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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."
Haha for a second there I thought the title said "Sarge is Now Frozen," I guess I should put my glassess... wait, what the...
I hope they can thaw him out.
That pig flying was about this. Was wondering wtf that was about.
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?
Duke Nuke'm Forever was released and Microsoft committed toa firm launch date for Longhorn.
This guy is way out there
Worry not, he'll be promoted to Colonel (kernel) in no time.
sorry...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They did NOT say the distribution was frozen, only the name.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Whaddaya know?
"Chance of flurries tonight, lows in the teens."
For regular Debian stable users, this doesn't mean too much: a simple apt-get upgrade is all it will take to 'upgrade' to Sarge.
For new Debian users, Debian testing images based upon the new installer have long been available here.
My main question is why Debian didn't advertise the above-linked installation images more. Just finding a link to the new installer ISO images is like navigating a maze blind-folded. Yes, I understand that they're not 'release-quality' yet, but it would take just a simple warning on the page to download Debian: "Please try our new installer! Although it's not completely stable, it's faster and easier to use and is definitely worth a try."
Ubuntu's installer is based upon the new installer, and it's not unreasonable to believe that many people use Ubuntu because it's an easier-to-install Debian, in no small part due to the work on Debian's new installer (and the great work of Ubuntu developers).
I'm Trappped at Berkeley.
This is the last April Fools's joke?
http://www.michel.eti.br
most of our team left Debian a while back. While its stability is still a strong point, many other distros are very proactive about putting out a stable, quality product these days without the rediculously long timeline....
K
I want to use Debian but I need to get my CD burner from 1992 working and need at least kernel 2.2. thx.
By frozen, I'm guessing you mean poor Sarge was cryogenically frozen, right? What's the prognosis?
He's dead, Jim.
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.
I realize a lot of the posts here are in jest, but what's wrong with being a little slow on the release schedule? There hasn't been a release of Microsoft's desktop OS since 2001 (wow, comparing Debian to Windows XP - kind of like comparing __insert appropriate metaphor__).
As long as the developers are still committed to maintaining the distro, I think we should all be thankful that Debian is so conscientious in it's release policy.
Something else froze today too!
Just because there are always people who don't know how this works...
Each generation of Debian is named after a character from Toy Story. Potato, Sarge, Woody (the one I run), Slink, Hamm and Sid. Sid is always "testing", the most unstable places for apps to go. Remember who Sid was in Toy Story? Same thing. After packages get more stable, they get promoted to "testing". For a while, this has been "Sarge". After "testing" proves itself (and they demote packages that can't get more stable), it gets promoted to "stable"-- today that's "woody".
Sarge being frozen means that sometime in the near future, we'll have a new "stable", with more recent packages.
People who run servers but can't afford to qualify them much should probably stick with "stable". "Testing" is for desktop users who don't like much churn, but it's still more stable than Windows, IMHO. "Unstable" is for the bleeding edge who want someone else to do the compiling.
For more information, visit your local library.
Hell, these are news? Sarge has been frozen for only god knows how long already =P
João Pinheiro
That depends on your sources.list; if your apt lines refer to 'stable', yes apt will try to make the transition. If they refer to 'woody', then woody you shall remain.
On any system that's used for real work, the later is much more sane. Upgrade when you've tested that path, not simply when it becomes available.
Hmm, things look really strange. Pigs are flying fat lady's singing....Sarge is frozen........ OH MY GOD!!!!! THE END IS NEAR!!!!!
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't
and that is why he is frozen.
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
Of course, I don't think Sarge will get all of the Debian desktop users back. I hope that community is fine with its role of being a server distro.
Open Source Sushi
Now I know how Boston felt last World Series.
I'm glad that the long wait for a Debian release will soon be over.
Proof positive that you have no idea how Debian works. This isn't Windows, or OS X. If you want the release, just go get the damn release whenever you want. You don't have to wait for it to be stable before you do.
