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Debian Project Votes To Postpone Policy Changes
jonoxer writes "A little while ago members of the Debian project voted to make changes to the Social Contract. As previously reported on Slashdot, the end result looked likely to be a delay in the release of Sarge, the next Stable edition of Debian, until 2005. But on Saturday Debian developers voted to postpone the changes until after Sarge releases, effectively affirming that the changes need to be made but making a pragmatic decision to not let the next release be delayed as a result. The official voting page doesn't show the result yet, but it's been semi-officially announced."
I know Debian has its supporters and what not, but won't this move hurt Deb's desktop use? It seems that Debian based distros have been taking off (especially live CD based ones, which install much more easily than Deb). Won't this just put it farther behind?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
But on Saturday Debian developers voted to postpone the changes until after Sarge releases, effectively affirming that the changes need to be made but making a pragmatic decision to not let the next release be delayed as a result.
This is a super example of how open source products can, when properly managed, be much, much more nimble than a lot of proprietary offerings. Look at the Longhorn delays. That's not going to come out until approximately the same time the Sun becomes a cold, dark chunk of coal (that's a joke, please don't flame me :) ).
The smaller, more flexible systems that are characterized by Linux-based OSes, however, can quickly adapt to all sorts of changes.
Agreed. Debian is very archaeic in many ways.
Debian zealots claim that apt is what makes Debian great, however other distros have had it for years now.
What's the point of getting Debian stable, when it is so out of date? SID is like Fedora, newer, however Debian can't guarantee it's stability - and they label it the unstable/development branch. Fedora is stable and has newer packages.
It is definately not the distro of choice for power users anymore. It might have been years ago, but not now. I can think of at least 5 distros I would rather install before I even looked at Debian.
Debian has it's place, and it's user base, but not on any of my boxes.
Even unstable is pretty damn stable for me. Unless you're running some completely obscure configs, I've never had a problem with unstable. The box only reboots when the power goes out.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
This is good news. Alas, it will still have been too long when Sarge comes out.
I've heard others elsewhere suggest that there should be a server distro and a desktop distro in Debian. I like the idea personally.
Yes, I know about testing and unstable. I use unstable as my desktop. However, I'd like to have reasonable recent software without dealing with the constant moving target that is unstable. I'd like to see a desktop version that is updated every six to twelve months and that isn't held to the same standards the server sub-distro would held to. I think unstable updates too often. Stability is also a factor. Yes, unstable is relatively stable, but you have to keep close watch on incoming packages to make sure they don't break something.
This would also allow for docs to be made for the majority of Desktop Debian users who don't seem to be using stable.
We see the 'high ground' a bit differently. I think Red Hat who spends 1/5th of thier revenue on R&D back into the community is huge, all GPL software, all free as in speech just like Debian except they give back a magnitude of software more. The knee jerk reaction is companies don't have principals but some of them do really good things with the money we put into them.
Software is... software. Its not a cure for some social ills, its purpose is defined by the usability it brings to people.
Software which places such usability in second place becomes something else.. a propaganda tool perhaps? If Debian continues to keep such course, the only reason I see for using it is to make a political statement.
I wish the Debian project would stop pretending and become a political party or something.
Don't go silently into that peaceful night
A while back while reading in an issue of "Linux User & Developer," I read an article about how bad the install was for first timers installing Debian. It went over one of the readers hard times, troubles, etc. After the user finally coming to a completion with the install, they made a comment that made so much sense to me. With the greatness of apt-get literally letting you uprade anything and everything, once you have debian installed, you never need to reinstall. That's probably why most users don't really bother with a new installer, because for one they're already se and won't have to deal with it anymore, and because secondly...Even the thought of the installation process invokes uncontrolable goose-bumps....:P
-- [H]itman_forhire
Apt is "available" on other distros, but it's NOT the same apt that debian has.
