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Debian Aims For September Release Date
An anonymous submitter writes "Debian Planet has a good discussion of the most recent release update from the new Debian release managers. The most interesting point is the current hard freeze of base+standard and an optimistic but doable release date in September."
Debian and Gentoo are similar in that they have a packaging/software installation system that is top notch (apt, portage), making it easiest to maintain, but a wickedly difficult installation method (dselect/tasksel) - however it is my understanding that the newer Debian will have a much easier installation setup. I look forward to trying it out.
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It's beta 4 of Sarge but I think it lets you throw on Woody as well. Netinstalls are good obviously because it's a small DL, you end up DLing only what you need, and what you do download is fresh regardless of when you burnt the CD.
Also, I'm batting a thousand with this installer as far as getting X video working without a hitch... I can't say that for the sound server, but as they say, if you're interested in sound, you shouldn't be running Debian. :)
Its about as easy and painless as Slackware now. Which means they've got a user in me.
Sometimes. Other times, they simply "backport" bug fixes to older versions.
do they inform the original authors of a problem?
Gentoo always sends its fixes upstream when appropriate. I would imagine Debian does the same.
if so, what effects on code ownership does this have - does the Debian team become co-author?
Depends on the author of the original code and the patch. Some will require you to assign copyright to them, others don't really care because it's all GPL'd anyway.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing. Debian is a very fine distro for even desktop use.
And to top off including 13,000+ packages, they've even beaten the release times between Microsoft's barebones desktop OSes Windows XP and Longhorn
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
To really see the debian process at work one would need to be a member of one of the many mailing lists (depending on what your interests are) and/or participate in the IRC meetings or regular IRC chatrooms for many debian-based or debian-specific pieces of software.
For instance, I usually hang out in the #debian-desktop channel, and i'm subscribe to the debian-gtk-gnome mailing lists. In there I get to help others fix their problems, help developers find bugs and re-do packages, etc.. etc... Usually all bugs reported to the bugs.debian.org bug repository or to the mailing list get sent upstream.
After years of distro-hopping from various Linux distributions, I find Debian to be the one that gives me the most confidence in all senses: from a security point of view, from a non-vendor "lock-in" point of view, and even more importantly from a stability point of view.
Surprisingly enough, I run debian "unstable" as my main workstation at work and at home, and I rarely see a piece of software that breaks (this is despite the fact that I have become an apt-get junkie! Which means that I usually update as soon as there is some new piece of code added to the "unstable" branch).
The future version of Debian stable, code named "Sarge", is a very very solid distro as it is at this moment. I have started to exclusively install this distro on friend's and family's desktops as they move away from other OSes and welcome the Linux beauty into their lives. Out of 20 or so "upgrades" i have done, only one has gone back to the dark side after a month or so using it. Usually after they get to use a very well configured (and stable) desktop based on Debian, they never go back.
My hope is that Sarge becomes a rock-solid, easy to install, modern OS a la Mandrake or Xandros, but totally royalty free. And so far I believe that very goal has been achieve, with a few things missing here and there that might be addressed in the near future. (Like the need for a GUI to the installer, and a way to manage drivers for hardware from a GUI).
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
Almost but not quite.
Stable = Stale, unless you seek stability... or somthing. [correct]
Unstable - Latest packages. NOT unstable but high quality releases. They HAVE been tested.[inncorrect - this is testing]
Testing - this is the latest really unstable stuff. Installing from here will screw up your system eventually.[incorrect - this is unstable]
To recap its stable then testing and finally unstable.
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
Dselect and tasksel? I bypass that step of the installer and just apt-get things as I find I need them. Obviously I realize that this doesn't work for everybody ;)
Stable = Stable = Woody
Testing = Stuff not in stable yet, but in the queue = Sarge
Unstable = Living on the edge = sid (and will always be sid)
http://www.debian.org/releases/
I think Debian is a fine project, but to be fair you have to admit that the unstable and testing distributions break far too often to use on a production machine
Maybe the grandparent does, but I don't have to admit any such thing on my testing system. Been running testing since... Geez, I can't even remember. Sometime around when RedHat 7.0 came out. No more or less stable than any other distro.
I'm sure that unstable is... wait for it... UNSTABLE. But testing? No problems.
(/me knocks wood)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I have seen it with IE, Safari, and Firebird, using Windows 2k, OS X, and Slackware. 503 errors have nothing to do with the browser, just the server.
They are still debating if XFree 4.2 should be default.
/etc/issue
huh?
$ cat
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 \n \l
$ dpkg -l xserver-xfree86 |grep ii
ii xserver-xfree8 4.3.0.dfsg.1-6 the XFree86 X server
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
To be fair, you should also mention that Debian supports 10 architectures
* Alpha
* ARM
* HP PA-RISC
* Intel x86
* Intel IA-64
* Motorola 680x0
* MIPS
* MIPS (DEC)
* PowerPC
* IBM S/390
* SPARC
Have you checked out apt-listbugs ? When using apt-listbugs, you know what issues you may have 99% of the time before actually installing the programs, and can say ,"no, I don't want to take a chance of that bug fsck'ing up my system." You can pin the old version, and go about your merry way until the bug is fixed, and you unpin it and proceed.
Using apt-listbugs, I've really only had two issues in the past year when updating programs, and one of those was because I didn't pay attention to the bug notice. The other one was in a minor app I used often (krdc), but there were other alternatives (vncviewer), so it wasn't a showstopper by any means.
Methinks you're thinking of ^H ...
Don't call me a cowboy, and don't tell me to slow down!
The following excerpt is from an interview at http://www.pctechtalk.com/view.php?id=3230. It seems people are not going to be able to bitch about the outdated releases for too much longer.
technobeast: Why is the latest stable version of Debian outdated? And why is this idea with several releases? Any purpose to announce outdated versions as stable and currently usable as unstable/testing?
Martin Michlmayr: Debian has traditionally had very slow release cycles. One reason for this is that Debian has often been used for servers. As it is being used increasingly for desktops, our release cycle is not adequate anymore. We know about this and are working on implementing faster release cycles which will meet the needs of server and desktop users. Another reason why Debian is often slow with release is that our system is very large. We have more than 10,000 packages and support 11 architectures. However, we are working on solutions which will allow faster release cycles. In this process, we are moving away from a feature based to a time based release. This will ensure predictable releases.
I do the same thing, except I "apt-get install aptitude" and then do the rest in aptitude.
Aptitude is the default apt frontend in Sarge - dselect is deprecated, although it's still available as an option in the new debian-installer for those who've got used to it.
I can honestly say that if it wasn't for aptitude, I wouldn't be using Debian. I tried to try Debian a number of times in years gone by, and always failed to get through dselect without accidentally finalising on a set of broken packages - this despite years of Linux experience. But when the debian-installer betas came out, I tried again, and aptitude was usable enough to get me through. And I like it enough that my old SuSE skills are gathering dust.
In short, Debian is no longer impossible to install. Let's hope more people who were previously put off by the bad old installation process feel inspired to try again come September.
Unstable doesn't mean "will crash if you so much as look at it incorrectly". It means "software dependencies and APIs change on a daily basis". A binary package targeted at Debian Stable can be counted on to install and run properly over it's supported lifetime. Stable releases are about three years apart and are supported for a year after new Stable releases.
A binary package targetted at Unstable could fail to install and run tomorrow because dependencies have incremented upward in version.
When I set up a Debian box about 6 months ago, the installation didn't seem any more difficult than installing RedHat (which was the only distribution I had used up till that point). You don't HAVE to use dselect or tasksel. The Debian installer (for woody at least) provided some images of standard packages that a user might want when setting up an initial install. I hosed that up, but that was my own fault. I ended up just using apt-get to install specific packages I needed. It's just a web server, so I didn't need much.
I've only used Redhat and Debian; Debian is WAY better with the package management then RedHat. I'm looking forward to converting my other RedHat box over to Debian as soon as I find the time.