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.

[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]

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: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: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).

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!

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).