Sarge is Now Frozen

JoeBuck writes "Steve Langasek has announced that Debian Sarge is now frozen. He produced a schedule that would lead to a Debian release at the end of May, though I would expect it to slip somewhat. I'm glad that the long wait for a Debian release will soon be over."

Comments

Good news, even for Sid users.

[FlipmodePlaya]

I was upset to see that KDE 3.4 was being held back from Sid until Sarge released (I ended up getting it from the Kubuntu sources), and I believe a few other packages followed this policy as well. Now that Sarge is coming out I assume we'll see some major updates in Sid. On that note, does anyone know when Debian will adopt X.org?

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Kent Recal]

Okay, you take the basher part, I'll try to play the zealot...

If debian is too slow for you then don't fucking use it but quit the whining. Go and have your gentoo, ubuntu, fedora or whatever fulfills your desire for up-to-date software.

The rest of us will just keep on loving and hugging debian for testing the shit out of their shit in multiple stages before they even consider to stamp a big, red "stable" on it.

I consider it a great blessing that I am granted access to their *testing* and *unstable* branch for my desktop but my major reason for choosing debian is that I know once something hits stable it might be old but it is very likely that many people have not only looked at it but actually used it for a noteworthy amount of time (and whined and bitched about bugs and problems, all of which have then been worked out in the process).

Show me another distro where "stable" means stable and that achieves this goal in shorter time and I'll switch, gladly.
There is none.

In the life of a sysadmin it's worth quite a bit to know that there's a place where you can say "apt-get install apache" and it *will* work.
Certainly worth much more than alpha transparency in X or whatever hype feature of the moment.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Solitude]

Amen to stable.

When shit breaks it fucks up my day. Debian has never done that to me.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Slack3r78]

Congratulations, you've just hit on exactly why most people will never even try Debian, which is a shame. Because when legitimate complaints are raised, the Debian zealots get defensive and give reasons that would excuse the distribution for being somewhat behind the curve, but not in the state it's in.

If they really are releasing Sarge without X.org, this is a perfect example of just this mentality. Debian is the *only* major distribution that hasn't made the switch. Even Slackware's done so, even with that stretch where Pat was absent from development. Let's face it, X.org has been the de facto standard for months now, and the initial release was little more than a fork of the last XFree release before the license change.

So what exactly is the reason for completely ignoring a changing landscape every other distribution has accepted? I just see it as the 'nothing changes' mentality taken to an absurdist extreme. Yes, it makes sense for a stable distribution that's already released, but putting out a new stable branch that, if given Debian's current record, will end up being the standard bearer for a few *years* with major system components that have been replaced for months at launch? Beats me.

The fact of the matter is, like it or not, this is the perception of Debian that's been gained by a good segment of the Linux using populace, and its users aren't helping with comments like "I consider it a great blessing that I am granted access to their *testing* and *unstable* branch."

Which is a shame because from a technical standpoint, Debian has quite possibly the best underpinnings of any of the major distributions. apt is an elegant solution to the package management problem. Debian's configuration tools are generally top notch. Even the new installer's not half bad. But as a whole it's held up by an overly slow development cycle and an elitist attitude amongst its users.

*That's* the reason you see people migrating to Ubuntu en masse. It's all the technical goodness of Debian on a sane development schedule and with a friendly user base. It's what I've wished Debian could be for years, but never seemed to have any interest in becoming. Ah well, C'est La Vie. It just shows what's possible when development becomes focused on getting things done rather than allowing them to languish.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand the market for debian stable. When I need a server, it's Debian stable. I don't care if it's still running apache 1.whatever, because it's STABLE. I don't care if it's got KDE 2.2 because I'll never use X on it. I don't care if a lot of the stuff isn't the latest and/or greatest, because I don't -need- it. I need stability and prompt security updates, which Debian stable delivers in spades.

Don't like it? Use testing or unstable or Ubuntu or whatever, no one cares. But don't act like just because it doesn't fill a need for -you- that it doesn't have it's place.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Slack3r78]

No, I understand perfectly what Debian stable is intended for. I just feel it's taken to an unreasonable extreme.

You know why using testing or unstable isn't an acceptable answer? Because when things break you get the copout excuse that 'things change and break' because it's a development branch.

Having a stable distribution does *NOT* mean that you have to run old, borederline obsolete software. It means that once a distribution is released, the software within that release remains stable, and the only real changes it's going receive are security patches. This simply means you don't go pulling the carpet out from under things by making changes like major version upgrades in that release. Which is fine, but it does not mean that you need to go three *years* between releases, and then launching with older software than any other major distribution is currently using.

