Debian 2.2r4 (Potato) Released

codazzo writes "Debian 2.2r4 is out. As their website states, "The fourth revision of Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (codename `potato') has been released. This point release, revision 2.2r4, mostly includes security updates, along with a few corrections of serious bugs in the stable distribution." " You can see the press release - or get it from the FTP list.

Comments

Test woody

[RavenDuck]

For those who don't need the rock-stable, but somewhat out-of-date reliability of Potato, but want to give Debian a bash, try the testing (AKA woody) release. It's generally pretty stable (although there was a doosie with X not long ago that many people had problems with), and contains a lot of the latest and greatest software. Plus it comes with the quality and apt goodness that Debian is famous for.

I probably wouldn't run testing on a production server (although I certainly do run Potato on them), but if you're knowledgeable enough to cope with the odd dependency conflist or other problem, it makes a great desktop. Only problem is that security fixes might take a few weeks to make it into testing.

Of course, if you really want to live on the edge, Sid (unstable) is even more fun. Certainly not for beginners, however (Sid, that is, Debian generally isn't as difficult to install as its reputation suggests).

Where's the stable kernel?

[Kenneth Stephen]

The last I heard, Debian was waiting for a stable kernel to appear. And please dont tell me that the 2.4 kernels were announced a while back by Linus - I have any number of machines (of varying hardware) on which 2.2 kernels run fine but the 2.4 kernels are unstable. Granted, 2.4.13 is billed as the stable kernel we've all been waiting for. However, given that it made its appearance only last week, I think we should excercise some patience. It will take a while to test all the OS packages with the new kernel.

Re:Where's the stable kernel?

[Genom]

I'm sure it is possible to fix if you know what you are doing but the whole point of apt-get is that it is supposed to take care of that instead.

Actually, it's not supposed to take care of *everything* for you -- it just takes care of most dependency issues, so you can concentrate on which software you want to run. You still have to understand what the software you're installing is going to do.

If there's a major problem with an often-used package (or set of packages such as KDE, Gnome, etc...) there's generally some press about it over on Debianplanet - as well as on the mailing list. If you're going to run "unstable", then you generally should check those places before you do any major installing, just to be safe.

As far as installing KDE2 -- Here's my install process (which has worked with "unstable" every time I've tried) from a 'clean' system:

• Install base system (stable)
  
• Upgrade base system (stable)
  
• Check Debianplanet for any caveats with the current packages
  
• Change /etc/apt/sources.list to point at unstable
  
• dist-upgrade to unstable (gives the "unstable" base system)
  
• install/configure xfree86 (should give you Xfree4.xx at this point)
  
• install kde
  
• install kdebase-crypto (to give konq SSL support)
  

Thusfar, that's worked for me on quite a few new boxes -- I don't play around with Gnome too often, so I can't help out there.

I guess the real bottom line is that just because an "easy-to-use" tool exists, doesn't mean that you can just be lazy about the stuff you install - you still have to keep up on what's broken at any given point. That's the drawback of "unstable" - if you want everything to "just work", then "stable" is the answer, although you'll get a lot of outdated stuff, it's been tested quite extensively. If you want newer stuff, but don't want the bleeding edge, then "testing" is where you should be, although I've found it tended to break a lot more than "unstable" when I tried it (this was a while back - maybe things have changed since then). "unstable" is for us bleeding edge freaks who want to run the latest versions of everything -- at any given time something could bust - but it's generally fixed within a day or so.

Re:Where's the stable kernel?

[Fjord]

Debian is no option for somebody who wants to use a linux desktop in a production environment.

I actually believe the exact opposite. Debian is the best environment for workstations. The default listings in /etc/apt/sources.list are just defaults. Because of this, you can change them to point to an internal server. Then an admin updates packages on the single internal server (once tested) and they get pushed out to the workstations. Individual workstations can be rolled back if need be.

Note that I am talking more along the lines of where there are 100+ workstations or where security is a real concern.

(un)accepted packages

[Chocky2]

There's a list of which packages did/didn't make it in available at http://people.debian.org/~joey/2.2r4/full.html

Re:Where's 3.0

[HoserHead]

Firstly, Debian 3.0 will be released when it's ready - which means sometime in 2002.

Woody wasn't frozen in July, Policy was. The base base system was frozen later, in August. Everything else remains unfrozen, though those packages in 'standard' and many tasks (such as GNOME and KDE) should be on the block to be frozen pretty soon.

We're going about it in a different way this time; different parts of Debian are being frozen at different times. Because base and standard packages are more important than Priority: extra packages, they're being frozen first so all bugs can be shaken out and fixed.

