Slashdot Mirror
Debian Lays Out Freeze Plans For Woody
impaler writes: "Looks like Woody is frozen. LWN has a message from the Woody release manager, saying it is frozen. So, I guess it is finally frozen. Hopeful in less than a year Debian 2.3/3.0 will be out. Yay. Well, really lots of yay. Nice gui installer(even though I'm fine with the text one) and automatic hardware detection(something I like...especially when installing Debian on a box you know almost nothing about its hardware i.e. at an installfest)." And it looks like the Debian Release Manager has absolutely, positively staked his life on releasing Woody no later than July 8, 2001, so we can set our clocks now and hold him to his sworn word.
One of the marks of a mature OS. I'm glad to hear that a major linux distro has it...
.. it told me that it had found a new serial mouse, set it up for me, and that was it. It worked fine in both the console (gpm) and in X, and required no further work from me.
FWIW, Mandrake 7.x has automatic hardware detection as well. Other distributions probably include it, but Mandrake 7 is the only one I've used since Redhat 6.2 a couple of years ago or so. This worked out great one day last week; I had a short in my keyboard (PS/2) port which rendered it unusable. This would have been a big problem (obviously) but I found that for some reason, I could plug the keyboard into the mouse (PS/2) port and the BIOS recognized it fine!
Of course, now the problem was I had no mouse. What I did have was a spare serial port, and so digging through my Box O' Tricks, I found an old serial mouse. I plugged it in, booted up Mandrake 7.1, and sure enough
Now Windows users are probably reading this and saying "Big deal." But for Linux, it is a big deal, because this is exactly the kind of thing that Linux needs to get broader desktop acceptance. It never ceases to amaze me how far we supposedly "powerless" open source developers can come in such a short amount of time.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
(That threw me for a loop when I first started on Linux. I had to figure out that knowing the model number of your Reveal sound card is worthless. I had to peel the Reveal stickers off of the chips to see who actually made them.)
Having another distro (besides Redhat/Mandrake) do this is a nice thing.
It hardly looks like the Debian Release Manager "has absolutely, positively staked his life on releasing Woody no later than July 8, 2001" after viewing the following statements in the message (too lazy to read it?):
..."
"So, a theoretical (and overly optimistic) timeline: [timeline follows]"
"Now, those dates are obviously not realistic: it's questionable whether there'll even be alpha-quality i386 boot-floppies by the end of this month;
"Let me note that again for anyone from the press that might be reading:
THOSE DATES ARE NOT REALISTIC!
[0]"
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I'm not stoned, I just chugged a pack of fUN dIP!
Ohh, VESA modes, I'm so impressed. X hardware detection is still gimpy. EX. I tried to set my monitor to 1152x864. Quite a nice, normal resolution. Yet X thinks that mode should only go up to 71Hz! (Yes, even though my XF86Config says 30-95 and 50-160).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I have NO idea how this GUI installer rumor came about, it is blatently false. Woody will use the same boot floppies as potato does, and the debian installer project will also have a nearly identical UI (the text based curses menu like the current boot-floppies use).
If slashdot (or the submitter) had bothered to actually read Anthony's message in its entirety they would have seen that 1) woody is not frozen yet. and 2) that there is no mention whatsoever of a GUI installer. what Anthony DOES mention is better packaging of GUI software such as KDE/GNOME type programs.
here is a quote from the actual message where this silly rumor must have come from:
Third, I'd really like to see Debian include some of the nice "desktopy" stuff that's coming out for Linux these days: office software, DVD players, games, KDE, Gnome, Mozilla and so on. I'd like to see the installer cope nicely with the hardware that goes with it, video cards and sound cards and TV cards and whatever.
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Ethan
I realized something when I first saw this headline. When you see the phrase "Debian Woody is Frozen," and it makes sense to you, you know too goddamn much.
Time to drink off a few braincells.
hot foreign sheep.
What part of the "THESE DATES ARE NOT REALISTIC" enclosed in blink tags did you not understand?
He didn't stake a beer on that date, much less his life.
No, I don't mean the VESA driver, I meant the screen modes. The VESA standard makes a list of common resolutions and refresh rates and most VESA-compatible hardware supports those modes. XFree, instead of detecting the modes itself, simply relies on these VESA standard modes. Thus, if you're preferred mode isn't part of the (extremely limited) set of standard modes, you have to write your own modlines (or steal the automatically generated ones from your BeOS installation ;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Firtly, yeah! Why? Because Debian is starting to do what I thought they should do for some time now. Release cycles should be done in phases. I cannot agree more with the outline that AJ has set up. The one thing I would add to that would be, "And when we finally release woody as stable, we will start all over for the next release."
If it so happens that by the time that Woody is released in toto, that the next generation boot floppies are still not ready for release, we fall back to the versions used in the last release. I know that no one will want to do this, and thus we may have the motivation to finish up TNG-boot floppies, but why would we ever want another 1.5 - 2 year release cycle?
The first steps have been made: "testing", autobuilders, and phase-based release freeze. Now, let's keep it going w/a 12 month continuous release cycle.
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assert(expired(knowledge));
When I visited the FSF, the one Hurd box they had was frozen. =)
My Hurd box has had 3 or 4 months of uptime, so I have no idea what the hell the did to it.
