Slashdot Mirror
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As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing.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
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.
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
Methinks you're thinking of ^H ...
Don't call me a cowboy, and don't tell me to slow down!
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.
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
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.