Social Contract Amendment May Bump Sarge To 2005

An anonymous reader submits "Debian's Release Manager Anthony Towns announced that after the Grand Resolution to amend the Social Contract has been successful (it does not only apply to software any more), vital parts to modern Linux systems, such as important documentation, firmware needed for proper hardware support will have to be removed from the distribution before the next release. Moreover, the upcoming installer will need to be changed. He goes on to say that he does not expect this to happen by the end of this year which means that Sarge will not be released in 2004."

Comments

Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

Release one version with the new contract next year, and one without it sooner? Call it sarge- and sarge+.

Re:Why can't they

[Openstandards.net]

That's what I was thinking. Why not call it the Social Contract of 2005?

Or amend the social contract to promise hardware support and then prioritize the goals to hardware support takes a priority until a "free" option is created or becomes available?

It appears as though Debian is going to take a big step backwards if something isn't done. The goals are clearly good, yet the real world has always required a compromise between the ideal and the real. Don't the Debian developers actually work in IT for a living?

I'm really concerned about this, because I was highly considering Debian for the next OS to try since RH is discontinuing free security updates, and I'm not sure at all how Fedora is supposed to address it. The last thing I need, though, is a hardware problem, particularly with a network card.

Re:Why can't they

[Wyzard]

Nobody's saying that your proprietary hardware will cease to work in Debian. The packages will still exist; they'll just be in the "non-free" section, separated out so that people who don't want any non-free software can omit that section from their sources.list file. Non-free packages are technically not part of Debian, but if you have a non-free line in your sources.list, there's no difference whatsoever in how you use them.

Re:Why can't they

[Openstandards.net]

Your probably right. However, when I read his description of the impact on the installer, it appeared a bit unprecedented that the firmware for a network card could not be presumed to be in the kernel, and thus creating a new complication.

Perhaps this is only an issue for the next major release, and thus not critical today. I don't know. The reality is, though, that people have to make decisions and don't have all the time in the world to investigate every possible scenario and become Debian gurus before they've ever even installed it for the first time. People need some assurance that things will run smoothly, today and in the foreseeable future.

In IT, perception is 9/10ths of reality. Thanks for helping to ease my perception. ;)

Re:Why can't they

[Wyzard]

I suppose you're right that if your hardware needs non-free firmware then it won't be usable right away in the installer, but it's not that much of a big deal to provide the necessary driver to the installer. But I think long-run maintainability of a system, especially a server, is much more important than ease of getting it installed in the first place, and that's an area where Debian shines. (That's not to say that installation should be difficult, but someone installing an operating system on a mission-critical server should be able to get by without having his hand held the whole way, or he's probably not qualified for the job.)

Re:Why can't they

[Openstandards.net]

You're right, once it's running, everything is great.

What I was kind of imagining, though, when I said, "people need some assurance that things will run smoothly, today and in the foreseeable future," was that if Debian did install successfully and run well (Java is fast, errata is easy to keep up-to-date, etc,...), it might become the chosen OS for successive hardware purchases, which may have different hardware and may receive a newer version of Debian. You want to know that the installation 6 months from now will go as smoothly as today's installation, and knowing that they are changing it in a new way does not help give you that kind of assurance.

If being the best sysadmin was the most critical part of the decision, I'd go Windows all the way. I know that backards and forwards, and inside and out (barring the source code, lol.) However, I also know Nimda and Nimda II a little too well. ;) Discovering that my Kernel was trying to send packets to North Korea didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

So, I'm willing to risk the "unknown" a bit, though RedHat 9 and FreeBSD 4.9, including all the networking and server software I had to configure, have done well to break me in. Heck, I even finally had the ballz to give one of those machines a full static public IP address instead of hiding it behind NAT. Yet, I never did get my D-Link wireless card to work on my laptop, so am typing this in Windows XP right now. :( Thus, I will NEVER claim to be a Linux hardware driver guru. NEVER!!! I need to trust the OS to take care of that.

Re:Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

They do, it's called: Unstable or Sid.

You use Sid if Woody is to old. If you want to use Sarge you can RIGHT NOW, however it requires a bit of extra work.

In your apt config you tell it you want to use packages from Sarge, and if they don't exist then packages in Sid.

Whala. Sarge+ and Sarge-

I don't know why people always complain about Debian being out of date, it's irritating.

Re:Why can't they

[FuegoFuerte]

It's going to be hard to say this without people getting their panties in a knot, but I absolutely hate trying to 1) get debian systems running how I want and 2) keep them running how I want.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like if some of the Debian folk spent as much time fixing their distribution as they do ranting about the philosophy behind their system, it could just about literally jump into my computer, read my mind, and magically do everything I wanted without me touching a keyboard. As it is though, I'm forever saying to myself "now where the hell did they put THAT file, since it's not in its standard location..." and "what version is this package really? It looks like version 3.1 from 2 years ago.... no wait, that's 3.1-15... wtf is the -15? It has features that weren't released until 3.9? Huh?!??" and similar.

I once made the mistake of trying to figure out what flags were being used to compile a Debian package... after jumping around through about 7 different intertwined and slightly obfuscated shell scripts for about an hour, I gave up.

Unfortunately, I'm still stuck using Debian on one server (the owner doesn't want to change OSs), but I've gone to Slackware on all my systems. Much simpler system to deal with overall, IMNSHO.

Re:Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

"You use Sid if Woody is to old. If you want to use Sarge you can RIGHT NOW, however it requires a bit of extra work."

What's the point? Neither sid or "sarge" are provided with security patches (in timely fashion) so you can't use them in a production system.

A really disappointing move ...

Re:Why can't they

[Wyzard]

Standard location? In my mind, the "standard" location for a file is where Debian puts it, and I get confused when it's located somewhere else in another distribution. :-)

I get the sense that you're used to installing things via "configure; make; make install". It's good to have a simple method like that available, but when I talk about maintainability of a system, installing non-packaged software is one of the biggest ways to hurt that maintainability. Files created by a "make install" usually don't have any way to cleanly remove or upgrade them; you can upgrade by installing a new version over the old, but if the old version included any files that were removed in the new version, you still have that cruft sitting around. You get the idea.

I like the fact that Debian has lots of infrastructure. I like to know that when I install a package, it will cleanly integrate with other related packages, and when I remove it, it will cleanly go away. I like the fact that when I'm looking for a package that performs a certain function, I can often guess its name, thanks to fairly consistent naming patterns, and that when I'm looking for a file, I can usually guess where it's located due to a consistent and sensible filesystem hierarchy.

I hang out in #debian on IRC, and I read some of the mailing lists, and I see a lot more discussion on practical matters than on philosophy, and philosophical rants are pretty rare. The system works quite well for those who use it; your comment about "fixing their distribution" just doesn't apply. Remember that Debian is run democratically: if you don't like the way something's being done, you can always register as a Debian Developer and vote to do things your way. If you don't want to do that, or if you get outvoted by people who like things the way they are, you can use another distribution and nobody will hold it against you.

Re:Why can't they

[Welsh Dwarf]

You have just pointed out the #1 reason why sysadmins who compile from source on production servers need a beating with a clue stick. I'm not going to get all superior, because I know that at one time, I did the same thing. The point is, to put something new on a production machine (like samba with acl support for debian) you: -Compile it on a development box with prefix=/tmp/what_you_want -Make a package of it -test the package on a second test box to make sure it works -install the package on your server This provides several advantages besides the one you stated: Firstly, you never have to have dev tools on your production server (and a lot of rootkits depend on these being present). Secondly, you are sure that when you deploy, it's quick and painless, and you won't brake your server with a botched compile. Thirdly, you can deploy then on multiple servers quickly and efficiently.

Re:Why can't they

[FuegoFuerte]

Standard location? In my mind, the "standard" location for a file is where Debian puts it, and I get confused when it's located somewhere else in another distribution. :-)

I tend to think of the "standard" location as being where I can find a file on better than 75% of the *nix systems I've used (Several linux distros, BSDs, HP-UX, Irix, Solaris, etc). But whatever makes a person happy I suppose. For a linux distro, I'd say the standard location should be where the LSB says it is, which from what I've seen Slackware tends to follow a lot closer than Debian.

I get the sense that you're used to installing things via "configure; make; make install". It's good to have a simple method like that available, but when I talk about maintainability of a system, installing non-packaged software is one of the biggest ways to hurt that maintainability. Files created by a "make install" usually don't have any way to cleanly remove or upgrade them; you can upgrade by installing a new version over the old, but if the old version included any files that were removed in the new version, you still have that cruft sitting around. You get the idea.

Actually, I typically install things via "installpkg ---.tgz" and upgrading things via "upgradepkg ---.tgz". When I install from source, I use "configure; make; checkinstall 'make install'". This makes a package out of it that I can easily install, remove, upgrade, whatever I want.

As far as philosophy goes, well, I think you're well on your way to proving my point with your small dissertation on democracy and voting.

To be honest (and here I'll get philosophical), I think the democracy thing may be part of what's (IMO) wrong with Debian... the masses are often wrong, and most of the people in the masses will never known an entire distribution as intimately as, say, Pat knows Slackware. Therefore things take longer to get fixed, the whole process gets bogged down, and the distribution suffers because of it. I have known people using Debian Unstable who have had things like SSH stop working properly upon 'apt-get dist-upgrade' or whatever the command is. Meanwhile, I am almost always running slackware-current (aka the unstable, in-development branch of slack), and have never once had these problems in the several years I've been using slack.

Re:Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not that much of a big deal to provide the necessary driver to the installer.

No? I sure never managed it in the days when every other Linux distro had a driver for my network card, and even Debian did, but it wasn't on the install disk. First time I finally got to use the distro was when they finally put it on the install disk, because I simply couldn't figure out how to use a separate driver with their installer.

Of course, that could have been something to do with the total lack of documentation.

Maybe if they're about to take the driver out again, they could have the courtesy to make the process of using it a little easier? Debian's a lovely distro, but if I can't install it I'm not going to be able to enjoy it.

Re:Why can't they

[gnu-generation-one]

"I tend to think of the "standard" location as being where I can find a file on better than 75% of the systems I've used"

#!c:\perl\bin\perl

Re:Why can't they

[vk2]

Secondly, you are sure that when you deploy, it's quick and painless, and you won't brake your server with a botched compile. Thirdly, you can deploy then on multiple servers quickly and efficiently.

No wonder my server ( without dev tools offcourse ) never slows down :-)

Re:Why can't they

[plugger]

without dev tools offcourse

Glad your dev tools aren't leading you astray :p

Re:Why can't they

[Alioth]

Actually, the old RedHat desktops seem to get security updates via Fedora Legacy. I've seen a few go by since RH officially discontinued support.

Re:Why can't they

[Cro Magnon]

Long term maintainability doesn't mean squat if you can't get it installed in the first place. I don't need a fancy GUI with lots of eye-candy; Slackware installs great. But I never did get "raw" Debian on my last machine, though I'd installed many other distros, including Slack, with no trouble. I also want to add that I use Linux on a home desktop, not a server.

Re:Why can't they

[pebs]

Release one version with the new contract next year, and one without it sooner? Call it sarge- and sarge+.

You know, unless I missed something, I didn't see anywhere where they said they were going to delay the release of Sarge because of this. They said simply that they wouldn't be able to achieve their goal of implementing this new contract until next year. The delay was inferred by the article submitter.

They should release Sarge as soon as possible. It doesn't matter whether this social contract gets in or not. And it doesn't matter whether Gnome 2.6 gets in or not. We are ready for a new stable release of Debian now.

Re:Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

...losing...touch...with...reality...

Re:Why can't they

[spotteddog]

Don't the Debian developers actually work in IT for a living?

Many of us do. Many do not. Many are students. Debian is very diverse.

Some of us who "actually work in IT" view our Debian work as a way to fix what we view as broken in the "mainstream (MS dominated)" IT world. One of those broken things is the lack of accountability, stability, and reliability in all facets of "mainstream/modern" mass produced IT systems.

I compromise my "idealism" with respect to computing systems at the job I get paid for (because I'm not the "big boss"). I am not willing to do so in my volunteer work.

The Debian project will release "when it is ready." It is ready when the software, and all the other bits meet the creiteria set forth in the Debian Social Contract (and the release manager give it their blessing).

NOTE: The opinions expressed are my one and do not necessarily represent those Debian project. I am a Debian Developer.

Re:Why can't they

[Featureless]

By the way, I had reasonably good luck getting my (G520) D-Link wireless working under Debian (w/ the 2.6.5 kernel) with the driver emulation package from LinuxAnt called DriverLoader. Commercial, sadly, but between that and madwifi (no Super G, etc etc)... Anyway, I _think_ it works for the PC Card as well.

Not perfect, and I had trouble until I went to the 2.6.5 kernel, but it does work (I was playing CounterStrike on it last night with a 20 ping). :)

Re:Why can't they

[BillKaos]

Files created by a "make install" usually don't have any way to cleanly remove or upgrade them

You can use GNU Stow

Re:Why can't they

[Syberghost]

I'm really concerned about this, because I was highly considering Debian for the next OS to try since RH is discontinuing free security updates, and I'm not sure at all how Fedora is supposed to address it.

Pretty much the same way Debian does, only with a different balance of free vs. usable.

Re:Why can't they

[nsxfreddy]

Files created by a "make install" usually don't have any way to cleanly remove or upgrade them; you can upgrade by installing a new version over the old, but if the old version included any files that were removed in the new version, you still have that cruft sitting around.

That's why you use something like Epkg to manage symlinks into /usr/local/whatever. Simply add a

--prefix=/usr/local/encap/package-version

to your configure command, build and install as usual, and use epkg to manage which version actually shows up in /usr/local. You can even try the new version out from /usr/local/encap/package-version without removing the old version until you're ready.

Re:Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just upgrade to unstable...

Re:Why can't they

[walt-sjc]

We are ready for a new stable release of Debian now

Not only are WE ready, modern hardware is ready. try installing woody on a machine that only has SATA drives... Hell, for that matter, SARGE won't even install. You end up needing to build a custom kernel with extra patches. BTW, Knoppix works as the kernels are more modern and include libata.

Re:Why can't they

[wasabii]

I run Debian on a home desktop... and a few work desktops for Users. It's better than anything else out there in my opinion. You can bend apt to your will to deploy software to an entire office... and debconf to deploy configuration settings.

Anyways on my personal desktop, I run unstable. I do have problems, but they are life ending things. It's sort of something you're going to have when you're bleeding edge.

Really knowing Debian is just knowing dpkg/apt. The entire system is just a bunch of packages. You know you can install Debian from a Knoppix CD just by making a partition, mounting it, and typing 'debootstrap woody /the/partition http://us.debian.org/debian'. Beats the hell out of any other installer. :)

Re:Why can't they

[emag]

The packages will still exist; they'll just be in the "non-free" section

Ok, and so what happens if, the next (or next next, or next next next, or whatever) time there's a big push to "get rid of non-free", as seems to happen regularly with Debian, and it finally goes through? That would be my big concern here. Moving a bunch of hardware support to non-free has the potential of abandoning a large amount of hardware in the future, should the camp that wants to eliminate non-free ever manage to actually get the momentum they need.

Re:Why can't they

[beeblebrox87]

They really should institute some sort of "semi-free" section for those of us who agreed with the old social contract, and therefore don't want to use contrib or non-free, but find the new one too broad, and therefore have no objection to installing things like GFDL documentation. Moving all binary firmware and GFDL docs out to non-free will just force almost everybody to use non-free, which defeats the point.

Re:Why can't they

[Cyberdyne]

Your probably right. However, when I read his description of the impact on the installer, it appeared a bit unprecedented that the firmware for a network card could not be presumed to be in the kernel, and thus creating a new complication.

Saying "just include non-free" is fine for installed systems - but what about running network installations using that network card? Would you need to get a special "non-free bootdisk"? The different boot images are already a pain; a bootable ISO with all the drivers would be nice (AIUI the current ones are all 'unofficial'?) - but would this now have to fork into two versions, "free but incomplete" and "non-free complete"?

Perhaps giving a warning before loading any "non-free" drivers would be enough to satisfy the purists, without creating extra overhead for maintainers...

Re:Why can't they

[llefler]

Beats the hell out of Debian's installer anyway. But that doesn't take much.

Actually, I was just doing a debian install last night using Sarge. And tonight I'll probably reformat the drive. Let's see, 32g out of a 40g drive (don't have that problem with Knoppix), no option to build multiple partitions, no swap partition? I wanted lilo, I configured lilo, lilo was already installed, it installed grub. (in expert mode)

For me, I don't really care about social contracts. Free means I don't have to open my wallet to install it. It's a nice goal, but not something that I'm looking at when I'm building a system.

The things that have kept me using Debian are apt and Knoppix. And the ideal installer would be a Knoppix build that only included the base OS and a full KDE. (I prefer to boot to Knoppix, then knx-hdinstall) I'll apt-get everything else.

2004 or 2005 for Sarge? Doesn't matter, it's so outdated it's already irrelevent.

Here's the thing people, it doesn't matter how many applications are available for Linux if you have to fight with every install. Wanna hear a story about spending 3 hours getting mysql working properly because of one improperly documented setting? PostgreSQL installed fine. MythTV, I'll get it going someday....

Re:Why can't they

[Cro Magnon]

But will installing with debootstrap find my hardware? My current hardware is more Linux-unfriendly than the other machine (which I couldn't get raw Debian on). And, though Knoppix 3.3 detects all my hardware, I had problems going from Knoppix to Sid.

Re:Why can't they

[mcc]

but it's not that much of a big deal to provide the necessary driver to the installer

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but all I know is that if I have to locate and download a separate network card driver and somehow figure out some kind arcane interface for "supplying" it just to get the hardware to run, that is in fact a big deal. In fact, it's unacceptable.

I basically judge distributions based on how much bullshit they make me do and how much of the bullshit they do for me. If I have to even think about what "drivers" I need, I consider the distribution to have failed me. I had one experience with Debian and it was excellent, but a big part of that was that installation meant downloading a single floppy disk image and booting off of it, and after that one floppy disk ran and downloaded all the parts it needed, everything worked.

I can't speak for anytone else. But if upon running the installer I had been presented with "please supply propeitary network driver" (which would have been difficult to fulfill, because at the time linux lacked support for HFS+, and it would not have been able to read from my hard drive), I would have gone "oh hell no" and tried something else, as that would have caused me to assume that there was going to be a lot of bullshit once I got things running and it would be best to bail out while I had the chance.

Re:Why can't they

[ajk]

I have known people using Debian Unstable who have had things like SSH stop working properly upon 'apt-get dist-upgrade' or whatever the command is.

That's why it's called "unstable".

Re:Why can't they

[Phillup]

It's good to have a simple method like that available, but when I talk about maintainability of a system, installing non-packaged software is one of the biggest ways to hurt that maintainability.

What good is having the source code to software if you aren't going to use it until it gets packaged?

Oh yeah, I know... instead of installing it... make a f*cking package... and then install it!

Give me a breake. If the system is that fragile... it deserves to die.

Which it won't... because it isn't that fragile. But I sense that there may be more than a few admins that are that fragile.

Re:Why can't they

[dondelelcaro]

For a linux distro, I'd say the standard location should be where the LSB says it is, which from what I've seen Slackware tends to follow a lot closer than Debian.

By default, Debian Policy stays in sync with the LSB. However, there are a few places where the LSB is suboptimal, so Debian documents the differences in policy, and does the right thing. Is there a particular set of files that you're talking about that you feel is in the wrong place?

Actually, I typically install things via "installpkg ---.tgz" and upgrading things via "upgradepkg ---.tgz". When I install from source, I use "configure; make; checkinstall 'make install'". This makes a package out of it that I can easily install, remove, upgrade, whatever I want.

And here, I do the following to upgrade or install a package:
dpkg -i foo.deb;
Or:
aptitude update && aptitude upgrade;
Finally, if I need to build and something from source, it's as simple as:

apt-get source foo;
apt-get install build-essential fakeroot;
apt-get builddep foo;
cd foo-*;
# Change how ./configure or make or R CMD is called
$EDITOR debian/rules;
# Build the .deb
fakeroot debian/rules binary;
# install the .deb
dpkg -i ../foo_*.deb

There's nothing magical there at all. The rules file calls make in the build target, and everything else happens automatically. [Now, if you don't know how to modify a make file, perhaps you shouldn't be building stuff from source?]

Re:Why can't they

[Wyzard]

It's not really "the masses" who run Debian... it's Debian Developers. Anyone can be a DD, but you have to get a PGP key signed by another DD and go through an application process, so there's a sort of self-screening that keeps out people who don't really have that much of an interest in the project. There are lots of DDs, and it's true that most probably don't have a deep knowledge of the workings of all the software in the distribution, but they're not exactly "unwashed masses" as you portray. :-)

As far as philosophy goes, well, I think you're well on your way to proving my point with your small dissertation on democracy and voting.

Dissertation? All I'm saying is that the Debian project does what its members think best, and if you were a part of the project, you'd have a say in how things are done. That's hardly a philosophical rant.

The SSH problem you mentioned happened a few days ago, due to a mistake while tightening permissions on /dev/tty*. Prior to that, the last problem I remember was about a month and a half ago, when GConf broke for a day or two. Bugs do pop up on occasion, but that's a natural consequence of using the "unstable" branch, the front line for packages that haven't been tested yet. I find it pretty hard to believe that no Slackware package has had a bug in several years.

Re:Why can't they

[ACNeal]

These are volunteers developing a freely distributed OS and other software bundle.

It hurts no one in that group if people stop downloading Debian.

Who better to stick strictly to ideals?

Why should they compromise?

Buy SuSE if you want a big, commercially viable, compromise. Buy Windows for that matter. They are giving you the fruits of their labor. It isn't their job to coddle you. It is their job to not compromise their ethics.

I always struck me as a quible. But come on, go some where else if you want something else. They don't want you, you don't want them.

Re:Why can't they

[Openstandards.net]

>It hurts no one in that group if people stop downloading Debian.

Not true at all. The developers are motivated to be part of something bigger than themselves. If Debian dwindles and disappears, let's see if your theory holds true.

When developers leave Debian, then what are you going to say? It hurts no one when developers disappear. What about when you are down to one guy working alone 10 years from now on what was once Debian? Was no one hurt?

The developers who like to build something great and successful get hurt if the project loses its interested parties. They might be the cause, ironically. We are our own worst enemies. But being the cause doesn't mean you won't get hurt.

Leaving a project that is dwindling is depressing. You can't tell me that some contributors won't feel like they lost something.

I'm not saying this will happen to Debian. I'm simply saying that's its innacurate to say it hurts no one.

Re:Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a drug that'll increase your penis size, make you smarter, and install software for you. But you don't have to wait until it's FDA apporved. And if your physiology is fragile you deserve to die.

Do us all a favor and go have sex without a condom.

Re:Why can't they

[Wyzard]

Let's see, 32g out of a 40g drive (don't have that problem with Knoppix), no option to build multiple partitions, no swap partition? I wanted lilo, I configured lilo, lilo was already installed, it installed grub. (in expert mode)

What installer were you using? The old one runs cfdisk, and the new one has a nice menu-based partitioner that lets you edit partitions, filesystem types, and mountpoints all at once. I don't remember offhand what options it gives you for a bootloader, since I use grub anyway, but if you're using the expert install you can just skip the bootloader step if you don't want it overwriting the bootloader you already installed.

I really don't understand what the difficulty is with Debian's installer. I found it a bit challenging when I was a complete Linux newbie, but nowadays I find it much more pleasant than other OS installers I have experience with. (Redhat/Fedora, Gentoo, and OpenBSD come to mind.)

Re:Why can't they

[Wyzard]

If I have to even think about what "drivers" I need, I consider the distribution to have failed me.

And if you have to even think about what "partitions" or "packages" you need, the distribution has failed you too, right? In that case, go run Windows. Or do you draw the line somewhere?

Speaking of which, ever notice that when installing Windows, as the setup loads itself there are a few seconds where it says something like "press F8 now if you need to load additional drivers from a disk or CD" ? Hardware detection and automatic driver loading are a convenience, but they can't be perfect, whether because of licensing issues or just because the hardware didn't yet exist when the OS was released. Debian's new installer provides that convenience in most installations, but if it's not available, it's not the end of the world.

Re:Why can't they

[llefler]

Installer: debian.org/devel/debian-installer. I used the 30 meg 'net' install for i386. I knew that the current stable release was too old for what I wanted to do, so I followed the links to the latest beta. It certainly wasn't cfdisk, I use that everytime I install with Knoppix. The new one showed me my two HDs, gave me the option to automatically partition or to manually partition. Manually partition let me create one partition for the 'full' size of the disk. No option for creating more than one partition and no way to see the true size.

On the bootloader, I went through a normal install the first time until it told me it was going to install grub, so I rebooted and started from scratch in expert mode. I skipped the configure grub option and configured lilo, even though it was already installed. Exiting the lilo config option put me back on the grub option. I skipped it again and selected the option to install and it installed grub in the boot sector although the lilo packages were installed too.

I've used a couple (now old) RedHat installs. Probably something like 7.x. Mandrake 7?, 8, 9, and left when I saw what 9.1 did. Debian Woody, which has never given me a bootable system. Debian Sarge. Gentoo and Knoppix. And some really old versions a couple years ago from TurboLinux, Slackware, and some that I no longer remember. To be really honest, the unofficial Knoppix install is the smoothest I have found. If only Knoppix wasn't so big.

Re:Why can't they

[Wyzard]

When using the partitioner, did you realize that in addition to choosing "finish partitioning", "automatically partition", "undo changes", or "configure LVM" from the menu, you can also move the cursor up into the list of partitions and press Enter to create new partitions of any size you want, or change filesystem and mountpoint settings for existing partitions? About the only thing you can't do is see the exact size in bytes of a partition, but that's not much of a big deal; numbers like "5.3 GB" are easier to read and quite sufficient in most cases. (And you can always switch over to the second virtual console and run cfdisk yourself if you really want to.)

Re:Why can't they

[ACNeal]

You missed the whole point of the parent of my post, and my post.

If you don't want to use Debian because it doesn't have certain packages, then don't. It won't hurt anyone if the entire user base leaves.

This is a perfect place to be unwaiveringly principled. Their commitment to the principles is what they are contributing for, not to be great and successful.

If no one ever downloads 7 iso images from one of their mirrors again, no one is hurt. These volunteers don't suffer any damages. They don't lose anything. Most of all they don't lose self respect by compromising their ideals.

Re:Why can't they

[Anonymous Coward]

However, there are a few places where the LSB is suboptimal, so Debian documents the differences in policy, and does the right thing.
Oh! you mean that in any open world, when you see a standard not good enough, its better to make the things our way instead of proposing the changes who could benefits everyone (that, if your idea really worth it)? If the idea for a standard is that good, an intelligent developer of open source app will always welcome the idea.

Re:Why can't they

[Openstandards.net]

I think that you presume they are all complete idealists, which I don't believe, because they are human. I haven't met one person that's 100% idealistic, 0% realistic, and completely immune to human instincts. Thus, I don't believe Debian developers are intrapersonally as idealistic as people describe. I believe peer pressure probably plays a role in the public statements, so that it can become easy to believe this if you only look on the surface.

Regardless, how about the 30 something votes against the change? For those that voted for it, how many really understood the impact? For those that understood the impact, how many will feel the same way if things don't turn out as idealistically as they thought?

Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[ObviousGuy]

With its stable releases already years behind the curve (still using 2.4 kernel!), Debian shows off again how it is willing to buck the trend of newer and better by demanding that functionality be *taken out* of the distribution.

Luckily for Debian, its main competitor, Gentoo, just lost its leader and so the mass migration away from the dated distro will most likely be stemmed before it can begin.

Meanwhile, businesses serious about Linux are still using Redhat Fedora as their OS.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Rura Penthe]

Who the hell uses the 2.6 kernel in a production setting? I know I don't. In fact, I vastly prefer to admin servers on debian because finding updated packages is typically EASIER than on Redhat without a support contract. Some server admins prefer the slower moving target of debian releases and the ease of backports.org for packages they NEED upgraded.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[dilvie]

Sarge does not need to be "released" to be relevant. The software still runs on the debian OS. You can still upgrade your kernel. IMO, the best thing about debian is that you can start with a very minimal linux install and add the packages you need as you need them a lot easier than is possible with many other distributions.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[mastergoon]

My company has been using 2.6.x on production servers since January, and there hasnt been a single problem. We have 24 servers running it.

