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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."
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.
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.
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.