Quite simply, because a deb gets through more QA before release, not to mention that the standard debian packages have the following advantages:
1) most debian packages manage config file changes by the user, and try to merge them(at least in unstable, not 100% sure about Sarge as of yet)
2) Debian's userid/tcp-ip ports management through dpkg catches more errors and allows better handling for special situations(like development boxes running several different kinds of web servers, for instance), that might just be my personal experience however(although the amount of work I had to perform to get 6 different types of webservers on a single debian box was lower than on any other distro I've tried by a large amount)
3) I take exception to your "What's the point of getting Debian stable, when it is so out of date?" statement. Until you replace stable with unstable, I read that as an oxymoron. Stable software was out of date last month, it is however, secure, usable, and third parties have had months to work out their alphas and beta phases, so now you can use it with your 12321322123112 machines with no worries that a bug hasn't been found YET. Not that Debian is IMMUNE to bugs, but up-to-date software IS rife with bugs(and if you're lucky, you don't wait too long for your fix). But with debian stable, that's confusing the security patches, with the next generation release, and that's bad juju.
The branch of Debian I notice you don't mention anywhere, is testing, which just might do what you think is Stable's job. For the rest of us, I'll go pray that some 3rd parties get a clue from Debian and start producing Stable branches of their software that break less often than their Unstable ones.
But gentoo and fedora are more secure because they get patches faster. Remember for debian stable a fix has to be backported to the old version in stable whicih takes A LOT of developer time! Gentoo or fedora you just download the new version and you are good to go. Debian you have to wait till some part time college amateur developers backports the fix to the old version. Just hope he doesn't have midterms or it could take weeks!
.debs don't even have the same kind of security features rpms have.
Remember debian testing (which you need to use if you want even half way modern software) does not even guarantee any security updates at all!
Debian being secure is a myth.
Sorry but I'd rather trust my system to rpm and yum any day than debs and dpkg. Debian server got cracked and it didnt get noticeed for what a month? then it didn't come online again for what? another month? Gentoo caught it the same day and fixed it in the week, and fedora never got cracked.
Debian security is all hype...
I mean, it obvious they really care about the contract. It's obvious many users are not _as_ interested in waiting for the contract to be reexamined.
So they move Sarge while agreeing to discuss it at a later date.
When's the last time you saw something this internally important to a project drag a project down in flames? How many other non and for profit organizations have torn apart/forked or become non productive over such a dispute?
It's a nice compromise and I'm glad they're willing to be so reasonable about it.
As far as being out of touch, hey slow and steady is still a winning strategy for those willing to wait. *
~G
* glances at apt source.list for all the lovely unstable bits.. I'm not one who likes waiting tho' ^_^
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
Sometimes I wonder if it would be better for Debian to call the stable branch "frozen" instead. It'd disspell a lot of the myths about how Debian is 4 years behind the times.
:-/
But then again, some of the Debian core developers think the world should conform to them, not the other way around...
Amen to that. I ran Debian Woody for about two years, all the while thinking that 'unstable' meant 'prone to crashes' (I know, I am dumb). I moved to Mandrake 10 CE recently, and am happy with the latest GNOME, KDE, etc. I feel that the Mandrake bootsplash package has sucked up part of my soul, though :-)
The way every other package based installer works (that I've used anyway) is to install all the packages from the installer boot (usually by forcing dependencies) and then say "all done, reboot now".
The way the Debian installer works is to install a barest minimum system that will boot and run apt and then reboot. Then once it has rebooted it asks for some apt repositories, asks which packages you want install and then installs them (this bit may take a couple of passes though the list to work out any warts in the dependencies). Having done that it presents you with a fully working system WITHOUT a reboot.
The fact they can have that much confidence in the apt repository and the tools is pretty impressive.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I bet we can expect a big surge of Debian popularity soon, as the "stable" version becomes up-to-date again, making it usable for something like 6 months at least. Sarge is quite well on the "speet spot" of software released now, with KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.6 and Kernel 2.6, and the last "good" version of xfree (the next good x server is probably some time away anyway).
