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."

19 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. is this the one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...that features the new 2.0 kernel?

  2. Debian... by dhakbar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing.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.

    1. Re:Debian... by Television+Set · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      EOF
    2. Re:Debian... by Erwos · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing."

      And for those of us who've used Debian before, we can tell you that, every so often, unstable just breaks. It's not like it's planned, but the fact is, with so many package maintainers, something's bound to go wrong - and it usually does every few months. At that point, you've got to go and uninstall and reinstall packages to make dpkg not complain about weird circular dependency problems - an irony for a distribution that so many claim is the answer to "dependency hell".

      You can't test to see how reliable Debian Unstable is, either. I mean, "Debian unstable works great for me" is kind of confusing as a statement. Did it work right a month ago? How about 36 days ago? 67 days ago? That is to say, it's impossible to actually be sure that it's working right any particular day because Debian unstable is constantly changing. Debian stable, SuSE, and RedHat simply don't have this problem, and it's why many people are not enamored of running Debian off the unstable packages repository.

      Thus, Debian unstable is simply _not_ what you want for reliable updating and pain-free maintenance. Debian is many great things, but realize that it has big faults once you move out of stable. It pisses me off to no end when people proclaim Debian to be the most stable (in reference to the stable branch) and most up-to-date (in reference to unstable). It's the most stable OR the most up-to-date, not both.

      Just thought I'd get that off my chest. I'm a big Debian proponent, but I'm not going to lie about what's going on with it.

      -Erwos

      --
      Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
    3. Re:Debian... by CoJoNEs · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

    4. Re:Debian... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  3. WHAT? Sarge might be RELEASED? by JessLeah · · Score: 5, Funny

    Isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

  4. ode to 503 by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    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,
  5. Let's try to be orderly by Minwee · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  6. Netinstall!!! by Douglas+Simmons · · Score: 5, Informative
    I *highly* recommend doing new installs with the 110meg iso net-installer that you can grab here: debian.org/devel/debian-installer

    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. :)

  7. Re:Debian Noobie by Nasarius · · Score: 5, Informative
    to achieve their aims do they bug fix other peoples' code?

    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
  8. September? by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Did they specify the year?

    --
    Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
  9. One possible reason for slow releases by moberry · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  10. Let's see... by wiredog · · Score: 5, Funny
    Doom III released... Check

    Sarge released... Check

    Slashdot works better with Internet Explorer than with Firefox... Check

    Walls bleeding...Check.

    Yup, it's the End Times.

  11. Re:Debian Noobie by lems1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  12. Re:Why this obession with release dates? by MBAFK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We use Debian on our production kit. I would not like to 'chase' versions with apt daily, weekly or monthly. To us having a stable set of boxes is extremely important, an official release is a big deal to us and the long term plans for our servers are based on these releases.

    I used to do apt-get dist-upgrade all the time on my workstation but it is not acceptable for some computers.

  13. Re:eh? by Peaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Huh? Debian unstable doesn't break often at all. In fact it hasn't broken anything for me in more than 6 months, and I do it at least weekly. Lower frequency updates obviously break things even less frequently. I have other Operating Systems break far more often when tinkering with installed packages or upgrading stuff.

  14. The name fix by Phillup · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  15. A new release system is on the horizon... by Stalin · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.