Debian, Past Present & Future

solferino writes "Christoph Lameter, a major guru in the debian project, has put up a very well written talk that he gave earlier this week that addresses debian's past, present and future. He includes a good background history of the project, some interesting sets of figures and projections (30,000 packages by the end of 2004!), a good discussion of the pros/cons of source based distros and his ideas about a new package manager he is developing (uPM). In all a very good read, whether you are just now considering dipping a toe into the debian well-spring or have been drinking from the source for a long time already."

Comments

Re:source distribs

[autechre]

Keep in mind that you can install from source when you really need it. For example, I was still running potato on my servers a while back when AOL broke Everybuddy. Newer versions were out, but Debian only updates packages for security reasons (which is occasionally annoying). Not a problem:

apt-get -b source everybuddy

This will grab the source and Debian modifications, apply the mods, and build a package. You can omit the -b option if you want to customise it.

Some will say that if you do this, you lose the stability provided by Debian's long release cycle, but I disagree. The rest of the system is not less stable because you installed an IM client (which shouldn't be able to hurt anything else, unless there are severe bugs in it). This is not any different than compiling it from source yourself and installing it into /usr/local (except that when you dist-upgrade, you'll get a newer version if one is available).

On the other hand, installing packages from testing or unstable may upgrade libraries, and that could affect your system as a whole (especially if it's libc6). You'll have to weigh the benefits of this if it ever comes up.

Re:30,000 pkgs by 2004?

[The J Kid]

Nope. If you'd read the article you'd've seen that uptill woody they released every year.

The reasons for Woody taking extra long were:
- BIG jump in archs...up to 11, with stuf like X-Windows not actually designed for those archs, but they fixed it!
- Security Patch maintainers where up to there neck in work and it was a bottle neck (remember the planned may release? This was why it was prosponed)
- They only started fixing the above 2 probs after the freeze so that no new stuf could get in.

But thankfully these issues are resolved now, so Sarge should release (ahem) on time. And anyway the PM (Project Manager) of Sarge wants to have cds of testing too.

The future

[Anonymous Coward]

The future sure does look bright for debian. The way I see it, debian went through a huge backend change during the potato-woody release. The number of architures soared and the number of package become increadible. Essentially the developers where forced to automate the entire build process across all platforms. This was hugh, and puts debian in a really good postision going forward. From what I can tell, debian is the only distribution where scripts control so much of the backend in building, distributing, and bug tracking the system.

Now that this change has been accomplished there is alot of "low hanging fuit" for debian to pick.

The installer has been reworked and is currently in early beta testing. the whole thing is now modular to allow for easy porting to different architures, and to to allow for a very flexable install. Most debian developers want to be able to pop in a cd, have it detect most of the hardware, then automatically install baisc packages. The new installer allows for this, while retaining the power to customize or trouble shoot installations.

Also there is the new PGI installer. Version 1.0 is out now. This is as simple as redhat/mandrake installers. It has great hardware detection and set up and gnome desktop.

If you want to try thy hardware detection routines in debian (package discover) then try popping in knoppix 3.0. This is a debian system on a live cd. Pop it in to most PC and the network, x, sound, and usb are all configured.

The desktop is coming to debian. Both gnome2 and kde3 are about to move from experimental to unstable. They should be in sarge for the next stable release. gnome2 will enter this weekend, and kde3 is awaiting the completion of the transition to gcc-3.2, but its ready to roll.

There are now many subprojects that will help puch debian onto the desktop: eg the desktop , the education and the music (demundi) sub projects are all starting to take off.

Debian been my primary desktop for 2.5yrs, since I gave up on redhat. I keep trying other distro, but they are just to inflexable for my needs, and to difficult to maintain. I want something to get my work done, not to continuely tweak the operating system.

AC-DC
PhD elec. eng.

PS for those who think that lindows software warehouse or ximian redcarpet are cool, try kpackage with it confgure to use apt. This is the default in the debian's kde. This combo of kpackage and apt-get is the most powerful and user friendly package installation i''ve ever seen. ( Of couse I personally still use apt from a terminal. :P )

I

Re:source distribs

[Tolchz]

Have you tried adding security.debian.org to your /etc/apt/sources.list ?

Usually for me it's a case of "Dang, some flaw in was found"
apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade

And a few minutes later that package is being replaced with a non vulnerable one. The security fixes are very quick for Debian.

I also run stable on a machine at work. It's beein running stable for about 2 years or so now and I've never had a major showstopping bug with it.

Re:source distribs

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main problem here is that the freeze is globally to all packages instead of local to small package groups..

This is false, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2001 /debian-devel-announce-200106/msg00014.html.

"The freeze will proceed in four phases: first policy will be frozen, followed by the base system, followed by standard installs, and concluding with the remainder of Debian."

Re:Debian's problems, RedHat sucks, but still use

[rendler]

One example that comes to mind is the XFree86 maintainer continuing to maintain XFree86 4.1 months after 4.2 had been released.

Yes that's because he (Branden) had to port 4.2 to the other platforms that are supported by Debian. As the attached document says, the XFree86 people only produce guaranteed working code for x86 and then it's Debian's job to port it to a huge number of other archetectures. Not only that but there were major bugs in 4.2 that Branden felt he could not release it as-is. Even after all of that he provided experimental debs months before the 4.2 went into unstable. For more info about this past non-issue.

Re:Plots (somewhat) misleading

[o-o]

Look at Section 4 (The Future ...) for
properly scaled graphs. The X axis for the diagrams in chapter 2 are the debian releases so far.

Re:Debian users - try rpm

[Wdomburg]

The Debian package format was introduced in 1995. The RPM package format was introduced in... 1995.

In terms of age they are pretty well matched. Red Hat was a growth of several other earlier package managers (RPP, PMS, PM) which may have made the transition a bit easier.

Probably the biggest thing Red Hat had going for it is that Caldera providing some of the funding for the initial development. In other words, it was multi-distribution from the start, whereas Debian for a long time was proprietary to their distribution (yes, I realize there are now several Debian based distributions out there).

Matt

Re:Three steps:

[Anonymous Coward]

it comes from the episode of South Park where the underpants gnomes are stealing tweaks daks. they follow the gnomes to their home, or whatever it is - fatory? - anywya, and they ask why they do it, and they are told 1. steal underpants 2. ??? 3. profit!!!

it was funny in south park, its very unfunny on here though. juist like most of the slashdrones though, who cant actually invent anything funny,they just repeat and repeat it ad-nauseum.

Fraud? The give the correct graph also

[wayne]

Right under the graph that you show, they say

(Note that the X-Axis of the diagram are the years of Debian releases. Diagrams with proper scaling of years can be found in chapter 4).

And, in chapter four, the show this image which has the correct scaling. Guess what. It looks exponential to me.