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Debian Leaders: We Need to Release More Often
daria42 writes "The lack of a new stable release of Debian GNU/Linux since July 2002 is fuelling the campaigns of many candidates for the project's Debian Project Leader role, with many pushing for a shorter and more stable release cycle to stop Linux users heading for greener and more updated pastures."
Here's some fresh Debian:
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10020
I would like to be the first to say "duh". Debian is old. Despite it being stable, it's often a good idea to have the newest programs to keep up with the newest technologies.
However, I do find that using a netinstall version of the "testing" release tends to keep up to date with most packages.
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I have no problem playing with aptitude from their latest unstable Sarge (it's great BTW), but it makes it very hard for me to recommend Debian on servers to customers when the latest stable release is eons old. Yes, I know there are ways around this... but let's face it, from a customer point of view it's an small image problem Debian has.
READY.
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I suppose an apt-get answer to yum,portage et-al seems appropriate in exchange for the debian written security patches that would only be included in the stable branch. They should focus on i686 binaries instead. Since such a small minority of debian users are still using 386's
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
As a new Linux user, what I heard from all my friends was, "don't use Debian, use Mepis or Knoppix or Ubuntu." It seems to be the opinion of many that Debian is nice, but it's not worth using a plain version of Debian, because these other distros have built it into something better. At least, that's the impression. So it seems that Debian is losing "mindshare" among new Linux users to a degree.
It would be really nice if Stable were updated at least yearly. I'm willing to play with Unstable or Testing if it's for my own use only, but if it's for someone else then I may as well either use a heavily-package-based distro like RedHat or SuSE, or Slackware if I'm going to have to build a bunch by hand anyway.
I guess that it'd been awhile since I last installed Debian from scratch, I didn't know that it has been two years.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I think this is good news that some of the potential leadership in Debian has reconized this as a problem.
I've been a Debian fan for some time, but I find I am racking my newly built critical servers on RHEL3&4 just because so many of the Debian packages are 'stale'. In a lot of enviroments, running testing is unacceptable and using stable is to far out of date for the intended use of the machine. We are definatly in limbo as far as Debian installs.
I really hope they pull this together, without Debian the landscape changes dramatically for binary stable systems.
But, the biggest problem I can see is that by releasing early and often it creates a larger legacy code base that needs to be maintained but does not have the resources to do so. You cannot effectly update a server farm of hundreds to thousands of machines to a new version within a short legacy cycle, yet it is a huge burden to maintain the legacy code for any lengh of time.
Is up to date, even considering the head honcho's health problems.
There's no excuse for no Debian stable releases since 2002.
Maybe Bruce should base UserLinux on that.
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BMO
Not to mention Gentoo.
But I'll wisely keep quiet so not to incur the wrath of Slashdot...
Debian developers basically have two options: either reign in the development cycle or rename "Debian Stable" to "Debian Obsolete". I've been a long-time Debian user, but now I too am looking for greener pastures. The question is where to? Gentoo? Fedora? Is there something that compares to apt-get?
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
We have over 100 Linux servers, but we chose CentOS as our default OS. We could have chosen Debian instead. In fact, the control panel we use for our customers (DirectAdmin) runs on Debian. But here's the #1 reason I didn't choose Debian:
[hypothetical scenario]
Customer: "What operating system version do you use?"
Us: "Debian unstable."
Customer: "...unstable??"
The close-behind #2 reason is the installer, but I understand that's getting fixed. IMHO, Debian should strive to release a new stable version every 6 months, with 12 months being the maximum time between new stable releases. As it is, I cannot justify using Debian for business purposes when their offering that coincides with what we need is labeled "unstable".
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Debian _UNSTABLE_ is shipping Xfree 86 4.3. There have been, quite literally, _thousands_ of bugs fixed since then.
Stable does not always equal good.
it's important to look at debian as a concept as a whole. when you say "debian stable", you're talking a particular snapshot of all these programs 3 or 4 years ago that have been analyzed and proven stable. if you are looking for what linux provided as a whole 3 years ago, you are probably in the right place. why is it so bad to have a clearly defined role for this "stable" distrobution? it's called "stable" because that is exactly what it is. rock solid stable. if you want fancy jazz, no one stops you from using testing or unstable. despite the scary connotations, testing has proven to be stable as well.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
This is a "once more" new iteration of the same old idea of Debian updating their stable branch not often enough. And as always, I have to respectfully but totally disagree.
