Debian Announces Sarge Will Include GNOME 2.8

El Cubano writes "A recent posting to the debian-devel-announce mailing list announces that Sarge will release with GNOME 2.8. From the announcement: 'After requests and a detailed proposal from the GNOME team, we accepted an upload of GNOME 2.8 into sid, and, via the usual mechanisms, into sarge. We should mention that the release team was running out of objections to GNOME 2.8 in unstable that the GNOME team hasn't satisfactorily addressed; this, and the fact that they have demonstrated good reaction times of late are the main reasons why we're approving it despite the timing.'"

Comments

good for debian, good for users

[feepcreature]

Gnome 2.8 is stable enough in ubuntu, so it's good to see it being used back in debian.

Also, this might help combat the "Debian [stable] never includes new stuff" meme. Another good thing.

Re:good for debian, good for users

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, this might help combat the "Debian [stable] never includes new stuff" meme. Another good thing.

Debian stable never includes new stuff - that would make it /unstable/. Stable means "tested to death." Adding stuff would mean going through the whole testing cycle again (and those efforts go to the next stable..)

If you're in need of newer stuff for stable (currently woody - sarge is currently testing and will become the next stable) - go to a place like www.backports.org or search through apt-get.org. Keep in mind though, that backports are not part of the official debian base and you can't bug the debian people about them (though most backports have active maintainers - try them instead!)

Re:KDE

[coekie]

Actualy reading the announcement would have answered your question: "In the meantime, we were also asked why we decided to go with KDE 3.2, and if it would be possible to go with KDE 3.3 instead. The main reason is that KDE 3.3 in unstable started with some RC bugs, and there was no proposal from the KDE team how to proceed. The door is only closed, but not locked for KDE 3.3. We are still open for proposals how to sort the KDE 3.3 issues out, and there has been some productive discussion of late about that - but no final decision yet."

Re:I have been waiting for this

[wild_berry]

Are you sure this isn't a troll?

I've never had that problem with Gnome. My system is as responsive with Gnome as my previous operating systems: Win98se and WinXP. Are you sure your system is okay?

Re:I have been waiting for this

[oddbudman]

I'm with you on this call dude. Gnome 2.6 and Gnome 2.8 seemed fine to me (responsive wise). It doesn't take a genius to have a poke at C lacking boundary checking. Last time I checked the kernel was written in C also- what a hack! Furthermore I thought that most Gnome's apps were written in python.

Re:Anonymous coward is confused

[peterpi]

The releases of Debian go through the following stages:

• Unstable
• Testing
• Stable
• Dead

And for most users, at any one point in time the Unstable one offers the best tradeoff between features and stability. The current situation is that Sid is unstable, Sarge is testing and Woody is Stable.

Real Soon Now, they'll all shuffle along one, Woody will die and Sarge will become stable. I run sarge on my home and work machines and it's completely rock solid.

Re:E?

[Shadestalker]

Firefox 1.0 has been in sarge for a while now. Gimp 2.0.5 is in, though I'm not sure when it was released for sarge.

Re:How about these?

[RAMMS EIN]

Definitely not Sun JDK. It's not DFSG compliant.

PHP 5 probably still has some issues to be worked out, meaning it won't get into stable.

I don't know about the others.

Re:x.org

[smoking2000]

No, x.org will not be in Sarge.

See the news item "Future of Debian X11 Packages" in this issue of Debian Weekly News

Re:Is Armagaedon upon us?

[Zach Garner]

The Debian "stable" vs. unstable seems to match the new RedHat "Enteprise" releases vs. the new "FEdora". Maybe Debian can shorten their transfer time and testing enough to use "stable" for production servers? I know a bunch of people who'd like that.

We [beware of the Marketing people's use of shockwave and flash] already do that. I'm sure many others do to. We count on stable being secure and reliable. We're ok with it being relatively slow moving, if that's what it takes. A few select applications, such as X11VNC are brought in from testing or unstable, or made into custom packages internally. It works great.