They are neither dying nor hugely behind nor becoming irrelevant.
They just have a terrible time getting a release out the door.
If you run testing/unstable you run fairly current software, and you're not that much further behind come the release, and at release time Sarge will be fairly representative of the "stable state of the art". It's just that in the couple of years between now and Etch, things will progress without being reflected in a stable Debian release. But come the next release, Debian will be there again.
It's like a staircase with widely spaced but high steps. other distros have closer steps but they're not so high... does that makes sense? I've only had one beer.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Just practicing.
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).
... 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.
Etch. And no, it won't be bleeding etch...
By frozen, I'm guessing you mean poor Sarge was cryogenically frozen, right? What's the prognosis?
Oh...they've encased him in carbonite. He should be quite well-protected -- if he survives the freezing process, that is.
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
I realize a lot of the posts here are in jest, but what's wrong with being a little slow on the release schedule? There hasn't been a release of Microsoft's desktop OS since 2001 (wow, comparing Debian to Windows XP - kind of like comparing __insert appropriate metaphor__).
There's a word in yiddish - that word is l'havdil (it approximately means "pardon the comparison")
So you're asking "What's wrong with being a little slow to release. L'havdil, Microsoft hasn't released since 2001."
Since most of us weren't alive the last time this happened:
Think seriously about whether you want your apt sources list to say "testing" or "sarge"
There's no single answer to that question, if you get it wrong, it might lead to a very long day.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
When Woody was released, Potato continued to receive security updates for (from memory) somewhere between 12 and 18 months. That 'end of life' was reached after the debian security team polled the community to judge whether it was worth the work.
.. security updates will continue for as long as they're worth the effort.
So while I haven't heard of anything akin to Fedora Legacy, woody won't disappear overnight
what form the other three horsemen will take?
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
Have you tried rebooting?
-- Tech Support
Yes I have and it's still frozen, now if you tell me to reinstall I will kill you!
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
With sarge being frozen, and the release nearing, I am finally glad i'll be able to move back to debian. Ubuntu is nice, but debian gives you much more control out of the box.
What is keeping me off of debian right now is the lack of Xorg, and the official support for the amd64 arch. Those were both things that were a "coming after sarge" deal, and now it looks like all that waiting will finally come to an end, I hope.
:(){
Paluminum.net
I think its really dissapointing when I read all of the flamebait on this thread.
/. 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.
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
If its not what you want great, go elsewhere, but leave quietly not bitching about how it doesnt suit *your* needs.
I think people expect more out of open-source projects. Since you can, in theory, have many many times the manpower of a corporation that thrives on closed-source development (such as Microsoft), many people assume that quicker release cycles should follow. While I agree somewhat with that notion, I don't think the lack of frequent releases is indicative of laziness or any other such nonsense that I see from time to time on Slashdot and other forums. It's not laziness; it's a commitment to stability and order. While I tend to stick with more mainstream Linux distros for enterprise tasks, I have colleagues who swear by Debian's stability, order and ease of maintenance.
Frankly, Debian has always come across to me as a more enterprise-ready distro than, say, Gentoo or Mandrake (going off of personal experience). The kind of people I know who use Debian aren't the ones looking for the latest X.org packages so they can play Doom III or have terminal transparency. They're the kind who don't give a rip about what version of KDE comes stock, as they'll be using Debian mostly from an SSH term anyways. I think efforts like the Ubuntu project are a more appropriate approach to a modern desktop-ready Debian than pressuring for more frequent release dates from the Debian Powers that Be.
"You and your third dimension."
I never understood why so many people focus so much on releasing a new version like this. I have more or less run Debian since around the Woody release (coming from years of running Slackware) and one of the things I enjoy about Debian is the "floating" update. I generally just do an update with dselect on all my boxes once a week and everything is reasonably current. Debian "old"? Well - most stuff is reasonably up to date and it's certainly more up to date than if I took ANY of the commercial Linuxes and installed that without updates. So what IS the fuss about? I seriously LIKE not having to go through a major update/reinstallation every now and then. In my eyes it's the KEY quality of Debian.