The FSF production machines all use Debian now.
Debian Woody is Frozen - I wager my life the team waited a very long time to see that headline. Geek humour :)
Woody is most definitely NOT frozen, and /. shouldn't proclaim lies as headlines.
Does woody now have shrinkage because it is frozen?
Well, I do think the info about QNX was "informative" (though not worth +5). Small OSes tend to have small lists of compatible hardware, and I rather not spend a day trying to install something just to find out if it'll work on my machine. QNX is advertised as being better than most in this area, and I was glad to see some confirmation.
"How so? He's pointing out that an operating system these days should be able to detect new hardware as it is added to the system."
Yes, but he's doing so in a way that implies that hardware autodetection will just reach Linux for the first time in Debian 2.3/3.0!
Funny, when he said "Corel did a good job on my P75, but it's all stock hardware." I assumed he was talking Linux and not, say, Word Perfect. My mistake, I guess.
Clench a magnetized needle, (which you must magnetize yourself) between your thumb and forefinger, and carefull magna-etch the data of your program onto the surface of your hard drive platter. Don't leave any fingerprints on the platter, and for god's sake, leave your static electricy elsewhere! Use of microscopes is generally frowned upon. Come on! Like you can't feel your way through those sectors!
Bunch a crybabies.
tcd004
The guts of the PENTIUM 4!
Stockphotos
July 8, 2001 my ass. HURD will be finished by the time Woody is finished.
Kernel 2.4?????? if so reiserfs support? devfs? assorted goodies support?
Did anyone actually read the referenced message? It doesn't sound to me like it's frozen - for each of the three parts (base system, boot floppies and standard packages, optional packages), testing comes first, then that part will be frozen.
Is this a correct? If so, it seems like a big difference from being frozen.
And a lot better than the previous practice, I might add.
Liam Healy
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Not everyone makes OS decisions based upon the latest Slashdot opinion poll. :)
Kudzu
unstable rawks...
xfree 4.0 plus xlibmesa3 plus kernel 2.4.x with the right modules = DRI OUT OF THE BOX! no recompiling no downloading anything by hand no editing configuration files! (at least on a g400)
According to my last scan with console-apt, Woody makes use of libc6 v2.2.1, which I'm led to understand is a fairly major departure from potato's libc6 (2.1.3). There are some things in Woody I really want, so I'm inclined to upgrade now, but I have no idea how much stuff the new libc6 will break.
Anyone have any experience along these lines?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Sorry,
-atrowe
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Sounds nice. I recently installed Debian on an old pentium and needed to install most of it over the net so had to get the network card working but didnt know what it was. After a few educated guesses It was up and running but automatic hardware detection would have been one less headache for me.
no sig.
The number of innacuracies in this article is very high.
Woody is NOT frozen. We have a timeline, which calls for a freeze beginning in April. The timeline is plastered with "THOSE DATES ARE NOT REALISTIC!" warnings.
Woody may or may not include hardware autodetection, but the code's not there yet. The next-generation debian installer project (which I lead) WILL have hardware autodetection, but it will not be a supported installation method for woody.
Woody will NOT have a GUI installer. What fever dreams prompted impaler to write that, we will never know.
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see shy jo
Progeny already have a Debian based system with a very nice hardware autodetection system. The beta versions have been able to pick up everything on the various pieces of hardware I've tested it on. They also have a very cool tool for installing multiple systems with the same setup without having to do each one by hand - install on one, set up a DHCP server or a file containing MAC addresses and networking information, create floppies for every other machine, boot them all, come back and find that they've installed everything and configured themselves in the same way as the first machine.
One of the marks of a mature OS. I'm glad to hear that a major linux distro has it... Corel did a good job on my P75, but it's all stock hardware.
What REALLY impressed me was the QNX demo. It installed on my system, automatically loaded drivers for my mouse, cdroms, etc, then it automatically set up their mini-X on my Voodoo 3 at 1024x768 (NO MODELINES!!! Woohoo!) and what REALLY knocked my socks off - It even set up my printer, I was able to print Sluggy Freelance on my Epson Colour 740 by simply hitting the print button! All this in 15 minutes!
Anyway, automatic hardware detection will rawk. I've got about 15 different computers a month that get debian installed on them. (Or re-installed, due to hardware failures, etc.)
I think that the Debian guys deserve a big slashdot hug.
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Desperation is a stinky cologne
The whole "troll" thing is starting to become as overused as "Communist". You can accuse anyone of being a troll for being controversial or just ignorant.
Frankly, I wouldn't put much stock in the moderation. At best, it would be a measure of coherence and style, but usually it's just a product of shameless appealing to the masses (either those who hold the mythical Slashdot party line, or those despise it and enjoy promoting the "underdog", even if its proponent is content-free). I wouldn't worry about it much.
As an aside, I have noticed an increase in info-trolls (info-whores?) who try to gain karma, or just be annoying, by posting counterfeit informative posts. They try to sound knowledgable, but post totally bogus info. Most everytime they're caught, which is satisfying to know. Of course, you still shouldn't believe everything you read on Slashdot. :)