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XFree86 4.3.0 in Debian Unstable
Anonymous Coward writes "XFree86 4.3.0 has finally made it into Debian unstable. See the announcement." Note that Direct Rendering is broken (there's already a bug filed, and I'm experiencing the same problem - looks like something small and stupid, affecting everyone), so don't dist-upgrade just yet.
On my debian laptop... Debs and instructions can be found here.
Not the distro, per se, but the concept. I am as ardent a supporter of the Free Software cause as anyone, and Debian most closely represents my views as a proponent of Free Software. By not including any software which does not conform to the terms of the GPL, Debian has taken a firm stand against the encroachment of closed source software into their distribution.
While I run Windows at work and home, I also find Linux to be incredibly interesting as an experiment in Free Software, and Debian is at the fore of the movement.
What dismays me sometimes with Debian is that it is perceived as being behind the curve with regard to the state of the art. However, as can be seen by this latest inclusion of XFree86 Debian proves again that it is ready and able to lead the Linux horde flying the flag of Freedom high upon its shoulders. Though Debian takes a while to include the latest software releases in the distro, you know when the release is finally made that you have not only a distro that is up to date and on the cutting edge of Free Software but also that the distro itself adheres strongly to the concept of Free Software. Though many people will mock such a stance, seeking to include "useful" programs regardless of their software Freedom, for those of us who care about such things Debian is invaluable.
I have been pwned because my
I used to be annoyed that X always lagged behind so much in debian/sid. But then I realized, after upgrading to 4.3, do I as a user notice anything different? absolutely not. It might be slightly faster, not that I notice with a 1.33ghz AMD machine... Why does it really matter what version of X you're running, as long as it can handle dri, you can play you games, render true type fonts, etc. Not that I play games under linux anyway, that's what my "play" XP Pro box is for.
This is not mean to be a troll, honest. But wasn't the whole purpose of Debian Unstable to be really up to date?
Debian unstable *is* really up to date, in general. However, there are a few high-profile packages, like XFree86, that tend to lag because of Debian's incredibly diverse platform set and high standards of quality. The wide variety of platforms doesn't affect most stuff nearly as much as hardware-oriented software like X.
I mean, when people complain that debian is way too far behind, debian fans are quick to point out that debian has three distros and that unstable is really quite stable and as up to date as other distros.
I run unstable on my laptop and my desktop (stable on my servers), and in my experience, unstable is not "as up to date as other distros", most of the time it's well *ahead* of the other distros. Because my systems get upgraded almost daily, I find that my biggest compatibility headaches with my colleagues on Red Hat, etc., is that I'm always running newer versions of everything than they are.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Nope. The "perfect" desktop distro would be a more up-to-date version of debian, with something as nice as YaST. Perhaps User Linux will provide the funding necisarry for this. Here is what I have found for the current distros:
For the desktop SuSE is king - it has great hardware support and YaST is much better than what Mandrake and Redhat have to offer (if only they would release it under a better licence). One edge that RedHat Linux had over SuSE, wast that there were more third party packages made for it, however now that RHL does not exist this is not a factor. Like any other RPM based distro though, after a year or two you will get to the point where it is easier to just do a clean install of the newest version rather than continue to update.
For the server, debian is great - it is rock solid, and the easiest distro to keep up-to-date without any down-time. However, if your employer really wants support then RedHat enterprise would be the best way to go.
Slackware was my first distro, and is wonderfull in its simplicity of design. I still recomend it to anyone who wants to learn linux, not just have a windows replacement. Like RPM distros, you will likely want to wipe and start over every couple years. Once I learned linux fairly well, the day-to-day convienence of other distros moved me off slackware.
Fedora stands alone as being the most up-to-date distro due to it's short release cycle, so it is the obvious choice for those who want to be on the cutting edge. It actually seems to be quite stable despite it's cutting edgeness. But when you release every couple months you can't expect to be able to support a release for any length of time. IMHO, the only advantage that Gentoo has is that it is more up-to-date than debian. The package manager seems nicer than rpm, but not as convienent as apt. I have never had the desire to use it myself. Knoppix is great for trying out linux, troubleshooting, and installing a desktop debian system. I keep a couple burned copies on hand at all times. And of course there are dozens of distros that are usefull for cool niche projects.
Debian works for me. I've not found any software that doesn't have up-to-date packages; if they're not in the main tree it's normally for a good reason, and apt-get.org can usually find them. Failing that there's Google and the helpful IRC channel and mailing lists.
apt-rpm, while much nicer to deal with than native rpm, still suffers from the fact that nothing beats Debian's own apt repositories for sheer quality and stability, thanks to the zealous adherence to quality of the majority of Debian package maintainers. Actually, it's this QA which puts Debian ahead of almost every other distro, especially the (IME) terminally crashy Gentoo.
I wouldn't say that Debian is the perfect distro, but I think it's as close as you'll come to one.
Debian tests for a wider range of architectures than the rest of the Linux distros, and in fact wider than XFree86 itself does. (Branden Robinson points this out on his site - Google for 'Debian X Strike Force').
The odd architectures are more difficult to test for, but it results in a couple of benefits:
* Changes can go upstream (obviously, I'm not referring to 4.4) -- and in fact XF86 kind of expects Debian to test for them
* Debian as a whole gets a much more stable set of X packages than the others do -- unstable packages for X are at least as stable as most other distros' production versions.
Ah, but I do understand this. But isn't this the whole point of *unstable*? Sure unstable gets a stable (sounds wrong already doesn't it?) XFree 4.3 package after 1 year, and even that isn't really true as apparently dri is broken. Meanwhile, lots of people are using XFree 4.3 dri on lots of other distros - certainly on less platforms than debian supports but isn't the point of unstable to be bleeding edge? It certainly doesn't seem to be.
I honestly cannot see how debian people can claim that their distro does not lag behind in current features (not that this is bad mind you - not at all. Debian stable rocks as a server, I've deployed many machines myself) pointing at unstable, when it takes a *year* to get XFree 4.3 there.
Some packages are up to date in a matter of a day or two, but some you just have to wait ages for. I'd like to see Firefox, KDE 3.2. And lots of little apps/games that aren't updated all the time. For example qtjoypad looks like just what I was looking for but no debs in sight. Compile it myself you say? Well, I was going to but I couldn't properly install qt dev libs because of something with XF86. Apt-get would just tell me needs XXX but it's not going to be installed.
Some games I've wanted to check out: Neverball, neverputt. Neverball is a great game, and there is a deb but it's been behind for awhile.
Also a great looking 3d chess called Slibo, no packages in sight. Tried to compile myself and got all kinds of errors. Same thing with endeavour. A file browser in my quest to find a good windows explorer replacement (currently using xfe but that has some limitations as well). There is an edeavour package but it's not up to date and the latest has some features I'm looking for in a file browser. Again tried to compile but got all kinds of obscure errors. I've compiled many packages but some are just a nightmare to deal with.
I could go on and on, but I'm a user who likes checking out new software and even something as simple as apt-get/synaptic gui can come up short. I'd be happy at this point with a distro that could compile anything from a fresh install.