2.6 is marked stable, because its stable.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[ObviousGuy]

Replying to my own post.

I look at the landscape and wonder when a distribution that takes a pragmatic look at Linux stability like Debian does without the associated religious zealotry will come into being.

It is an amazing thing to see the focus on stability and completeness in Debian. I deride the distro in jest, but it is a sign of good thinking that they don't declare a stable release every other weekend like some other distros.

However, the zeal to make Debian a "Free" distro is hampering it, causing the maintainers to shun obviously useful and necessary utilities because of the flavor of its license.

I wonder how long it will take for Debian to fork between the GNU-like religious faction and the pragmatists.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[AstrumPreliator]

I think there's a point you missed though. Even though Debian is well supported and is infact a good linux distro, it's still aged. There is a definite trend towards open source operating systems right now and I think Debian is going to miss out on this to sa large extent. People (and by people I don't mean individual computer enthusiasts) are going for the more main stream and updated distros such as Fedora. Once you install a distro on a box you tend not to just replace it with a different distro on a whim. I know people who use Red Hat 7.3 for servers still and as long as the hard drive is alive and assuming they don't kill the OS, it will be running for a long time to come.

In that respect I do think distros such as Debian and Gentoo will fade away to a large extent. They will always be around, but not widely used.

Of course thats just my opinion.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[nuclear305]

Oh yea?

Sometimes I wonder if all the distro zealots have stopped to realize this one simple fact:

Every distro is using OSS. Yes, it may be tweaked and patched here and there..but beneath all the branding and logos...it's STILL the same software.

[Of course, I'll throw in my 2 cents as well. I've used both Debian and Gentoo. Honestly, Gentoo is my path to take...I now run it on 3 servers [1 is production] and a firewall and once they're set up..they just run. Not to mention extremely easy to update. ]

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Debian might be aged, but it's all relative. All I know is that whenever I do an apt-get update I am amazed by all the cool new software I get.

If I were to install Red Hat my head would probably explode from an overload of new glitzy software, and that would kill my uptime.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[dilvie]

Now, this is a post I can agree with to some extent. However, when I read the text in question, I agreed with the social contract completely. What I don't agree with is the strict definition of free which requires derivative works to be released under the same license. I personally like attribution licenses and/or public domain grants. You might say that the debian folks want to force everybody to subscribe to their form of freedom, whereas I don't care if somebody wants to yank large bits of my code, slap it in their system, and sell it for $1,000. More power to 'em. I realize this is a controversial view in the open-source community. I'd still like to see a complete OS with apps that all use licenses that aren't picky about what they link to, who's making money, or whether or not Microsoft gets to benefit from open-source innovations... I think software should be software, not a legal quagmire.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[ChanxOT5]

I wonder how long it will take for Debian to fork between the GNU-like religious faction and the pragmatists.

It's not likely to fork, considering that all the decisions are made by a democratic, open [to those who contribute], voting process. Just look at the numbers that supported this change.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Grail]

You mistake the Debian maintainers' pragmatic licencing approach for religious zealotry.

They are approaching the Debian GNU/Linux as a Free Software project, not a feature rich distribution project. Once you yourself can understand what the philosophy of the Debian project, you might understand that they are being incredibly pragmatic.

Regardless of how long Copyright is extended for (eg: Disney's current goal of forever - 1 day), no matter how tight the DMCA becomes, you will always be allowed to run the complete Debian GNU/Linux operating system.

Licencing and legal restrictions on your hardware may prevent you running Debian on your specific hardware (thanks to "Trustworthy Computing" taking over from "binary only"), but there will be no licence or legal restrictions to your using Debian on any hardware that it does work on.

You have to be a special type of person to be a Debian developer - these are people who want to dedicate their time to having an operating system they can safely give to their friends and family without risking a gaol term. People who aren't Debian developers (or fanatical users) are the ones who'd hand over their soul for the next cool gimmick ("yes, I'll accept the condition of only running the software you let me, if you'll let me pay $200 for Halo 4! That game's so cool I don't need freedom!").

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[ian mills]

Why do people continually compare Debian Stable to bleeding edge Linux distros? If you want bleeding edge use Debian Unstable, that's what it's there for. In anycase 2.4 is not "years behind." There is nothing stopping you from using bleeding edge software and proprietary software with Debian, I do it all the time, they just seperate out the nonfree stuff for the people who care about that. It really is a "feature" not a "bug."

Businesses use Redhat because they offer commerical support, something I don't believe Debian offers, as Debian is not a commercial enterprise.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[PoesRaven]

one word -- Slackware Slackware is about security, stability, and pragmatism

Volkerding didn't even originally plan on switching to X.org from XFree86 4.4, but he is now have second thoughts (with suggests being sent in by slack users)

security, stability, pragmatism, Slackware

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[sn00ker]

I'd still like to see a complete OS with apps that all use licenses that aren't picky about what they link to, who's making money, or whether or not Microsoft gets to benefit from open-source innovations

So, what you're really saying is that you want to use FreeBSD! Seriously, most of the apps that ship are under the BSD licence, with a few exceptions - GCC being the most obvious one, but since GCC is pretty loosy-goosey in its licence, who cares? The only other biggies are the office suites, and Evolution. Most other stuff you can find software which uses the FreeBSD licence, or something similarly open.

FWIW, the GPL is not a "free" licence, only an open one. You are not allowed to do with GPL'd software as you wish, which does not fit the dictionary definition of free. Technically the BSD licence isn't either, but attribution is a heck of a lot closer than the GPL will ever get.
And, yes, I do understand the negative side of the BSD licence, but I still think it is the "free-er" of the two choices.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw hell, you had to go and do it. You post something that praises the ease of debian and you get a +5 mod to make you stand out.

Don't you know that you are just inviting the gentoo parrots to reply and lull us all into a semi-coma stupor as the prattle on and on? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, MAN?

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[sn00ker]

security, stability, pragmatism, Slackware

You forgot arcane and pedantic :)

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that 2.4 is a pile of shit. That's why I don't really like linux, it's been too overated and hyped. However, I have performed some serious testing with 2.6 and I can confirm that it seems to do threading in an acceptable manner. And that's compared to real UNIX operating systems, not 2.4 which obviously doesn't do threads properly.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Openstandards.net]

>I'll accept the condition of only running the software you let me, if you'll let me pay $200 for Halo 4! That game's so cool I don't need freedom!

ROFL!

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess English isn't your first language; i'll be happy to explain some words for you.

religion - a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.
philosophy - any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation
open source - A method and philosophy for software licensing and distribution

If Free Software is a religion then so is vegetarianism, environmentalism and capitalism.

Calling Free software a religion is ignorant trollish bullshit.

(definitions taken from hyperdictionary)

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Debian and I use:

I play games like UT2004 on it.
I have firmwear-based drivers and closed source Nvidia drivers for it.
I run Kernel 2.6.5 on it.
I run Gnome 2.6 on it.

A lot of the software I run is more up-to-date then anything Fedora, Suse, or Mandrake uses. Gentoo is the only thing that can beat debian out on the more-bleeding edge part.

When the next numbered upgrades for distros come out (for example Fedora core2) they will be newer and more bleeding edge then Debian unstable, but that's only for a couple months.

It's a hare vs tortuise thing.

And it's dead-stable, too. Except for a couple small bugs in Gnome 2.6 (it's from experimental, so that's to be expected.)

And unstable is as "stable" as anything from any other distro. The "unstable" is unstable because it's constantly changing and updating, not because it crashes all the time. (BTW you are not suppose to run testing by itself, Testing is for developers, normal people should use unstable if stable is to out of date)

The only difficult part is installing Debian and editing the /apt/sources.conf file. Otherwise it's as easy as it gets and still have a good OS that will be on your computer and constantly updating for the next decade.

Nowadays my OSes out last my computer! I've run my current OS thru 3 different major computer upgrades. It's a miracle compared to Windows 98 were I had to reinstall every few months.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[steveha]

You might say that the debian folks want to force everybody to subscribe to their form of freedom, whereas I don't care if somebody wants to yank large bits of my code, slap it in their system, and sell it for $1,000.

But a BSD-style license is DFSG-compatible. BSD-licensed code can be in Debian main.

steveha

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever tried Gentoo? I haven't, but I looked at the website because of a Gentoo relates article earlier. It looks pretty cool. Some really neat features. I like the idea of easy package management, it kept me from using linux for a while until apt came around. It compiles your stuff optimised for your system - ok, not for the impatient, but makes for a tight system. What's to dislike. Ok, it is one thing to give props to your distro, and another to evanglize - but the question remains - have you tried it? If you haven't, then I suggest you reserve judgement of the zealots and the os until you can speak with better authority.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[dilvie]

I do like the BSD license better than the GPL, yes, but I don't consider FreeBSD to be a complete OS. My definition of a complete OS is a system that provides everything I need to run webservers (which FreeBSD does just fine) as well as desktop applications (where all un*x's fall short, in my opinion, with the notable exception of OSX). Again, controversial viewpoint on /. ... I'm pragmatic about it though: It's easy to satisfy all of my software needs (but none of my phylosophical ideals) on Windows, and it's easy to satisfy all of my software needs (but few of my ideals) on Macs running OSX. It's difficult (ranging to completely impractical) to satisfy all of my software needs on linux and other forms of un*x, free or otherwise, even though they're much closer in terms of my philosophical ideals. As somebody who would still like to get real work done... guess which OS I run for my desktop music and video production needs...

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[dilvie]

I stand corrected. /debian folks/GPL folks/

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[mcbridematt]

And what is your damn reason for not even trying 2.6 in the first place? Of course, Debian does give you a choice by way of dpkg. Don't like it? Just find yourself another package, or build it yourself with your selection of packages etc.
Overclockers Australia runs 2.6.5 on both www and db.
AFAIK the mem usage is high due to the use of some caching and accelerator tools. Both servers are quite new run Slackware and replaced a single Dual PIII 1GHz which started having high usage problems since a few months back. Peak time slowdowns are a thing of the past now.

All my computers run 2.6 series kernels and I have never experianced problems with them at all. The performance is higher (my machines do distributed computing stuff all the time) and I my laptop is even faster booting into KDE than Windows now (couldn't beat Windows on 2.4)

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but that doesn't matter. Zealots are annoying. The problem is that they keep repeating the same thing. They are generally going to do more harm than good for their cause. I won't try Gentoo and I won't get a Mac. I have nothing against the people that have put together Gentoo I have a few issues with Apple, but nothing that would prvent me from buying a Mac. The zealots have simply driven me away from them.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

arcane? jesus. for experienced veterans, it doesn't get any easier then slack. it dispenses with the bullshit.

pedantic? i think you need to go look up the definition.

arcane is forgiveable if a newbie is setting it up. sure he might have to actually break out the command line.

but pedantic?

please.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Trashman]

Yes, I have tried it. Not once but several times. I've gotten a (semi, and a couple of fully) working system(s) on several machines. (last attempt was on my Thinkpad 600. That machine dual-boots debian and WinXP now.) And you know what? as great as the Gentoo users make the distro out to be I feel it's too much damn work and too much thumb twidling to waiting for stuff complile. I know you don't have compile everything and that there's precompiled binary's for certain things. But Even Debian's (woody) installer doesn't put you through what the gentoo installer puts you though. Most people who bitch about debian's installer are really bitching that it doesn't detect hardware (I know the new one does.) and/or they're bitching about dselect.

Also, the Optimized binary's argument has been de-bunked. (don't have link handy, it's late, ask google.) Compiling everything doesn't get you any mesurable increase in performance. Unless you enable potentialy unstable compile flags.

So yeah, for my purposes (for which I am obviosly the authority.) gentoo is not the distro for me.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Lord Kano]

People who aren't Debian developers (or fanatical users) are the ones who'd hand over their soul for the next cool gimmick ("yes, I'll accept the condition of only running the software you let me, if you'll let me pay $200 for Halo 4! That game's so cool I don't need freedom!").

I'm not a Debian user. I have no plans on becoming a Debian user. I am fanatical about freedom, but not about free software.

I recognize that the OSS model is the best model for software development, I also recognize that having the best model doesn't always make up for weight of numbers of a LONG head start. Take the example of the GIMP versus Photoshop. The GIMP is what, half the age of Photoshop and has (in my opinion) about 80% of the funtionality.

That 20% difference in functionality and the $700 premium that Adobe charges for it is what separates GIMPers from Photoshoppers.

If Adobe hadn't given me a free copy of Photoshop, I would most likely be using the GIMP.

I don't see this as selling out. I see it as using the best tool for the job that I need to do.

OSS zealots who insist on using such imagery are only hurting themselves. You can't convert people to your religion by waving an AK-47 in their faces and you can't win over OSS converts by calling them names.

I'm going to resist the urge to plug my favorite Distro here.

LK

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[B2382F29]

Even worse! AFAIK the default kernel is still 2.2!

Check the packages, last time i installed debian there was a 2.4 kernel, but it wasn't the default.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

>"yes, I'll accept the condition of only running the
>software you let me, if you'll let me pay $200 for
>Halo 4! That game's so cool I don't need freedom!"

I don't understand why people continue to make references like this. As much as I love OSS for the rights it grants me to do what I want with it, using a proprietary system does not mean a person has less freedom. In fact, I would say that the persons *ability* to choose is the essence of freedom. The person has the ability to *choose* what software they will use, whether or not that software grants them specific rights.

That said, I hate Microsoft and I hate their product. However, I don't hope they are completely run out of business. Why? Becuase they provide another option. People can *choose* to run Microsoft products OR they can *choose* to run Linux OR they can *choose* to run something else. That, to me, denotes a lot more freedom than there would be with having only one "Free" operating system with no other possible options.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[harlows_monkeys]

Who the hell uses the 2.6 kernel in a production setting?

There are production settings other than servers. I run Linux on my desktop at work, for example, and many of the things in the 2.6 kernel would be quite welcome on my development machine.

Even for servers, there are quite a lot of servers where the improved performance of 2.6 would be worth the extremely slight theoretical loss of stability of 2.6 vs. 2.4. For example, if my database server goes down at work, all that happens for the 10 or 20 minutes it takes to come back up is that a dozen overworked people work on other stuff for 10 or 20 minutes from their ample TODO list.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[displaced80]

...then you're doing yourself a disservice.

It's not like you have to pass a test, get circumcised or know the secret handshake to try out these other options. If there's one thing I dislike as much as zealots, it's those who won't try something because of some stereotypical view of what existing users are like.

If you're interested in the tech, and you've got the ability to try it, do so.

Reminds me of something a friend of mine once said: "I love Metallica. But there's one problem : I hate Metallica fans." (though that was before the Metallica/Napster debacle ;)

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[B2382F29]

Also, the Optimized binary's argument has been de-bunked. (don't have link handy, it's late, ask google.) Compiling everything doesn't get you any mesurable increase in performance. Unless you enable potentialy unstable compile flags.

You're partially right, compiling standard apps with simple -O3 will not gain you that much. But i DID get an improvement by installing kernel-headers 2.6.5 and recompiling glibc (I think it is by using new functions in 2.6-kernels)

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[rauhest]

Yeah, but we want bleeding edge and security updates :)

I know, that's utopia -- but then, at the very least, I would like to be notified when the issues are fixed in unstable (the fixes are not always backported from sid -- e.g., see the last cvs DSA).

Getting that information from changelogs and BTS threads is tedious.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[JohnFluxx]

People who insist on waving AK-47 in debian's faces demanding that they comprise their philosophy so that they can have the latest non-free drivers are only hurting themselves.

You can't win over the developers by calling them names.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[IkeTo]

> That 20% difference in functionality and the
> $700 premium that Adobe charges for it is
> what separates GIMPers from Photoshoppers

I'll bet that at least 80% of the people using Photoshop actually use none of the 20% difference in functionality but pay the $700 premium anyway. On the other hand, this is a side issue, nothing to do with freedom. GNU followers, myself included, think that the lack of a fully modifiable and compilable source code of Photoshop makes a significant philosophical *and* practical difference, that we don't think Photoshop is a replacement to Gimp at all. Real GNU followers are okay to pay for software, but not okay if they are asked to conceal it from others.

> You can't convert people to your religion
> by waving an AK-47 in their faces

I don't quite understand what act you are refering to. It seems to me that "waving an AK-47 in others' faces" is an act to threaten others that "if you don't follow our way I'll kill or significantly injure you". I don't see any act here with any similar effect. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you don't have to deal with Metallica fans to listen to their music.
That often isn't the case when it comes to OS zealotry...

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[chthon]

Install Debian Woody

/etc/apt/sources.list -> testing

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

It is not because the official installation of Debian is four years behind that you have to run older software.

Production setting : keep a local mirror of sarge and update it every three months. Test the updated software, upgrade production servers from the local mirror.

:-) I run Debian over Red Hat on my flashy new server, because Red Hat is able to control my Promise SX6000 controller, but Debian isn't.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Qzukk]

I know people who use Red Hat 7.3 for servers still and as long as the hard drive is alive and assuming they don't kill the OS, it will be running for a long time to come.

Ahahahahah, and you call debian aged? At least with debian I'd know that I'd have security updates forever (including an automatic upgrade to the new stable, whenever that happens) and not have to worry about things like buying a legacy support contract from fedora.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[ahfoo]

However, a major part of that conversion wave is going to start off with Knoppix based LiveCDs and once they see it working, they'll say OK, stop. I want that. Just that. It's so simple and that's what people want. At least I know I've already seen it with quite a few people.
Now whether you want to argue that a KNoppix LiveCD is different than a REAL Debian install is another case although I think such a debate is rather academic and more about the definition of "real" than Debian.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[noda132]

In that respect I do think distros such as Debian and Gentoo will fade away to a large extent. They will always be around, but not widely used.

Debian is a sysadmin's dream. It's *so* easy to apply security updates and even upgrade an entire system.

And while stable is very dated, testing and unstable are viable choices for a desktop system, and they are not. For example, subversion 1.0 made it into Debian unstable a couple of days after release; and GNOME 2.6 is available at http://pkg-gnome.alioth.debian.org.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Cro Magnon]

This from a Debian user? Er, pot meet kettle.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Grail]

using a proprietary system does not mean a person has less freedom

You need to read up on "trustworthy computing" or "Palladium" as it's touted by Microsoft. The computer becomes a platform that is trusted by the software vendors, not by the end users. The vendor can determine what software you're allowed to use and when (and for how long).

I respectfully disagree with your opinion - using a proprietary system does mean a person has less freedom. If you can't run the software you want, when you want, you don't really have freedom of expression or thought, do you?

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Etyenne]

Who the hell uses the 2.6 kernel in a production setting?

I do, and enjoying the better performance and POSIX ACL support.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[analog_line]

"yes, I'll accept the condition of only running the software you let me, if you'll let me pay $200 for Halo 4! That game's so cool I don't need freedom!"

Uh, aren't you already accepting the condition by refusing to use software that isn't "free software?" The people and organizations that publish "non-free" software don't want people who will tinker with their software using it, and put those licenses on there specifically to stop "Debian developers" from doing anything with it.

So exactly how can you claim that you're running the software you want to instead of only the software they let you run. I don't see much of a difference here.

Not that I disagree with the priciple of giving the finger to the proprietary software world, and I certainly am a great fan of Debian for providing an operating system that I will (with considerable effort, unfortunately) be able to use without having to pay a licensing fee to anyone. However, that doesn't magically make me able to run any software other people won't let me run. Ignoring stuff you're morally opposed to using doesn't make it not exist, as the comment I quoted seems show you believe.

That and if you wanted to appear more like an elitist prick, you couldn't have written a better post. All kinds of people be wanting to run this Debian now, thanks to you showing them their rank stupidity.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe Debian is fading to irrelevence. Debian is setting the standards for Linux, and very much protecting it from take over by corporate interests. This is a *very good thing* in my humble opinion. It is this openness that distinguishes Linux most from freebie/shareware/adware proprietary software, and what makes it great. Of all the distros and free OS's, Debian and OpenBSD seem to be the two that consistently refuse to compromise these principles or sell out.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[debian4life]

You might be giving them too much credit. I think stable still runs 2.2. I use unstable which is still more stable than Windows.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Oestergaard]

Yes, it does need to be released to be relevant - not to the hobby user, but the the server farm.

Woody is relevant because it has no upgrades to packages (meaning, no scripts/sql/... break because of version upgrades), it has almost instant security updates (in the form of *backports* to released software - very important!), and it's a "known good distro".

Sarge has almost daily upgrades (not updates, but upgrades - version numbers (and therefore feature-set) change!) - I am sure this is fine for the hobbyist, but it's not good enough in the server farm (if your farm is more than a handful of servers at least).

Sure, I can compile my own packages. Heck, if that's what it's all about, I could re-write most of them from scratch to get the exact features that I wanted. But this is not the issue; what I need in my server farm in order to be "effective", in order to not waste my time on things I do not need to waste my time on, I need to have instant and easy access to the required updates and I need to have a minimal (preferably zero) number of upgrades. This is what Woody has, because Woody is released. And this is what Sarge does not have, because Sarge is not released. This is why Sarge is irrelevant, as long as Sarge is not released.

I would so wish, that Debian would release Sarge within the next four to six months (as would be realistic since the only major part they need is a finished installer) - and that they would then attempt to solve these purely political issues in whatever-will-be-after-Sarge.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[wobblie]

So was 2.4. Ooops.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[debian4life]

I agree. People think they are bound to what the OS maker gives them on their ftp site. You can upgrade your kernel, run the latest packages, do whatever you want. All you have to do is know where to get it.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[analog_line]

I'll bet that at least 80% of the people using Photoshop actually use none of the 20% difference in functionality but pay the $700 premium anyway.

Only if 80% of that 80% of Photoshop users infringed on Adobe's copyright in order to get the software. I'm the IT guy for a busload of design people and all of them push the current feature set of Photoshop hard, and regularly want more out of it than it's able to give them. Not a single home user of Photoshop that I know has paid for it, ever. They either got Photoshop LE free with their scanner or printer, or they downloaded it or copied it from a friend that downloaded it. Most of them either use Photoshop to (badly) construct fake images (cutting their friends into stills from porn movies, etc) or just to screw around with filters and make eye gounging web "images."

And regardless, people throwing out random percentages with no actual basis in research don't actually prove any points, or make themselves any more knowledgable. My experiences are my own, my numbers aren't based on research unless I provide research. Take me with the same grain of salt you ought to be taking everyone else with.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[CarrionBird]

If you can't run the software you want, when you want, you don't really have freedom of expression or thought, do you?

Umm, yes actually. You just can't run all the software that you want. Palladium is crap, but not every vendor is MS.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[CarrionBird]

You mistake your religous zealotry for pragmatism.

People who aren't Debian developers (or fanatical users) are the ones who'd hand over their soul for the next cool gimmick ("yes, I'll accept the condition of only running the software you let me, if you'll let me pay $200 for Halo 4! That game's so cool I don't need freedom!").

What!?! No, they're the ones who'd hand over some cash for a box of software. If you don't like the terms of that box, buy a different box of software, or download something else, or whatever.

Until the man starts forcing people to buy only MS approved systems and software, your fananticism is unwarranted.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[ImpTech]

Your logic thoroughly escapes me. People have *always* gone for more "mainstream" distros, hence the term "mainstream". And yes, most people don't change distros on a whim. They change when their current distro pisses them off in a substantial way. For the guy running RedHat 7.3, that will happen when the box gets thoroughly hacked because its using non-patched software from years ago. Even then, maybe he'll just go with Fedora because its what he knows, but so what? How is any of this a new trend? And furthermore, what does this have to do with Debian being aged? If this RedHat 7.3 guy is happy now, imagine how much happier he'd be with Debian stable, which he could trivially keep secure.

And your conclusion that Debian and Gentoo will fade away... where does that come from? Theres clearly some logical leap I'm missing, as I see no particular reason to believe that their userbase will shift percentagewise from what it already is.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Lord Kano]

Not a single home user of Photoshop that I know has paid for it, ever. They either got Photoshop LE free with their scanner or printer, or they downloaded it or copied it from a friend that downloaded it.

I got mine for free; from Adobe.

LK

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[tiger99]

Gentoo has a particular niche application which most likely will increase rather than decrease. And I can say that, although so far I have not used Gentoo.

Debian is the basis of other distros, Xandros, which I do use, Lindows, which I have no need of, and the one Corel used to supply, maybe more. It is a good place to start, if you want to construct a distro, the package management is better than the grotesque RPM system, but I do wish they would fix it so those of us with modems and time limits can actually download the larger packages.

Fedora is going nowhere as far as I can see, it may be better with the next release, but the first one was a strange mixture of manual (editing files) and automatic (using moderately nice tools) configuration, which is primitive compared to SuSE, Mandrake or Xandros. SuSE has the backing of their new owners Novell, and Novell has the backing of IBM, so it is clear where many users will go in the end.

But some will insist on using BSD. Diversity is a very good thing.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[mcubed]

You mistake the Debian maintainers' pragmatic licencing approach for religious zealotry.

Licencing and legal restrictions on your hardware may prevent you running Debian on your specific hardware (thanks to "Trustworthy Computing" taking over from "binary only"), but there will be no licence or legal restrictions to your using Debian on any hardware that it does work on.

Isn't there an inherent contradiction there? What good is the lack of license or legal restrictions to using Debian if there are practical, real-world hardware restrictions? If Debian won't bend it's licensing approach to some degree to accomodate drivers or other necessary components, then how can its approach be characterized as "pragmatic." "Idealistic" comes to mind, so does "impractical." But not "pragmatic."

these are people who want to dedicate their time to having an operating system they can safely give to their friends and family without risking a gaol term.

But do they want their friends and family to be able actually to use it? "Hey Jer, here's this great OS I helped develop that consists entirely of free (as defined by the GPL) software. Oh, you can't get it installed? You're probably one of the 95% of PC owners with some piece of hardware or other that our philosophy doesn't permit us to support. Too bad ... back to Windows." It seems to me if Debian developers really have the goal that you mention in mind, they'd use a BSD license instead of the GPL. FreeBSD ... now that's an OS you can safely give to your friends and family without risking a jail term, and one they are likelier to install successfully.

Michael

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily for Debian, its main competitor, Gentoo, just lost its leader and so the mass migration away from the dated distro will most likely be stemmed before it can begin.


Hi,

I just switch from Debian to Gentoo on my laptop (ppc development machine).

I see no way that Gentoo can be a competitor for Debian. They cover 2 different market. I would personnally never use Gentoo for a server environment such as web server etc.

However, Gentoo may cover more of my current needs on my laptop as I am using it for development. So I am currently using it as trial. Both OSes have their advantages and disadvantages.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[dilvie]

I agree, for the most part, but I personally haven't had any trouble mixing a small handful of packages from sarge with a mostly woody-based distro. There aren't that many new features that my servers just can't live without... at least, not until mysql gets its promised upgrades (triggers, stored procedures, etc..). I don't mind the slow pace of debian releases. Woody is still functional and dependable.

I actually think that the slow pace would annoy hobbyists more than server administrators. You have to go outside the woody release to get all the cool new features in Xfree86, KDE, gnome, etc... Debian certainly isn't competing well as a desktop OS.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[noahm]

I agree, for the most part, but I personally haven't had any trouble mixing a small handful of packages from sarge with a mostly woody-based distro.

Try maintaining that in an enterprise setting. It almost reaches the point where you're maintaining a whole distribution yourself.

For those who claim that woody is still OK on a server, here's small list of the server packages that I've found that argue against that:

• Exim
• Apache
• OpenSSL (obscure bugs present in 0.9.6 are fixed in 0.9.7, but that won't ship with a stable Debian release for another year or more, according to AJ's announcement.)
• Cyrus IMAP
• net-snmp
• OpenAFS
• Horde/IMP, etc

Those are the packages that have annoyed me on the server side of things. Note that those are just about all the reasons we run servers at this site. I don't doubt that we'd run in to yet more painfully outdated software if we tried to run more services.

And have you recently looked at the list of backported server related packages on backports.org? The fact that such a site even exists speaks to Debian's failure to produce a release that is both stable and functional (by stable I mean "not changing daily", not "not crashing").

