Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 Released

emissary47 writes "The Debian Project is pleased to announce the release of Debian GNU/Linux version 3.0. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system, which now supports a total of eleven processor architectures, includes KDE and GNOME desktop environments, features cryptographic software, is compatible with the FHS v2.2 and supports software developed for the LSB. The Release Notes are available here."

Comments

Re:There's something strange here

[dvdeug]

we understand Debian likes to be eccentric, but isn't it silly to provide the release notes in Catalan?

That's the way Free Software works. Debian didn't hire translators to translate the release notes; they put out an email saying "anyone who wants to translate the release notes, here they are." Somebody translated them into Catalan. Nobody put the work into translating them into German or Chinese. That's just the way it goes. They'd be in all 5,000 human languages if we could, but we take what we can get.

In any case, you're being a little hard on Catalan. There's 9 million Catalan speakers world wide; it's not one of the top ten world languages, but it is one of the top hundred.

Re:to apt-get or not to apt-get

[Phil Hands]

Er, correction to that.

I've just been informed that apt-get dist-upgrade is in fact not recomended, because if you don't know exactly what you're doing it has a tendency to remove half the packages on your system, and not bother upgrading. So you are left with a perfectly valid, but somewhat emaciated instalation at the end.

dselect on the other hand makes smarter decissions about things like "replaces" and "suggests" package interdependancies, and lets you resolve conflicts before going for the upgrade, so that is the recomended route, unles you happen to know better.

Of course, I didn't know that, because I know how to avoid getting bitten by apt-get, so don't tend to notice its teeth.

Sorry about the previous mis-information, please igore it (feel free to mod it into oblivion)

Re:So Pleased

[Bostik]

Yes, I have been following Gentoo a bit as well. A friend uses it, and has fallen in love with the idea of having hugely optimized linux binaries. I gave it a thought - having something like ports/portage for Debian packages would indeed sound good.

Then I came across this: apt-src is in the making. Imagine Debian's package and dependency system combined with ports. Instead of doing a dist-upgrade for binary packages, you would have the choice of doing the same thing, but automatically from source debs. This is already possible for individual programs:

apt-get -b source $package

does just that but doesn't do recursive builds. It only builds that particular package. Having all the build-dep packages built as well, that would indeed make a difference. Over time, it would allow to incrementally optimize all of the packages.

Personally, I'm thrilled.

Re:Why?

[Phil Hands]

Why does Debian always come with such old stuff? Fine, maybe KDE 2.2 is more stable than 3 but still...

Well, we test it until we're happy with it. This takes time. Time during which newer packages get released. Packages that generally get uploaded to Debian unstable (or in the case of KDE3, Debian experimental), then people like yourself that want to run that package have to go through the "trauma" of editing one line in one file (or using a cute point and shoot front end), and then they can pick and mix what software they want. Is that really so difficult to understand?

Other people may release things because their marketing department tells them to. Debian has the luxury of not having a marketing department, so we don't need to do that. That's why we use the word stable, to mean stable.

OK, it takes longer than it might if we were all being paid to do this, but who cares. It's so easy to select the versions of software you want, and select the level of instability you can live with, that there is no issue to be resolved here.

For example, you might want to run a known good version of postgreSQL on you machine to look after you accounts database (don't want to loose that) but be willing to run a cute KDE3 based database access tool to view that data, on the assumption that if it crashes, it probably won't have chance to ask postgreSQL to do anything too bad --- your choice, go right ahead. apt-get will even keep track of that, adn continue to upgrade postgeSQL from the stable branch, and kdata (or whatever) from unstable, or even http://freds.kde.emporium.com/debian/ say.

In summary, give Debian a try if you fancy it, but please stop coming up with spurious excuses not to, if you don't.