So the short version of this is that being "STABLE," as you put it in the manner that matters for a server simply means that you have an unchanging baseline to work from. The problem comes when you have multi-year stretches between those baseline points. That's the flaw with the current Debian manner of operation, and the reason people like myself avoid it even though we see some great strongpoints to the distribution.

BTW thanks for making my point exactly about Debian zealots with the "STFU you don't understand how it works, now go run unstable" response. I never have understood what it is about Debian that draws the elitists.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm attracted to Debian because I got burned when Red Hat discontinued RHL support. With Debian I will never have to nuke and re-install because of some corporate rebranding strategy. I also have yet to find a dependency loop and very much like the idea of installing once then just upgrading for eternity. No reinstalls, no poorly tested "upgrades" that break everything -- Shit Just Works(tm).

I think you should rethink your ideas about what "old" are WRT software. Maybe in the linux world two years is "ancient" but that's nothing in commercial OS land. I think Debian's release cycle shows a lot more maturity and forethought than goes into distros that release more often.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[jesterzog]

If they really are releasing Sarge without X.org, this is a perfect example of just this mentality. Debian is the *only* major distribution that hasn't made the switch.

Wow. As a somewhat laid-back debian desktop user who primarily runs the testing builds, my thoughts were mostly about how we can finally start to test X.org now that sarge is going to be out of the way.

Bitching about not having it until now didn't really occur to me.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are an idiot.

The Debian folks have gone over why Sarge won't be shipping with XFree86 in some detail. In particular, switching to X.org from XFree86 means retesting every single application that uses X. Let's just say this is non-trivial, so they've blocked X.org from even going into testing (or unstable, I don't remember all the details) for the last few months. I'm sure there'll be plenty of how-tos on how to build X.org, or apt-get it from some handy repository (you probably already can), just like you could do with the 2.6 kernels, but there's nothing wrong with the technical merits of their decision to withhold X.org until the next release (which hopefully won't take as long as this one did, the situation this time around was unusual, with changes to the core charter of the Debian foundation and everything).

BTW, I'm typing this out on a NetBSD box, which also still has XFree86 4. While I'm sure it won't have wiggley windows, it's still a perfectly functional environment. Heck, I'm even using twm without complaints, even though I could just as easily install something more "advanced". All the interesting stuff is happening inside the windows, and for that I still haven't seen anything convincing that isn't still supported on XFree86 for the interim.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I understand perfectly what Debian stable is intended for. I just feel it's taken to an unreasonable extreme.

You're contradicting yourself there. Stable is an extreme in itself (there is no "half-stable" or "sub-stable") and the goal is to come as close as possible to this ideal.

You complain about the long delay between two baseline points. It appears to me that you either don't get the point of what "stable" is supposed to mean or you have no idea what it means to thoroughly test a piece of software.
Your understanding of the term "stable" is very likely washed out by Microsoft inspired developement/release practice (aka "public beta") and/or the general habit to just slap "beta" on anything and call it a day.
In a software-world where it goes without saying that "beta" is the norm (unless stated otherwise...) the "stable"-term naturally becomes hard to grasp, too, after a while.

It ["Stable"] means that once a distribution is released, the software within that release remains stable, and the only real changes it's going receive are security patches.

You are mistaken. Stable means both, that the software will not be changed *unless absolutely neccessary* and that it was already beaten to death in order to iron as many bugs out as possible.

Stable means: "We have tried our very best to make sure that this will not break down on you."

It doesn't mean: "We like this package so we've added it and I think we won't change it for a while."

Or, more indepth, when it's not practical to actually work out a formal proof for a piece of code then the most viable of the few remaining options is generally to timetest it ("beta") by letting it loose on as many users as possible for as long as possible.

That's exactly what debian is doing and 3yrs is not really a long time when you consider the complexity and sheer amount of packages taking part in the game. Have you ever looked at the debian bugtrackers?

The reason other distros are "quicker" is simply that they don't apply such a strict testing process - and it shows.

Well, as said, for your JoeDoe Desktop box any fedora or ubuntu is fine. Go for it and be happy. But please don't complain about a distro that does things differently because it has a different goal. It's not made for you, it's made for people who need to get work done. And who eventually get fired when things go south too often.

Re:Good news, even for Sid users.

[Jungle guy]

That is a good reason to drop the other architectures, and favor i386, and PowerPC, as well as their 64 bits flavors: x86-64, ia-64 and PowerPC 64.