I use Debian. I use it everywhere. Most of the infrastructure (both server and workstation) at my workplace runs on it. I use Debian at home. I am a Debian developer and work to improve it where possible. I use it and develop for it because I want a system that doesn't suck. For a long time, Debian sucked less than anything else out there. It's sucking harder and harder, though, and I'm honestly starting to wonder how long it's going to be before it starts surpassing the other options available to me.

Debian needs a change in its release philosophy, or it will stop being useful on production systems at my site and undoubtedly at others.

noah

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[dilvie]

And have you recently looked at the list of backported server related packages on backports.org? The fact that such a site even exists speaks to Debian's failure to produce a release that is both stable and functional (by stable I mean "not changing daily", not "not crashing").

The fact that backports.org exists is a clear example of why debian is still relevant, despite the unpopular release phylosophy.

I don't mind using backports.org once in a while. Clearly, there are people who prefer the release schedules of other operating systems. I'm still happy with debian.

One of the things I like most about debian is that it gives me so many choices, that are often much easier to manage than other distros I have tried... It's far from perfect, but I have tried other alternatives recently, and I am still running debian.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[noahm]

The fact that backports.org exists is a clear example of why debian is still relevant, despite the unpopular release phylosophy.

I use backports.org myself in some situations. I still think that needs to exist only because Debian has failed to meet the needs of a large portion of its user community.

I think what backports.org really shows is that people want to use Debian. The Debian system infrastructure is very flexible and powerful. But the users of backports.org can't use Debian because the software doesn't meet their needs (lacks functionality, is buggy, or doesn't interoperate with the newer versions that everybody else in the known universe upgraded to last year), so instead they must use software that is packaged to use the same infrastructure as Debian software, but is not Debian.

noah

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[DShard]

ew, ew let me try...

SQWUAK... it runs ls .0002 times faster.

SQWUAK... I compile while I sleep.

SQWUAK... I don't have missing options from my packages.

Honestly, I have used gentoo and I have to say they have one of the best user communities I have seen for a distro. But barring that I think it was always just to easy to break.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Grail]

Hmm... okay, I have to relearn Slashdot Lesson #1: don't use sarcasm. Amercians don't understand it, and most other people find it unamusing.

Not that I disagree with the priciple of giving the finger to the proprietary software world ... if you wanted to appear more like an elitist prick, you couldn't have written a better post.

What's elitist about choosing to only run software that doesn't impose restrictions on how I'm allowed to use it? I'm not interested in "sticking it to the man" - I'm interested in keeping myself out of gaol. I know I'm safe when I use Debian, because I can copy the same software to every machine under my control with the express blessing of the authors. I don't have to pay royalties to anyone for setting up my girlfriend's computer so she can keep in touch by email and Jabber. I can pull an old machine out of the cupboard and set it up to serve SMTP and IMAP, without worrying about whether I've got a valid licence for that operating system.

Contrast that to the world of the X-Box game. I can't just go installing Halo on any machine I want to. That's a condition expressly imposed by the authors of the game. I can't even make a backup of the game to protect myself from theft, fire or even scratches on the DVD. Backups are expressly forbidden by the authors of the game. Heck - I don't even own any part of the game - the disk and its contents are only leased to me until such time as the game author, game publisher, or Microsoft decide that I'm not allowed to use it anymore.

As for the joke about giving up my freedoms to simply run a game - it's called absurdity:

absurdity n 1: a message whose content is at variance with reason

Doesn't it strike you that people who are willing to give up their right to do something as fundamental as make a backup copy, are living absurd lives? I guess it might, but since I hadn't illuminated further by gesticulating like a Ballmer and putting on a funny voice, you didn't understand that it was a joke.

I should, perhaps, put my sense of humour away when posting on Slashdot.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Grail]

No, they're the ones who'd hand over some cash for a box of software.

Don't forget the money they paid for the console to run it on (which they can't use for any other purpose, despite the suitability of the equipment). And don't forget that they'll have to hand over that money again just as soon as the DVD gets scratched, because they aren't allowed to make a backup. Even if they were allowed to make a working copy, the hardware wouldn't let that copy be used.

At least, for the meantime, Microsoft is allowing X-Box titles such as Halo to be published for other platforms. I'm still not allowed to make a working copy of the DVD or CD to play from.

Later in life, the technology behind the X-Box will be added to general purpose computers ("PCs"), so you'll enjoy the inability to even run "unauthorised" software on the hardware you just bought (the party making the decision of "authorised" or not would be Microsoft in the first instance). I'm just hoping that someone will continue to manufacture user-controlled hardware.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[krumms]

I think there's a point you missed though. Even though Debian is well supported and is infact a good linux distro, it's still aged. There is a definite trend towards open source operating systems right now and I think Debian is going to miss out on this to sa large extent. People (and by people I don't mean individual computer enthusiasts) are going for the more main stream and updated distros such as Fedora.

Gentoo packages are updated every two or three days. emerge sync every couple of days will nearly always result in various packages in need of updates. Aside from java-gnome being constantly broken, fixed and rebroken and the sometimes patience testing compile times, it's great as far as up-to-date software goes.

Debian unstable, although I've only just started using it, has updates almost as frequently. My Debian system is running KDE 3.2 (3.2.2 I think) and Linux 2.6.5.

Once you install a distro on a box you tend not to just replace it with a different distro on a whim. I know people who use Red Hat 7.3 for servers still and as long as the hard drive is alive and assuming they don't kill the OS, it will be running for a long time to come.

You complain about Debian AND Gentoo (!) being out of date because they don't have frequent updates like Fedora (and they do!), and in the same breath mention Red Hat 7.3??? Didn't that EOL last century? Are you smoking crack?

In that respect I do think distros such as Debian and Gentoo will fade away to a large extent. They will always be around, but not widely used.

No, I doubt they will ever be THE distro (Gentoo has potential, but the install process will cause wet pants for some newbies - after that it's relatively smooth sailing) but then, who cares? Your argument is more or less that because Gentoo and Debian aren't Red Hat, they're going to die.

Whatever.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[AstrumPreliator]

Everyone missed the entire point of what I said. I'm saying that Debian's stable is old. I'm not saying it isn't updated, but right out of the package you are getting old stuff that you will need to upgrade. People are going to skip over Debian and go for things like Fedora, thats the point I'm trying to get.

The point I was trying to make with a person running Red Hat 7.3 was the fact that they aren't switching distros. Everyone is jumping on the linux bandwagon but they aren't going to install Debian. So once they install Fedora or some other distro, they will most likely never go to Debian. I'm saying that Debian is missing out and this delay can only hurt them more.

That being said I use Debian and I'm not an avid Red Hat/Fedora fan. So yes, whatever. I have my opinion and you have yours.

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the "bleeding-edge" Linux distros offer TIMELY SECURITY UPDATES, which Debian Unstable explicitly DOESN'T.

You can't compare the two. If I install Mandrake 10.0, sure it's bleeding-edge, but I can put it on production boxes because it's officially supported. Deb Sid isn't.

All this "bleeding-edge" talk is mostly stupid anyway. You know, sometimes new packages can be a lot better than older ones. When I hear people talk about how "rock-solid" Debian Stable is, I laugh - it has Mozilla 1.0 and OpenOffice.org 1.0. We all know the 1.1 versions of both of those apps were much more reliable, so many of these "bleeding-edge" distros are actually more stable to use on the desktop than Debian Stable!

Re:Debian is fading into irrelevence?

[On Lawn]

This is a bit of a dated thread but I had to say Amen to it. Thank you for reminding me of why I moved from Debian so long ago.

Debian standards

[Anonymous Coward]

All I have to say is, good for them for sticking to their standards.

"Grand Resolution" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* more charming Open Source elitism. Ya don't see Microsoft releasing announcements like "Following consultation with the Grand Poobar, a Greater Council Desicion was reached to sh*t all over Lindows". Fark.

Re:"Grand Resolution" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's with "the board of directors" or "our laywers".

Think before you write.

Re:"Grand Resolution" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya don't see Microsoft releasing announcements like "Following consultation with the Grand Poobar, a Greater Council Desicion was reached to sh*t all over Lindows".

But wouldn't it be great if they did? :)

Re:"Grand Resolution" ?

[The Musician]

The slashdot summary that says "Grand Resolution" in wrong. The proper expansion of GR is "General Resolution".

See http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution, in particular sections #4 and A.

Re:"Grand Resolution" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that Debian has a "constitution" makes the parent's point.

Re:"Grand Resolution" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No instead we get the "Microsoft Security Initiative" and a constant stream of worms and virii.

Re:"Grand Resolution" ?

[timothy]

I assumed this was just the poster being a bit snarky. Could well be wrong, since I often am ...

timothy

Re:great solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? How does that improve anything? The apt-get system already does that.. Want to compile from source? Fine. 'apt-get source package'

meh

[mastergoon]

On most distros with a packaging system, releases don't affect you much, as you can install newer packages and stay up to date, so who cares when the next iso comes out.

Maybe im wrong about how things work over on debian, im a gentoo user, bite me.

Re:meh

[mastergoon]

just because i get flamed doesnt mean im flamebait morons :)

Re:DISTRO FLAME WAR!!!

[jdunn14]

hi-fuckin-larious. GO FEDORA!!! =) Death to the infidels.... er, gentoo users.

Re:And...

[grepistan]

well, I do all that with consensual living humans of the opposite sex, and even I was able guess from context that 'sarge' refers to the next, upcoming Debian release. Or you could try looking here?

up to date?

[linuxbert]

i use and like debian. but i want new packages to be released, and for it to generally appear to be supported.

if you dont want non-free stuff, fine, release sarge, its almost ready (and long delayed) and make removal of non free packages a goal of the next release.

Re:up to date?

[cammoblammo]

Upgrade to Sarge now. It's not that bad, and presumably the stability is where it needs to be. The security updates won't be automatic, but keep an eye on the security page at Debian for info. How secure do you need to be?

I think it's the whole point that Debian won't release software critical to the system that's non-free. They're not going to sit on their standards for a month or two and then worry about them.

Personally I use a little bit of non-free, but I understand completely the ethics of those who refuse to do that. Debian's just about the only distribution (okay, I don't know them all, but I'd be glad to hear if I'm wrong) that has the exclusion of non-free as central. It's what attracted me to Deb in the first place (sorry Ian!) even though I didn't have a clue about GNU/Linux.

Don't deny us that for the sake of a few months when there are otherwise good alternatives.

Re:up to date?

[The Musician]

A number of active debian developers are already advocating this approach, and other similar ones. You can read the "debian-devel" list archives to view some of the discussion.

The thread begins at:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/debi an-vo te-200404/msg00074.html

Much of the discussion has migrated to debian-devel, but its web archives have not been updated yet. Check the debian-devel archives later for a thread of the same name.

Re:up to date?

[filledwithloathing]

RMS was recommending GNU/LinEx as the only totally free distro.

RMS: When I recommend a GNU/Linux distribution, I choose based on ethical considerations. Today I would recommend GNU/LinEx, (Update from RMS: GNU/LinEx is non-free), the distribution prepared by the government of Extremadura, because that's the only installable distribution that consists entirely of free software.

Article But then he found out it wansn't:

1 RMS provided us with this update on GNU/LinEx: The developers told me that GNU/LinEx included only free software, but after this interview was published, people from GNU Spain and others have checked it and found non-free programs in it. I therefore cannot recommend GNU/LinEx at present. I hope that this problem will be corrected. Meanwhile, once again there is no installable GNU/Linux distribution that we can endorse; all of them include or recommend non-free software.

Footnotes

Re:up to date?

[Anonymous Coward]

So?

Re:up to date?

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck rms. fuck the hurd that will never be. if i don't pay for it, its free software. if i can compile it myself that's a bonus.

Re:up to date?

[Malc]

Have you looked at Backports.org?

Not sure if I'd go down that road if I required 100% certainty that they will still be providing security updates a year from now when we're still waiting for Sarge...

Re:DISTRO FLAME WAR!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

ipcop does most of that, except the game/ftp/web server.

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do that, you will soil Debian. Stay with gentoo you amoral fuck.

yeah but

[Anonymous Coward]

it doesn't let you apt-get the portage system and you're still stuck with debian.

Re:yeah but

[fdawg]

Last time i checked, the apt repository was over 100gb per mirror. "...still stuck with debian."? If thats "stuck" then Im glad Im stuck.

One of the reasons I cant deal with gentoo is the wait requird to try anything new. X alone takes a few days to compile, not to mention a new KDE. Considering Debian packages are updated almost nightly, thats a whole lot of compiling for each new release. No thanks.

Re:yeah but

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh, when was the last time you compiled anything? Days for X??? honestly, get it right.

Plus you can bin install with gentoo, and not have to wait.

Re:yeah but

[black mariah]

It takes me about 12 hours to compile QT. Same for GTK. g++ is SLOOOOWWWWWW, expecially on older computers like mine. Not all of us get the latest and greatest hardware.

Bollocks

[grepistan]

If Mr Gates of the Borg isn't a Grand Poobah I don't know who is. Don't forget about Cardinal Ballmer and the rest of the cult.

And don't start me on Microsoft announcements! I suppose the main problem is that there is only so much mileage in "Longhorn will be unimaginably great" and "Longhorn has *ahem* been delayed again"...

Rock solid stability

[rufey]

Although I am disappointed that Sarge will take a bit longer, for my two servers at home, Woody has been rock solid. Sure I grabbed, compiled, configured, and am running 2.6.4 on one of them, but its still Woody under the hood. If I need something newer than what Woody has, I grab the source and build it myself (OSS is great because of this). I like machines that just run and don't need to be upgraded every other month. The bleeding edge releases of other vendors simply doesn't offer anything I need for a web, mySql, Sendmail/Postfix , and DNS server.

We have machines at work that are currently running Redhat 7.2. A couple are RedHat 8, 9, and RHEL 2.1. Why are they not all running the latest and greatest RedHat? Because we either can't afford the downtime (not to mention configuration) to upgrade every time that RedHat comes out with its next release, or the bleeding edge releases break things. Unless a newer release provides some feature/function that we need in production and we can't get any other way, we don't upgrade each time a release comes out. We've even downgraded a couple of machines from RHEL 3.0 to 2.1 because getting some Oracle software installed was near imposible (even with Oracle consultants on-site!)

I'd much have a rock solid server that performs its job all the time than have a bleeding edge server that requires 2 or 3 upgrades a year just to stay bleeding edge.

Re:Rock solid stability

[green_crocadilian]

We have machines at work that are currently running Redhat 7.2. A couple are RedHat 8, 9, and RHEL 2.1.

I am curious: are you still getting bugfixes and security updates for your redhat 7 systems? It seems hard to believe that someone still maintains the package tree for distributions that old, especially since redhat itself seems to have abandoned them.

Re:Rock solid stability

[Phleg]

And even better, all you have to do to keep Debian at the latest official release is to point to the "stable" branch. When sarge is release, you'll get all the updates automatically--and you have the reassurance that the migration path has been tested and retested ad nauseum.

Re:Rock solid stability

[matlhDam]

The good people at Fedora Legacy are providing updated RPMs for RH 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0, and will be providing support for 9.0 when it's EOLed in a few days. They've been a bit sluggish getting update RPMs out recently due to download server problems, but the support's still there.

Re:Rock solid stability

[afidel]

Better to have planned downtime for system migration then unplanned downtime for system triage and intrusion cleanup. Running RH 7.2 on any kind of network with a chance of outside contact is just as bad if not worse then running Windows 2000 unpatched in a similar situation (at least with 2k Pro the only services running is file sharing). Personally I would be running RHEL 3.0 on most of those boxes and telling RH to get their freaking act together and fix the damn Oracle problems! That's why you are paying them good money and exactly why they have the partnership with Oracle, if your rep can't get you satisfaction ask to talk to his boss. 2-3 updates a year is probably bare minimum just for security updates, even OS/390 nee Z/OS has more than that!

Re:Rock solid stability

[rufey]

I am curious: are you still getting bugfixes and security updates for your redhat 7 systems? It seems hard to believe that someone still maintains the package tree for distributions that old, especially since redhat itself seems to have abandoned them.

We probably are not as concerned about bug-fixes and security updates as we should be, and this is a problem with old versions of distros. I mean you can no sooner do an upgrade of some Linux distro than you find out that the version you upgraded to is going to be EOL'ed in the next year, and the vendor recommends you upgrade yet again just to keep up (and get support).

We don't do security updates on a regular basis on our older RedHat servers simply because, support for those versions are hard to find anymore. Most of them don't even face the Internet (you'd have to break in elsewhere first), and we mostly use java/tomcat/apache/Oracle downloaded (and upgraded on a needs basis) from their respective vendors and don't rely on RedHat to keep us up to date with the apps we use. If we find a bug that needs to be fixed, it has always been with the third-party vendor supplied software, not RedHat.

If RedHat were Debian, I bet that v7.2 would still be the stable release - which means we'd still have full support...

Re:Rock solid stability

[rufey]

While I agree that having older operating systems can pose a security risk, with proper administration, you can reduce that greatly.

Our older RedHat systems don't run all the default services. In fact, most of them can only be gotten to (from the outside) on port 80 and or 443, which runs the latest and greatest Apache/Java/Tomcat. Sure, inside we also have ssh access, but with a firewall and intrusion detection between it and the Internet, its a good bet that port 80/443 is all thats open. We have most of nfs, ftp, telnet, smtp, snmp, pop, imap, finger, echo, nis, and any other service turned off. If they are not running, they are not vulnerable.

Running something like Apache 2.0.48 on RH 7.2 isn't necessarily going to be any less secure than running Apache 2.0.48 on RHEL 3.0. Any successful compromise of Apache is likely to be due to Apache, not the underlying OS. Fixing Apache, not upgrading the OS, would be the solution here, assuming you build Apache yourself from source, which I tend to do.

Re:Rock solid stability

[phaze3000]

You can also purchase updates for RH 7.2-9.0 from Progeny. We've been using them on our old RH 7.3 servers since the beginning of the year and have had no problems.

Re:Rock solid stability

[buysse]

Actually, in a sense, 7.2 is still the stable release from Redhat. They just call it RH Enterprise Linux 2.1. If you buy the server version of it (actually, support for the server version), it's supported by Redhat for five years from release. 3.0 is equivalently stable. ;)

Re:First Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this person for real or a troll? Come on, "Well Respected VBScript Guru?"

the Grand Wizard was out of town

[Anonymous Coward]

he was attending a conference on outsourcing to India.

Great. Just great.

[JessLeah]

As more and more pieces of hardware will be protected by the ever-intensifying "intellectual property" laws, Debian will get more and more worthless. It's quite simple: In the distant past, manufacturers made specs available to those who asked. Then they stopped doing it, but you could reverse-engineer them. Then a few of them succumbed to commercial pressure (and the desire to look like "nice guys" to geeks who might influence corporate purchasing decisions) and released binary-only, proprietary drivers for the most popular Linux distro(s) (read: Red Hat and, if you're lucky, Mandrake and/or SuSE). Now most companies don't even bother doing that, and there is a growing trend towards the use of wrappers and such around Windows (!!!) DLL-based drivers. Linux's future is one of proprietary drivers and payware wrappers around proprietary Windows drivers.

And the Debian people are rejecting this sort of thing because of their morals. That's really great. It's also, unfortunately, a wonderful way to ensure that Debian only has primitive, reverse-engineered, DMCA-illegal, flaky support for newer hardware.

Let's see. nVidia and ATI both have proprietary binary-only drivers for Linux (which of course ONLY work on Linux/x86, not Linux/PPC or Linux/ARM or Linux/SPARC or whateverthehell), right? DriverLoader is required to use a bunch of WiFi chipsets under Linux, using Windows .DLLs. Mplayer (that favourite of rebellious geeks) uses Windows .DLLs. Am I forgetting any similar projects? And the kernel is full of various drivers (think sound drivers) which ask for proprietary pieces of firmware, right? I suppose the Debian folks are going to rip out support for all of these devices?

I LIKE the Debian project's inherent sense of morality. I DON'T like their ridiculous lack of pragmatism. This sort of antic is only going to drive off more moderate users towards the likes of Fedora (bloatbloatbloat), Lindows^WLinspire (Windows wannabe, bloat), and ... well, and Windows itself. Way to go, guys.

Re:Great. Just great.

[Phleg]

This is what contrib and non-free are for. Debian's new social contract simply says that it will not depend upon non-free goods of any sort--not that it won't be provided.

Re:Great. Just great.

[rufey]

Usually when I purchase hardware, Windows drivers do come with the hardware. Often times, however, there are newer drivers available on the hardware vendor's website. I've never been charged to go to a vendor's website and download updated, binary-only Windows drivers for the hardware I bought.

Similarly, I don't see why hardware vendors need to suddenly charge for, or deny access to, drivers to hardware you legitametly purchased. If I run Debian, I should be able to install a x86 Linux driver for whatever hardware I own, whether or not I got it from Debian or the vendor itself. I've had to grab drivers off of vendor websites for some of our newest machines at work because RHEL 2.1 doesn't come with the drivers, and RHEL 3.0 was unworkable due to Oracle install problems. I was never asked what Linux distro I was running.

It doesn't matter whether the binary-only device driver is for Windows, Linux, Solaris, HPUX, or what have you. If I have the binary, and I have the OS the binary is for, and the hardware, I can reverse-engineer it to at least some extent. Sure it can be put under the DMCA and made illegal to do so, but the DMCA is US law. How about someone in Asia, or Russia, or some contry in Africa. Does the DMCA apply in every country?

Re:Great. Just great.

[Wyzard]

Most likely, the non-free stuff will not be completely removed, but rather, moved to the non-free section of the distribution. (Strictly speaking, non-free isn't part of the distribution, so things moved there have been removed from Debian, but the packages are available from the same servers, and interoperate with the free stuff.)

The NVidia drivers, for example, work just fine in Debian. Not only is the nvidia-kernel-source package available via apt-get, but it works with Debian's kernel-package build system to produce .deb packages of the built modules. The fact that the drivers are non-free don't affect me in the least; I use them the same way I use any other third-party module package.

I'm not particularly bothered by this change. I'm slightly bothered by the delay of the Sarge release, but since I run Sid on my desktop, and my servers do fine with Woody plus an occasional backport, it's not that big a deal. And it does pretty much answer the question of whether GNOME 2.6 will make it into Sarge. :-)

Re:Great. Just great.

[aws4y]

Thats because the ATI and Nvidia Hardware for PPC, ARM and SPARC (does anyone but Sun make GPUs for SPARC?) is of a completley different arch than x86 (sorry for being captain obvious) besides the fact is that the Linux PPC market is small (0.1% of the 2% of PCs that use Power Processors) Since ARM is mainly used in embeded applications its likely that such drivers would be custom since the GPU would interface into the embeded bus (I am not an embeded systems specialist so I don't know)The result is that ATI and Nvidia don't really care about these markets, or would partner with the company developing the embeded system. In the case that they did relase HW specs for SPARC(?) and PPC versions of there GPUs only a small number of developers would be interested.

Re:Great. Just great.

[dondelelcaro]

Debian's new social contract simply says that it will not depend upon non-free goods of any sort--not that it won't be provided.

Debian's Social Contract has always said that it won't depend upon non-free software. Unless you're one of the people who think that software != data, nothing has really changed at all.

In fact, the only possible new class of works that this covers is documentation and things like images, not firmware or anything else. Those have always been (rather non-controversially) covered by the Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Re:Great. Just great.

[Raspberry]

I agree. I purchased linuxant.com's solution for my 802.11G linksys card. If I was smarter, I would have bought a DLink :)

I did just buy a dlink bluetooth USB adapter -- so hopefully that should be ok.

I'm pissed at debian for holding back the libmysql-client to 3.23.xx instead of moving up to 4.0 because there are "licensing issues" (the PHP issue was resolved) according to the mailing list.

If there was something better than Debian, I'd be on it -- Gentoo is just a waste of my time. I think I'd need a bigger box

Re:Great. Just great.

[don.g]

... so why would an NVidia GPU have to be designed for a particular processor? AGP and PCI are supposed to be CPU-agnostic (unlike the ill-fated VESA local bus).

Re:Great. Just great.

[Eminor]

This sort of antic is only going to drive off more moderate users towards the likes of Fedora (bloatbloatbloat), Lindows^WLinspire (Windows wannabe, bloat), and ... well, and Windows itself. Way to go, guys.

Or it could drive them to try FreeBSD. I switched to BSD after the pain of trying to install the latest and greatest software on Debian Woody.

Re:Great. Just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use one of the Debian derivatives which presumably includes all the non-free stuff by default?

Re:Great. Just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of whether the DMCA applies in every country (similar acts have been passed all around), the US has been very good about prosecuting other country's "offenders," often using trade agreements and/or "We see you, we arrest you." tactics... remember Skylarov (sp.)?

Re:Great. Just great.

[Ost99]

The BIOS on the video card is x86 spesific.
They release other versions of the cards for PPC.

- Ost

Re:Great. Just great.

[miffo.swe]

Someone has to take a stand even if they have to sacrifice some users. Remember that Debian isnt driven to provide whatever users want for the moment. It makes sense to keep the non free stuff out of the dist since that makes debian less vulnerable to attacks from vendors wanting to cash in on their patents or "IP" by litigating SCO style. That wifi cards require windows dll isnt something you can blame Debian for, vote with your money and refuse to buy cards that doesnt have linux drivers even if you buy the card for a Windows machine. If there is a market it will be fulfilled cause money is everything to these people.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself why almost every scsi card out there has support for linux? Can it be because linux is common in servers where scsi is common?

If Debian gains some momentum on the desktop there will be more support for drivers included in the kernel without wrappers because people doesnt want the hassle if they can get stuff that works out of the box.

Re:Great. Just great.

[don.g]

But the Linux drivers for most devices don't care about the BIOS: they talk directly to the hardware. That's how I'm able to use PCI NICs and IDE controllers with x86 BIOSes on my old PowerMac. I can't see why NVidia would be any different.

Re:Great. Just great.

[njdj]

Linux's future is one of proprietary drivers and payware wrappers around proprietary Windows drivers.

And the Debian people are rejecting this sort of thing because of their morals. That's ... a wonderful way to ensure that Debian only has primitive, reverse-engineered, DMCA-illegal, flaky support for newer hardware.

I never buy hardware that isn't supported by free (as in freedom) software. As Linux use grows, there is a good chance that market forces will favor those companies which publish specs for their hardware. We have a choice. We can help to bring about the good outcome, by buying only devices that free software can support, or we can buy the stuff that makes the latest cool game look slicker (or whatever) while rewarding the bastards who want to take away our freedom. You seem to have made your choice, and I despise you for it. Neither of us knows how this will end.

Re:Great. Just great.

[Ost99]

Well, it's possible to use PC video cards with PPC, but you get no picture before the drivers kick inn (and for video cards, you often have to send a signal to the BIOS to start them). For some (older) cards, x86 video bios commands can be sendt from a program running on the PPC.

But, it's a lot more work than most people are prepared to do. I've wasted 100 hours of my life getting a PCI S3 (x86) vid card running on a IBM PPC. Not something I would do again...

Nvidia and ATI don't want you to use their PC cards on PPC, they charge more for the PPC spesific cards (or used to, haven't checked lately).

Re:Great. Just great.

[wathead]

Fedora isnt that bloated compared to mandrake Suse rh9 etc.With todays hardware hell my hardware is 2 years old on my fedora box and it works well. If I want bloat XP has plenty of that. Slack is the best distro for non bloat. It has to be tweaked a little more than Fedora. Hell Mandrake is broken I cant even get X to work on Debian period.
Fedora/Redhat is the only distro that will use a PCI Hardware modem without having to create a symlink to ttyS4 why cant the other distros do this even Suse in thier windows like attitude a PCI modem wont work unless you symlink it to ttyS4. Do you think Joe Sixpack can do this?
I find Fedora very stable the only thing I have had to downgrade is Grip. Everything else just works.
I use Slackware on my older hardware. Patrick doesnt have a problem including java and the plugins contrary to what a lot of people in the opensource/freesoftware community will tell you.
Ok now mod me up as flamebait etc..

Re:Great. Just great.

