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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."
...that features the new 2.0 kernel?
As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing.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.
Isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
five oh three
we've seen thee a lot two odd numbers sandwiching naught
seeing a good olde friend
such a grand time
a prime, a zero, another prime
we hope slashdot
doesn't fix their site
so we may enjoy you every night
grub
Trolling is a art,
I know of Debian's aim of a safe, stable distribution as opposed to cutting edge, but don't know how they go about it.
to achieve their aims do they bug fix other peoples' code? do they inform the original authors of a problem? if so, what effects on code ownership does this have - does the Debian team become co-author?
anyone got any interesting stories about the Debian process along these lines?
Okay, this is a Debian thread, you all know the drill. Everybody who wants to make a crack about Debian packages being at least twenty years old by the time they are released form a line to the right.
Zealotous supporters of other Linux distributions over by the wall. If you have no clue how apt works but still want to say that rpm/emerge/tar is far superior, just raise your hand when we call on you.
If you think you're being pretty darn rebelious by railing against the use of "GNU/Linux", then stand over by the wading pool. We'll get to you once the grown-ups have had their say.
BSD supporters can congregate near the exit. We've heard some rumours about you and I want to make sure you have a clear path to the ambulance in case anything happens.
Everyone who thinks Yggdrasil is the one and only true distribution, there's a special thread for you over in the cafeteria.
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. :)
With all that flame war nonsense about communication (which sucks unfortunately in Debian) and AMD64 inclusion in Sarge, it's great that someone has cleared mind and moved forward. No offence to Debian AMD64 guys, thought. But they should at least understand that Sarge release already TOO late.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Did they specify the year?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I've never understod this obsession with debian release dates. Since you can apt-get dist-upgrade every day to keep up to date, "release date" is simply the assigning of a particular date to a set of file versions.
Utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, if you ask me.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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. Of course, I've heard that Lindows^H^H^H^Hare and Xandros do a fine job of producing a quality stable release from those packages, but that's not really the same as pure Debian. Using pure Debian is great if you like to tinker and don't mind when things stop working all of a sudden. But for a primary desktop machine it is too unstable and just doesn't cut it for me anymore since I fully ditched mswindows and rely on my linux installation for everyday work.
This isn't to say that Debian sucks -- it really doesn't suck at all and I love using stable for servers. It's just not a "fine desktop" for people who just want to get work or play done without applications suddenly failing on them.
501 Not Implemented
There are ony SOO many toy story characters, after this there going to have to start naming them after the etch-a-sketch, piggy bank, etc. on the other hand.. there have been 2 sequals since woody was released.
Sarge released... Check
Slashdot works better with Internet Explorer than with Firefox... Check
Walls bleeding...Check.
Yup, it's the End Times.
Best Slashdot Co
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
Haven't seen it yet with IE.
Best Slashdot Co
This is totally off-topic, sorry 'bout that. Didn't know where else to submit this question...
How come I get 503 errors? I've been experiencing this for about 2 weeks now. Didn't seem to be happening before. It'd be one thing if it was all the time, but it's not. Is it slashdot, or my choice of browser (firefox)?
2nd question is: how come sometimes there is text that renders as ^D^D^D^D^D^D sometimes. I think it's when someone tries to use a special character that my browser (again firefox) doesn't support, but I don't know how to fix this. Again, slashdot is the only place I experience this.
Thanks for the help,
Oiarbovnb
I would be nice if an editor would post something to let us know what is going on. The site comes back up and goes on with no explanation.
And that is text book bad customer service.
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.
Aptitude (curses) ....
Kapture (kde)
Synaptic (openstep? GTK? I dunno)
Kpackage (kde)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Seriously, get GIMP 2.0 in there. With Mozilla 1.6 and OpenOffice 1.1, I'll have everything I want in a desktop, with security patches even...
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
Will they be including the new installer, or even perhaps a graphical one finally? ( the debian port of anaconda works pretty well )
.. Its not as easy as with *BSD, but its still pretty painless..
The installer is what keeps many away from using Debian.. that and the *perceived* slowness in releases and having to stick with 'old' versions of items...
Reason i say perceived, is that you dont have to stick with the released version forever, you can upgrade fairily easily to something a bit more current. ( or even bleeding edge if you are brave )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've been using sarge for quite a while now, and on production machines, too. I keep a local workstation as the crash test dummy, upgrading it first just in case there's a problem that I don't want to add to the production machines -- I haven't encountered any show stoppers in almost a year now. I don't even have any woody boxes any more.