... well, since about the Potato release.
For one, people should really understand and see, that not all Linux distributions are just there to suit the newbie (l)users' desktop needs. This is just the attitude people gather while being full-blown Windows users and then fiddling around with some Linux, thinking it's cool and if he can't find his way around, then at least that';s another reason to bash.
Debian's stable branch is just _the_ perfect distro for servers. You can argue with this statement, but I will _not_ listen to home users' hysterical crap about the newest kde/gnome being necessary. There are places where that simply doesn't matter.
Where I spend my working hours very few people use Linux distros on their desktops, really very few, but almost all our servers are Linux based. The two of them where I hve root access are Debians. One is a current stable Woody, being web&mail&db&cvs&related server which I installed last year because the previous machine had a major blowup. The other is a Debian Potato (!) which is the previous [i.e. before Woody] stable branch, which is our dns server, up and working for
No desktop environments, no x, just good stable and reliable code which I trust and - most importantly - _very_ _easy_ to maintain.
At home I use Debian SID for about 4 years now. Updated about weekly, _very_ stable and usable. It has all the desktop fun I need. Most important: it hasn't been reinstalled since the first install just always copied over to the changed machine (about once in a year, I always hand-build my machines ever since I became acquainted with the screw driver), updated the necessary stuff and keep it always apt-get dist-pgrade-ed.
For me, and for many others out there, Debian - and now the quite many Debian-based distros, hey, there are even Debian SID-based distros now (!) - represent _the_ _GNU/Linux_ _distro_. For the others, there are plenty of others you can use and that is exactly why Lnux distro forking is a Good Thing, try not to forget that.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Check out Arch Linux. It's a bit young, but up-to-date, fast, elegant and great package management.
BenCurry.net
Personally I think they would be best served by doing a little of each.
Debian stable is too old. It doesn't work on latest x86 and PPC hardware. Testing is fine for desktop, but for people who need stable and secure system for servers it's not an option. Since there is no security support for testing and there still are some bugs.
So we really need stable releases more often. Doing it by dropping some architectures makes sense to me, if you can't buy the hardware anyway. Also developers can still work on their favourite architecture and release if they keep up to the speed those 4 most popular architectures are releasing. It just means that i386 won't be waiting if there are some bugs on m68k.
And yes, I run debian testing
The answer is so simple I am surprised nobody has mentioned it.
Trim down the number of "official" packages. Right now there is something like 3000 packages in the debian system. Why not cur that down to a thousand. Take the top 1000 most popular and best maintained backages and call it debian.
The rest of the packages can go into "ports" or "contrib" or something. They would still be there if anybody wanted to install them but they would not hold up release cycles, debian would not guarantee they would work with the rest of the system.
The great thing about debian is that by using stable you are promised that nothing you install will break your system. They can still promise that but just with less packages.
evil is as evil does
If you were running for that Debian Project Leader Role, I would vote for you.
We're using SuSE because we can't use pacakges from something called "unstable"
I for one am very glad that Debian does not take your advice. The differences between Enterprise, Personal, Exxtreme are arbitrary and subject to interpretation by the user and mardetroids.
My desktop might be your extreme. Who are you to tell me what my installation is?
"Release When Ready" is a good principle
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... Well off course then they will have to decide what make it through and what not, which off course will lead to endless debates, if those debates are not eclipsed by debates on what is free and what is not and if non-free should be kept etc...
"But Release When 8000+ packages ready" is next to impossible and rather dumb...
Theres probably something wrong with their paradigm(*), I guess they could also release packages individually or in groups,they kind of do that with testing in fact
Stable is supposedly for Critical Entreprise application, but who in this category needs 8000+ packages, including n minesweeper and x IM client?
Maybe the solution is less packages in Stable, just keep the most important component and apps in there.
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(*) Off course not i dont really know what that word means...
No i'm not talking about the spoilers and alloy wheels.
Seriously Gentoo has x86(stable) & ~x86(testing) and there equivalents for each platform, and different packages are considered stable or not on a per platform basis.
SUrely something like this for debian, with prehaps core architectures being released together (eg x86, ppc & Alpha).
Also how about Stable, Release and Testing/unstable as better names.
Testing & unstable all sound like they are broken, when infact testing usually isn't.