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Interview with Ian Jackson
Figuring you can never get too much Ian Jackson, Trevelyan writes: "Debian Planet has an
interview with the long time Debian maintainer, and a former DPL, a current member of the
technical committee and the author of
dpkg.
Also
announced Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r7 released. In case some of you thought Debian won't be releasing anything this year =)"
Debian is always out of date so why dont they add a bsd like ports system.
Just for the record... Last time I tried FreeBSD, I found the ports tree not to be all that stable. Trying to install gdm I found something like 4 or 5 broken dependencies.
You can't get quality in a hurry. (Not that FreeBSD isn't great and stable -- I'm just saying Debian is absolutely more polished)
Anyway -- Debian will have something similar to the ports tree (but better) in Woody+1. (apt-src)
Besides that, Debian has been innovating since ever, and has great features:
- APT (now in Conectiva too)
- update-alternatives (now in Red Hat)
- First to adhere closely to FHS
- Bug reporting tools are the best I've ever seen (try reportbug -- the latest version even warns you about the "usual non-bugs in this package") - Kernel compiling tools are quite sophisticated - Debian has been incorporating more Java packages than any other distribution I know of
- Runs on *lots* of architectures. First to use the Hurd. Will soon work wirh BSD kernels (Free, Net & Open)
- Recently created apt-src program will let you create source trees much better than the BSD ports tree.
That's why it takes time to release a new version of Debian.
Well 'outdated' is not a major problem when you want a RELIABLE server.
And I think this is the point of Debian Stable. Tell me exactly what you would need for a home or semi-pro server that's not in Debian Stable?
If you want recent software, 'testing' and unstable shall make you happy.
I think it's a very good thing that a distro keeps a branch that is very unlikely to cause security problems
Ever heard of testing? Replace 'stable', 'slink', or (when it's released) 'woody' with 'testing' in /etc/apt/sources.list and update. Then everything's fairly up-to-date, but since it's already gone through 2 weeks of testing by people who run unstable (like me), it's also fairly stable. It's not as stable as 'stable', of course, but it's not horribly outdated, either.
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
I'm running kernel 2.4.18 with ext3. It really just depends on how much work you want to put into your system after Debian finishes installing. Switching from ext2 to ext3 literally took me less than 10 minutes.
Karma: Positive. Mostly effected by cowbell.
Sorry but Debian isn't out of date. If you like, you can use testing or unstable versin of package and you are more updated that with other distro. But if you want a very stable system maybe it's ok to wait the stable. The difference are in security. Now I run 3 servers, two with RedHat and one with Debian, and difference are important.
I can wait for Debian developer to release the new version with it's ok in quality and security features. If you like more "updates" and more insecure system use Redhat like distro.
I shouldn't feed the various trolls, but I guess I will. For one, someone mentioned OpenBSD's no remote hole in 5 years... Well that has changed now. Debian can compete with OpenBSD directly in the realm of security, because Debian backports EVERYTHING. They audit their code. No, they don't tout this fact like Theo does, but Debian is defintely covering their bases. And, you can be sure they will release a advisory AND a patch in a timely manner. Debian maintainers are some of the most talented guys out there, and highly motivated.
Someone said that Debian was dying because it hasn't made a stable release.. Well, clueless troll you are! Run Unstable. It is _cutting edge_.
I have ran Debian since 1.3, and for most of those years, I have used the unstable branch exclusively. I have been burned by it maybe 3 times. 3 bugs bad enough to affect my life. And every bug was fixed within a day. Let's see m$ or anyone else have that level of dedication.
Debian is very much alive and well, thank you very much, and I will continue to use for years to come, and should they stop maintaining, I will be happy to contribute, just to keep it going. Security, current packages, and reliability. Not bad for free software.
Ian Murdock.
What tends to happen is the ports directory lags behind software releases, especially the ports directory that gets installed from cd, and the particular .tar.gz source file that the makefile is trying to fetch isn't hosted on the web anymore.
It's really easy to get cvsup to continually update your ports directory. Just run it once in a while (like once a month or so) to update your ports directory to take into account newer versions of software packages and such. Once you do this, all issues with getting things built will probably never show up.