Yes, the security updates are a mite slower to get into testing, but usually only by a few hours or a day.
It works fine. I like it. I'm just sitting up here on my mountain being happy.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
I don't use Debian, I run Gentoo, but I respect the Debian team because they produce an exceptionally fine version of Linux.
The aim of open source is freedom, and I think it's great that the Debian team, the Fedora team, and the Gentoo team each try to further the cause in their own way, each with their own focus, giving everyone so much choice.
Look how at-home Linux is on EVERY computing platform; THAT is beauty. THAT is truth, THAT is freedom!
I know I'll come off like a Microsoft (or ANY OTHER monopoly) - basher, but the days of closed-source-we-decide-what-is-best-for-you are OVER!
Thank you very much, development teams, engineers, beta-testers and users!
Ever onward! Excelsior!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Debian Release will include a copy of Duke Nukem Forever, it is the true reason for the delay
The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X
To recap its stable then testing and finally unstable.
;-))
I think they could solve their name problems if they would rename everything like this:
Stable => Debian Server
Testing => Debian Desktop
Unstable => Debian Windows
Each name clearly denoting the level of stability for that branch.
(Let the flame wars begin
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
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.
Try the apt-listbugs package. Before installing any packages it will list the critical bugs in the packages. If you see a bug titled "Breaks teh X!!1!", then abort the upgrade and try again in a day or two.
1. don't try to track sid every single day.
1(a). this means: apt-get upgrade if and only if there is a serious vulnerability; optionally, once a week, preferably once a month.
2. USE apt-listbugs.
2(a). this means: READ the fscking bugs. take a special look in those marked by apt-listbugs with , but DO read all of them. in any apt-get dist-upgrade, I get at most 30 bugs.
3. USE apt-listchanges.
3(a). yes, you know the drill. READ the changes. SEARCH for changed functionality, especially in packages you tinkered with the config.
1+2+3 == NEVER breaking the machine.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The problem with testing is if something breaks, it might be broken for a long time since it will take time for the fix to filter down from unstable.
For this reason, I prefer to run unstable. Sure, it might occasionally break. But with apt-listbugs alerting me of any major bug reports before I upgrade, I rarely get bitten by a major bug.
Yes and no.
I'm using Munjoy Linux, a very good unstable derivative, on my desktop.
But, here's the question: if "Unstable" is so stable, why is it called "unstable"? Why isn't it called "Desktop"? Why isn't "Stable" called "Mission Critical Server"?
The continuing use of the label "Unstable" obviously does not accord with a reality in which almost every other distribution uses the same software rather reliably.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
...and labels it 'general release' within a few months.
I have several major applications "made for Redhat" back in the 6.x and 7.x days. They all stopped working with Redhat 8; I am sad to say the same is true for every other distro I've tried that is based on Redhat. But these apps all STILL WORK on Debian Testing which is itself only one step away from bleeding-edge.
I'll take Debian Testing over a "finished" Redhat release any day.
Clue: Redhat isn't meant for end-users... at all.
You'd think people would not overlook specifics such as this, that are so important to Debian release dates.
I used it for the first time several months ago. Its nice and easy, but a little slow and not at all flashy.
It is about time.
If you get a 503 error, delete the slashdot cookies your browser has stored and reload the page. Apparently there is (was?) some kind of a database bug that could be triggered in a number of different ways, and one of them happened when slashdot was trying to load up the user prefs referenced in a login cookie. Some folks have had success re-logging in after getting to the main page in this manner. YMMV.
This also appears to be the reason that some folks report that they have success using IE (it's not logged in) but not in Firefox (it is logged it).
..wayne..
Debian's development site recently added a daily generated list of bugs 2 years or older.
http://master.debian.org/~ajt/oldbugs.html
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
ah ha, no, now it's much worse than those bad-old-days.
now it's the days-of-geeks-having-fun-doing-what-they-like that are IN.
i'm not entirely sure which is worse, but i will say this: ASF-like charters are INFINTELY more important [advocating mutual respect, and evicting people who offend]
witness the number of flame-warts that have caused good people to have to leave projects...
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.
You said it.
:) This is over a period of a few years now.
Security updates are almost instant - not only in becoming available, but also when you look at the timeframe from when it becomes available till I actually have it running on critical production systems.
This is possible, because I know that I won't have to worry about some PostgreSQL feature changing, some weird Apache module configuration file format change, or what have you... I know that I can safely install security upgrades *immediately*, because I know that the package as such is not upgraded, the security fix is instead *backported* to the (outdated, but more than adequate) subsystem that had the security vulnerability.
Other admins I know will wait until the weekend before they apply updates, because experience has taught them that security fixes break things every now and then. Just not so on Woody.
And face it; how bad is Apache 1.3.X, how bad is PostgreSQL 7.2.X ? It's not all that bad. Sure, it's "outdated" compared to the bleeding edge, but they worked a few years ago, and with security updates backported, they still work very well. And I haven't had a single service "dropout" because of security updates (or anything else for that matter).
I think the most serious service dropout I encountered was a kernel update - due to errors on my side, I waited for a minute long than I had to after the machine came up before I started Apache (requires passphrase for SSL certificate). So, the most serious service dropout I've experienced thru my time with Debian was a two-minute web-server downtime. Because of a kernel update (requiring reboot) and my own stupidity in combination
For things that absolutely need to stay up and running, I haven't seen anything approaching Debian/Stable.
Of course, my days with debian on the desktop are over (at least for now). Different requirements, different distributions (or even different operating systems).
I'm not sure I understand everything in your post, but I will comment on your last point;
Disagreements will happen, surely, and they're the hallmarks of good projects, because as long as you consider the points of views of others in the project and try to get your point across without shoving down anyone's throat, we all win.
Sure, sometimes good projects lose people and the project may have a much tougher time progressing afterwards, but come on, you can't have prima donnas throwing temper-tantrums and hijacking projects any more than you should expect EVERYONE to agree, right?
So projects can literally fork-off (I know, it reads almost like F----off) if enough people, or even if ONE person feels deeply enough about a direction.
Developers are still free.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
...is that September 2005 or September 2006?
...but reported as a bug, because it did not match the ISO standard. I wonder who the hell did this, and the maintainer just insisted on not changing it back to just Taiwan. I am not making any political statement here. I think an open source software would be more political neutural.
That's contradictory. What you're saying is: Debian uses a name from the ISO standard, but that's offensive. You want it to be something different from the standard, and you think that's not taking a political stand?
Think about it, suppose the name of 'Canada' was changed to 'Canada, 51st state of the USA', even though that's non-standard. Isn't changing it away from the ISO standard name like that a political statement? Then why isn't changing from the ISO standard 'Taiwan, province of China' a political statement?
Whether or not the standard names are any good is a whole different question, of course. But the one thing that Debian is being here is politically neutral. I can understand why Taiwanese people may not like it, but the reality of world politics is that China has a lot more power, which is why few countries have separate diplomatic relations with Taiwan (China doesn't like them doing that, since you only have diplomatic relations with other countries).
So yes Taiwan's place in the world is sucky. However, it's nothing to do with Debian, which is just using the ISO standard name for countries. That standard reflects the reality of the world today, which is that China is more powerful. All you have to do is change the standard.
Actually, the Release Update is much more futuristic that you might think:
It surely sounds like science fiction, does it not?
As a more serious sidenote:
Oh yeah, that's my Debian Stable desktop. Who laughs now?!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I just read the Debian-user thread on this and I think that Debian has screwed this one up. It is not politically neutral to use the name "Taiwan, Province of China" even if that's in the ISO standard recognised by the UN. Apart from anything else, Taiwan is a member of neither ISO nor the UN so it is a mistake to treat ISO and UN rulings as definitive in this matter.
Of course there is also an issue in asking the Taiwanese authorities since that implies an answer to the political question so it turns out that there is no definitive standard in this matter and Debian therefore has to choose a name. Choosing the non-definitive UN/ISO standard is just as political as choosing the generally (outside of government) accepted name "Taiwan"
The box only has 16 meg of memory and finding an install that works took a while. All the newer ones require 24+ meg of RAM. In order to get it installed, I had to use the Lord Sutch installer to get stable up and running, then to a dist upgrade to sarge. Messy.
It's great for KDE users too :)
:)
Synaptic is probably the best package manager
I've seen yet! Beats Windows & more traditional
*nixen hands down.
Debian users you know what to do....
apt-get install synaptic
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
Use testing instead. That's what it's for. Testing is a whopping 10 days behind unstable. That's 10 days of ironing out the kinks. Use that if you don't want breakages.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent