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Debian Fastest-Growing Distro, Says Netcraft
Oskuro writes "According to this story at news.netcraft.com, Debian was the fastest growing distribution in the last 6 months, closely followed by SuSE and Gentoo. RedHat, while still reigning, has started to lose sites in Netcraft's survey after they announced the end of support for their desktop releases. The survey is based on the stats from webservers which include the distribution name in their webserver's header." Maybe it would grow even faster when Java issues are worked out -- read more below on that.
adamy writes "For people like me that use both Free/Open Source software and Java, the two have come together with two major exception: The Java Virtual Machine and the Base Libraries. Seems the folks trying to get Java packages ready for Sarge could have listed the issues. This is an interesting example of dependency tree pruning: Several packages are orphaned because they depend on Ant, which depends on Swing. Swing has been lower priority for the Classpath because most of the java pacakages are server side or lack a UI componenet."
...is right here.
Lots of discussions on library dependencies and Kaffe and such like are in the January archives.
The Army reading list
Not suprised one bit. Both Debian and Gentoo are the only two usable UP TO DATE distro's that will run on a sparcstation. They obviously care to encompass EVERYONE who might use their OS, and gladly, Ill join that line.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
to me, it says that a lot of mid-sized sites got burned with red hat's recent killing of rh9. when the option is either a) pony up $400 or b) move to this untested hobby distro (fedora) that requires a complete re-install anyway, people start looking at other distros.
Upgrades are half price -- $174.50 for ES, which isn't that bad if you need the support and RHN.
Or go look at Progeny, who is not only providing "transition" support for RH 7, 8 & 9 users but was also just awarded LSB certification.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
this untested hobby distro (fedora) that requires a complete re-install anyway
That's quite a trolling from your part.
I have installed Fedora on my RedHat 7.3 machines using apt-get (for rpm) and only in 1 reboot, so it doesn't require a full reinstallation.
And also Fedora is the evolution from RedHat 9, even if it have bugs (as all distros) it's stable and ready for production.
May the source be with you!
[...] or b) move to this untested hobby distro (fedora) that requires a complete re-install anyway, people start looking at other distros.
I'm going to have to call FUD on this. Why would installing Fedora Core require a complete re-install? Doing an upgrade from Red Hat Linux 9 works fine.
For that matter, what's untested about it? Red Hat has to take some of the blame for this confusion, but in actuality, Fedora Core has gotten just as much pre-relese testing as previous consumer-level Red Hat distributions -- probably more, with the more-open development model.
It's also not *really* a hobby distro, any more than Debian is.
so, yeah, i'll be migrating our twelve servers from red hat to suse sometime in the next month or so.
Now *that* will take a complete reinstall. SuSE is a great distro so there's nothing wrong with that, but I suggest you take a second look at Fedora first.
The poster never said "untested hobby distro (Fedora) requiring frequent reboots." So no, it isn't trolling. It is actually a fact that this is the purpose of Fedora - a testing ground for the commercial offerings of RedHat. You don't have to read far down the Fedora web page to find this fact - it is in the first paragraph.
I work at a small web hosting company. My 10+ Web Servers do not report the distro used (In this case Slackware) as I have "rolled my own" Apache from source and do not want such details
reported. Many of the Admins I know at other web hosting companies, do the same. How accurate can such a survey be, when based on the assumption that the distro is reported? Then again, Netcraft is not well noted for it's accuracy and well know for it's use of false assumptions.
A good looking, easier installer for just x86 is doable, but having that same installer work on the, what is it now, 10 or more different supported architectures that is the trick. Also don't forget the debian installer is designed to work on the lowest common denominator not every system it installed on has a flashy graphics card, some don't have a display card at all.
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
A lot less than 2 CDs if you have the bandwidth to do a net install. There are debian net install .isos out there that'll fit on a business card disc.
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
The above poster is right. People want to run Java servers on their Linux boxes.
But the fact that Debian currently has some issues with installing those automatically shouldn't hold things back. Certainly, Red Hat aren't going out of their way to support Java.
And as far as Ant goes, it's not that hard to install:
antversion=1.6.0{
cd
wget -O - "http://apache.inspire.net.nz/ant/binaries/apache
ln -sf
echo "export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/apache-ant
export PATH=\$PATH:/usr/local/apache-ant/bin" >
chmod +x
}
FWIW, I run Linux Virtual Private Servers with a bunch of Java hosting tools like Tomcat preinstalled on my distros.
And, at least for me, Red Hat (including Fedora) is still outselling Debian by 5.3 to 1. Maybe it's because I install apt-rpm on the Red Hat boxes to make them just as easy to manage as the Debian ones :)
I'd have to argue with you on this one. When you install Gentoo...it starts off about as bare bones as you can be....stuff gets added as YOU choose to.
Its pretty much a 'built from scratch' system, but, it does manage your dependencies quite well for you...that and all the flags can help optimize just about every application you install, since they are all compiled from scratch (with the exception of some things like the NVIDIA binary drivers).