[Dunkelzahn]

Supporting parent, I've used a SCSI card from my RS/6000 (powerPC based) on my x86 based PC under Linux without any problems. Modprobe and go. It was a Symbios chipset based differential SCSI card used for an Andataco RAID system that I needed some data off of. Detected it, modprobed the JFS modules, it worked, no problem.

Re:Great. Just great.

[gullevek]

Debian unstable:

saturn:~# mysql -V
mysql Ver 12.22 Distrib 4.0.18, for pc-linux-gnu (i686)

soo, what was that with license issues :)

and Gentoo is ALWAYS a waste of time. Compile from scratch is only for ... erm ... I don't know, windows people who want to be mr.3l33t.

Re:Great. Just great.

[Geopoliticus]

Help me out here. I don't understand why a hardware company would not release their specs to developers. Does this put them at some sort of disadvantage with the competition? How does it "hurt" a hardware company to provide this information?

Re:Great. Just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't your sig read: "I etah elttiL .naidnE"

so?

[Anonymous Coward]

use unstable, which has the same shit all other distros have. the only difference is that that Debian has higher (too high?) standards for what they call stable.

Rather than whine, help

[Morganth]

I can see why some people think Debian is fading into irrelevance. Even running sid feels like you're "behind the curve" (in terms of what my Gentoo friends are emerging), and sid is already well ahead of sarge and perhaps years ahead of woody.

Nonetheless, instead of complaining about it, why not help a hand. One first project ot look is Debian on the Desktop.

Maybe from there desktop users can pull enough weight to a) get the latest desktop packages into sid (or at least, at worst, experimental); b) utilize existing apt-get source framework to allow for rapid from-source installs of bleeding edge apps, to reduce packaging time; c) further tweak app to prevent the already-rare occurences of dependecy hell (or, more appropriately, must-remove-to-upgrade hell).

But please, don't do what I do. Don't whine. Just try and help. I think Debian needs a community of [young] desktop users to sort of provide a voice alongside the old-timers who care more about stable servers than Gnome 2.6 or whatnot.

Re:Rather than whine, help

[eloki]

Even running sid feels like you're "behind the curve" (in terms of what my Gentoo friends are emerging)

Really? What stuff are you thinking of?

Re:Rather than whine, help

[Anonymous Coward]

cyrus-imapd

Re:Rather than whine, help

[Anonymous Coward]

Or switch to Arch Linux.

That's what I did. A binary distro that's up to date.

They just need more packages, come help.

How to make this a non-issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just my uninformed opinion, but if testing were to receive security patches as fast as unstable and stable, wouldn't this eliminate a lot of grief?

I've had some trouble with woody, and would like to run sarge on a file (and application) server (which wouldn't be exposed to the internet except with nat for updates), so that I can run kde 3.2.x and newer packages (I have my reasons for running X on a file server). I'm familiar with backports, but backporting kde 3.2.x, and other needed applications is a non-starter for a newbie like me.

In addition to the file/application server, I'd like to run Sarge on a couple of desktops. Security patches that hit Sarge as fast as woody would make it possible for me to do this. And I think it would make it possible for a lot of others to run Sarge without worrying about when/if Sarge will ever make it into stable.

With the installer being "close", kde 3.2.x making it into Sarge, and all the other noise about Sarge being close, I've put off getting a server and a few desktops running, because I wanted to start with a clean install of Sarge at stable. What I'm finding out now is that I've wasted a lot of time for nothing.

It's a shame

[stootles]

After reading this we are now discussing what distro to look at? I don't feel like fighting with management about another distro - Debian was so good that the battle with them was worth it, we just found out we have Suse licenses, so that could be the go - plus we will actually have a big red support button - running 20 servers and I have never had a support button before, that'll be different.

Seriously Debian is great, but, this is a ?harsh? reminder that Debian is not developed for users - never has been - it is developed for the developers making Debian.

However, I see a possible bonus here for those commercial distro's using Debian as they will be able to insert the non-free stuff into their own distro's. From what I saw it seems alot of people would start with something like progeny, but end up migrating to Debian proper - maybe this will give those companies a fighting chance to keep their linux users.

Cheers,

Stewart

Re:It's a shame

[LnxAddct]

Is Red Hat out of the question? If you already have Suse licenses then go for it, but my experience with red hat servers has been great and their support is even better. They've really got their stuff together as far as servers go.
Regards,
Steve

Re:It's a shame

[stootles]

We have quite an extensive agreement with Novell (not something I use myself, but it is used here) and part of that agreement was amended to include Suse licenses for servers (not desktop), so for a $0 we can use Suse, while we will look at it first if it does not meet our expectations, we will look at RedHat next I guess.

Thats servers sort of covered - gotta fugure out what to do with my desktop now....maybe a boiled carrot and some post it notes ;)

This just in...

[Enucite]

News Flash: Debian isn't in it for the money! 8-o
That means they could care less about market-share.

It also means doing whatever it takes to produce a damn fine distro.
There is a reason so many distros are based on Debian.

Re:Rather than whine, help - shame on me

[Morganth]

that's lend a hand, not help a hand...

and, in c, "app" should be "apt."

Don't do what I do. Preview your posts. grr.

Pragmatists dont care about you

[Anonymous Coward]

Pragmatists care about themselves, and since in this case they are developers that means maintenance of old shit is a low priority.

So take the good of idealism with the bad, or find someone to take your money to do it more to your liking.

want sarge now?

[agwis]

su
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
:%s/stable/testing/g
:wq
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade

In the meantime, I'll stay with woody on my servers. I like the fact that 'stable' really does mean stable when running debian.

-Pat

Re:want sarge now?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the meantime, I'll stay with woody on my servers. I like the fact that 'stable' really does mean stable when running debian.

I work on a project that is on woody stable and our software there is three years old!! When we get a problem report from one of these yahoos that we solved several years ago we ask wtf are you running such old software. Oh, they're running woody, nevermind.

Re:want sarge now?

[nkuttler]

oh come on, please RTFM and don't give bad advice. That will completely break your system. do apt-get -u dist-upgrade instead.

upgrade: "upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed"

dist-upgrade: "dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages;" -> resolves all dependencies.

Of course in the past, dselect has been the official choice to upgrade to testing. And don't even thin about putting testing on a server

Re:want sarge now?

[Anonymous Coward]

app-get fuck off you linuz shitz

Re:want sarge now?

[agwis]

I stand corrected. Leaving out dist-upgrade was a mistake on my part but surely no one will be inspired to upgrade their server from my post...at least I hope not! :P

I think my point is clear though. There were already a bunch of the "oh no, I can't wait any longer for sarge, debian is ruined, blah blah blah" posts before mine and I just wanted to show that it easy to upgrade if you wanted to.

The main point that never seems to get across is that if you want to run bleeding edge software with debian you still can...and it's a simple apt-get dist-upgrade away (whether it's sarge or sid). Debian isn't losing anything, it's just being shifted around. I love the fact that you can do a net-install and choose what you want to run, which level to run it at, and whether you want to include non-free software.

-Pat

Re:want sarge now?

[LousyPhreak]

Actually stable means 'version stable' (afaik)

so once you install woody you'll know that i.e php will stay the same version as long as you use woody (and dont use packports or other sources), even if you installed a million security upgrades. so a serveradmin knows when he installs woody what versions of each software he has available.

the added benefit is that by using the same versions for longer time than others you learn about almost all security leaks so you can fix them over time.

but one big downfall is that the packages are severely outdated and (because of the version-stability) no new software gets added/updated so you are practically stuck to what you got (unless you use backports and the like which infact defeats the 'stable' principe).

if the packages were not that outdated i could imagine that software vendors would start to add debian to their list of supported distros.

so i stick t sid (server and workstation) and never had problems so far (except maybe the issue that my amule got updated and the new version is REALLY unstable (crashes at least every hour on me)) so i had to reinstall the old one, but thats one of the resons i like linux so much: CHOICE!)

(hell, i really should stop writing that large rants ;) )

Re:want sarge now?

[harlows_monkeys]

I like the fact that 'stable' really does mean stable when running debian

All the major distributions seem stable enough. Servers behind the firewall, so they can skip many updates, have no trouble reaching hundreds of days uptime (they only go down for hardware problems). For servers exposed to the net, there are usually a few kernel updates a year, so that limits uptime.

A few years ago, things might have been different, but Linux, both the kernel and the major applications, have matured sufficiently that stability is not a problem except for the very extreme bleeding edge.

In other words, choosing Debian over another modern distribution because of stability is like choosing to vacation in Bermuda instead of Hawaii because Bermuda's ocean is wet.

Re:want sarge now?

[p00p at instable.net]

Don't you mean

su -

?

Re:want sarge now?

[Anonymous Coward]

sarge is relativly close to stable, so it's already supported by security.debian.org, this isn't always the case for testing, but it is the case for the current testing, sarge...

Re:This will help?

[Anonymous Coward]

debian is kind of cool.

but if I need to build a fast, secure, lean server...i'm going with slackware or freebsd. think millenium falcon.

if you want the stardestroyer of distros, all bristling with 16,000+ precompiled apps, a packaging system that's bigger then some entire distros..then go debian.

Interesting

[aws4y]

I think that the Debian people are right on this one , however the FSF foundation is partly to blame because of the invariant sections in the FDL . (why glibc wont have documentation)

I think the solution, since non-free is being kept, should be to include the non-free repositories in the default "sources.list" file and allow tasksel to use non-free packages for documentation under a "Non-Free documentation" header, no non-free stuff should needed for the bootstrap installation(although binary kernel module won't be available by default). Thats the best comprimise, IMHO.

Could we stop the Microsoft, Debian, Gentoo and Fedora, and *BSD astroturfing please?

Re:Interesting

[runderwo]

GNU won't endorse Debian if the installer mentions the existence of non-free. Therefore, removing it was important for sarge.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

And why is GNU's endorsement desirable? Even Stallman runs Debian despite the lack of endorsement.

Re:Interesting

[mbanck]

GNU won't endorse Debian if the installer mentions the existence of non-free. Therefore, removing it was important for sarge.

GNU won't endore Debian anyway, as long as non-free is distributed via ftp.debian.org. Removing the question whether the non-free component of the archive should be added to the list of APT sources has been removed because the Debian Project Leader asked the base-config maintainer to do so. It has nothing to do with the relation between the Debian and the GNU project.

Michael

Re:Interesting

[Zigg]

Ironic, isn't it, that the organization that reportedly stands for freedom would be involved in trying to restrict the flow of information, eh?

Or maybe not, considering the GPL is a coercive license itself.

Re:Interesting

[pla]

Could we stop the Microsoft, Debian, Gentoo and Fedora, and *BSD astroturfing please?

Debian (and Linux in general) does not exist in a vaccuum. In a discussion on the merits of following the "free" philosophy to an irrational conclusion (seemingly, what Debian has chosen to do with Sarge), you need to mention other Linux distros (Fedora), other 'nix-like OSs (*BSD), and other popular OSs (Windows).

Philosophically, I agree with the idea of Debian. I consider it a truly wonderful goal. In the current IP climate among hardware manufacturers, however, a move like this all but dooms Debian.

I don't like using binary-only NVidia drivers any more than the rest of you. But I like it a hell of a lot better than using X in 640x480 stdVGA mode on my shiny new $150 video card. Get the idea?

Re:Interesting

[dvdeug]

I don't like using binary-only NVidia drivers any more than the rest of you. But I like it a hell of a lot better than using X in 640x480 stdVGA mode on my shiny new $150 video card. Get the idea?

So? I'm sure some people find POV-Ray an important program to keep around, but they don't whine when Debian puts it in non-free. If you want to use programs in non-free, that's your problem.

A good push-back

[Animats]

This is a good thing. Debian is pushing back against increasingly proprietary hardware.

Now we need a logo for open-source hardware, so people know what to buy. Preferably one designed by a competent icon designer, like Susan Kare.

Re:A good push-back

[TWX]

"Now we need a logo for open-source hardware, so people know what to buy. Preferably one designed by a competent icon designer, like Susan Kare."

No, we need the DMCA repealed, so developers within the USA won't be afraid to reverse-engineer some company's hardware. We need companies to release their own source, or to at least provide a high quality binary driver if the development is slow enough (XFree86 as an example) so that people can use Linux on their new cheap machines.

For the longest time there was no decent support for the sound chipset on my motherboard. Fortunately the OEM didn't skimp on the PCI slots, so adding a Sound Blaster with an EMU10K wasn't a big deal, but it would be nice for this stuff to just work. I had an i815 based machine at work that has problems with sound, video, and ethernet. The video stuff came in first, but I had added cards to handle sound and ethernet, and even if they have a solution at this point it's irrevelant to me since I came up with a stable workaround. Most users aren't going to want to do that though, they just want the damn thing to work.

I use Debian on my computers. I like it. It's easy to maintain, stable on the servers, and fairly easy to keep current enough for my tastes with Sid. I install it and I don't think about it anymore, excepting security updates. I have a computer that's been up for the better part of a year (non-public:) and doesn't give me any fits. I could probably automate the apt-get update && apt-get upgrade procedure and still not worry.

Debian is for Slackware admins that got lazy.

Re:A good push-back

[elhedran]

I just want to say this is a good idea. Hardware makers seem to like to put 100's of icons on their packaging. This will to a lot to make people aware of what OS means (not just us, other people who buy hardware) and certainly will make it much easier to vote with our money. If the icon was backed up by the FSF or some other suitable organisation then I know I will be using it as a decision factor when buying hardware.

Re:A good push-back

[CarrionBird]

Really? Hardware is a different animal than software. It's not like people are gonna buy a support plan for a sound card.

Mfgrs make thier money on selling a physical product, if they give the design away for free, they get kinda hosed, now don't they.

Re:A good push-back

[Malc]

"could probably automate the apt-get update && apt-get upgrade procedure and still not worry. "

I would be very careful doing this. Even Debian screws up. For instance they recently released a completed screwed up kernel security patch. Thank goodness old kernels are kept around as a backup, but still time consuming to fix.

Re:A good push-back

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like people are gonna buy a support plan for a sound card.

No, they buy the soundcard.

Re:A good push-back

[gmhowell]

I looked at her site, and saw lots of icons, and a few widgets, but I didn't see anything that I would call a logo. I'm not sure that the two fields overlap. Anything to substantiate that and prove me wrong? (I'm curious. I can't even draw a stick figure in MS Paint or Gimp)

Re:A good push-back

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is for Slackware admins that got lazy.

Funny, I used to be a slackware admin before I met debian.

Re:This will help?

[Anonymous Coward]

With this focus, Debian will never become a more widely-used distro and remain the distro of the uber-geek, but perhaps that's the point after all.

Er, no on both counts. Debian's goal is not to be widely used. And neither is it Debian's goal to be the distro of the uber-geek.

Debian's goal is to assemble the best operating system it can that you can freely redistribute to your friends and family. Debian's goal is to assemble the best operating system it can that you can sell to others for profit. Debian's goal is to assemble the best operating system that it can whereby you can modify it to fit your needs. Debian's goal is to respect you, the customer.

How many other operating systems can say that?

Perspective

[The Musician]

A few disclaimers, from someone who reads debian-* lists regularly, but isn't part of the project...

(1) Much of what is proposed is about moving pieces of the OS from the "main" archive to the "non-free" archive; "main" is what you get on the Debian CDs, "non-free" is available via ftp. So it is probably less convenient to obtain, but not totally expunged from debian.

Of course, components that affect your initial installation are more sensitive to the method of distribution, but other projects are welcome to build mixed installer tools that combine the default debian installer with the non-free firmware.

(2) This was only announced about 24 hours ago. Things are still in a state of flux, so don't take the "all this is happening and sarge is now year(s) away" too literally.

(3) Don't read into the summary that this solely a personal decision by Anthony Towns, or that he is necessarily in favor of the proposed changes.

Re:Perspective

[darketernal]

> (3) Don't read into the summary that this solely a personal decision by Anthony Towns, or that he is necessarily in favor of the proposed changes.

This is quite right. He believes that the changes to the sarge schedule may be necessary, but when the vote was decided, he was like "oh great, dudes, what the fuck have you guys just voted in favor of?" on IRC.

Note that the vote proposal was poorly worded and that most people would have voted against it if it were clearer as to what was going on in the changes to the SC.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like what most people think our referendum on Europe will be like *duck*.

Re:Perspective

[Crazy Eight]

other projects are welcome to build mixed installer tools that combine the default debian installer with the non-free firmware.

Exactly. Building Debian in adherance to "constitutional" principals ensures it's availability as a reference platform.

Debian has shot itself in the foot

[Tracy Reed]

Debian is really maginalizing itself. I was a debian user for about 6 months. I had been using Linux for nearly 10 years prior so I wasn't averse to learning a new system, compiling stuff by hand, etc. But debian stable is just so far out of date, the installar is just so hideous and painful to use, and the new stuff seemed so far off I jumped ship to Fedora as soon as I realized that it had the single best feature of debian: apt-get (I use yum actually but the effect is the same). But now that this news has come to light I am very glad I jumped ship when I did. My company could never have put up with such a slow and unreliable release schedule. And removing non-free bits of microcode from the kernel is really going to hurt hardware support. Sure, you will probably be able to download them from non-free during or after install and everyone will so we don't really gain any more freedom and we further complicate the already painful install process. Debian is quickly becoming the dinosaur of Linux distributions and is pulling an RMS and hurting the cause of Free Software by marginalizing itself with extremism such that no serious users or organisations will want to be associated with it.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[The Musician]

It is true that the "apt" part of debian -- a modular packaging system with dependencies that are carefully expressed and automatically installed -- is a beautiful thing, and that other distros have similar tools.

However, even just looking at the practical (rather that philosophical) side, apt is not the best part of Debian.

The best part of Debian is a set of packaging conventions (the Debian Policy Manual), and a set of tools and a QA system to support that system, with the result that the software you use from Debian is consistently well-integrated, even though it is crafted by a distributed group of volunteers.

The social norms and continual build-up and exposition of best practices, expressed in part by the Debian Policy Manual, is really the best practical characteristic of Debian.

The freedom thing (and corresponding attention to software licensing) is nice, too.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[Phleg]

My company could never have put up with such a slow and unreliable release schedule.

I'd say the release schedule is quite reliable. "Never" is about as reliable as you can get. Joking aside, I don't see what the big problem is. Does your company actually *need* bleeding edge features provided by many packages? The truth is usually no, and that the unmatched stability and reliability of having older packages with fewer features is a better investment. If the answer is yes, it's very rarely for anything but a few packages, which can be upgraded easily through apt pinning.

The only updates that are absolutely critical are security patches. And thankfully, unlike some Operating Systems and distributions, Debian only provides the security fix for its stable branch, and doesn't require you to update the package to a newer version. This means that less bugs have a chance of being introduced in a security patch, which in turn allows companies to install patches with less worrying about whether or not it will break a current installation. It's still possible, but massively less likely.

In fact, when you get down to it, Sarge is pretty much completely usable as it is. The servers I administer which *do* happen to need those newer features are all running Sarge problem-free.

Really, for all the complaining about Debian, almost none of it is founded on anything rational. Think it's outdated? Run sarge or sid--you lose nothing. Think they're being too pedantic about code and documentation released under non-free licenses? Point apt at the contrib and non-free branches. They're even included into the Debian architecture, including bug reports, mailing lists, and apt entries, so you don't have to go out of your way to do anything special. It's literally no more than changing one word in a configuration file to fix both of these "problems".

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[Phleg]

Debian only provides the security fix for its stable branch...

Thanks to lack of semantic intonation on the web, this implies something other than it meant to. I intended to say that Debian provides only the security fix for the stable branch, and explicitly goes out of its way to avoid inserting any new features or upgrades into software in the "stable" branch.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[pnot]

From the Debian website:

The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system.

It's a question of defining your goals. You're criticising Debian because their project isn't achieving what *you* see as the ideal goal of a Linux distro.

Debian is not accountable to you. Debian is accountable to its developers -- and as the vote shows, they overwhelmingly support freedom over world domination.

As you point out, there are other distributions which settle on a different compromise between freedom and ease of use. You are, of course, welcome to use these. But frankly I think it's a little cheeky to lambast Debian for not conforming to YOUR idea of what THEIR goals should be. Why do you unleash such bitterness against something you profess not to care about? If you're right, Debian will die quietly and it won't make any difference to you.

Debian is quickly becoming the dinosaur of Linux distributions and is pulling an RMS and hurting the cause of Free Software by marginalizing itself with extremism such that no serious users or organisations will want to be associated with it.

Oddly enough, eweek doesn't agree:

According to a Netcraft Ltd. report covering July 2003 to January 2004, Debian was the fastest-growing distribution among Linux Web servers, and Debian trailed only Red Hat Inc.'s Red Hat Linux in the number of Web sites it serves.

But hey, I'm happy with Debian, you're happy with Fedora. No need to make a flamefest of it.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[Barbarian]

Unmatched stability? Debian stable (and unstable) can't even get the mouse to work under both gpm and XFree86.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[steveha]

It works on my system. The installer didn't set it up for me; I had to do it by hand. However, I do not choose to reject Debian simply because its installer isn't perfect yet.

By the way, there are people working on spiffy installers for Debian. Progeny is porting the Red Hat installer to Debian (for x86, anyway).

steveha

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[LousyPhreak]

well i guess you never found out about sid (as snother poster pointed out), which is where the (b)leading edge resides. and dont let yourself be turned away by the 'unstable' tag it has, its still (in 99.99% of all cases) more 'stable' than the fedora updates (stable meaning wont break things on upgrade, if the version itself has issues thats another story, but therefore pinning was invented), although i have to admit i never used fedora.

and the kernel is (and imho should be) usually compiled from the kernel archives, because you'll never need every module shipping with those distros, and you can cut the kernel specifically to your needs.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Does your company actually *need* bleeding edge features provided by many packages?

The problem is for developers -- you can expect a business application to last 5 years or so, and it might take 6 months to develop. You really don't want to start building the app on 3 year old software, because it will almost unmaintainable in just a year or two.

This isn't an impossible problem with Debian, but known release schedules would help. Like is "Sarge" now really going to be the same as Sarge-stable.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[mcrbids]

I've been a RedHat user since RH 5.2, and I really don't know what to say about apt.

But, I've been playing around with yum on Fedora Core 1 - and it's damned impressive.

I can point to any number of yum repositories that contain packages for my particular system. As updates come out to these packages, I can have them all updated and applied with simply

yum -y update

It's damned impressive to consider that binary packages from several (I've had up to 8) sources work together so simply and so easily.

With excellent security, too - all these packages are signed by the appropriate certificate authority, and it's a simple 2-step process to get and install a certificate for a particular yum repository.

WOW!

I was impressed with the Red Hat Network - this blows that away because it's open to the public. (up2date may have been, as well - I never bothered to find out and nobody ever mentioned it to me)

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

We have been using debian since 1994 before version 1. It has never failed us, it is stable and unbreakable, and we perfer to run oracle db on debian, rather than going with RedHat. We have full confidence that we will be able to continue to use Debian as our linux platform , as we find it to be the best server operating system that we have seen until now.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[ScouseMouse]

Interesting point of view. although not one i share, i can see can see its validity.

Debian was always more of a geek release rather than something intended for companies. If you want a commercial grade supported linux, go to redhat/suse/mandrake. Any companies using software in an important role without some sort of direct developer support are taking a huge risk anyway.

I think its good that they are sticking to their morals, and they have the right to do that. We are not short of different linux distributions of various sizes, quality and uses. The Debian maintainers have just clarified where they think they stand.

In a world where everyone+dog is making a linux distribution (How many are there now? 100, 200?) I dont see what the problem is.

Does anyne know how many drivers and packages does this affect anyway? Hopefully it may force some people to release specifications for particular hardware so they can be supported on other projects. Linux is not the be all and end all of open source projects, or even OS's.
Reverse engineering drivers is possible, but creating drivers is much easier if you have the relevant data books in front of you.

For projects like AROS, SKYOS, ReactOS, heck, even FREEDOS, THe only way they are going to get drivers for some hardware is by the hardware manafacturers taking pity on them, and this is not really an acceptable for "Open source" software.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[devnullify]

How late is RH getting on the bandwagon? APT is what? 5 years old now?

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[Malc]

Is it because apt-get is the user interface that some many people get confused and give it all the credit? Apt-get is wonderful. But what makes it truly spectacular is the care, effort and attention that goes in to the preparation and maintenance of the packages that it installs. RPM could be as good as apt... it just needs a higher set of standards applied to the packages themselves.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[spotteddog]

My company could never have put up with such a slow and unreliable release schedule.

At the risk of intense flames, I would like to point out that most companies do put up with such a slow and unreliable release schedule (can you say Micro$oft).

You don't say what your company uses (only that you personally use Fedora now).

What, if any, contributions to Debian would your company make? Debian is NOT a company. Debian is all VOLUNTEERS. A few companies pay people to work on Debian, but not many.

If you wanted a faster release cycle from Debian, you should have volunteered to help make it so. If you wanted more up to date packages you could have upgraded to testing or unstable. Instead you chose to change to Fedora/Red Hat. That is your right. Please don't malign Debian because you don't agree with the project's goals. I still know of many large organizations that want to be associated with Debian.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[rsax]

dont let yourself be turned away by the 'unstable' tag it has, its still (in 99.99% of all cases) more 'stable' than the fedora updates (stable meaning wont break things on upgrade, if the version itself has issues thats another story, but therefore pinning was invented), although i have to admit i never used fedora.

So in just one sentence you diss Fedora in comparison with Debian unstable by saying it is more stable than the other distro and yet claim that you have never used Fedora yourself. I'm not sure why you think that you are in a position to make that comparison. On top of that Debian unstable or testing isn't even supported by the security team.

--
A happy Debian, FreeBSD and OpenBSD user.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[rsax]

Really, for all the complaining about Debian, almost none of it is founded on anything rational. Think it's outdated? Run sarge or sid--you lose nothing.

You lose support from the Debian security team if you stray away from Debian stable.

Re:Debian has shot itself in the foot

[LousyPhreak]

i got that info from a friend who tried fedora and had troubles updating. (my mistake that i forgot to include that)

also i went from a potato install to woody (back when it was still testing), and then to sid without breaking a thing, also i know atleast 3 people who run sid without troubles.

so i guess better than working flawless is difficult but maybe im just a 'bit' biased ;)

not sure how long it took for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently compiled X under gentoo, but I'm not sure how long it took since Linux is a multitasking operating system and it compiled in the background under low priority as usual.

More distros are based on debian then any other.

[Anonymous Coward]

With this focus, Debian will never become a more widely-used distro and remain the distro of the uber-geek, but perhaps that's the point after all.

I use a debian based distro because I'm a newbie and apt-get + debian archive = the only way I can install most of what I want.

It's my humble opinion as a mostly incompetent GNU/L user that knoppix (on HD) is much more user friendly then mandrake.

Do you know why I only drink pure grain alcohol...

[MourningBlade]

Mind you, I'm all in favor of this, but I couldn't help but think:

I can no longer sit back and allow [them] to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

Time for revenge!

[IamScared]

Something is really happening to Debian. Of course, Debian is dying!

AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Vlion]

Argh. Woody has kernel 2.2.20 and gcc 2.x I'm sorry, but we need the next Debian.

I run a debian testing system next to my windows system. My windows sys dual-boots to 'drake 10rc3, but drake is crap-
the ethernet is crazy flaky and dont ask about sound.

I've been waiting for the next debian-installer so I could get debian
on my higher-end machine in a stable manner.

I don't have time to wait around while they smoke pipe dreams about their free morals.
I move out of the dorms in 3 weeks, and away from a decent internet connection. They say they need 8 months to rewrite debian.

I am sorry, we need Debian 4.0 now not when kernel 2.8 comes out, metaphorically speaking.
They can release 4.1-free eventually, but if the Debian project can't get their butt in motion, they will fade and die,
with Gentoo taking over the position of organic Linux distro.

I like debian, but its release cycle is slower than a dead slug in solid concrete,
and this just excaberates the problem.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[bomb_number_20]

not to nitpick, but if you boot from disk 5 of the woody cd set there is a nice 2.4 kernel waiting for you.

switching to gcc 3 is also just an apt-get and a soft link switch away.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Chandon Seldon]

Debian unstable is relitively cutting edge, and is about as stable as a "stable" gentoo system in my experiance. If it's a desktop system, it's definately time to upgrade.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Soko]

I think of Debian Stable as a server only distro - rocksolid, never varies, tested in the bowels of hell itself on 11 different architectures. Is it old and crufty? Yup, but some people like it that way - it's a known quanity.

If you want a desktop distro, get the current Sarge installer and go to town - you can even go to Sid with good results. To me, the Debian development model was heavily borrowed by the Fedora project, and it shows. Fedora seems to be closing in on Debians package count and ease of use, and AFAICT is nothing but Free Software to boot. If this is indeed the case, it would seem that Debian is "the one true distro" (how's that for flamebait), a point of reference for all the others. Just as there are the -mm, -ac and -ck kernel trees beside the Linus tree, we have Fedora/RedHat, SUSE, Mandrake and others who are judged against the Debian distro.

I'm glad Debian is around and sticking to the intent of thier social contract - it keeps the other distro makers honest, since Debian matches or surpasses thier functionalty and will always be Free as in speech, and likely Free as in beer too. I don't normally use Debian, but I support them fully in this.

Soko

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Anonymous Coward]

i used the new debian-installer to install a sid system a few months ago, and have had zero problems.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Wyzard]

Is this second box of yours a server which needs stability above all else? Or is it, as I suspect, a desktop system?

If it's a desktop system, just run Sid. Despite the "unstable" label, it's quite usable -- I've been running it on my desktop for 3.5 years and it's still running smoothly; I've never needed to reinstall, or do major recovery of any sort (aside from some filesystem corruption at one point, but that was my own fault and not Debian's). Packages break on infrequent occasions, but rarely severely, and with some common sense you can work around the problems. "unstable" doesn't mean "will crash on you"; it means "hasn't been tested enough yet to be considered stable".

I'm running kernel 2.6.5, using LVM2 on some of my disks and XFS on all my filesystems. My desktop is GNOME 2.4 on XFree86 4.3 using the 5336 release of NVidia's driver; I may install the "experimental" packages of GNOME 2.6, but I'll probably just wait a little while until they're moved into unstable. My system is up-to-date and I'm quite happy with it.

If you want to use the new installer, go download it -- it's quite usable already. If you're comfortable using your existing testing system (installing and upgrading packages, configuring things, etc.) then you'll find that Sid isn't much different. You'll run into snags on occasion, but they're minor, and you'll learn from them and be that much more knowledgeable in the future.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[LousyPhreak]

just for your information:
woody: stable (meaning versions wont change therefore old software)
sarge: testing (meaning versions almost stable, preparing for release)
sid: unstable (meaning new software, possibly (but very unlikely) bugs in the install scripts)

so all you need is to choose what you like.

and DONT let yourself be turned down by that 'unstable' tag... ive had never had problems with sid til' now and ive been upgrading from potato over woody straight to sid and my server is still happily working, only needing a reboot to change the kernel (or if some hardware dies but thats another story).

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[emj]

I've never ever downloaded CD number 3. So that would prove to be really hard. Really Woody needs a change of engine, python is so outdated that things are getting really hard for me, Mysql and PHP is another issue, you have to install from source if you use Debian Stable, and want to run a webserver.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Dionysus]

www.backports.org

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Anonymous Coward]

This is due to the proximity of Debian & RMS (who seems to emit some mystical go-slow field) - The Hurd! Remeber the Hurd!

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Crazy Eight]

Stop waiting for the installer and just get it right now. The business card cd is only 30 megs and IIRC you can skip testing and go straight to unstable if you like.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Malc]

What are you talking about? Debian Stable gives you a choice of 2.2 or 2.4. It's been a while since I installed it so I can't remember if it gives you a choice at instalation time... if it doesn't, just do something like this:

apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-686

Simple eh? All my Debian workstations and servers are running standard Stable with 2.4. If you need 2.6, use backports.org.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[Alioth]

I like debian, but its release cycle is slower than a dead slug in solid concrete,
and this just excaberates the problem

When you are running a herd of servers, this is a feature - not a bug. I use Deb on the servers *precisely* because they support the current major version of stable for a long time without continuous major version updates. I don't need the latest version of $EYE_CANDY, I just want a server that stays up and is trivial to keep updated.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG

[congaflum]

> I can't remember if it gives you a choice at instalation time

It does. You just need to enter "bf24" at the first prompt in the installer. Works like a charm.

Cheers.

If you can do better...

[ron_ivi]

... why don't you fork it and make your own successful distro. (serious advice - the knoppix guy did just this - and included components not found in standard Debian distros)

Personally, I very much approve of the stability of Debian Stable for environments where I get up-to-date security patches, but no frivolous cutsie upgrades that break stuff. I don't believe there's a more stable Linux distro out there.

(do doubt everyone else'll point out you can use Testing or Unstable if you enjoy that kind of stuff, so I won't repeat that part)

This is actually an advantage.

[rice_burners_suck]

I think my first reaction at reading this announcement was one of disappointment. This seems a lot like a step backwards, especially when many important components are affected. However, after a bit of thought on this subject, I have come to the conclusion that this is a good idea anyway.

First, if I am interpreting this correctly, this entire issue revolves around Debian remaining 100% free (under a certain definition of "free"), and not requiring the use of any non-free component. This is in stark contrast to, say, the NetBSD project, which is a bit more lax on which "free"/"open" licenses qualify for inclusion in their software. Their idea is that they do not have infinite time to reproduce every single component under the BSD license, so inclusion of other software benefits the community. This would seem to place Debian at a disadvantage.

But upon further reflection, I reminded myself that free software is all about the freedom to choose. In other words, I can choose to use Debian, or not, and further, if I choose to use Debian, nobody said that I can't install components from other distros, specific developers whose software was not included, or even earlier versions of Debian. Therefore, this becomes a great advantage to the community: A 100% "free" distribution, into which you can add whatever components, free or not, that you wish.

Re:This is actually an advantage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is saying that it isn't an advantage to have a completely free distribution. I think what really bugs some people is that Sarge was so close to being released, whereas this decision delays it to 2005.

Fact is that Woody is really stable and can be equipped with a 2.4 kernel. However this requires a skilled user. While testing or unstable may have the packages you want I doubt that I can recommend this path to anyone based on the promise of a Slashdot-post that these "are really stable and probably won't break your existing system".

In the meantime stable has a 2.2 kernel and really outdated packages when compared to other distributions (KDE 2.2.2 and Gnome 1.4 versus KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.4). Based on this I doubt it was a wise decision.

that explains it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a slow computer, slow connection, or aren't familiar with Linux it probably won't be a great experience for you. Unless you download the CD precompiled for your architecture and only install the packages that are also pre-compiled and optimized for your machine. Of course if you don't do much processor intensive stuff the increased performance probably won't be that obvious and you may want to stick with a more mainstream distro.

Just great? Could be awesome.

[green_crocadilian]

I certainly see your point that for some popular devices (e.g. nVidia cards), the proprietary drivers are much better than the open ones. I also agree that going the moral road will turn away some users.

However, Debian is imho big enough to pull this sort of thing. If some micro-league, half-assed distro went this route, it would die in obscurity, but a major product like Debian will survive. Furthermore, by rejecting proprietary firmware and documentation, Debian is raising awareness of some important issues (like Fedora not including mp3 support raises awareness of patent encumbered technologies).

Say you get a shiny new pci card with a little tux on the box, and a proprietary driver on the CD. Cool, huh? No. Not cool. The driver will work with your Linux system provided:
-you use kernel 2.4 or maybe 2.6
-you compiled said kernel with gcc 3.2 or 3.3
-you use glibc 2.somethingorother
-your /etc, /dev, and /proc are set up just right.

Years pass. Linux gains 20% desktop market share. Duke Nukem Forever is released for Mac and Lintel. You fish out an old computer from your closet; you want to install a Linux (kernel 3.0; compiled with gcc 3.5; with glibc 2.somethingelse; and a GNU/Darwin directory layout) to turn into a streaming virtual reality server for your apartment. Guess what's the probability of your closed-source driver still working?

Open source drivers might be a hassle to use in the short term, but C source is still the most portable way to distribute software.

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[Dot.Com.CEO]

I'm really wondering what kind of world you live in. Debian a major product? When? Where? Maybe in Slashdot, but, kids, remember, Slashdot is not the real world. With Linux in 3% of desktop computers and Debian an enthusiasts distro, what with their "philosophy" and all, we are talking of AT MOST 1% of desktop computers, and that is assuming that one third of Linux PCs run Debian which is overly optimistic.

As a desktop Linux user I find this kind of argument tiring and irrelevant. I want an OS that works, and I really do not care if RMS approves it, I don't care about the "tainted kernel" messages, nor about binary-only drivers. THIS is the real world, my dear friend. You might think this philosophy of yours is very noble and might change the world, but wait until you REALLY need to work on a PC rather than own it to to apt-get upgrade every 2 minutes and we'll see who's right.

Also, your argument about what would happen in 20 years is simplistic. In 20 years you would not dream of installing a modern OS on an ancient machine. You'd either emulate whatever OS you wanted to use or you'd take out the PC from the closet and load the ancient, 20 year old OS. Why a simple thing like that would need to be complicated in such a way I do not understand but, then again, I favour the BSD way of doing things rather than the simplistic and outworldly RMS "philosophy".

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

C source is still the most portable way to distribute software.

C source? You got to be kidding!

I do agree source code is better than binaries, but I wouldn't call C the most portable language! (I wouldn't call Java that either)

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[drinkypoo]

As a desktop Linux user I find this kind of argument tiring and irrelevant. I want an OS that works, and I really do not care if RMS approves it, I don't care about the "tainted kernel" messages, nor about binary-only drivers. THIS is the real world, my dear friend.

So go use Windows. No one is stopping you. You have chosen to state that you do not care if software is Free, so I feel pretty safe in making the statement that you can only harm Linux and not help it. The fact that manufacturers are releasing binary-only drivers might be the status quo, but it doesn't mean it's desirable.

Also, your argument about what would happen in 20 years is simplistic. In 20 years you would not dream of installing a modern OS on an ancient machine.

There should be machines from 1984 which you can install Linux (or some downsized variant thereof) on. If not, then by 1985. People do more than dream of it. Next bullshit objection? If you examine my timeline of microprocessors you will see that the MC68020 was commercialized in 1984. Also, in 1986, intel sold the 80386, which linux obviously runs on; So even if my time scale is off it is only by a year or two. What's two years anyway? (One tenth of the total time scale, that's what. On a 20 year scale that is not that much, though.)

As a user, you SHOULD care about the political issues, but no one can make you, and most users don't. Linux sliding down the slippery slope to closed-drivers-land is a distinct possibility if people do not pay enough attention to these issues.

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[Dot.Com.CEO]

So go use Windows. No one is stopping you

Spoken like a true Debian zealot. Also, I "help" Linux by paying good money for distros that give me what I want, while in my opinion you hinder Linux advancement by linking technological development with a quasi-religious view that I find wrong.

Also, please do sit down for a second and think of the fallacy and complacency of your "argument" about twenty year old PCs. Frankly,calling it an argument is too much. But hey, whatever, if you think you're on some kind of a crusade, who am I to argue. I just use Linux because it's superior for what I'm doing. When it's not, I won't use it.

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[drinkypoo]

You're ignoring the fact that if we don't support the companies who are as obliging as possible to what we want, there won't be anyone willing to work with us. While plenty of Linux driver development was carried out through reverse engineering, much was done with the assistance of the manufacturer. So long as these people continue to act in this vein, I feel we owe it to them to support them, which will in turn provide them motivation to continue to do so. The motivation? The highest-quality drivers, written by the combination of the company that made the hardware, and the people who write the kernel.

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[Dot.Com.CEO]

I'm not ignoring absolutely anything. You are the one who is shifting to a totally different problem. This has absolutely nothing to do with binary drivers versus open source ones. Philosophical questions aside, if a manufacturer provides a working driver, binary or open source, that works, people will use it in Linux. If they don't, Linux users will most likely buy something else. I use Linux and first of all, I don't think that anyone has the moral high ground to tell me "I should go back to using Windows" because they subscribe to the GNU philosophy, but most importantly, I use whatever allows me to get the job done. I use Winex for games, Crossover Office for running a couple of apps that do not exist in Linux or are not up to the standard of the ones I am used to using over the years and I happily use ATI's binary drivers. I think your objection is that my OS is not longer "free" but that is the least of my worries since I paid about 150USD for it. For you, an unustomised, GNU-only distro might do the job, I, and many others, like to have a choice.

Also, I think that you, as well as the Debian community as a whole, are moving further away every day from where Linus wants Linux to go. He does not have problems with binary kernel modules, and the GPL is not a religion neither is it a philosophy. It is a useful licence that works for some kind of development. When the market or the customers want something else, it will appear. Accept it.

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[drinkypoo]

I'm not sure how you can think that this has nothing to do with binary drivers versus open source ones. That and other issues which Linux seeks to address specifically by being GPL are about Freedom to do what you want with what you have purchased. Manufacturers are trying to take that away from you, and the GPL seeks to give it back. Hence, Linux too is part of this effort.

The GPL is neither a religion nor a philosophy, but it exists and was crafted due to a philosophy which to some borders on a religion. In fact the GPL was created in order to spread the tenets of that philsophy to the world. If all you want is to give away source, after all, you can use something like the BSD license, or for that matter, just release it into the Public Domain.

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[yakovlev]

Years pass. Linux gains 20% desktop market share. Duke Nukem Forever is released for Mac and Lintel. You fish out an old computer from your closet; you want to install a Linux (kernel 3.0; compiled with gcc 3.5; with glibc 2.somethingelse; and a GNU/Darwin directory layout) to turn into a streaming virtual reality server for your apartment. Guess what's the probability of your closed-source driver still working?

This is a LINUX failing, not a proprietary driver failing. Linux should have a set of interfaces that DON'T CHANGE, that basic hardware drivers can be written to. I'm not the first person to express this complaint, and it's something that really needs to be fixed for linux to get vendor-supported drivers. GREG

Re:Just great? Could be awesome.

[Dot.Com.CEO]

First of all I apologise for having put you in my foes list but your "don't like it use Windows" retoric hit a nerve. More to the point, I guess your point of view is valid regarding what you think Linux is. Actually, Linux is just a kernel. By saying you use GNU/Linux, actually, you make a statement that says "my kernel is Linux and I use Free software". My argument is that not everyone who uses Linux uses it because Microsoft are evil or because they subscribe to the GNU philosophy. Some, myself included, use it because it allows me to run 90% of the programs and games I used to run in Windows with the added advantage of being a Unix, and therefore familiar, geeky and better looking. I actually run a version of Linux that has several proprietary extensions to KDE (Xandros), which probably would make you turn blue but it makes my life easier so, I guess it's irrelevant.

My point throughout the discussion with you has been that neither Debian nor Linus can define what the OS is. It is up to the distros and, ultimately the customers. In the greater scheme of things, which means paying customers, Debian, and therefore their philosophy, are irrelevant. Or rather, "Free" is not a selling point, and it can never be since for most people Windows and Office is free (came with the machine), is familiar territory and ultimately, people do not care about the nuances of GNU vs BSD vs proprietary. They want something that works. And Debian puts prerequisites to that, such as "well, it would work but our philosophy prohibits us from distributing binary drivers". Irrelevant.

Social Contract?

[microwave_EE]

Dang, I thought there'd be at least SOMETHING about Hobbes' Leviathan, or Rousseau's... Ressau's... Roseao's... *crap, it's some dang French spelling*...that one guy's book, "The Social Contract" ...I was hoping for some good ol' philosophical debate about the origin of society... Oops.

Re:Nice sign on

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just upset he took your login first.

Woody's Age

[Emperor Tiberius]

Problem with pushing Sarge back is that Woody continues to age. I suppose for those on a server, a 2.4.x kernel is fine if bf-2.4, but TBH, I'd like to see Sarge come out with the stock kernel as 2.4.26 or even 2.6.5. Who runs Woody with 2.2 anymore these days? Sure, it's rock stable, but it's not going to run the next greatest thing.

I'm not trying to attack Woody, I used to use it before switching to Sid, but let's face it; the packages are old and deprecated. As I said above, it may still appeal to the server community, but for those on the desktop, it starts to lag. Then again, it begs the question, is Debian really a desktop OS? Debian developers seem to argue that one a lot.

Re:Woody's Age

[Wyzard]

Then again, it begs the question, is Debian really a desktop OS? Debian developers seem to argue that one a lot.

Stable isn't, but with a little care and feeding, Sid is. And the care and feeding is educational -- just doing an upgrade every few days with apt-listchanges installed is a great way to learn by osmosis little tidbits about the system's workings.

Re:Woody's Age

[LousyPhreak]

you said it yourself: switch to sid if you need new packages!

think of woody as the server release (with all the security stuff and things) and sid as the desktop release with all the new whizbang

Re:Woody's Age

[Cro Magnon]

I'm sure Sarge will come out with a 2.6 kernel. Of course, by then everyone else will be using kernel 3.4.

Re:First Question

[Anonymous Coward]

the next poop the debian crew is going to excrete from their collective ass hole

You know what this means.

[Visceral Monkey]

It's obviously the result of a grand conspiracy involving the masons, jews and gentoo users. Those dirty, dirty Gentoo users..

Re:You know what this means.

[Nasarius]

Those dirty, dirty Gentoo users..

And we would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

Re:You know what this means.

[Anonymous Coward]

...and your dog!

Re:You know what this means.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo users get all the sex

Re:This will help?

[Anonymous Coward]

With this focus, Debian will never become a more widely-used distro and remain the distro of the uber-geek, but perhaps that's the point after all.

No that's not the point you dildo. (damn retarded troll)

The point of the Debian distro is a completely NO STRINGS ATTATCHED.

Anybody anywere can use Debian for whatever purpose they want. ANY PURPOSE.

Anything from Debian you can modify, sell, share, and make your own startup distros from. No config tools from Suse to mess around with.

No unfree drivers to get in trouble for distributing. No restricted artwork and tradmarks(ala Firefox and Redhat) no nothing.

Do you want to create your own windows-like distro (lindows for example?) you can.

Do you want to use it for a for-profit software company, you can. All of it, and you don't have to get anybody's permission or pay people no attention.

Do you want to use it for School? To run university labs?

No liscencing restricts.

Plus it's to remind people and the developers themselves EXACTLY WHY LINUX WAS CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Debian rocks!

You go ahead and setup debian and learn to use Apt, and you will find that it's probably the most easily maintained distro out there. What you need to know to run Debian is what you need to know to run any Linux distro out their.

The point of debian is to be as non-1337 as possible, so that nobody will ever have to worry about anything ever. It's safe, it's secure. No potential lawsuits and installing any program is as easy as going [b]apt-get install programname[/b], and applying security patches is: [b]apt-get update && apt-get upgrade[/b].

Is that realy that difficult or 1337?

Re:Do you know why I only drink pure grain alcohol

[ajlitt]

I think you've stumbled upon the post - Toy Story naming paradigm. Should the next one be named Muffley or Guano?

Remember...

[Steamhead]

There is free as in beer, free as in speach, and free as in the recipe. I hope what they ment by removing non free software is not one of those (remember there are some pretty cool closed source applications) .

Re:Remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is free/recipe different from free/speach ?

It is precisely the restriction of _speach_ when handing other people the _recipe_ that causes the whole problem, isn't it ?

Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[steveha]

One of the cool things about Debian is they way they relentlessly review things to make sure they are free. The Debian Free Software Guidlines (DFSG) are rigorously applied, and anything that doesn't meet DFSG is not allowed in Debian's "main" area.

(I tell people "Debian is fanatic about this stuff so we don't have to be." If you just use Debian main, you are using nothing but free software. Easy!)

Debian has two areas for software that doesn't meet the DFSG: "contrib" and "non-free". Now that this proposal has passed, not only software but documentation and firmware will be migrated out of main and into contrib or non-free.

The first thing I thought when I read this was: I wonder if Richard Stallman will finally be satisfied?

Last August, RMS was asked in an interview, which distribution of GNU/Linux he would recommend. He said he would recommend GNU/LinEx, because it contains no non-free software. As it turns out, he was mistaken about that; GNU/LinEx still has traces of non-free software in it, just as Debian has. He withdrew the recommendation of GNU/LinEx (without, to my knowledge, offering any recommendation to replace it).

RMS has said that he cannot recommend any distro that offers up free and non-free software from the same servers, or contains references to any servers that offer non-free software. (Keep in mind that his definition of non-free is not identical to the "non-free" of the Debian project.) So Debian, the most free distro I know, is still not recommended by RMS.

You can read a somewhat acrimonious discussion thread about this here if you like:

linux.debian.legal discussion archived by groups.google.com

Note that Debian is so committed to free software that they are booting FSF documentation from main, because of the newest version of the "Free Documentation License" that allows invariant sections. Invariant sections are clearly free according to the FSF, but they are not in compliance with the DFSG, and thus do not go in main anymore. Discussion here:

another linux.debian.legal discussion archived by groups.google.com

I will close with a final quote from RMS, on the possibility that Debian might one day strip out the non-free software to his satisfaction:

The change that I asked Debian developers to make, some years ago, was to separate the two, such that we could refer people to Debian GNU/Linux without in the same act referring them also to the non-free software. This would make it possible for us to refer the public to Debian GNU/Linux. If in the future Debian GNU/Linux does not include the GNU manuals, this reference could not be wholeheartedly positive, but we could still make the reference.

P.S. If you asked me for a recommendation for a truly free distro, I'd suggest Debian main. If you don't put contrib and non-free in your sources.list file, you will never get any contrib or non-free software and yours system will be fully free software. That's good enough for me, even though it's not good enough for RMS.

steveha

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[black mariah]

At some point everyone just needs to stop giving a fuck what some bearded hippie thinks (not that being a bearded hippie is a BAD thing) and just get the fuck on with it. Look, I respect RMS and the FSF as much as anyone else that uses Linux but I seriously don't give a flying fuck what RMS does and doesn't like. It makes no difference to me, and it shouldn't make a difference to anyone else. RMS is NOT divine. He's just a guy. His opinion is no more relevant than anyone else's.

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[Tarantolato]

No.

Althought the /. fanboys are all atwitter about the drivers issue, an equally important reason behind this decision is documentation. Specifically, GNU documentation.

Ya see, there's this thing called the GNU Free Documentation License, which says you have to include "invariant sections" in any use or modification of the document under question. These may be quite large.

The Debian team considers the GFDL to be =non-free=.

In other words, this decision is likely to only provoke RMS more.

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the parent article? Like where it has a link to the detailed explanation of why the FDL isn't DFSG-free?

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[moxruby]

I agree that we should form our own opinions, but to claim that Richard Stallman; one of the founders of the free software movement is no more relevant than the average Slashbot is ridiculous...

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[platipusrc]

Oh come on now, it's obvious that RMS is going to begin supporting binary only software and disclaiming the viability of open source software while suddently coming to terms with the superiority of security through obscurity seeing as how he's moved into the Bill Gates Building.

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is equally ridiculous to claim that the opinion of Richard Stallman is of ultimate relevance...

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tell people "Debian is fanatic about this stuff so we don't have to be." If you just use Debian main, you are using nothing but free software. Easy!

I think that's absurd.

I don't care if it's free. I don't care if it's GPL. I just care if it works. A totally free distro that doesn't work with my sound card and video card isn't great. There's nothing wonderful about inoperative. I'm not interested in fighting a holy war, I just want my computer to work like it's supposed to.

What's great is when I can install the same distro on my laptop and my two desktops and have everything working in only one day. Now that's a great disto.

Then I can tell my friends that "the developers are fanatic about making my computer work so that we don't have to be". It's easy!

And RMS can kiss my shiny white ass. After all, my sound card works and his doesn't.

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you do use Windows, true?

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[black mariah]

No, it's not ridiculous. RMS's comments come from the most biased, hardcore GNU/Free Software zealot imaginable. In fact, just because of that, his opinions means LESS to me than that of the average Slashdotter.

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[steveha]

I don't care if it's free. I don't care if it's GPL. I just care if it works.

Do you care whether you will still be allowed to use it next year?

One of the best things about free software is no one can ever take it away from you. If nothing else, the freedom to fork means that if the package developers take the project in a stupid direction, other people can fork and take the project back to sanity.

If gcc had not been free software, the egcs project could not have started as a fork of gcc, and gcc would stagnated. (Eventually, the egcs and gcc projects unforked, which is why you might not have heard of egcs. Look it up on google.) The fact that gcc is free software means it works better today. This is an example of the pragmatic side of using only free software.

You are a perfect customer for Debian. You don't care whether stuff is free; you just want it to work. I have lots of non-free software I bought years ago, that basically doesn't work anymore. If I had just used Debian main, everything I had then, I would still have now.

When Progeny finishes porting the Red Hat installer to Debian, take another look at Debian.

steveha

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I respect RMS and the FSF as much as anyone else that uses Linux but I seriously don't give a flying fuck what RMS does and doesn't like. It makes no difference to me, and it shouldn't make a difference to anyone else. RMS is NOT divine. He's just a guy. His opinion is no more relevant than anyone else's.

Time and time again, RMS has warned of various problems and been called a kook. But then something happens that vindicates him. It's happened lots.

For instance, why do you think that the GNU project requires signed copyright assignments? Is it because RMS is a kook, or is it preventing an SCO-like attack on the GNU project, by accounting for every last contribution in writing?

Sure, he's not divine. Nobody claims that he is, so you are attacking a stupid straw-man argument there. But to claim that his opinion is not relevent is just ludicrous.

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[dvdeug]

RMS is NOT divine. He's just a guy. His opinion is no more relevant than anyone else's.

But it is. Because he's been around, and he's been doing this for so much longer, and has well-thought out reasons for his actions. You may disagree with his opinions, but they should be taken into account.

Can you honestly say that you don't value any one's opinion? Are the only opinions you listen to are your own?

Re:Will RMS finally recommend Debian?

[jschrod]

One of the cool things about Debian is they way they relentlessly review things to make sure they are free. The Debian Free Software Guidlines (DFSG) are rigorously applied, and anything that doesn't meet DFSG is not allowed in Debian's "main" area.

Then, why is TeX in main?

DEK and the AMS doesn't allow that anyone changes TeX and still calls it TeX afterwards. You are even not allowed to fix errors; they are features, after all.

Linux x86 only?

[CaptainPinko]

Linux's future is one of proprietary drivers and payware wrappers around proprietary Windows drivers.

This would reduce Linux down to x86 and x86-64 since proprietary drvers do not help anyone running anyother architecture. I'm just trying to figure how to get a WiFi card going in a mactop Only open drivers will let Linux users actually have the freedom and choice they want.

And there's more!

[RAMMS EIN]

Adding to your post, I would like to make the case for Debian unstable.

Unstable in no way means it's really unstable. What it means is that while packages have had some basic testing, the distribution as a whole hasn't been religiously tested, and, consequently, isn't years behind the curve as stable is.

Packages in unstable often provide improvements and bugfixes that the versions in stable didn't yet have.* This means that, while stable is guaranteed to be stable, many people will find unstable more usable (especially people using Gaim, as the IM networks change protocols once in a while, breaking older versions).

The message is, if you want guaranteed stability, use Debian stable. If you want to stay current, but still want to have the benefits of Debian (easy software installation, automatic dependency resolution), use Debian unstable. Don't use testing, unless you really intend to test it - it's almost guaranteed to be broken.

* Note that security fixes are backported to stable. This means that you can keep using the version of the package you have always used, and be sure your configuration keeps working, while still getting security updates that are only available through upgrading for other distros.

Re:And there's more!

[Anonymous Coward]

You appear to have confused "testing" and "unstable."

Re:And there's more!

[borggraefe]

Both testing and unstable have no official support from the Debian security team.

So if you're going to run anything where security matters your only choice is stable.

Re:And there's more!

[RAMMS EIN]

I did not. Those are my experiences with Debian. Everything in stable works, as long as nothing has changed externally to break it. Things in unstable have always worked for me, although from how the process works, I can see how they could break. Testing is the only one that has ever given me trouble, and since it gets neither the updates from upstream, nor the fixes from Debian security team, I recommend against running it for anything other than testing.

Re:And there's more!