For more information, search the debian-devel-announce archives or see the most recent mail from one of the release coordinators, Anthony Towns.

Basically, be patient. The reason that Anthony whipped together Debian 2.2r4 is simply because 3.0 won't be ready for a while.

Debian vs. Redhat

[timbck2]

I don't intend to start a "my distribution can beat up your distribution" thread here.... That said, I had a very negative experience with Debian recently. While trying to choose a Linux distro, I narrowed down my choices to Debian and Redhat. I didn't want to run a beta release of anything, but it sounded like Debian (Potato) would suit my needs. So I installed it. The installation itself wasn't painful (though I don't understand why it required two floppies to do a network install), but I soon discovered it didn't support my usb mouse & keyboard or my Matrox G450 dualhead video card. I futzed around for a day or two trying to get XFree 4.1.0 running, without much success. So I bagged it and installed RedHat 7.2 with no hitches whatsoever.

I'm fairly new to Linux (I prefer BSD, however), but not at all new to Unix on PC hardware -- I've been working with that in various forms for 12 years.

What's my point? Well, I guess it's that if hardware continues to change so rapidly, then for any given Linux distribution to stay relevant and useable it needs to keep up.

Re:Debian vs. Redhat

[swillden]

The slick, up-to-date ones are all made by companies. Community efforts don't seem to work nearly as fast.

For the record I do have a machine that runs debian, I'm not bashing it but Mandrake 8.1 compared to the newest debian is night and day

Which Debian version are you talking about, Potato, Woody or Sid? In my experience, Debian testing (currently Woody) is just as solid as RH-based distributions, and it's very up-to-date.

And if you want to stay on the leading edge, I don't think there's anything out there that moves as fast as Debian unstable (currently Sid). And don't let the "unstable" name fool you... it very rarely breaks and as long as you update fairly frequently, it's quite easy to back out the rare upates that do cause problems. I run Sid on three different desktop machines and Potato + selected bits of Woody on my server (if you want to do this, the first thing to upgrade is apt, because the new version of apt allows you to specify which distribution you pull from when you apt-get).

Debian gives you a range of choices between stability and newness. I think the only thing lacking is one more stage. I'd like to see an additional version between stable and testing that lags testing by maybe a month and gets security patches quickly. Running stable + bits of Woody is a reasonable compromise, though.

Finally, I always found that my RH-based installs were more out of date than I have been since I switched to Debian. Why? Because upgrading them required a reinstall that I was always reluctant to do. Maybe things have gotten better now, but I started with Mandrake 5.0 and stayed with the Mandrake distros until 7.2 and every upgrade had to be a reinstall/reconfigure.

With apt-get, debfoster and cruft, I don't expect I'll ever have to reinstall any of my Debian boxes until my HDDs die.

Re:Debian vs. Redhat

[shaka]

You don't need two floppies to do a network install.
One is almost always fine if you have fairly standard hardware and chooses the compact disc, which is only one disc and contains many many nic-drivers.
That said, people who expect a cutting edge dist for desktop use should not run Debian Potato. They shoud run Woody, which poses few problems, or Sid, which probably is the most cutting edge dist out there - I run it and only once have I ran into serious problems; actually only half-serious, it took a couple of hours to fix the problem and I didn't loose data or anything like that.
Debian rocks. That's all there is to it.

Re:Debian vs. Redhat

[blang]

Debain has 3 release paths, and if you did not get as far as recognizing that, your attention span is too short. At any given time,debian has production, test, and unstable.
Consider it 3 different distros.
Potato, the most rock solid distro there ever was, with lightning fast security updates.
Woody - more solid than most other linux distro's, at least the red hat kind.
Sid - bleeding edge.

Redhat on the other hand has no such consept. They'll slap together something and call it release 6,6.1,7.0 or something. But these releases won't even be properly tested. Red Hat out of the box used to be so full of root-exploits. A typical honey pot redhat system only lasted a few minutes before they were 0wn3d.
That's bad if their market is the linux newbie: a linux newbie is not expected to know how to lock down a system before plugging in the cable modem.

There is no possible compromise between stability, reliability and bleeding edge. You see the same thing elsewhere. Windows NT was available only for limited hardware choices, while 95 and 98 was supposed to support everything. NT was supposed to be reliable, and 95/98 was expected to crash.

To achieve good reliability, features have to be introduced with care, and regression testing must be extensive. If you can come up with a method that provides the highest reliability without sacrificing new features, you'll be a very wealthy man one day.

Debian is doing the right thing by maintaining these branches. In fact, that's the way the best commercial software shops do things, except they allow the end user to see only the stable version.

The moral: Don't buy any new and fancy HW for a production system. The HW is not production proven yet, and you won't be able to find a stable OS for it.

If you want the latest and greatest HW and SW, make do with less than optimal reliability, but don't go whining like a baby if something breaks or crashes.

Great - I updated from 2.2r3 to woody last night .

[Crspe]

There I was, having a problem with ssh that I just couldnt fix, so I thought I would upgrade to woody. The ssh version went from 1.2.x to 2.9.x (or something like that) and the problem disappeared! I mean 1.2 to 2.9 is a big jump - I am not surprised that it made a difference.

Are there any other linux distros which still have the 2.2 kernel as their current release version? Personally I would prefer to see woody released earlier instead of doing small patches to an out-of-date distro. I mean dont get me wrong, debian is great, I love it as a distro, its just that right now it seems a bit behind the times.

Re:Mirrow Mirrow on the wall.....

[sydneyfong]

The big list is here : http://www.debian.org/misc/README.mirrors

What testing is

[PhracturedBlue]

Anyone who wants to know what testing is for should probably read (from Anthony Towns): this

The doc is somewhat out of date, and testing hasn't worked nearly as well as they had hoped for it's primary task (shortening the release cycle), but it certainly fills the need of having reasonably stable packages that are still up-to-date.

Basically the important parts are:
> * New "testing" distribution
> This is a (mostly finished) project that will allow us
> to test out distribution by making it "sludgey" rather
> than frozen: that is, a new distribution is added between
> stable and unstable, that is regularly and automatically
> updated with new packages from unstable when they've
> had a little testing and now new RC bugs.
...
> * Testing updates to frozen is suboptimal: updates go into
> incoming, wait there for a while, get added to frozen,
> we discover they introduce as many release critical bugs
> as they solve, rinse, repeat. The "wait for a while" part
> is particularly suboptimal, but without it, it's not really
> a freeze.

The current way we do things is basically to build a new package, hope it
works as advertised, and let people test it. If it doesn't work, we repeat
as many times as necessary, or eventually just throw the package out.

A better way to handle this, which I suspect everyone's just spontaneoulsy
reinvented as the read the above, is to try to keep around a previous
version of the package that was usable. That way if the new packages don't
work, we can just keep the old one rather than having to throw it out
entirely.

That, essentially, is the point of the "testing" distribution: to contain
a consistent set of the most recent "believed-to-be-reliable" packages.

So the main point of this is to create a distribution that, essentially,
doesn't have any release critical bugs [5] and can be kept that way
with much less effort on the part of the release manager. That should
have a pretty profound effect with regard to speeding up the freeze,...

Read the whole thing, though. And remember that it's a year old, and things have changed a lot since then.

Sid's problems are overrated

[Mendax Veritas]

When I first started using Debian, I installed Potato. All the software was badly out of date, so I moved to Woody. A lot of the software was still out of date. So I moved to Sid. Everything worked. I'm happy.

Yes, from time to time something bad happens (the broken PAM package of last February of March being the worst incident -- it broke login!), but those usually get fixed up within a day. The more lengthy problems are usually caused by a package being reorganized or renamed such that everything dependent on it has to be rebuilt. This is currently occurring with the Python packages. So I have all the core Python packages marked "hold" until everything I need that's dependent on them is updated. It's a minor annoyance, but no big deal really.

So by and large, I'm very happy with Sid and I think its breakage problems are severely overrated, mostly by people who are afraid of living on the edge.

Re:which Debian should I use

[mvdwege]

Ok, I hope you get to read this.

Do remember that upgrading a distribution is non-trivial, even though Debian does its best to make it as painless as possible. If you have the stomach for dealing with some minor niggles the procedure is as follows:

1. Install the stable distro ('Potato'), but only install enough to get networking going. The base installation with no further package selection should work if you're on a network, otherwise use tasksel to install the dialup utilities.
2. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to include a line to the testing distro ('Woody') or if you're feeling adventurous, add unstable ('Sid'). Just copy the relevant lines that are already there, changing stable to testing or unstable as you see fit.
3. Run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. If all goes well, you should end up with your base system upgraded to testing or unstable (I don't know if you can upgrade straight to unstable yet. 3 months ago I had to upgrade to testing first).
4. Install the rest of your system using either dselect, deity or just plain apt-get install <package-name>.
5. Have fun!

If you do run into any problems, check the docs. If they don't help, or if you haven't got a clue which docs to consult, ask the debian-user mailing list, they tend to be friendly folk. If you have more preliminary questions, check my email on my user page.

Mart