Give it a look...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Have you tried the new installer? The old boot-floppies has been totally replaced for sarge, and the new installer is shaping up pretty well. It's still not pretty (yet, although people want a gtk frontend, no one has really stepped up to do the work on it) but it's got hardware autodetection, a lot less questions to ask, grub as the default bootloader, and a whole bunch of other goodies that are on the way. We've gotten tons of positive feedback on it so far, so please give it a go!
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Use Testing for the desktop. It is new enough (typical a new Gnome release costs about two weeks or so), but I don't believe it breaks (see also Bruce Perens comment in this thread who uses unstable for 10 years). Perhaps you shouldn't force packages that are kept back for a reason?
Infrequency of adding packages? Usual there are reasons for this and Fedora will have the same infrequency in future. Only thing which is a bit Debian specific is the withdrawing of License related problems.
Sid is more for developers and adventurers.
Actually, Red Hat folks release Fedora updates for current releases. Here's the one from Monday for slocate, for example. Notice the redhat.com return address, and if you look at the package, you'll see it was built by a Red Hat engineer on a Red Hat system.
Older releases will be handled by the Fedora Legacy project, and while it'll take a little bit for that to get settled in, I'm highly confidant that it'll be a success. Again, see Debian -- "hobbyists" can do a good job of keeping security updates current.
None of the commercial vendors impressed me with their technical support, which is funny since I paid them for it. Red Hat of course dropped support for their desktop distribution altogether.
Both gentoo and Debian, in my experience, have extremely friendly communities who are willing to answer even my worst inane questions ("How can I get video1394 to load automatically on boot?")
I ran gentoo for probably six months, but the cost of compiling everything once a week to keep up-to-date just wore me down, especially on the laptop. I know it has binary packages, but not for everything, and anyway I was all proud of myself for having optimized binaries for AMD...
Well, no more. Now I'm on Debian and I'll probably stay there. It has the best "everything just works" rating out of all of them, even the commercial distros. Well, it has the best rating after you've installed discover. (And why doesn't discover load video1394 when it sees my firewire cable? It seems to know to load raw1394...)
My only complaint is that there needs to be kernel-image packages that have ACPI compiled in.
I'm impressed enough with Debian that I intend to install it on 50 desktops at work, if only I can convince management of the benefits of doing so. (Especially with Fully Automated Installation, woo hoo.)
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
Yes, the X packages are well behind in Debian, but it's for a number of good reasons. One being that the packages underwent a massive reorganization for 4.3. This was, in part, to prepare to accomodate the oncoming packages of the freedesktop.org stuff. The libraries have been split in to individual packages, rather than massive bundles. Once the freedesktop packages go in, the infrastructure should be there for you to mix and match X libraries from both XFree and f.d.o as you need them.
Another reason is that, simply put, XFree86 produces unportable code. Tons of the porting work must be done by the Debian team itself, and that isn't easy. The fact that a lot of the code itself is crappy is an issue too.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Sadly, testing and unstable have _no_ security updates.
Unstable is handled by basically updating to whatever the upstream developer produces, which usually includes the security fix, but getting those fixes into testing is not in any way reliably prioritized. It can be weeks to months before serious open currently exploited bugs get fixed in testing.
I really love a lot of things about debian, but the security policies are rather incomplete.
-josh
You can do a PROPER install of Debian with the MEPIS live CD.
http://www.mepis.org/
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
When will people learn?
apt-get dist-upgrade is meant for that: DISTRIBUTION upgrade. You've been running woody, want to run sarge, apt-get dist-upgrade.
Other than that, it CAN cause breakage. It is meant to remove all traces of the previous distribution, thus it defaults to _remove_ packages which do not exist in the new one.
For everyday use you type apt-get upgrade (no dist-). It upgrades to the new packages, and when conflicts arise it always assumes the conservative approach (leave you with non-upgrade packages instead of breaking).
I do have to agree there. Unfortunately, one of the big problems is that some of the porters simply weren't building 4.3 pre- packages on their arches for a while. They really dropped the ball, and x86 seemed to hurt for it. Unfortunately, I don't think all the work for x86 was really done, even though the packages worked for most people. Hopefull now that the big reorganization is over with, and 4.4 packaging has already begun, things will move quicker in the future. If get time, I'm going to help out with the 4.4 testing/packaging effort, but that probably won't happen until post-sarge. FWIW, Branden does want people to help him, hence the move to svn.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I think that would be because Netcraft only counts website servers. So this means that Debian is the fastest growing Linux distro for use as a web server. I have a feeling that it would indeed not be the fastest growing desktop distro, although I could be wrong.
It's not surprising that Mandrake didn't rate very highly. Mankdrake is a desktop distro. From the page, the data was collected from the distro names embedded in the Apache server header.
-----------------
It's not really funny, unless someone doesn't get it
Not quite. The difference is that a plain upgrade will hold a package back if the new version has dependencies or conflicts which your system doesn't currently satisfy, while a dist-upgrade will automatically install new dependencies and remove any conflicts (usually obsoleted stuff, though not always) in order to meet the needs of the new version of the package.