[RAMMS EIN]

``So if you're going to run anything where security matters your only choice is stable.''

Not quite. Unstable doesn't get security fixes from Debian, but it gets them from the authors of the software. This makes the security comparable to many other distros, which also simply package the new, fixed versions of software. I don't think either way is significantly more secure.

Re:And there's more!

[Anonymous Coward]

Beeeep!!!

Unstable gets the new upstream release with the security hole fixed asap. Maybe even eralier than the backport is available...

Re:And there's more!

[Short Circuit]

I run unstable. On two occasions, the version of the perl modules available didn't agree with the version the perl binary was looking for. So much of the packaging system got hosed when perl wouldn't run.

The first time was years ago. The second time was around Febuary.

Other than that, the occasional dependancy issues haven't given me too much trouple.

Re:And there's more!

[Malc]

My problem with both testing and unstable is the constant stream of updates. It makes WindowsUpdate look bad! ;) The great thing about stable is that it doesn't change. Change is bad, especially when it comes to servers. On the desktop it's just irritating... although I can't remember what it's like compared to other distros as it's been too long since I used other distros.

Re:And there's more!

[plugger]

Just make sure you check the latest news before doing an upgrade. Hang out in #debian for 20 minutes, if there is a serious problem with dependencies, you will see a steady stream of poor saps asking the same question. I have only been badly bitten once in 18 months of running unstable, and that time the topic in #debian had a warning about the broken package.

Re:And there's more!

[Short Circuit]

I currently upgrade via sneakernet. I don't have an internet connection at home. (When I originally installed the system, I was on an unrestricted T1, but that was a long time ago.)

Re:And there's more!

[hummassa]

No one is forcing you to upgrade.
Just don't. Take a look in the security advisories and only upgrade what you must.
As I said in other post (sid user) I upgrade only once each 2-to-3 weeks.

Re:And there's more!

[spotteddog]

I will take this opportunity to bash you with a clue bat. Unstable is unstable because it changes and may be broken. Testing is slightly less volatile than unstable but still changes at a rapid pace for packages that have active upstream development and/or bugs. Stable is just that - stable. Stable only changes for security related issues.

Saying your problem with testing and unstable is the constant updates to them is like saying the problem with your car is that it moves.

Personally I've had it with all the users complaining stable is not bleeding edge and testing or unstable changes too often. You can't have it both ways. Pick one and deal with your choice. Nobody is forcing you to use Debian.

Re:And there's more!

[pohl]

I'm clear on the intended semantics of "stable", "testing", and "unstable", but my experience is exactly the same as the grandparent post. There may be an occasional burp in the updates, but they go away fairly quickly. In contrast it seems like it takes forever for fixes to get promoted to testing. I've been a debian unstable user for years, and feel like it's the sweet spot to be at for the best balance of recent software and ease of maintenance. Face it, the debian development process is so freaking conservative that even their unstable branch is more stable than other distributions.

This is for my workstation, of course...I wouldn't maintain a server that way.

Re:And there's more!

[Malc]

There are no security advisories for the non-stable trees. There's no way to know whether a patch for stable is needed in testing or unstable as the code there could be sufficiently different that security hole isn't present.

Re:And there's more!

[Jo_2521]

Beware on using testing (sarge) on servers though.

As nice it may seem to get relative new programs instead of the year-old stuff in woody without the stability problems (ssh was broken a few years ago in unstable, which is a perfect reason why not to use sid on servers :) ) you could face in unstable, there is one major problem:

There are no security updates for testing.

Re:And there's more!

[FattMattP]

No he didn't. Testing is usually more broken than unstable. Testing is only in good shape now because Debian is near a release.

Re:And there's more!

[Malc]

Ooohhh, somebody's a bit testy. Personally I've had it with grumpy impatient people - life's too short to pay them any attention.

You don't have to explain the difference between the Debian versions - I've been using it for a number of years and I can read too! The biggest problem that users have with Debian is that it's all or nothing when it comes to your choice of which version you use. People's complaints justifiably reflect that. I'm not going to waste my time making suggestions as I don't sufficient bandwidth to get involved enough to do anything about it. That's not going to stop me voicing my opinion though.

Re:And there's more!

[trashme]

No, he confused nothing. Read this post for a little explanation on why it may not be such a good idea to use testing.

Re:And there's more!

[ameoba]

The problem with unstable is that any given upgrade might possibly break your computer. Testing is probably a much more realistic compromise between the crusty old stable & bleeding edge unstable.

Re:And there's more!

[tiger99]

I think that unstable simply means, in this case, liable to change. Some "unstable" packages have been absolutely rock solid, conversely some "stable" packages have been buggy. With Debian, most "stable" packages are fairly good. The common meaning of "unstable" suggests that it may well perform about as reliably as Windoze ME on a bad day, however here it only reflects the developers intentions, and experience in testing at that point in time, rather than being a real expression of the quality of the software.

Re:And there's more!

[Cro Magnon]

Some people want an OS that upgrades every 6-12 months. That ain't Debian! Stable changes every 2-5 YEARS! Testing/unstable is in a constant state of change, which might be ok for a developer's desktop, or even a homeuser, but not for corporate use.

Re:And there's more!

[spotteddog]

I'm neither grumpy nor impatient. I've been a Debian Developer for over 7 years. I've been hearing the same thing for 7 years.

Your post suggested you really didn't understand the difference between the different versions. Your follow up suggests you might, but don't understand the various ways provided the package management tools to allow running a mixture of packages from each version. It is possible provided all the dependencies are satisfied.

Your lack of bandwidth argument is a poor excuse. When I started working on Debian I had a 14.4K modem connection to a 16MHz 80386 system with 16 MB of RAM. (insert obligatory "barefoot, uphill both ways in a snow storm and we liked it that way " joke) If you have enough bandwith to read and post on /. you have enought bandwidth to contribute to Debian. You could review documentation, test small packages, etc. Packaging for Debian doesn't require a lot of bandwidth, just the ability to get your upstream source and then send it to the project server once the package is done. The full source is normally only uploaded once for each version number of the upstream source. The real reason you don't contribute directly to Debian is you choose not to. Please notice I said contribute directly. If you loaded Debian and made some comments about it, you are contributing indirectly. If you run a Debian based system you are contributing indirectly.

As anyone who has read any portion of the numerous Debian mailing lists knows, you are always free to voice your opinion.

Re:And there's more!

[spotteddog]

Actually testing, unstable, and stable only change when the system administrator decides to upgrade the boxes. Updates are available for unstable and testing very frequently. Stable is, well, stable .

If you want an OS that upgrades every 6 months, only run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade every six months.

(the above is intended to be slightly serious and slightly humorous)

Re:And there's more!

[Malc]

I confused you with my poor choice of the word bandwidth. I meant personal time and energy, not my internet connection which is 4Mbs.

Re:And there's more!

[Catharsis]

When Perl went from 5.6 -> 5.8 in Debian unstable, it just about killed me.

All of a sudden ANYTHING that relied on Perl for ANY reason lost its dependancies!

It was awful. Almost nothing would install without hacking and working around, and I was (relatively) new to Debian at the time. When I asked around for help, I was told "Well, you shouldn't have switched to unstable, N00B."

Well, fuck you too, here I am, stuck. Telling someone who fell down a well "don't play near the well" doesn't help anyone.

The moral of the story? Stay away from Debian unstable until you know your way around the Debian package system really well.

On the other hand, if you don't ever use Debian unstable, you probably won't ever have any motivation to learn it.

The other moral? The vocal minority are the bandwidth majority.

Re:And there's more!

[Palshife]

Oh for Christ's sake, just whip em out and be done with it.

Sarge

[dj245]

Sarge will not be released in 2004.

Thank heavens, we have enough enemies without a efficient windows killer being released on the "axis of evil". NCO's lead the way!

Frankenlinux (Debian ressurected with new feature)

[ZeekWatson]

I use Debian and I use:

I play games like UT2004 on it.
I have firmwear-based drivers and closed source Nvidia drivers for it.
I run Kernel 2.6.5 on it.
I run Gnome 2.6 on it.

Dude, running that kernel and apps means you aren't running Debian, you're running Frakenlinux!

Joking aside, it's true. Debian means old and stable - seriously. If you're running the latest stuff, it ain't Debian anymore.

Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[gnuman99]

For people that don't know, Debian has 3 distributions: unstable (Sid), testing (Sarge) and stable (Woody). This means that if you want most up-to-date software, you run Sid and cope with some possible breakage (I didn't have anything broken badly over the last few years).

If you want stuff up to date, but want to have something that would be considered "stable" by other distros, you run Sarge (or testing).

The Woody distribution is for cases when you want to run a bunch of applications predictably. This means that your production application will run the same on day one as it does on day 100. An update will not break your application. An update will not change the way the application works. That is the point of stable - stable operation for a long period of time.

And yes, you can install 2.4.26 in Woody (from kernel.org). Woody actually has 2.4.x kernels no matter what the trolls are talking about.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[NuShrike]

Yes, Woody was the unstable for quite a while when Potato was the stable. Potato was the 2.2, Woody was the 2.4. Debian has sorta caught up..

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[Bystander]

The problem for some(many?) people will be in getting Sarge installed on a system where Debian has not already been installed. That is because the Sarge installer is unfinished. This means the most reliable way to install Debian Sarge is to first install Debian Woody, then use apt-get to do an update distribution command while hoping some unforseen dependancy problem doesn't break the install scripts during the upgrade.

I've performed the operation twice: from the previous version of Debian before Woody, and from Woody to Sarge. Each time an error prevented a completely automatic update from the old version to the new one. The fixes involved locating specific packages whose dependencies couldn't be met by the installer, and manually forcing certain packages to be installed in the correct order to satisfy those dependencies. For many people, having an install script stop working while giving only an obscure error message after its crash would lead to great initial confusion about what to do next.

If Debian would concentrate on finishing the Sarge installer and releasing it in a condition suitable for general use, they would reduce a lot of the pressure to release the entire Sarge distribution in a shorter timeframe. People who absolutely needed the functionality of software in Sarge and who were willing to put up with occasional bugs could then more easily satisfy those needs on their own.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[mst76]

If you want stuff up to date, but want to have something that would be considered "stable" by other distros, you run Sarge (or testing).

This is wrong, see the discussions on Debianplanet (post by Chris Metzer) and the mailing list. To summarize: Testing exists for the development of the next Stable release. It is not intended to provide people with a more recent Stable. Debian does have a problem getting timely Stable releases, but the solution is not to point end-users to Testing.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[Anonymous Coward]

I've installed several times a woody box and updated directly to testing WITHOUT any problems at all. The trick is to only install a MINIMAL system with woody, THEN upgrade to sid, and THEN choose the packages you want to have installed on your production system, not installing all you need using woody, and then upgrading to sid.

It's that simple...

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[Phleg]

How is this wrong? It is what would be considered stable by other distributions. If you don't mind having feature updates for software and packages added to the tree, you might as well use Sarge. What, then, is the difference between that and releases by other distributions?

Yeah, that's not its "official" purpose, but that doesn't negate the reality of the situation.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[wobblie]

Like everyone else who says this, you completely miss the point. As far as production machines go, testing and unstable are absolute, I mean complete, no - no's. No way. Not at all, no fucking goddamn way would anyone in their right mind use testing or unstable on a machine that other people depended on. I've been running unstable for 3 years, and I'll be damned if I would use it in a production environment.

You are wrong, entirely, about testing. That is not what it's for. It's for the developers to work out problems in unstable, not for users who want a "middle ground" between unstable and stable. It is not by any means a "middle ground". If you think it is, just wait till it goes frozen, and your system stays broken for over a month while they work out bugs. They never, ever told people testing was a "milder unstable". That is NOT what it is.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[mst76]

Did you even read the link? Testing does not get timely security updates. Gnome and KDE were broken for months in Testing in the past year. This may happen in other development trees like Redhat-Rawhide and Mandrake-Cooker, but not in the release versions. Testing may (or may not) be less broken than the development trees, it is not comparable to the release versions of other distros. Close to release it's of course pretty stable. But at the start and in the middle of the cycle, things may be a lot worse. Which is of course the reason that it is called Testing and not Stable.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[Phleg]

And of course, there would be little reason to run Testing soon after a release. So the fact that it's unstable at the start and middle of the development cycle is fairly moot.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[gnuman99]

Currently, with all of the packages migrating from unstable to testing automatically based on bug reports, testing is nothing more than a moving stable release. Stable is just a snapshot in time of testing - sure, we want the number of RC bugs down to 0, but that should be the case for testing at all time.

If you want to have testing just as bug free as stable, then run unstable on your machine and report all bugs, especially the RC bugs. Then testing will remain relatively bug-free.

Re:Slow release cycle? It is not that slow

[gnuman99]

If end-users don't use testing and unstable (those that can report bugs), then you'll have these bugs in next stable release.

On a remote collocated server, I would never run testing. On a local, internal server that I can fix at any time, I do run testing. On my machine, I run unstable (well, all Debian DD should :).

That is why I said that you run stable on machines that you need stable (not changing) software. Everyone that would like to help the next stable release be bug free should run testing, or even better, unstable (if you want testing to be bug free)

Testing is NOT limitted to developers. There is a reason why all mirrors do not only distribute the stable release.

Re:This will help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely. Debian is one of the distros that does what it does for good reason: to make a better operating system. Not exactly something you'd expect from Linspire, now is it? They're goal is more of the money-making variety.

Disclaimer: I use Slackware.

Re:This will help?

[the_2nd_coming]

I guess you missed the news that Debian based distros out number RPM based distros now by a large margin.

Debians own social standards???

[quinkin]

Hrm... Having read the majority of the newsgroup postings on the topic I think I can say with some certainty that the Debianites really need to work on their own social standards.

They are astonishingly rude and confrontational in an entirely unproductive way. Sure it's probably unfair to point the finger at Debian alone (especially on /. - oh the irony) but I can say with some certainty that nothing positive will come from that thread. Conflict resolution amongst egotistical (come on , we can admit it) geeks is damn difficult - especially when programmer opinions take on the form of religious zealotry (free vs. libre).

These are big changes, and many people are expressing that they felt misled with the "editorial changes" description of the vote in question. I am not going to get involved in an internal dispute, except to say that it is in the best interests of the project for the majority not to feel manipulated and/or deceived. Again, I'm not saying they have been, I am saying that is what some are expressing.

Q.

Re:Debians own social standards???

[Karora]

As with any group of over 1000 individuals, your statement is a vast generalisation.

How can you call us "rude and confrontational" when all you are basing that on are some mailing list posts, primarily in a mailing list which is renowned for that behaviour.

Personally, as a Debian Developer, I try to assist people and fix bugs in my packages, as my way of contributing back to a phenomenal set of software. Debian has over 5000 packages in the distribution, and while those are mostly not written by DDs, they are packaged, and made to play together nicely and install, upgrade and uninstall cleanly, and the whole damn thing just works.

Yes, of course Debian Developers are principled people who care passionately about things other than software, and if you stick a thousand of them in a mailing list together there is bound to be fire! And hell, some of us are geeks without social skill. Cry me a river.

Re:Debians own social standards???

[DAldredge]

You imply he is wrong in the first half of your sentence, then in the second have say he was right.

Every thought of running a presidental campaign?

Re:Debians own social standards???

[Karora]

Hardly - I said he's over-generalising, but within any sufficiently large group of individuals there will always be annoying little pricks.

I don't even agree that Debian has more than it's fair share, just that the nature of the beast is that the organisation is comprised of people who actually care. Passionately.

:-)

Re:Debians own social standards???

[sultanoslack]

> [...] (free vs. libre)

Just to be pedantic -- you mean "libre vs. gratis" -- the translation of "libre" into English is "free"; if you want to differentiate by using another language you need to use both of the distinct terms from that language (or in this case family of languages).

Re:Debians own social standards???

[Anonymous Coward]

They are astonishingly rude and confrontational in an entirely unproductive way. Sure it's probably unfair to point the finger at Debian alone (especially on /. - oh the irony) but I can say with some certainty that nothing positive will come from that thread. Conflict resolution amongst egotistical (come on , we can admit it) geeks is damn difficult - especially when programmer opinions take on the form of religious zealotry (free vs. libre).

STFU and quit whining you clueless noob. If you don't like it then go back to playing with Windows. When you're running with the big dogs like Theo, DJB, Stallman, etc., you have to expect primadonnas to act like complete assholes. It's what OSS is all about.

Re:Debians own social standards???

[Short Circuit]

The problem is when those "annoying little pricks" make themselves heard over the people who honestly want to help.

Re:Debians own social standards???

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether you find someone unpleasant or not has nothing to do with the quality of their principles. Suggesting that the two are related was really quite stupid of you.

Re:Debians own social standards???

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit that nail right on.

Try hanging on on freenode irc network, in #debian . Note how arrogant they are, and worst of all, how extremely hostile they are to new users.

This is very bad, considering new users are their future.

Try and point this out in a constructive way, and you will be silenced/banned.

Re:Debians own social standards???

[pkarlos_76]

There are the few that make it a unpleasant experience for many newbies to debian or linux in the mailing lists and more particularily the irc.freenode.net #debian channel. And when the newbies attempt to defend themselves some of the operators just kick them or ban them because they don't like their opinion. I give that some of these newbies can expres their opinion rudely, but usually that's a human response to being treated like garbage. Many in other distros view the #debian channel as very unhelpful to newbies. Sure their argument to read the man pages may be their way of being helpful, however the man pages are very hard to understand in some cases and fail to give real life examples of usages of their command structure, and fail to explain what each option does. Perhaps eliminating condescending attitudes and improvement of the documentation in the man pages would serve to overcome these negatives of the debian distribution. you say he is basing this on a mailing list that is renowned for that behavior, well I say the debian community needs to clean house and and ensure such people in mailing lists are no longer welcoemd in the community. Also note that I understand that the man pages is not a debian specific issue, but it is a debian attitude among some to rudely tell newbies to read the man pages. P.S. Just because some one else has a low self esteem does give them the right to abuse others emotional/mentally.

Re:Debians own social standards???

[SComps]

This may work into an off topic thread, but here goes. I've noticed that with a lot of the OSS community the "rude" or "superior" attitude is very prevalent. As a coder of small items for personal satisfaction, I don't know C++. I don't know every aspect of the operating system, it's file structure and so on. It seems that if you ask a question about a problem, or imply even remotely that there is a problem some self important geek jumps down your throat for calling him a poor programmer. If you ask a question that was answered any time in the last 15 yrs you're expected to find it on some archive site that's been throwing 404's for the last 12 yrs (yes I'm taking liberties with timeframes ) and they refuse to answer. *Sometimes* you'll get a sarcastic "google it" indicating that it might have been answered at one time.

What it comes down to though is rude is rude, attitude is attitude. The surest way to drive somebody away from your product, free or otherwise, is to make them feel like an idiot for asking a question about it. The same goes for policies and releases. A little bit of social skills would go a long way--even in newsgroups that are known for being rude. It's like my momma always said. No matter how rich or smart the man, he's still got an asshole, and an asshole is an asshole. (forgive the language)

Re:Debians own social standards???

[looie]

Yes, of course Debian Developers are principled people who care passionately about things other than software, and if you stick a thousand of them in a mailing list together there is bound to be fire! And hell, some of us are geeks without social skill. Cry me a river.

if you care more about your software than you do about your userbase, your software is DOA. and, indeed, that appears to be the case here. shipping software without documentation, requiring users to "go find" firmware to make their video cards work -- you couldn't look me in the face and tell me that you really care about your users. the whole point of debian is "purity" -- if you don't want to be a monk, don't pick up that disc. but the reality is, most of us install an OS on a computer in order to do work, not to make a social statement.

if this situation remains, two years from now, only debian developers will be using debian. you will have demonstrated your "purity" and accomplished nothing useful.

mp,"still a slackware user after all these years"

Re:Frankenlinux (Debian ressurected with new featu

[Anonymous Coward]

[b]Joking aside, it's true. Debian means old and stable - seriously. If you're running the latest stuff, it ain't Debian anymore. [/b]

Everything I run, except for the Nvidia/Hauppage drivers and kernel sources (I compiled my kernel using the automated kernel package tools, though, which turn any custom kernel into a debian package) are from official debian servers.

Just not stable. It's unstable/experimental mix. It's bleeding edge, for debian.

The cool stuff is Debian can be made into whatever you want it to be buy learning howto use the Apt package manager. It makes even extreme mods easy, all that functionality is built into the tools.

Debian STABLE is old and completely stable. Debian unstable is what most people end up using. It's just that Stable is a good basis for customization.

For example, if I was to create a campus lab using Debian that and had to deal with 300+ computers on my own, I could do that with Debian Stable easily. Stuff like Gentoo would be a pain in the arse, and Fedora would be between the two in ease of administration.

But for home use were I want the newest stuff the Debian community allows for that too.

Debian is old and stuffy + modern and flexible at the same time, just depends how you want it.

It's a sort of "have it your way" (to steal a term from Burgerking) sort of distro.

Guys, remember what Debian is about

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a lot of annoyance with Debian's stance on this type of thing. It seems to be of a similar type to those who are annoyed at RMS for being idealistic in the face of reality.

I can understand that, but I don't agree with it. If Microsoft/SCO/whoever sends an army of lawyers marching through the open source world, the strict principles of Debian might make them the only one invulnerable to the attack.

RMS and Debian might get on people's nerves, but there are other leaders and distros people can pay attention to for practical stuff. RMS and Debian prepare for the worst case scenario. Remember if things get really bad they may be all that stands between us and complete domination of the commercial software world.

Re:Guys, remember what Debian is about

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, bullshit. 90% of the "problems" Debian quibbles about are their own invention. Fine, but don't pretend its defensive.

And the real lesson of SCO is that someone can come after you even if you've done nothing wrong whatsoever.

Re:Guys, remember what Debian is about

[leerpm]

I can understand that, but I don't agree with it. If Microsoft/SCO/whoever sends an army of lawyers marching through the open source world, the strict principles of Debian might make them the only one invulnerable to the attack.

No single distribution is completely invulnerable, so long as software patents exist and continue to be approved for ridiculous 'inventions'. This applies to about every other operating system out there too, including Windows.

Re:Guys, remember what Debian is about

[ibi]

I can understand that, but I don't agree with it. If Microsoft/SCO/whoever sends an army of lawyers marching through the open source world, the strict principles of Debian might make them the only one invulnerable to the attack.

Really? I think it's more that Debian's crankyness threatens to make it too irrelevant to be worth suing out of existence. :-)

And if SCO proves anything, it's that you don't need much of a case to sue someone.

Repeat after me

[iamacat]

"All free software" is the enemy of "mostly free software", just like in most things in life. Redhat/Fedora Linux makes persons/companies think "I can make some simple changes to satisfy my business needs. Maybe the requirement to release source code if I distibute the stuff to other people is not so bad, since I am already getting a good value using it myself". Debian will make people think "well, I tried to install an OS, but I can't get the stuff to run, because it doesn't support NVIDIA cards. Isn't it one of the most common brands anyway? I guess I'll just stick with Windows."

If you want to make the best contribution to your cause, advocate a small improvement that is likely to be accepted by at least 10% of people/users. Enough said.

Re:Repeat after me

[adrianbaugh]

"Mostly free software" is the enemy of "all free software". People like nVidia put out free (beer) software and get away with it, so there's no incentive for them to put out free (speech) software.

Yes, I know nVidia say they can't release the code for contract reasons - but if they really wanted to release the code they'd renegotiate the contracts with their suppliers. As a high-level producer they're in a position to seriously strong-arm their lower-level suppliers. If they say they aren't they're either lying or stupid.

Re:Repeat after me

[iamacat]

And why would they do such a thing for a product with low market share on desktops? If Debian and Fedora don't include a working version of their drivers out of the box, NVIDIA could just stop making them, because the market share would be further reduced to the users able to compile and install their own kernel modules.

Re:Do you know why I only drink pure grain alcohol

[MourningBlade]

Personally, I'm going for Muffley. Just to see the expression on people's faces.

Though Turgidson has an appeal as well.

I think Mandrake might not fly, though: "I'm installing Debian Mandrake!" "Oh for the love of god please NOOOOOOOO."

To quote TFA:

[inode_buddha]

"...which means that Sarge will not be released in 2004."

Er, we already knew that.

Ah jeez...

[ecloud]

another excuse to be even later than ever.

I wish I had known to go vote on that one. I've been a bit of a Debian snob ever since I switched from Slackware but they seem to get further behind all the time. Am trying Gentoo on one box now, and it's much better about that. Nowadays it's better for bragging about too... don't need no steenkin' unoptimized binaries, and all that jazz.

Yeah I like the stability, and I like that it's 100% free software but this is ridiculous. Maybe do it in the next version? Plan ahead a little, rather than stop the whole train?

Eric Raymond a few years ago was preaching that while Open Source software doesn't permit you to make money by selling software, at least you can sell documentation, and consulting services, and t-shirts, and still put the beans on the table. Well I guess they don't even believe in non-free documentation. Next they'll be insisting that all Debian t-shirts be made only from wild open-range hemp, harvested and woven by young virgin volunteers, stone-washed in the Rocky Mountain heights, and given away freely to anyone who knows how to sing the Free Software Song properly.

I don't know the history of the libc documentation but I don't think anybody was suing them for compensation, were they? If not, maybe it's free enough, regardless of some poorly chosen words in a preamble somewhere?

Re:Ah jeez...

[cehardin]

I think you're missing one very important point. If you want to see Debian have more of the newer software in "stable," contribute! It seems that more people whine about open source software than actually contribute anything. Take, take, take, yet never give.

Re:Ah jeez...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had known to go vote on that one.

Sorry, buddy - only Debian developers can vote.

Re:Ah jeez...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Debian doesn't take new software in "stable". All new software goes to unstable. Only. Then unstable slowly drifts to testing. Then testing gets frozen and bugfixed and eventually relesed into the new stable. In fact, Debian forbids packages too new from entering the system when a freeze is coming up.

This is why GNOME 2.6 isn't in unstable yet; the Release Manager didn't want to see it drift into testing and thereby into the next release with so little actual testing time. Although now that the release has been pushed back, I wonder if he might let GNOME 2.6 through now.

Re:Ah jeez...

[mihalis]

Eric Raymond a few years ago was preaching that while Open Source software doesn't permit you to make money by selling software, at least you can sell documentation, and consulting services, and t-shirts, and still put the beans on the table. Well I guess they don't even believe in non-free documentation. Next they'll be insisting that all Debian t-shirts be made only from wild open-range hemp, harvested and woven by young virgin volunteers, stone-washed in the Rocky Mountain heights, and given away freely to anyone who knows how to sing the Free Software Song properly.

Ah, but which side of the rocky mountain heights produce the most ideal stone-washing? Those dirty east slope washers give the free t-shirt community as a whole a bad name.

Jonsathan Swift (big-endians, little endians) or Monty Python (People's Popular front of Judaea) already said it all when it comes to parodying tribal warfare of this sort.

Re:Ah jeez...

[Daniel]

I wish I had known to go vote on that one.

If you are a member of Debian, as this comment seems to indicate, and you chose not to vote (or even to take five minutes to read the proposal)...I'm sorry, but you can't complain about the outcome. There's nothing stopping you from proposing a "put it back the way it was" GR on debian-vote, though, or even one that explicitly says "Debian is 100% Free Software, plus some non-free firmware and some GFDL-licensed stuff". (note, however, that it will need a 3:1 majority, and this proposal passed with over a 4:1 majority)

Daniel

Re:Ah jeez...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric Raymond a few years ago was preaching that while Open Source software doesn't permit you to make money by selling software, at least you can sell documentation, and consulting services, and t-shirts, and still put the beans on the table. Well I guess they don't even believe in non-free documentation.

Debian is a Free Software project (a project aimed at building high-quality Free Software), not an Open-Source project (a project aimed at increasing software value through opening it up to the public). Some Debian derivatives are Open-Source projects, I suggest if you don't like the goals of Debian, you should use one of them.

Re:DISTRO FLAME WAR!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

'bout some no slackware mofos

Woody is ilegal

[nereid666]

Stop Sarge doesn't follow the actual social. Woody is ilegal it doesn't follow the actual social contract. We must delete woody from the mirrors, and delete woody from the servers, they are dirty, non-free software that have non-free data, documentation. If we are not "ready" then is better to not use computers.

Debian's Identity Crisis

[Elf-friend]

It seems to me that Debian can't decide what it is these days. Half the time, the just want to be the most secure and stable Linux distro out there. The other half of the time, all that matters is the licensing aspect.

I really wish they would make up their minds. Are they trying to provide the most stable distro out there, or are they trying to be an unofficial organ of the FSF? Both perhaps? If this last is the case, then they ought to have been more balanced about this decision. Why push back the release cycle by a whole year just to make the GNU zealots happy? Why not wait until the next release for these change and bring Sarge out on time? At least the message there would have been that "we agree with FSF/GNU ideals in principal, but we have other goals which are as important as far as this release goes."

Instead, the message they are sending is that "Debian is for GNU zealots only. We don't give a damn about anyone else. If you have a need for any closed-source program or proprietary hardware, you are evil." I am sick of this attitude, frankly.

Don't get me wrong, I respect what RMS and FSF/GNU have done for the cause of free/OSS software, but I simply can't agree with the notion that closed-source is evil. I prefer Linus' approach which is essentially to say that we think free/OSS is a better idea, but that authors have a right to go closed-source if they want. Personally, I tend to think that the BSD license is often, maybe even generally, superior to the GPL. I use Linux because it ofers more choices than BSD, not because I dislike BSD or its license. I had thought that Debian was distancing itself from GNU, but I guess they've done a 180.

I have used Debian for over three years, because I like the package system. I am not a GNU zealot. Over the last two years, I have become increasingly annoyed with holdups in the release cycle, but promises of a quick Sarge release went a long way to apease me. This is the last straw. There are other distros (Gentoo for one) with as good or better package/ports systems, and that at least pretend to care about real-world users. Goodbye Debian.

P.S. Before anyone flames me, keep in mind that in part I am blowing off steam out of utter frustration. If I spoke overly harshly, I apologize to anyone I offended.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Sunnan]

Half the time, the just want to be the most secure and stable Linux distro out there. The other half of the time, all that matters is the licensing aspect.

Some would say that you can't have the first without the second.

"Debian is for GNU zealots only. We don't give a damn about anyone else. If you have a need for any closed-source program or proprietary hardware, you are evil."

So what's with the non-free archive that they still have?

Frankly, what course of action do you suggest for Debian? That they "embrace non-free software as an equally valid choice"? That would be IMHO awful.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[twilight30]

I hear what you're saying, I've been more than a little annoyed with Debian as well lately. But...

I don't use the Stable release, outside of sysadmins, I don't think I know anyone else who does.

They have an obligation to release free stuff that has only become stricter in the last few years. What they are saying about proprietary hardware is not, 'Fuck you, you are evil,' but rather, 'We're sorry, but we have no control nor proper information over the hardware you're using and can't really help you, because if we did have that information, we would be constrained by the makers of your hardware not to divulge it to you.'

To take a completely trivial example, the computer I'm typing this on has an NVidia video card, and I run Debian testing on it. I knew I'd have a hard time using Debian-only software on it, so off I went to Google. Within an hour I had everything downloaded and installed.

OK, perhaps not as easy as grabbing Fedora. But I know as a result of this what I have, what Debian can provide, and what they can't. In other words, I've learned something, and I didn't have it done for me.

A lot of times people forget or get confused as to what the Debian project is about. But they tell you this upfront: they aim to make a free computer operating system. Not to make the easiest, or most convenient -- though it would be nice -- or to make the most secure or most complete. Simply to make it free, so that when a new user, a business, an organisation or a government picks it up, they won't have to --ever-- worry about licensing costs or any other shit.

Limiting the GNU stuff to exclude FDL documentation is, I agree, a total pain in the ass. Granted, disk space is no problem for users these days. But what would be the alternative be? Gloss over the very real difference in opinion as to the modification of texts as just a side issue? It creates problems because the GNU project says 'You have to accept this part and parcel of the original package even if you don't agree with any of it nor does it have any real use'.

And no, this is not a flame, it's an honest question -- if this is really a problem, why aren't you using a FreeBSD system instead? They have ports. They have lots of free stuff. They have a large userbase, they have lots of online support and are pragmatic. What's the holdup?

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Closed source drivers are bad as long as the DMCA makes it illegal for someone to make a competing open source driver for the hardware.

The (courts interpretation of the) law says you have a right to make your driver closed source, but it is illegal for me to make an open source driver.

You have the right to close your driver, and prevent me from releasing mine. That is the problem. Eliminate the DMCA and you position is much stronger.

We tolerate businesses doing most of what they want in the marketplace, because if you don't like it, you go elsewhere. If it is illegal to go elsewhere, that is a problem. Same if it is too inconvenient, impractical, or impossible. That is why we regulate utilities.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[sapped]

And no, this is not a flame, it's an honest question -- if this is really a problem, why aren't you using a FreeBSD system instead? They have ports. They have lots of free stuff. They have a large userbase, they have lots of online support and are pragmatic. What's the holdup?

OK, I am totally clueless as to the differences here. what is the most significant difference between BSD and Linux?

Can I run Linux stuff on BSD? E.g. Can I grab the latest GNOME desktop and install it on BSD along with any of the applications that come with it? And by install I mean I perform the same kind of effort involved in a Linux install.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Elf-friend]

Agreed. The DMCA is the problem there, not closed-source. I hate the DMCA just as much as the next guy. The DMCA is most certainly evil (as are patents on algorithims), because it infringes on the inherent right of fair use. Here's hoping it will be found unconstitutional.

Don't get me wrong, all else being equal, I prefer free/OSS. I'm just not opposed to authors having an inherent right to not share their code if they don't want to. While I may not always agree with their decision, I don't think it's an evil one.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[mcubed]

OK, I am totally clueless as to the differences here. what is the most significant difference between BSD and Linux?

Don't know if it's the "most significant difference," but one important difference is the license. A BSD license is, AFAIK, the least restrictive out there. Basically, it says you can use, modify, redistribute, etc., as you wish, all you have to do is acknowledge BSD's copyright. You want to make a closed-source, proprietary derivative app using some BSD code? No problem, as long as you acknowledge that some of your code came from BSD. Even Microsoft uses BSD code in Windows.

Can I run Linux stuff on BSD? E.g. Can I grab the latest GNOME desktop and install it on BSD along with any of the applications that come with it? And by install I mean I perform the same kind of effort involved in a Linux install.

Yes, at least with FreeBSD. Probably with the others as well. Google for BSD ports. It has a huge collection of software. And installation is straightforward -- Gentoo adapted its ports system from BSD.

Michael

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Elf-friend]

Well, as I said, I was blowing off steam before. I understand that Debian aims to make a totally free OS, and I love that. It's just that I don't always agree with their definition of "free." I'm pretty sick of drawn-out aguments of this "free" license vs. that "free" license. I really think that, as long as you give someone credit for their work (and pay them if they want money), it oughtn't be an issue what you do with it. I know the issue is more complicated than that, I'm just frustrated at the holdup over what I consider a non-issue.

Using stable has been part of my problem, but I've gotten the impresion that unstable and testing are far too often totally broken. I would rather be able to use a stable version that is a bit more up-to-date. I'm not clamoring for the latest GNOME version the day it comes out, but it would be nice to have it before it becomes obsolete. Woody released with a GNOME version which was already obsolete. At the time, they said something to the effect of "we want a quick turn-around for Sarge, because Woody took too long." Now Sarge is apt to take just as long.

As for why I don't use FreeBSD, it's mostly the issue of the core system. If, for instance, I want to use vim istead of nvi and gawk instead of mawk, that's fairly easy on any Linux system; but on BSD, if I understand rightly, you are stuck with whichever implementation that the project decided to use. Sure you can run the other version as well, but you can't subtitute it. I like the fact that Linux is more modular. I would have gone to Gentoo last year, but for being on 56k.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Elf-friend]

Well, they could stop holding up the release cycle over debates about "what does free mean." Some of the stuff in non-free is, IMHO, free/OSS. It just seems silly that some things which were considered free when Woody came out, all of a sudden aren't now. Are they going to go back and excise all of it from Woody? No. So leave it in Sarge, then.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Sunnan]

Some of the stuff in non-free is, IMHO, free/OSS.

Some, but not all, and to clarify which would mean even more debates about "what does free mean?".

One of the (many) reasons why Debian is a good building block for proprietary distros is that they've cleaned it up, so while the proprietary debian-based distros can go taint it down again, they know what they've got.

I'm personally happy with this change but I can sympathize with you. I believe that the route chosen was the one with the least bureaucratic hassle.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Elf-friend]

Yes, I'm not suggesting they should have moved the stuff in non-free to free at this point. I just wish that the current changes didn't have to hold up Sarge.

After cooling down a bit, I suppose that is somewhat selfish of me, anyhow, as I don't have to deal with any of the "bureaucratic hassle" myself. I understand that others do, and I just wish some of those hassles weren't such a hassle.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[twilight30]

I've put you down as a friend, I think what you're saying is important. To respond:

If you check out the Debian Reference, you'll see that one of the main Debian developers openly advocates using Testing as a workstation platform. Given that the Reference forms one of the key documents of the Project (IMHO, the only one you'll really need). In other words, they admit that what you are saying about the upgrade cycle is essentially correct. I don't think they have a real clue as to how to do it, for a couple of reasons.

Previous releases need to be upgradeable in order to smooth transitions from one to the other. The problem is that the testing they undertake is so arduous so as to render the latest stable release almost obsolete as soon as it is launched to the world.

In some cases, for specific parts of the project, this isn't such a big deal -- the kernel and X come to mind -- for X, they actually test the components on more architectures than the XFree86 project itself does.

I'm actually in a similar state to you, I download over a painfully-slow ISDN link. I haven't been able to upgrade Testing in 2 months or so. I have a number of apt and dpkg addons that make fetching packages easier (in the sense that I don't have to troubleshoot the process), but it is *fucking* frustrating to wait 2 or 3 weeks to download stuff and then have the apt tool tell me that perl is broken, mc will be removed, and God knows what else is wrong this week with the distro.

I do remember it being less of a problem during the previous release cycle, but am fairly sure it stems from the fact that having a fast connection makes all the difference.

I am also certain that other distros still do not handle upgrading issues as well (and this is saying something, after the above), mainly because they don't have ironclad policy in the same way as Debian. The other distros have lifted apt, as is their right under the GPL, but because they don't have policy that is consistent, don't do as much QA, and lack the developer base, crazy bugs often appear right after a release.

The free vs nonfree -- in the definition of the Debian people -- is actually quite important. I don't agree with it all the time either, but I see the value of doing it anyway. If you look for the new definitions of the FDL, they say that there are such things called Invariant Sections -- things that have no direct relevance to the subject matter and cannot be changed. Big deal, you say. But it is: I can't 'fork' the paperwork by releasing a stripped version, I have to include the original authors' dedications to Mom, their spouses and their dog Fluffy. Or their paeans to how we should protest the war in Bosnia, or Iraq, or start killing all infidel Christians. Or raping Chinese girls. You see?

I've tried out OpenBSD, and respect it, and like it, but I'd never want to use it for workstation stuff.

I think they should move to a more fixed release cycle, every six -- or even eight -- months like the OpenBSD system would work well. They would have to accept the consequences, though : probably less architectures, or redivide the system into more shades of stability.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[TiggsPanther]

Yes, I'm not suggesting they should have moved the stuff in non-free to free at this point. I just wish that the current changes didn't have to hold up Sarge

Although to me that would have been the option making most sense, I guess there's also another side to it.

On the "Ship, then Change" side I've already said in another comment that it would have made more sense, and been more fair on the users.
Plus it'd fir with the sub-project names. Testing implies "This is how we want it, not to fine-tune". Unstable implies "Now we're going to change styuff around - caution, stuff may break."
Suddenly changing what can and can't go into the distribution seems very much "unstable" and not really "testing" to me. It would make more sense to make these changesin unstable.

However, there's also the "Change, then Ship" side. And there are one or two highly-valid points on this.
Surely changing the Social Contract is to do with how they wish to be perceived. Woody being contrary to this isn't a real problem. Old version, old agreements. But we've seen how slow Testing->Stable seems to take. So if they did ship first and then worry about the new ammendments, it could still be well over a year where the major branch doesn't conform to their contract. It would make them look hypocritical - which is probably worse than looking overly-cautious.

It just seems like by ammending the contract at this time, they've got themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Whichever way they go, something's going to look wrong.

Tiggs

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Elf-friend]

Thanks for understanding. I'll put you down as a friend too. It's good to see this doesn't have to be a flamewar, just good discussion of an issue.

I think you're pretty much right. I really do understand that these issues are important for some people (mostly the people who have to deal with them), and that for those people the really do make a difference. I do think the Invariant Sections are a problem, for instance (especially for those who actually have to deal with them), I think it's just unfortunate it had to come at a time which holds up the release cycle.

Like you, I wish testing were testing and unstable were unstable. Perhaps that is really the root of the problem here. Testing ought to have minor bugs, not big one which break the system. I'm not saying it should be guarantied to work, but it would be nice if it were guarantied to mostly work. If it worked the way it was supposed to, I would use testing and probably wouldn't be complaining as much about the holdup.

As it is, because Sarge was only incrementaly newer than Woody in the first place (on some fronts, anyhow), it's going to be very much obsolete by the time it comes out. Maybe they should pull a "Netscape 5" here: ditch Sarge as it is, and start over with the cycle as of now. Then at least we'd get some of the things we weren't going to get in Sarge if it came out this year. On the other hand, maybe that isn't very practical.

Re:Debian's Identity Crisis

[Elf-friend]

Well, I'm not sure it would have been hypocritical to say: "it's too late in the game now to change Sarge, so these changes will have to go into effect in the next version." As you said, changes of that scale really should take place in unstable, not testing.

Trying to see it from their point of view, though, I guess they had to weigh the importance of the changes against the importance of releasing on schedule, and the changes won. I'm still not positive that I agree with that, but I can see why they did. If you have to deal with the FDL stuff personally, I'm sure it really does matter.

Rock and a hard place is right.

That is just dumb

[DAldredge]

That is just dumb.

I am sorry, but that is about as stupid as RMS firing the Lead HURD mantainer because he wanted a more free doc license than RMS.

For fuck's sake...

[theantix]

That's it... I'm giving up on Debian. I know they mean well but some users just want a stable system that has had application updates since 1994. I agree with the ideology of their actions, I think the unfree documenation should be removed from the project. But that should be a project goal for the next release, because we were nearly ready for one in the coming months.

It's sad, because the idea of a community driven project is noble, and I hate to see it fail. But this is failure -- they have abandoned their release goals and further postponed an already rediculously overdue rlease. They just aren't serious about maintaining a stable release, and thus I'm not going to take them seriously.

Not that they owe me anything -- I appreciate all the hard work that the Debian Developers do. But this is just the last straw...

Re:For fuck's sake...

[ajk]

That's it... I'm giving up on Debian. I know they mean well but some users just want a stable system that has had application updates since 1994. I agree with the ideology of their actions, I think the unfree documenation should be removed from the project. But that should be a project goal for the next release, because we were nearly ready for one in the coming months.

I think you should wait for a while before making such decisions. This change is controversial and was caused by a vote where probably the majority of people did not realize the consequences of an affirmative result. It is likely that the situation changes soon.

Re:For fuck's sake...

[evanbd]

they have abandoned their release goals

No, they haven't. They abandoned *your* release goals. Their release goals put far higher priority on the principles of free software, as defined by documents like the social contract.

If that means that Debian is not the system for you, then you're certainly welcome to do something else. That can be anything from running a combination of unstable, testing, contrib, and non-free in addition to the base system, to running a completely different distribution. This may very well mean Debian is not the distribution for you. However, I am quite glad that there is a group of people that produce a system like this, even if they don't always get usability in any of a variety of forms as high on that list.

Re:For fuck's sake...

[Oestergaard]

I'm not giving them up, but yes, fsck! this is bad.

As five minutes of CNN will show to anyone, fundamentalism in any form be it religious, political, economical or whatever, is not a very constructive thing - we live in an imperfect world where you just need to come up with and accept compromises and imperfect solutions, if you want to go anywhere.

Debian absolutely rocks as a server distribution; no updates except security updates, no version updates caused by security fixes (they are backported to the older shipped versions), generally a minimal-hassle rock-solid you-know-what-you-get distribution. I wouldn't put anything but Debian on servers I need to count on.

But I also use non-free software on my Debian servers - because in various small cases there are non-free solutions which have no reasonable equivalent in the Free software world. Debian is fine with this, and I don't expect them to ship those packages either.

But come on; removing glibc docs? What's that about? Someone put a comma in under BSD license with advertisement clause instead of GPL'ing it? Does anyone know?

re-re-rewriting the installer yet again? I was actually testing the installer betas recently, and was happy to see that there was some progress and that it generally worked well - now it needs to be "fixed" so that it can install certain parts of the kernel which are "Free" and fetch (or not fetch?) "evil" parts which are minor but somehow manages to piss off the licensing police?

Debian people; various important parts of a what we commonly know as a GNU/Linux system contain code that is not "Free" - that sucks, and it is bad, and it should be fixed. But please oh please, don't fix it in "Sarge". It wasn't fixed in "Woody", but Woody is still one of the finest server distros out there. Please allow Sarge to become the next. And *then* start fixing these problems.

There's been progress already; now there has been an amendment to the social contract which wasn't there by the time Woody was released. Attempting to solve the worlds problems before the Sarge release is not only unnecessary (Woody proves this), it is also something that will significantly harm the users of the Debian distribution *because* it will delay the release of Sarge by at least a year.

Re:For fuck's sake...

[spotteddog]

What, if anything have you done to help Debian release faster? Have you tried the testing or unstable branches? Submitted bug reports? Submitted a patch? Tested the installer?

No, nobody said you had to. Nobody said you needed to. Debian will continue on.

Debian's only release goal has been to release when it is ready. The changes to the Social Contract simple mean it will not be ready for a bit longer because work has to be done to move packages around in the archives, and split out some items from some packages. If you offered to help, instead of moaning about it and jumping ship, the work would get done that much sooner and the release would happen that much quicker.

Re:For fuck's sake...

[Urban Garlic]

> That's it... I'm giving up on Debian.

But, isn't "meaning well" the whole point of Linux?

If you "just want a stable system" with application updates, what is stopping you from using a commercial UNIX OS, or Mac OS/X, or even, God forbid, Windows, which I am told is actually getting reasonably stable.

Me, I don't "just want a stable system" -- I want a stable system that won't lock me in to application formats, won't spy on me, and will give me as much control over it as I am willing to take on.

Debian still does this. There's testing and unstable, you can use it with kernels from kernel.org if you want proprietary code in your drivers (I do this, under Debian, for my NVidia cards), you can use backports (I do this, under Debian woody, to run XFree86 4.3.1 on my laptop), and, for leaf nodes of the dependency tree, you can use "stow" to install pre-built binaries (I do this, under Debian woody, with Blackdown Java, and also OpenOffice 1.1, which however is also available as a backport.

It is perfectly possible to be a pragmatic Debian user, and for us, the community effort will continue to succeed.

Re:For fuck's sake...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've come to the same conclusion. At this date I'm still using Debian Stable with some backports (thanks to Adrian Bunk). Clearly I'm not chasing after the latest and greatest software, but would rather have a stable system that gets security fixes in a timely manner. That is essentially what Debian delivers.

However, what Debian does not deliver is an acceptable release schedule. I need to go outside of the official Debian structure in order to get anything current. I realize that I could use apt-get source, but that seldom works without a lot of effort fixing things up.

Debian Stable is stale, requiring a lot of effort to take advantage of some new technologies. Testing and SID give a constant stream of updates that may break the system at any time.

I've already decided to move to FreeBSD - they have production releases at reasonable intervals which get only required security updates, though there are also streams similar to Debian's Testing and SID. The only thing slowing down my move is lack of time to do that work - the same lack of time that makes problems with Testing and SID undesirable.

Re:For fuck's sake...

[scharkalvin]

I've tried installing sarge, but kde was broken (probably STILL is) and wouldn't install. Testing would have been stable enough for me, but over 6 months with a broken set of kde packages in testing is bullshit.

I'm now running Gentoo.

In other news...

[luna1ix]

Debian has decided to change the codename of the next release to GNU/Longhorn.

Re:In other news...

[ryanvm]

Debian has decided to change the codename of the next release to GNU/Longhorn.

I thought it was going to be Debian GNUkem Forever.

Re:First Question

[cheros]

Debian distributions are released with names. The current one is called 'Woody', the next release is named 'Sarge'. If you feel more comfortable with version numbers, Sarge will be a v4 (I think, haven't used Debian yet but am planning to try it, as well as Gentoo).

BTW: the 'Guru' title is something that is really bestowed by others, not by yourself. Not that that can't be the case (no opinion, I don't know you ;-), but there's a trend not to boast about it. Those that can, do. Those that don't, advertise..

MOD PARENT UP!

[gunpowder]

and perhaps grandparent down a bit.

Grandparent post makes much more sense if you replace "unstable" with "testing" (and vice versa).

Unstable is unstable, because it is
- packages are not guaranteed to *work* on all platforms
- using unstable might have broken dependencies, ie. apt-get is not guaranteed to work properly
- the pool is quite 'unstable', ie. you'll get alot of updates every day

Having said that, 'unstable' is indeed rather stable most of the time (at least on ix86), at least comparable to what RedHat or SuSE call a 'new release'.

Testing however contains only packages from unstable that didn't have any bug reports for the last 10 days (IIRC, and meet dependency requirements, and more).

So 'unstable' is if you really want to use the absolutely latest software (just a few days old), and testing if you want very recent software, but at least with no (big, bad) surprises.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

'unstable' is .. at least comparable to what RedHat or SuSE call a 'new release'.

Standard ol' Debian FUD.

A RH/SUSE release will at least have all the package dependencies satisfied, which you admit that Deb Unstable doesn't have. Not to mention they do do some testing.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

[Cro Magnon]

The impression I got of the 3 branches is:

Debian Stable: solid as a rock - and twice as old.

Sarge: Will probably work, but if something breaks it will take 2 weeks to fix.

Sid: The branch most likely to break, but it usually gets fixed quickly.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

[RAMMS EIN]

Debian does test packages before they go in unstable. As for unsatisfied dependencies: if the dependency packages don't exist, the package doesn't go in the main branch of unstable. I have never seen broken dependencies in stable or unstable, only in testing, just after a stable release had been made.

As for comparisons with other distros (especially the major, RPM based ones): yes, they do test their packages and make sure dependencies are satisfied, but I don't think any of them has as many packages as Debian has.

Who Cares?

[condensate]

apt-get dist-upgrade with a default to the unstable distro and you're done. Who needs sarge anyway. By the time it's released, it contains old software and you can start out equally well using woody and modifying your sources.list. The real strength of debian is its package manager, nothing else keeps me from using fedora.

So, that means that:

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME 2.6 will be included?

real-world impact

[CAIMLAS]

Does anyone happen to know what kind of real-world impact this will have on Debian (and thus those that run it), besides the release of sarge being delayed even further?

Does it effect simply things like firmware and other non-OSS items, or does it have broader implications for those of us that research our hardware before we buy it?

On another note, this delay further frustrates those that use and love Debian. For those of you that are like myself, and would like to see Debian have more of a business acceptance in the server room (icky, icky RPM!), do you know if there's any existing projects to have a more-recent yet reasonably stable release of debian? I realize there's sarge, which is usually good, except for occasional breaking - it's not quite good enough for production, IMO. Then again, it's more stable than RedHat, so... *wanders off*

Planet Debian

[alex_tibbles]

To see the blogs of those involved and commenting, go here.
See Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho and Joey Hess in particular. Anthony Towns (the Release Manager in question) has also blogged on the issue.

urm

[TwistedSpring]

vital parts to modern Linux systems, such as important documentation, firmware needed for proper hardware support will have to be removed

I thought one of the biggest problems Linux suffered was the inaccuracy of documentation (nobody really wants to document the project -- that's the dull part) and lack of wide-ranging and proper (non-beta) hardware support.

And in Nano Age ..

[RedLaggedTeut]

When in Nano Age, you would come to understand that closed source is evil in nanotech age, where everything could be made for free, but 95% of the populace doesn't earn any money to pay for the licenses because they are not designers and programmers and you are not allowed to program your nanomatter yourself because the DMCA forbids you to do it.

Welcome to global globalization.
Where you don't own the house, but the house owns you.

Re:This will help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus it's to remind people and the developers themselves EXACTLY WHY LINUX WAS CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Err.. Do you have any clue why Linux was created in the first place?

Re:Social Contract?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your first guess was correct, Jean-Jacques Rousseau ;)

Oh, fine

[varjag]

But then can we have GNOME 2.6 in unstable meanwhile, please?

Does that mean the installer will still suck?

[Trepidity]

Don't get me wrong, I love Debian, and use it myself, but the installer is downright crappy, typically requiring a bunch of manual editing of kernel module configurations and whatnot to get a system to install (usually with the aid of some HOWTOs). Knoppix is Debian-based and Just Works, auto-detecting everything fine---and it's Free Software. Why doesn't Debian just borrow their installer or something?

Re:Does that mean the installer will still suck?

[mbanck]

Eh, you can install Sarge Beta3 (Beta4 will be out in a couple of days) now. It's way better than the old boot-floppies, features hardware-detection and better partitioning, as well as a lot of other features like installing from an USB stick, via WLAN or using LVM. Try it out, it rocks.

Michael

Re:Does that mean the installer will still suck?

[Mr.Ned]

Knoppix is not Free Software because of the kernel binary firmware. That's the problem with which Debian is grappling.

Re:Does that mean the installer will still suck?

[gstamp]

Yes. It does suck. The good thing is that there's plenty of different debian installers to choose from.

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installe rs.html

Re:Does that mean the installer will still suck?

[Zigg]

I'll second that, d-i absolutely rocks. The only catch here is going to be that people with devices that require firmware are going to be left out in the cold.

That said, I'd really be quite surprised if all other distributions felt they could distribute the firmware when their time comes. This discussion is happening all over Linux land, it's just that in Debian's case, we see it out in the open.

Seems counter-productive

[Trepidity]

This is just going to make people care less about free software. If Debian is lumping documentation from the Free Software Foundation and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License under 'non-free', that tends to look a little bit pedantic to most of the outside world, which already sees GNU as being pretty hardline---but apparently GNU are the reasonable moderates here!

All this is going to do is make lots more people use 'non-free', so Debian will be officially Free Software, but everyone will use everything else anyway. That's counter-productive, because for the purpose of avoiding some Invariant Sections in GFDL'd documents, you've pushed a bunch of people towards using actually non-free software, since once you move to 'non-free' to get around their stupid GFDL rules, it's wide open from there on out.

While I agree about the gentoo-user part

[Anonymous Coward]

"Juwes" of masonic conspiracies aren't the same as "jews". You've got them mixed up.

Read the article.

[arafel]

If they were trying to be "an unofficial organ of the FSF", or "for GNU zealots only", then they wouldn't be ditching glibc documentation, would they?

Basically, this is because a resolution was passed extending the social contract past software into everything else. Whether everyone who voted for it really thought that one through or not is a whole other discussion, but fundamentally Debian has always stuck to their principles. That's quite rare these days.

Re:Read the article.

[Elf-friend]

If they were trying to be "an unofficial organ of the FSF", or "for GNU zealots only", then they wouldn't be ditching glibc documentation, would they?

Touche.

Whether everyone who voted for it really thought that one through or not is a whole other discussion....

Ah, but that is my point. Debian has shown a rather FSF-like interpretation of what "free" means. I don't mind them having that opinion, but they need to understand that not everyone who uses Debian agrees with that fairly narrow definition. So they should also know that to suddenly hold up what had been promised to be a quick(er) release cycle over this issue might not sit well with all Debian users.

Debian is wrong about documentation

[njdj]

Kicking out even FSF's documentation, on the grounds that is doesn't meet Debian's criterion of freeness, was a really stupid thing to do. Documentation is not like software. Writing software is its own reward for a lot of people. Writing docs is a vital chore which nobody likes and which gets little recognition. Keeping docs up-to-date is an even more tedious chore, which gets even less recognition, but is equally vital. The FSF docs are free enough for all practical purposes. You can copy them, you can update them and distribute the corrected copies.

Lack of good documentation is a major problem for free software. Debian just made a major problem worse.

Re:Debian is wrong about documentation

[boots@work]

Kicking out even FSF's documentation, on the grounds that is doesn't meet Debian's criterion of freeness, was a really stupid thing to do.

OK, with you so far...

Writing software is its own reward for a lot of people. Writing docs is a vital chore which nobody likes and which gets little recognition.

Sorry, but this is completely bogus. We went through this argument a few years ago: "people won't write nice GUIs for fun", "people won't write open-source databases", "people won't release open source kernels for big iron". Now it may well be that there is not enough good open documentation on some particular topics at the moment, but that is no reason to assume that it is not worth trying to get free documentation.

The FSF docs are free enough for all practical purposes.

They are free enough for many purposes, but the licence is buggy and needs to be fixed. Some projects such as Arch have gone back to the GPL for documentation, which is the sensible choice at the moment. Both FSF and Debian need to stop fucking around.

Re:Debian is wrong about documentation

[KevinDumpsCore]

> > Writing docs is a vital chore which nobody likes and which gets little recognition.

> Sorry, but this is completely bogus. We went through this argument a few years ago: "people won't write nice GUIs for fun", "people won't write open-source databases", "people won't release open source kernels for big iron".

As an active Open Source documentation volunteer, I can vouch that the parent is 100% correct. Documentation volunteers aren't given the same peer recognition and respect as programmers... If you don't submit code patches to a project, you're the invisible man!

Here's an exercise: Think of famous Open Source programmers, how many names come to mind? Now think of famous Open Source documentation writers (who aren't also famous programmers), how many names come to mind?

I submit that Open Source development for databases and Big Iron is done mostly by companies like MySQL and IBM. Some would argue that companies will fund Open Source documentation too. But I think documentation will continue like many localization efforts, lots of thankless hard work by volunteers with little corporate interest.

Re:Debian is wrong about documentation

[KevinDumpsCore]

> Keeping docs up-to-date is an even more tedious chore, which gets even less recognition, but is equally vital.

As an Open Source documentation volunteer who did this, my hard work was criticized as being mechanical. I was lumped in with the script kiddies because what I did wasn't "creative". I'm glad someone out there recognizes this thankless task!

Re:Debian is wrong about documentation

[boots@work]

Documentation volunteers aren't given the same peer recognition and respect as programmers... If you don't submit code patches to a project, you're the invisible man!

There is some truth to this, but I think it's a bit harsh. The truth is that very many good contributors whether they be writers, testers or programmers never get the wide recognition they deserve. There are a dozen Samba committers and probably nearly a hundred working on GNOME, but it's only the high-profile leaders who tend to get interviewed on slashdot... and yes, they tend to be developers. Perhaps the leaders deserve the most credit, but it takes a village, or so they say...

I guess that is just the way that "fame" works in general: it hits a small number of people semi-randomly.

But not being famous doesn't mean you're not appreciated. I've written thankyou emails to the authors of particularly good free manuals or documents. I encourage everyone to do the same.

Re:AGGGGAAAGGGG the spelling, the spelling...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be a spelling nazi, but this one made me stop dead and re-parse a few time:

/excaberates/exacerbates/

No.

[eddy]

>Why doesn't Debian just borrow their installer or something?

Historically the problem has been that these "smooth installers" are i386-only. Debian supports many different architectures, and they're not about to make i386 a "special case".

Hope this answers your question.

Re:No.

[kyoko21]

Very true. The installer *may* seem to suck, but because it works across all the platforms Debian supports, if you get one to install, you pretty much have learned it all for all the other platforms. I've installed Debian on a PowerPC 850, SPARCII (pizza box), and a variety of x86. For each install, it was almost the same. The only thing that was a bit 'fun' was the PowerPC 850 needed the original boot/bios partition on the HD. But after much FAQ hunting, I learned quite a bit about openfirm ware. (I named the box later on as macpenguin). I would have to say I had the most fun installing that box, and I think it was more enjoyable to learn about installing it than getting it up and running. Once I got passed the openfirmware, everything else looked exactly the same: the old blue screen installer.

Re:No.

[Cro Magnon]

True. The Debian installer needs to suck on 11 platforms.

You are partiatly wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

- gnuLinEx (www.gnulinex.org) doen't have any piece of propietary software in its distribution. They took out nvidia drivers when Stallman asked for it. There is nothing non-free there.

- gnuLinEx is just a part of Debian, with its own installer, and customization. So if Stallman recommends LinEx he is recommending Debian

too far

[tacocat]

I was reading on this email post and it's really discouraging.

many pieces of hardware will not be supported by the Debian system itself

The single biggest problem that I've seen in getting people to adopt Linux, and Debian in particular, is the function of hardware connected to the computer. If my widget doesn't work with Linux then what's the point of using Linux?

I've grown accustomed to the practice of due diligence on researching any hardware support for a product X before I buy it. But if I have to start doing this, and then perform another search just for Debian, it's making Debian very unattractive.

I am really doubtful that this is a smart move on their part. I am a HUGE fan of Debian and very supportive of their work. But the implications of this are not good from where I sit. Their ideologies are making their product non-useful to the community which they attempt to serve.

They are creating an overly complex architecture at a time when Linux does not have the support necessary from the commercial entities controlling the market (hardware and software). This will tend to isolate Debian from the rest of the Linux community and may give them the label of "Oh... Those guys over there in the orange sheets."

I hope I'm wrong, but I think Debian really screwed this up in a big way. The fact that they have just incurred an entire year of delays to their release cycle at a time when they were months away and years behind the rest really doesn't help them in the least.

I really don't understand their motives with this one.

Re:too far

[Phleg]

"the Debian system itself" is the key phrase, here.

When Debian refers to its own release, it does not refer to packages in contrib and non-free. They're there, they're updated, they're maintained by Debian Developers, they've got mailing lists, they've got bug reporting pages, and they're available through apt. However, they're not an official part of the Debian distribution.

Support for this hardware will still be there--you'll just need to add a single word to your apt configuration: "non-free".

Re:too far

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but how about on the initial install? On WinNT, all my hardware works from the initial install. You're saying I'm going to have to install the OS, then go much around with the apt config, then go set up my hardware? What happens if my video driver is non-free? They don't include the non-free on the CD distributions, how am I supposed to set up a non-free network card so I can download non-free?

Putting barriers up to ease-of-use isn't going to help me convince anyone (including myself) to use Linux. They've got the right to do what they see as right, but they just lost an advocate for their distribution. If they're going to make it painful for me to install it, forget it.

Re:too far

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoops I meant WinXP.

NICE LOGO!

[Anonymous Coward]

A floating donkey smoking a joint. Very professional!

MOD PARENT DOWN!

[ChrisCampbell47]

If you want to stay current, but still want to have the benefits of Debian (easy software installation, automatic dependency resolution), use Debian unstable. Don't use testing, unless you really intend to test it - it's almost guaranteed to be broken.

He's got it precisely backwards, and that's dangerous.

Code starts out in "unstable", migrates to "testing" after it has been tested a bit, and finally moves to stable after it's decreed stable.

Maybe you've found "unstable" to work well for you, but "testing" is definitely the more stable of the two and certainly newbies should be pointed to "testing" well before they touch "unstable".

Read before replying in the negative:
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-ftparchives.en.ht ml#s-testing
http://www.debian.org/devel/testing

tired of waiting

[drwho]

I'm tired of waiting for debian. I think I am going to fork my own. Too many things missing from potato, yet I want stability.

Sounds like time to use a relevant distro

[Democritus2]

Which of course can be only Gentoo.

Hmm I seem to remember some debian people taunting Gentoo a little bit ago about DRobbins story.

So if you Debian people need a modern distro, Gentoo will be here

:)

Why not?

[Trepidity]

It's not hard to have it set up so it only tries to auto-detect i386 hardware if it's installing on an i386 system. Don't see the problem at all.

Seems like splitting hairs to me

[Trepidity]

Sure, the firmware isn't Free, but neither is the firmware actually loaded in your motherboard's EEPROM chips. You don't see people raising a ruckus about how they refuse to purchase motherboards on which the firmware is not Free Software, so why are they worried about this? This firmware is pretty tightly coupled to the hardware in a similar way as the EEPROM firmware is.

Now maybe if people were going to an 100% Free system in which every single piece of their computer was Free, then I'd see the point, but if you're not going to do that anyway, I don't really see the advantage of causing a huge hassle over this relatively minor issue.

Ok

[RAMMS EIN]

Well, see, I know testing is supposed to be more stable than unstable. It's just that in _my_ experience, it has been the other way around. Seeing all the replies I have gotten, I think it is safe to

1) conclude that all branches are pretty solid
2) either my experience is statistical noise, or the people who counter it do not know what they are talking about
3) the former is more probable

So, I'll back off and just say that any version of Debian is very solid and you should definitely give unstable a spin if you haven't tried Debian because you thought it was severely behind cutting edge.

Thanks to all for correcting me.

Debian can't just "push" Sarge out

[Phleg]

I see a lot of people are asking Debian to just throw Sarge out the door, and then worry about complying with the Debian Free Software Guidelines and the Social Contract.

This is not possible. What was recently voted on is a new social contract which forbids releasing any software, documentation or other product that isn't free. It's not just a decision that was made, or simply that a large number of people wanted it so that it's done. It's an actual contract upheld to its users by the entire Debian team. Doing a quick release of Sarge would not only be a violation of that contract, but it would be a violation of the entire spirit of Debian.

Re:Debian can't just "push" Sarge out

[TiggsPanther]

This is not possible. What was recently voted on is a new social contract which forbids releasing any software, documentation or other product that isn't free. It's not just a decision that was made, or simply that a large number of people wanted it so that it's done. It's an actual contract upheld to its users by the entire Debian team. Doing a quick release of Sarge would not only be a violation of that contract, but it would be a violation of the entire spirit of Debian.

Perhaps what might have been a better idea would have been to state that the Social Contract Ammendment goes into play after Sarge becomes Stable.

"True to the Spirit Of Free" or not, making a change which forces a release to be put back on political issues rather than technical issues just doesn't seem fair on their Users who may have been waiting patiently for the next Stable release.

Personally, I don't use Debian, but I was considering looking at it. I was just waiting for Stable to catch up to the more recent innovations.
That ain't gonna happen any time soon, but it's a real shame.

Tiggs

firmware

[Ender Ryan]

I don't get the whole thing about drivers that include firmware. Why does it matter? As long as the firmware is freely distributable without any strings attached... A line has to be drawn somewhere, but I think they're going to far.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Is the license for firmware included in some drivers restrictive in some way?

I'm not trolling or anything -- Debian is possibly the most respectable distro there is -- I'm just asking.

Practical results

[Spazmania]

The practical result of this are:

1) The installer will include a "non-free" drivers disk. This will confuse folks new to debian dissuading them from using it, but existing debian users will find it just fine.

2) A variety of packages will split into free and non-free parts.

3) All but the 100 core zealots will run the non-free packages as a matter of course.

4) When one of the 100 core zealots complains about the lack of functionality in the non-free packages, they'll be invited to submit patches.

In other words, the practical result is the failure of the debian social contract. Oh well.

I respect RMS a great deal, but...

[hummassa]

I really don't agree with his views in respect to (a) non-free and debian; (b) GFDL. In all other accounts, I agree with him.

Hooray!

[Enahs]

Score another victory for Free Software!

Maybe the goal is to convince people to release documentation under certain licenses, and to convince hardware manufacturers to go totally Free, but will it work?

And I was going to recommend Debian for the office's fileserver. Wonder what documentation will be ripped out, anyway? That won't fly...

Nope, you're right.

[hummassa]

I ditched sarge because sid *is* more stable, specially if you use id as a desktop distro. I apt-get upgrade once each 2 weeks *or* if some security advisory (which I read everyday) tells me so -- in the second case, I usually only update the buggy guy.

doh

[fuck_this_shit]

Less convenience means less incentive for users to install this distribution. But of course, Debian doesn't care about being mainstream or the widespread adoption of Linux or something. Hint: prospective users care little to not at all about the politics behind the OS. Debian lately looks as if their politics are what matters, and not to put out a product.

All the fuzz is exactly for this.

[hummassa]

aj tought software != data. so, before SC changed, no problem; after, can't release. simple, ah?

Free vs Non-Free

[nuggz]

GNU won't endore Debian anyway, as long as non-free is distributed via ftp.debian.org.

But where else will you get non DFSG compliant documentation, like that under the GNU FDL?

...or distribution suicide?

[Royster]

It's an excellent example of people letting ideology get in the way of decent hardware support.

Binary firmware updates are not the biggest problem that we have facing Free Software. In fact, blobware allows manufacturers to support Linux easily.

YMMV - Sarge has been good to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it (i.e. Sarge, i.e. "testing") for a while, since a bit before RH ditched up2date. It's my primary desktop, and I seem to always find new ways to abuse it. Zero problems, and frankly, I'm quite impressed with it in comparison to RH8/9 in terms of its currency, organization, etc. More rough edges, but overall I think it's a better system.

Don't MOD PARENT UP!

[buysse]

The real problem with testing comes back when a security update is released. Security updates generally make it to Sid immediately -- can you wait 10 days with vulnerable (and publically known to be vulnerable) software on an Internet-connected system? Must be nice.

Stable or unstable. Testing is for just that -- testing, not to live on.

More Free than GNU?

[Nutcase]

I always thought Debian was essentially the linux implementation of the FSF/GNU ideals. Most other distros make compromises for usability, but debian never compromises on freedom. This is just the latest example of that. And more power too them for it.

The amazing thing here is this: In reaffiming their commitment to freedom, they are finding that they have to exclude some GNU documentation because it is considered non-free. In other words, Debian now seems to value free software more than the Free Software Foundation.

Thats disappointing, but at least Debian is sticking to their ideals without compromise. Too bad the FSF can't say the same.

Re:More Free than GNU?

[Mr. Darl McBride]

The amazing thing here is this: In reaffiming their commitment to freedom, they are finding that they have to exclude some GNU documentation because it is considered non-free. In other words, Debian now seems to value free software more than the Free Software Foundation.

You might remember that RMS endorsed another distribution over Debian earlier this year because it was pretty much a fork of Debain without the non-free section. (Later it was revealed that the distribution had merely merged non-free back into contrib.)

This seems a nice "back atcha" while RMS is still combing the egg out of his beard. :)

Re:Do you know why I only drink pure grain alcohol

[afabbro]

Oh, where are the mod points when I need them?

That is the single most funny and insightful thing I've ever read on Slashdot.

stable=woody, sarge=testing, sid=unstable

[kungfujew]

Just thought I'd clear the confusion here... I saw some of you guys refer to sarge as "unstable" and sid as "testing".....this is not the case. the correct names are: stable=woody- for production servers (current stable release) sarge=testing - this you run on your home machine sid=unstable -you dont want to run this because it breaks almost every day trust me, backing out of a dist upgrade to unstable is a painfull and involved process.

Debian still has a lot to offer

[crimguy]

It isn't pretty, but it sure works well. My server went from potato to SuSE (don't ask why . . . I got lazy), and while it has been stable, it has also been a bit on the slow side. I have been running a test install of sarge for a couple of weeks and have found it to be both the fastest distro I've encountered and rock-solid in the stability dept. apt-get/aptitude still work like a charm, and web pages/squirrelmail/dns are all instantaneous. They can relax about their social contract. Its very nice that they have such "morality," but I really don't see why it should prevent at least some kind of release in the near future. They need to make sure it's stable, no more no less IMHO.

Don't MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free

works then ...

Don't believe everything you read on Slashdot

[Ctrl-Z]

Article on Debian Planet.

A brief review of history.

[Daniel]

Here's some context for people who don't follow Debian matters habitually.

Debian has a document called the DFSG, or Debian Free Software Guidelines. These guidelines are used to determine whether software included in Debian is free: they require that the software be freely distributable, freely modifiable, etc. Stuff that doesn't meet these guidelines doesn't go on the CD images and is segregated into the "non-free" section of the archive; this policy is enshrined in Debian's Social Contract. More contextual information on the DFSG and its application is available here.

Now, historically, these guidelines have been applied to everything distributed by Debian. For instance, the Doom shareware .WAD went into non-free because its license forbade modification. However, some controversy has arisen in the last few years due to two developments: first, the FSF started using a new license (the "GNU Free Documentation License") for its documentation; more recently, there has been a trend for hardware manufacturers to require drivers to upload binary firmware code upon initialization.

Despite its name, the "GNU Free Documentation License" turned out not to meet the DFSG (you can read some unofficial explanations [URL redacted because I believe the author wishes to keep it private for the time being; I will post it later if he tells me it's ok; I'll badly summarize it by saying that Invariant Sections are the major issue but not the only problem]). Because this license was applied to documentation of large packages, such as libc and Emacs, because it claimed to be "Free", and because it was published by the FSF, some people felt that Debian should find a way to distribute software under this license in "main" even though it was clearly non-free according to the DFSG. The typical argument advanced to support this position was that "documentation is not software, so it doesn't need to meet the DFSG". This argument relied on an ambiguity in the meaning of the word "software": it can mean either "anything that's not hardware", or "sequences of instructions to be executed on the host microprocessor".

The firmware issue is somewhat different; there were some recent arguments on the debian-devel mailing list over whether binary firmware that is uploaded by an otherwise free driver should be moved to non-free. I haven't followed this as closely, and it only came up in the last month or two. (well, it has been discussed in the past, but the first serious discussion I'm aware of is in the last month or two)

The amendment that was recently passed changes the text of the Social Contract to make it clear that everything in the Debian archives (not just executable programs) should meet the DFSG. This was intended to settle the GFDL question once and for all.

The message referenced by this /. article is a post from the Release Manager indicating that he is changing his policy as a result of the GR. Until now, certain things that were unambiguously non-free, but where it was felt that the non-freeness was either not a regression (ie, they were non-free before and we didn't realize it and distributed them anyway), or where it would cause significant disruption to force the non-free item out of main (for instance, binary firmware), were being allowed to remain in Debian main until the release of sarge. Assuming that this message was sent in good faith, Anthony is indicating that he honestly believes that this was not previously a pragmatic exception to the Social Contract, and that no such pragmatic exception is possible now. Thus, he is now holding up the release until all this non-free stuff gets removed from main.

Discussion is ongoing on several Debian lists, and I don't think it's appropriate to make assumptions about the final outcome until things have settled down again.

Daniel

Re:A brief review of history.

[Daniel]

Just a note: a reference on the GFDL that has been publically posted is available here.

Daniel

Re:A brief review of history.

[Xylantiel]

Excellent summary.

I would only add this: my impression from some of the posts on the lists is that the firmware issue (which is the much more difficult one since it affects the installer) has also been a big deal on linux-kernel in the past, i.e. people didn't like it then either. Unfortunately I don't have the references for this. I think the linux-kernel people have been lax on binary firmwares and therefore introduced a legal minefield that everyone has been ignoring. Debian is just being realistic from a legal standpoint. Someone has to tell it like it is.

Re:A brief review of history.

[Anonymous Coward]

also rememebr the debain developers were lied to

editorial chanages indeed

Free-only should be just what it is, an OPTION!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just keep the distro the way it is guys and
make it EASY to go completely free if that's
what you require.

Think about it this way, it's MUCH easier to cripple
a healthy man, than it is to heal it.

Just continue the way debian always has but write a
new script. "./fuckallyouproprietaryfuckers-Imlame.pl" that castrates
you to a COMPLETELY free system.

Re:Nice sign on

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just mad that I make more money that you, and can afford more expensive pussy than you.

Re:Rather than whine, help - shame on me

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. You get modded flamebait for correcting your own post. Not to worry though - I'm looking at it in metamod as I type.

This is silly

[EdMcMan]

In the end, this is going to result in silly problems. A while back the maintainer of the linux-doc package said he was giving up on keeping all the docs "free".

Why?

Because going through each text and checking licenses was too much of a hassle.

I highly doubt that most users have the desire to modify documentation and firmware. I think they'd much rather prefer to be able to use device XXX because firmware was still included in the code.

This is a giant step backwards for Debian, if you ask me.

Re:This will help?

[JollyFinn]

installing any program is as easy as going [b]apt-get install programname[/b], and applying security patches is: [b]apt-get update && apt-get upgrade[/b]. Is that realy that difficult or 1337?

Let me try it: apt-get install civilization
nope doesn't work.
Ok other try: apt-get install flashplayer
doesn't work
Next try: apt-get install excell
doesn't work but perhaps thats windows only stuff
This should work: apt-get install spreadsheet
nope, huh. LINUX is only for nerd kids, I give up.

Disclaimer: I've been using debian since y2k, and hardest part of software installation is to figure WHAT software to get, I can do it but still it takes lots of efford, For end users well designed default installing and some way GIVING THEM PROPER INFORMATION with graphical installation, is a key to solve that problem.Not everything but something that they can interpret on how usefull certain software package is for their problems.

the GPL itself isn't free to modify

[Albert Cahalan]

If you're going to complain about invariant
sections in GNU documentation, take a look at
the GPL itself and gasp in horror. You're not
allowed to modify it! That's right, and no, I
don't mean modifying the license used by existing
code. I meant you can't take the GPL, change a
few words, and then use the result as Joe's
Public License.

Re:the GPL itself isn't free to modify

[0racle]

The GPL, documentation, and eventually all software under the GPL will be like that. To use a cliche, its "Free as in RMS."

I have nothing but the utmost respect for the GNU teams software, but RMS lives in a dream world, and in this dream world he is king, he dictates to all his little plebs how things are done, no matter how brain dead, silly, or hypocritical they are.

Now the GPL not being modifiable is probably a good thing for legal reasons, but look at everything else he touches. His lectures can only be copied verbatim, no excerpts. Documentation is NOT FREE. Documentation is far more important then the app, but its not free. He and the FSF like to control things, they want to be in a position to 'kill' your project if it doesn't fit with their vision of things. Just look at how every time some project that has become popular is handled, they release some statement whether its 'compatible' with the GPL, read "does it subscribe to our beliefs." Why? So that all their little plebs will cry from the rooftops its evils. In a recent example, it even got everyone excited in a FSF project that was going against an established defacto standard, XFree.

RMS is preaching a religion, and he's got a large following that will never question the "great and wise" RMS.

While it is a great idea to have ideals.....

[/dev/trash]

What do you gain if by the time release something it's already out of date?

Liar liar pants of fire

[hummassa]

There are no *security updates* for *testing*.
There are no *specific security updates* for *unstable*, but usually it is updated together with the security updates for woody.
Now, for those security updates go into sarge, they must wait the grace period.
Hence, unstable is safer in general than testing.

Debian - the Linux distro for the Debian team

[Dr Rick]

I guess you really gotta love Linux to use Debian, but I guess that has alway been the case, now it's even more so... Debian has always been a bit on the extreme for me, but more power to them for keeping pure.

Re:Debian - the Linux distro for the Debian team

[grahamkg]

Yes!

I've read most all of the posts, including all of the -1s. You are right, Dr Rick.

At present I'm burning 3.0r2 ISOs to some CD-RWs to bring home. I grabbed them on Saturday using jigdo - a rather ingenious tool in concept and execution - for the purpose of Again Trying Debian. I was willing to do this, thinking (obviously incorrectly) that 3.1 would follow sometime later this year. After reading all of what has been posted, I'm not sure why I'm trying.

At present I'm using SuSE 8.2, have used RH from 4.1 thru 7.2. I even did a stint with Mandrake. I'm about to migrate to SuSE 9.1, but wanted to try Debian one more time.

I'd say what Debian is doing is laudable, but it amounts to playing an elaborate game (re: it doesn't mean anything). Unfortunately I've got real work to do. Such a shame it is...

Testing security updates

[ajk]

It just looks like working, but in reality it does not.

Problems with Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is Slow, Worse, Expensive

Open source may be good, but there is one example that sticks out like a sore thumb as a problem with open source. Debian gnu/Linux. It is offically the Worst Linux Distribution ever made.

First of all, Debian has the most out of date software packages of any major mainstream distros. Even in the unstable version, is KDE 2.2 and Gnome 2.0, with Xfree86 4.1 (A version that really sucks). There are literally years that pass between each update of Debian.

Secondly, its a pain in the goatse to set up, first of all, you are forced to use Kernel 2.2, which is horribly hacked with "backports" to get any use on any modern machine (Read, made after 1999). Good luck memorizing all the *.ko files in /lib/modules, as you are going to need it.

Configuring XFree86 is hell! If you don't have a Thick X11 orilley book, and a list of your horizontal sync values from your monitor's intruction manual (if you even have one), BOOM! There goes your monitor.

Even then, good luck getting anything over 640x480@16 colours.

The most common response to help questions on the Debian mailing list is "n00b, READ THE FUCKING MANUAL, you idiot, go back to WINDOWS XP if you can't learn to use dselect", true too, search the archives if you think I'm lying. Other distros give you comprehensive PRINTED MANUALS, PHONE SUPPPORT and/or freindly forums where repling RTFM gets you banned!

Debians support for any decent hardware, including USB mice, scanners, Sound cards, heck even Serial devices struggle. If you can even get 80x25 text mode with PS/2 input devices you are really lucky.

Apt-get has many flaws. First of all it uses a non standard package format (the rest of the world uses RPM, deprecate the DEB format!), has broken respetories, and out of date software to install. All this combined with the kludgey dselect user interface make package management a nightmare.

And if you think I'm joking about this, find out why THOUSANDS of Debian users are switching to REAL distributions Debian is falling to pieces, if it is to survive any market share it will be through its superior forks (Xandros, Lindows, K/G-noppix) and unoffical package respetories.

Of course, while all this is going on, the only thing the Debian maintainers do is argue about politics on the mailing lists. The distribution decays while its creators argue over inane details like software licensing and the virtues of Marxism. Please! Spare me the political rhetoric and just give me a working distro!

Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and I'm happily using distros such as Mandrake, SuSE, Gentoo and Fedora. But I'm sick to death of zealots that push obsolete Distros on me EVERY FREAKING TIME linux is mentioned. I'm speaking from real world experiance here.

"guaranteed"?

[davincile0]

The message is, if you want guaranteed stability, use Debian stable.

Funny, the message of the day says just the opposite of what you say the message is:

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

If you want guaranteed stability with Debian, this is probably your best realistic option.

Who will be affected by this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Home users - No the all run testing or unstable, so they don't care.

Webmasters - No the old software is just as good, so they don't care.

Me - Yes, my institute insists using Debian stable. I am stuck with GNOME 1.3 every day :(

Trolls - No they all run GENTOO *ducks*

Re:This will help?

[stasis00123]

Hmmm... Assuming you have access to the worldwide web, there's always packages.debian.org. Spreadsheet application? Go to http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages. Scroll down to "Search Package Directories," type "spreadsheet" in Keyword, choose to search package descriptions also, and hit Search. And the returned results are everything related, along with descriptions of what they are. Gnumeric, Koffice, Kspread, etc. That site has always been a pretty vital part of my apt-getting.

Flashplayer? Switch type to Any, so that you can include non-free software, and search for flash, and there, in your face, is "Flashplugin-nonfree." Packages.Debian.org is far and away a better online utility than any other distro can offer. For that matter, say you need some strange file you've never heard of to be present as a dependency for some package...you can search package contents to find what package contains that file. Then apt-get install "packagename" and there you go.

Yes, Debian has a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to use all of the tools at your disposal, but once you do, it's hands-down blazing fast to get to where you need to go, and actually, relatively easy once you learn the in's and out's. I'd much rather go through these steps than try to find out which rpm contains a particular file in Fedora through groups.google.com searches.

Some will stop to work...

[hummassa]

Because there were found in the kernel some modules with firmware in which the firmware has *no valid license* or has a misplaced source-less GPL license (which would redeem the entire kernel package undistributable if included).

Developers using unstable undermine stable

[Anonymous Coward]

There are *no* security updates in Unstable! They are not mandatory!
The very /fact/ that so many Debian developers run unstable /undermines/ the work toward stable, and defeats the very purpose of even having stable.

Re:Dear Motherfuckers

[GnoMoreGnuPuns]

lp!