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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."
In other news... Hell has frozen over, pigs are flying, and the Chicago Cubs have won the World Series.
The whole point of Debian is that everything is done in the open. There's very little to be an "insider" on. Just subscribe to the mailing lists or read the archives and you'll be an insider.
Having said that, the future of Debian looks like a blue sky, with fluffy white clouds here and there. And a little flying saucer off in the distance.
noah
Can't you kids do a proper slashdotting these days? It won't work unless we all pull together!
Carousel is a lie!
Add these to your sources.list and be thankful for all the good things Debian _has_ that other distributions _don't_. ;)
deb http://kde3.geniussystems.net/debian ./ ./
deb-src http://kde3.geniussystems.net/debian
niko
- Vorbis 1.0
- Perl 5.8.0
...and now Debian 3.0
REPENT, REPENT, THE END IS NIGH!News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Debian 3.0 Woody comes with KDE 2 and XFree86 4.1 while 3 and 4.2 are out respectively. This is a bit sad, seeing that even CygWin and FreeBSD have more up-to-date versions in their releases.
Release processes do take time, and Debian woody's started long before KDE3 or XFree86 4.2 were released. It is not the policy of the Debian team to drop everything mid-release-prep and package the latest version of some package, regardless of how significant it may be. If that was the case, releases would take a great deal more time.
If you want to see the process go faster, feel free to step up and help out.
Since you're posting this sort of troll, you probably already know the truth of things, but in case you don't, I'll fill you in.
Debian GNU/Linux releases for 11 architectures, and aims to stable on all of them. Most distros concentrate on one or two (gentoo is no exception), and those one or two tend to be x86 and if you're lucky PPC. They also tend to cater to people that are in the latest-greatest-p6-123123MHz-gamer crowd.
It's important to realize that with Debian, users of non-standard architectures are not second class citizens like they are on other distros. If I install Debian Stable on a machine that Debian claims to support, I can be relatively sure that the system will run smoothly and without issue. This is much more than any other distro out there can say.
When you say that XF4.2 and KDE3 are stable, you mean they are stable on the intel architecture, something no one debates. But being stable on intel is useless to the Debian release crew if it doesn't compile on Alpha, SPARC, HPPA, and any of the other supported architectures.
Another thing that non-Debian users seem to have a very hard time with is the notion of Stable, Testing, and Unstable. When you use some other linux distro, a release is very important because the lack of a central repository and coordination of packages makes partial upgrades a royal pain in the butt. This is fondly called RPM hell. Actually, it has nothing to do with the RPM package format, which isn't really that much worse than the DEB format, but rather the way APT handles package dependencies and such.
A Debian user can keep his system up to date over a reasonable net connection, and I'd venture that most desktop debian users don't much care when something releases, because they don't track stable. Because stable needs to be stable on 11 architectures, it is nearly always behind -- but it's as stable as a rock. If you run x86 and want the lastest version of everything, stable is not for you. In that case, it doesn't matter when Debian releases.
If you're a newbie, track testing, because it's more stable than unstable but has a lot of pretty new packages. If you're adventurous and want the bleeding edge, track unstable. Despite its name, it's still more stable than say, Mandrake.
Hopefully, you're less ignorant now than you were before. If not, then you're beyond help.
The future of Debian looks like the past.
There will be, lo, much wailing and gnashing of teeth because Random Cool Package vX+1 isn't in the STABLE release. There will be much complaining by users (of which I am one!) when RCP vX+1 takes longer than 15 nanoseconds to hit the UNSTABLE release, regardless of how complicated it is to support on N (where N>=11) different architectures.
In about 3 months time, there will be much complaining about how long the freeze for "Sid" is taking, and how out of date "Woody" has become (completely ignoring the fact that most people using Debian on servers are probably more than happy to continue to use "Potato" or earlier, just so long as they can apt-get from security.debian.org).
In about 2.5 years, there will be another announcement on /. announcing Debian 4.0.
And all through this, real honest-to-goodness users will be able to keep right up to the bleeding edge of free software just by adding a single line to their sources.list, and won't notice a thing.
By someone who's apparently been running Debian 3.0 for some time now (a number of days, anyway) and didn't even notice. Thanks, apt-get dist-upgrade!
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
finally my woody is stable!
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
The release notes for x86 indicate that the thing
;)
ships with 2.2.20, with an optional 2.4.x for the bleeding-edgers, with (as explanation) a catty remark about the Debian developers not considering 2.4 a 'stable' branch.
Admittedly, I prefer Debian for the work that I do mainly because of the stability. But really -- 2.4 has been utterly reliable since ~2.4.14. Isn't this just a little paranoid? C'mon, folks, the thing is solid! I mean, the VM subsystem hasn't been completely re-written in *months*!
- undoware.ca
And as we all know (except for the magazines) the branches of debian are like this compared to other distros:
Now all that's left to say is, I wonder what they'll do when then run out of Toy Story characters to name the releases after? Or if they switch, what they'll switch to?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
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)
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
You hear me! Use the beta version of the PGI ISO, the graphical user-friendly autohardware detecting installer for Woody. Check out the website here, and the ISOs are at the first link (only 100MB download for the entire ISO).
Debian truely is the one true Linux distro. Its non-commercial, and developed by an open free internet community. Not only that, but Debian is superior to every other Linux distro. It is stable, easy to maintain, and it runs on any useful piece of computer hardware - no matter what platform that hardware is. Support Debian by simply spending the time to install and use it for your main Linux installation.
But the stable distribution attempts to eliminate even the 0.01% of cases you have allotted due to bugs in all packages across all platforms.
:) Debian has a slow release cycle. This is because they want to document and/or fix all bugs before they release things. This takes a long time. They have a slow release cycle.
:)
I once asked a question in #Debian.
I asked, "Why do bugs in packages which are obviously due to the program itself [menu options crashing the program, false advertising within the documentation, totally broken config parsing, etc], get reported to the Debian package maintainers? Don't package maintainers just package stuff up and put it in the tree?"
The response was, "A bug in a Debian package is a bug in the distribution."
Debian stable attempts to have _all_ bugs ironed out or documented. I'm serious. This is different than RedHat [latest version] which contains an attempt to iron out a lot of bugs, but is spurred mostly by neat developments in the software they distribute. It's not good or bad either way, just different.
You've heard it a million times, but maybe it will register one day.
Debian unstable plus "unofficial" sources is newer than RedHat [latest version]. apt-get resolves a FUCKING SHITLOAD of dependency problems that develop using rpm.
It's simple, really. It's nice. It makes you happy. People like Debian because it makes them feel good to just type in "apt-get install ", twiddle their thumbs for the download period, and then use it. And it almost always just works. The times that it doesn't work, it usually means that there is no such package or you spelled it wrong, and more often than not you got the name wrong.
When this is the worst thing your distribution does, you're doing well.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
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.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way