For me the reason to support other architectures was the existance of the Alpha, a great processor for scientific computing and clusters. But, let's face it, it is dead. Adn there was ARM, Mips and SH3 in the embedded area. But, lets face it again, ARM is the architecture of choice for most people! These 11 other architectures should be moved out of Debian, as side projects, that would contribute to it but would not delay the release dates.

Otherwise, in a few years apt-based distros, like Ubuntu, will make Debian irrelevant.

Re:Huh?

[bsharitt]

I wonder if the Debian team with move to quicker release cycles after Sarge gets out the door. Wasn't that one of the goals of the new Debian project leader?

Re:So...

[wosmo]

It means Sarge is a big step closer to becomming the stable branch. Freeze severely narrows the criterea for updates to enter testing; they're now hand-picked by necessity rather than appearing automatically once they've survived unstable long enough. It's the last big step before a release; at that point, Sarge will become Stable.

Re:Big woop now it's only 3 years behind. FP and F

[McDutchie]

The comparing methaphor is indeed appropriate, because Debian is a complete software distribution, not just an OS. The equivalent situation would be Microsoft not updating any of their software for three years.

Also, Windows XP SP2 could well be considered a release of its own, considering the depth and breath of the changes (as well as the widespread application breakage).

It was entirely appropriate ...

[JoeBuck]

... to warn people who follow the link not to make plans that rely on the May 30th date. Your suggestion that expecting a further slip differs from common sense is off target. It is no insult to Debian to expect that the RC bug count won't get to zero without a hitch.

Re:Is it kernel 2.2 yet?

[DA-MAN]

such nonsense is not what one would expect form a 5 digit slashdotter.

Us in the five digit club can put out nonsense as good as the next slashdotter. Only difference is we got more practice!

no love ...

[lexluther]

I think its really dissapointing when I read all of the flamebait on this thread.

I've been a loyal debian user for a while and I happen to like the system which they use to control the level of stability/upgradeability that your willing to tolerate.

Furthermore, its just on of the many models of Open Source. I think it is good to have diversity. I have a hard time believing that this many /. readers want to denigrate all of the hardwork that those at debian have been doing because the release cycle doesn't give them exactly what they want.

If its not what you want great, go elsewhere, but leave quietly not bitching about how it doesnt suit *your* needs.

Re:We have moved on........

[jmv]

Not everyone has the same experience, but I recently (~1 year ago) switched from Fedora to Debian and I'm pretty happy. Basically, I found that Debian *unstable* was much more reliable than Fedora Core 2 (release).

Re:How Debian (really) works...

[peterhoeg]

And now it is my turn to disagree. When you start talking about the enterprise, a whole different set of rules come in to play.

Why is Windows NT 4 still used in a wide range of large corporations for their enterprise applications? Because it doesn't change. Because deploying a new version of an application takes months. And a new application takes years.

When you run true "enterprise applications" (I don't really like that term myself though) stability is paramount and ONLY surpassed in importance by "staticness" (don't know if that's a real word...). You don't want things to change. You don't even want a point release of some software you depend on because testing is expensive and takes a long time.

If you are one of the 3 guys in the IT department in a small company where you can whip up a new PHP app in a matter of hours, then the latest software is good. But as things get bigger, you want as much as possible to not change.

So yes, Debian stable is great for the enterprise. For the same reason(s) that Windows NT 4 is.

Re:How Debian (really) works...

[thsths]

> And now it is my turn to disagree. When you start talking about the enterprise, a whole different set of rules come in to play.

Yes, but you are confusing to different situations: running an old server with Debian Woody, and installing a new server with Debian Woody. Since servers have a (hardware) lifetime of about 5 years, it makes a lot of sense to run the same software release on it for this time. You might do a mayor update if you need to, but usually you would just do security fixes. That's why you see lots of RedHat 8, Solaris 5.6 or Windown NT 4 around.

However, for new machines the picture is completely different. Getting hardware that runs NT 4 is nearly impossible, which is why every enterprise that does not have a clear migration strategy by now has a serious problem. Debian Woody is similar: finding a recent machine where you can install Woody is probably a challenge (think graphics card on the desktop, and gigabit ethernet/RAID/SATA on the server side).

So Debian is fine for machines that you installed 2 or 3 years ago, but it is not at all a possible choice for a new machine. Which, incidentally, completely defeats the purpose of stability.

Re:Oh no.

[shish]

It can't be the last -- we still have to wait for the dupe to get posted :P