The only time I don't use dist-upgrade is on the occasions when there's an inconsistency in the dependencies of some set of packages I use. Right now, for example, mozilla has been upgraded, but galeon (which I use) hasn't been built against the new version yet, so dist-upgrading would remove galeon so that the new mozilla can be installed. But I just look at what changes apt says it will make, notice that galeon is marked for removal, and just switch to using plain upgrades for a few days until the inconsistency is resolved.
That sort of situation is pretty uncommon though, and in most cases it's better to use dist-upgrade. Otherwise you're stuck with a bunch of old packages which aren't upgraded because the new version has spun off some functionality into a separate package, or depends on a different library (libgnutls vs. libssl, for example), and the plain upgrade won't handle the change.
The only time dist-upgrade will remove a package is when it's specifically incompatible with something else. For the general task of cleaning out old packages that you don't need anymore (libraries that nothing depends on anymore, for example), use debfoster.
The fedora website says that it's distros will be supported for a certain (small) length of time.
However, after reading through the fedora-legacy mailing list, it appears that many people are unhappy with that idea. Certain people would like to see releases immediately before a major change supported for as long as people choose to support it. The fedora-legacy project already supports RH 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 with the intention of supporting 9.0 when it EOLs.
I expect that FC1 will be supported for some time since FC2 moves away from the 2.4 kernel.
I believe the thought that one has to continually upgrade their foedora distro to the latest release may be a misconception spawned from the initial intent of the project... I think we may see it morph into something quite different from what was initially announced.
-Norm
Maybe we are living in different unverses but:
1) KDE is at 3.1.4 nad 3.1.5 in unstable
2) xfree86 is at 4.2.1 in unstable
3) use bf24 to install with kernel 2.4 (maybe you need to read manual or at least boot screens)
4) try dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 or simply use Knoppis as way to generate correct xfree86 configs.
5) try to find someone who provides support for Debian
6) I simply don't understand you about hardware support
7) I don't care about nonstandart format as long as any program I need have Debian package. I suggest checking number of native Debian packages. Anyway debian package typically works in Debian and its derivats - no subtle diferencies as between RH RPM and Mandrake RPM and SUSE RPM.
8] Please can you report why Debian repositories are broken? Everything works for me.
Yes, Debian doesn't have pretty installer and you need little more work to do to have working computer. But using it and upgrading it simply works. So in long term Debian is easier. But this can't be checked in day or two so no pretty reviews.
You have installed Knoppix, not Debian. I made the same mistake myself, once, when a colleague needed a machine quickly. There are some packages specific for Knoppix and not compatible with standard Debian. Sadly, these include the kernel and a shell, that is used somewhere during boot process (by initrd?). I forgot the details. There were some USENET postings detailing the procedure, though.
If you can manage to install a standard Debian, get yourself the first CD (if you have a fast connection), install a base system and then upgrade to testing (+ some packages from unstable, like maybe Mozilla, OpenOffice, whatever). You will have less problems with upgrading and maintaining the system as compared to Knoppix.
Kind regards
zapyon
I like my spaghetti with source.
Well - I never really got this one. I actually like Debian's strict policy on software licenses even if it now and then causes some inconvenience. As for Java - well - it didn't take me long to realize that I needed the original - and that Blackdown have a ready made Debian package that can be included in apt's sources.list. That's all - one line in a configuration file and you've got perfectly working Java in Debian.
And here's the line:
deb ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/java/debian/ testing non-free main
By the way - I would assume this problem to be exactly the same on all other Linux distro's due to SUN's licensing. Isn't that so?
scripsit zapyon:
I've never done this, as the Debian installer never struck me as particularly intimidating... but I was under the impression that if you point your sources.list at Debian servers and crank up the Pin-Priority in preferences, a simple apt-get dist-upgrade will get you a stock Woody, Sarge, or Sid box. (Pin-Priority>1000 will `upgrade' even if it is to an earlier version of the package.)
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
Fedora is easy to maintain/patch, with yum and apt-get.
Debian is a good distrib, but please stop this fanatism. Other than Debian could be viable solution.
You may have been told this already, but the best thing to do after installing a standard Debian setup is to use apt-get to install hotplug and discover. This should do the majority of hardware autodetection for you.
HTH
What makes a "proper" Debian installation?
Knoppix installs a mix of testing and unstable, it installs a lot of packages that are suitable for a desktop but not for a server.
The Debian cd installs a minimal base system of Debian Stable. From there you can choose which packages you want, and you can later choose to upgrade to testing or unstable if you want. This is what I would call a proper Debian install.
I dont know anything about MEPIS, presumably it too lets the user choose a more minimal server oriented system than the knoppix install, and hopefully also allows a totally stable system without needing to downgrade after the install.
I personally use the debian cd to install servers, and the knoppix cd to install desktops. I am sure there are better ways but this works for me. The users like knoppix, once I modify it a bit, such as increasing the screen resolution, deinstalling squid and apache etc...