We would like to see some newer software make it's way into stable, such as subversion. Right now I run a mixed testing/unstable at work, and a mixed unstable/experimental at home. I've never had a problem, though I do take time to understand what the effects of an update will be on the unstable and especially the experimental applications.

Re:x.org

[Anonymous Coward]

The Debian team will begin integrating X.Org into Unstable when Sarge is released. Except, they'll try and do it modularly, instead of monolithically...read more http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/05/msg00431. html.

Re: You like the cup, drink from the cup.

[andersa]

The X Strike Force

To sum it up, Debian is maintaining it's own tree of Xfree86, without any material that has the new license, but with some x.org and other patches. This is what will be in Sarge.

Re:E?

[quamaretto]

Sorry for the confusion - I was referring to 'stable'. I use unstable, mainly because it has all of that stuff. (Excpet E17 :)

Seriously, I should put something about "inspect message for sarcasm before replying" in my sig.

Re:Anonymous coward is confused

[Todesmetall]

So, sid will remain unstable and a new name for the testing branch will have to be decided (unless I missed something and that's already happened).

The release after sarge will be called etch.

Re:Actually, they switch names...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmm... no. Sarge remains sarge, woody remains woody and sid remains sid. The new unstable gets a new name. I believe the pre-woody stables were called potato, slink, and hamm respectively

unstable will always be called sid. i.e.:

stable -> slink
testing -> potato
unstable -> sid

stable ->potato
testing -> woody
unstable ->sid

stable ->woody
testing -> sarge
unstable ->sid

stable ->sarge
testing -> etch
unstable -> sid
sid never changes.

Next branch will be 'Etch'

[Anonymous Coward]

...as in Etch-a-sketch.

Re:buffer overruns

[EsbenMoseHansen]

While I agree with the sentinent, I cannot but hasten to warn that strncpy is evil, and it should almost never be used. Why? It doesn't zero-terminate, so it might turn a C-string into a non-C-String, with hilarious results.

I assume several C-String libraries must have been designed and built over the years. But I none seems to have prevailed for whatever reason. Which is a bloody shame, because C's string (mis)-handling are a trategy, so messy and unclean in such a nice & clean language. I wonder why?

(And yes, I'm perfectly aware why strncpy does what it does, I just wish they had called it fillrecord or something sensible instead.

Re:I have been waiting for this

[zemoo]

From what I understand, this is due to the Kernel.

In Windows, the application that is in the foreground (with the currently active window) actually gets a scheduler priority boost from the operating system.

Under Linux, this is not the case.

What does that mean? In Windows, interactive applications are snappier, but the background programs lag more. If you're running Windows, right-click on My Computer and hit Properties.
Go to the Advanced tab and hit the Settings button under Performance. Go to the Advanced tab and the first option I believe controls this behaviour.

Re:Actually, they switch names...

[Xibby]

unstable will always be called sid.

Yes, go watch Toy Story...Sid is the unstable next door neighbor with a tendency to blow stuff up. Debian unstable is aptly named.

Re:I have been waiting for this

[ssj_195]

Perhaps it is more a matter of application start-up time than overall responsiveness, I'm not sure

I understand that most Linux GUI apps do indeed start up more slowly than their Windows counterparts, due to the fact that they must be dynamically linked(?). Pre-linking apparently speeds start-up time considerably. Gentoo is supposed to have excellent support for pre-linking apps (which must be fully recompiled whenever one of their compent libraries is updated, in contrast with the dynamic(?) linking model).

Re:x.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed link: http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/05/msg00431. html

Re:buffer overruns

[Type-R]

They also gave out strlcpy(3) , but the glibc crew decided to go with the weaker more broken strncpy, making many people reimpliment it themselves. Unfortunatly egos won out over common sense.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Sarge Will Include GNOME 2.8

[pretzelgod]

You joke, but we'll be lucky to see sarge in 2006 if this is any indication.