It's nice to see debian decided not to slash it's own wrist by postponing the release. The problem with debian is, people who make the decisions to release or not are themselves using Unstable, and don't really care either way with the release. The loser is the guy who wants to run Debian stable, but doesn't get a say on if/when they are planning
to release.
BTW, one significant turn-off with Debian is the quality of the user base - you need to search far and wide to find as unfriendly a bunch. There is no friendly community that some would expect from such a project. Perhaps it's all the infighting that hardens the people...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
As an ex-debian-rant-meister I am pleased with having switched to Debian after the RH9 closure.
.spec file which project maintainers are generally happy to look after themselves.
Getting used to the differences took a couple of working days but it was well worth it.
Networking setup is very simple with debian, they haven;t managed to scatter it over so many conflicting config files as redhat.
Debian also really care about free software.
The only annoying thing with debian is the large (lots of files) debian-specific directory required for each package compared with redhats single
But thats a small gripe. The other gripe is that it is too hard to donate to debian. I have given up twice unable unsure of who I'm eventually paying money to and for what.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I have been a debian stable user for many years, and recently installed gentoo on my main workstation, so here's the comparison as I see it:
In debian stable, as in gentoo x86, the packages are tested before being released. The difference is that in debian stable, the distribution as a whole is tested, so you don't get integration problems. When I installed gentoo, I got a good working version of gimp, and a good working version of sane (scanner tools), but they weren't compatible with each other -- to scan an image from gimp I'd need to upgrade to a newer "unstable" sane or downgrade to an older gimp.
Secondly, debian generally tries to configure packages for you. You decide you want a service, you install the package, and that service is installed and running. It might need to ask you a couple of questions, but that's all. Gentoo explicitly leaves the runtime configuration of a package to the user. The "zero-administration" paradigm of debian is extremely ambitious, but they are surprisingly successful at it -- probably more so than any other distribution or for that matter any other operating system. Mostly everything Just Works. Then there's the obvious differences: debian stable is very old, and in Gentoo you have to wait for stuff to compile.
The reason Gentoo can have the "rolling stable" distribution is because it is a source distribution. debian testing is the same kind of idea, but it doesn't work nearly as well because binary packages necessarily have more dependencies on specific versions of other packages. It is the loosening of dependencies, not the tiny optimisations, that is the real benefit of distributing as source.
Of course, if you want the "stable distribution" rather than "distribution of stable software", then debian has the advantage. The gimp/sane problem was the only issue of that kind that I've encountered so far, though, so from my point of view the integration question seems fairly manageable.
I run "testing" on my desktop, and it works great. Kernel 2.6.6, recent packages all around. Not had any problems with it. If people read "server, desktop, experimental" instead of "stable, testing, unstable" it'd be much closer to the truth.
I don't know where it is coming from that testing don't get security patches. It might not have the guarantee that stable does, but in my experience they've been there almost instantly. That's pretty much what you get from ALL other distros as well (we provide as fast as we can, but make no guarantees).
As for installation, I install the base image (100mb, there's even a 30mb microinstall), then download the rest on-demand. If you're not on broadband, pick up the box and put it somewhere with broadband (where you'd download the CDs) until it is installed. It's text based and looks a little crummy (this is the new installer, you know), but it is powerful and easy. Slap an (optional) GUI on top and it competes well with Mandrake and Fedora.
Overall, I think those that installed 'stable' sometime in the stone age love that their distro is still supported. And whenever sarge is released, that it'll probably be supported to something like 2010. That matters to a significant portion of the people (server admins) that will never gripe about it on slashdot until it is "my "#"# production box just went to #%"!!!!!"
Personally, I don't care much for their social contract (I have no problems putting non-free and other sources in my sources list), I just picked them because in my opinion they're the best distro around. Best to get any real work done at least, with a minimum of maintenance.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings