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For those who don't need the rock-stable, but somewhat out-of-date reliability of Potato, but want to give Debian a bash, try the testing (AKA woody) release.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.

(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:Mirrow Mirrow on the wall.....

[sydneyfong]

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

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