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For those who don't need the rock-stable, but somewhat out-of-date reliability of Potato, but want to give Debian a bash, try the testing (AKA woody) release.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

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.