Oh - of course I see the argument in a production environment - and then again - I don't. As I said - been running Debian "testing" or "sarge" for 3 years on something like 20 machines or so. During that time I've had TWO problems that was so serious it made one machine (the one I was testing the update on) unusual for a short while. One was when somebody screwed up the Adaptec aix_7xxx driver in the kernel in the early 2.6.8 and the other was during the switch from LVM 1 to LVM 2. Apart from that - every single update have been successful. That IS pretty impressive if you ask me.
Although yours is a competely accurate description of how Debian is *supposed* to work, I have a feeling reality is somewhat different. This is my analysis. Feel free to correct it.
Debian Stable seems to be doing just fine. It's a bit old, so hardware support is dated, but no one who needs a "stable" distro ever complains that Debian Stable isn't "stable" enough. Those using Stable are the same people who like to assume that Debian is a server-only distro, and wonder what all the fuss is about "new releases". Unless you're one of the new users who clicks on debian.org and mistakenly downloads and installs Stable, expecting a modern desktop with modern hardware support, Stable is great.
Testing, which is a somewhat new addition to Debian, doesn't really seem to be fulfilling its mission. The goal for Debian Testing was for it to always be "ready to release". In theory, then, Testing would be an ideal base for third-party distros. Unfortunately, for some reason, few Debian-derived distros use Testing as a base. Most use Unstable instead. Testing is also supposed to be the branch that users can place on a non-production box in order to test out what the next stable will be, and to help stabilize it. Structurally, however, there is little difference between Unstable and Testing. Packages from Unstable are automatically migrated to Testing after a couple of weeks, unless they have glaring flaws. In the time between Debian Stable releases, most upstream sources go through multiple development cycles. Due to this and the constant churn of packages from Unstable into Testing, much of the work done stabilizing Testing is done in vain. Testing is touted as the ideal desktop, and many even use it as a server due to the outdatedness of the Stable branch. Debian Testing is more stable than 90% of other operating systems. But the Testing branch lacks security updates, and broken packages are frequently removed completely from Testing in order to enforce the "ready to release" philosophy. Also, the branch is in constant flux, meaning third-party support is near impossible.
Unstable is supposed to be a developers' and ricers' haven, with the latest up-to-date packages, fresh from the build farms and ready for hours of enjoyment. Unfortunately, Debian Unstable isn't new and unstable enough for many users. Creating Debian's well-built packages takes time, so the latest software usually isn't available overnight. Also, for fear of breaking Unstable, developers have created an even more unstable branch, Experimental, to contain truly unstable packages. Unstable is sometimes preferred over Testing as a desktop because there is no wait for security updates to migrate.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
While the impending release of Sarge is good, I'm not sure why Debian gets flack over slow releases. Sounds like a developers dream. Stable, well tested, and supported. I'm not sure how you can get any work done when you're constantly retooling or upgrading.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Do know know what the resources of Microsoft even are? 40 billion/year buys you a lot of developers, *full time*. 40 billion/200k (counting overhead, etc..), gets you about 200,000 developers. This is much more than Debian - about 900 part time, plus another 50,000 part time for upstream (guesstimating). Very few full time developers in Debian or upstream.
Most people working for Debian or have software packaged in Debian are not writing it for money. Money is a big motivation factor especially since you need it to live.
The *resources* of Microsoft dwarf Debian, Redhat and Suse combined. Sorry, but that's reality.
> I realize a lot of the posts here are in jest, but what's wrong with being a little slow on the release schedule?
The same as always: software aging (also termed "bit rot"). Look at woody (the last release), and you know what is wrong: standard kernel is 2.2 (therefore no support for most USB devices), XFree version 4.1 (good luck finding a graphics card that is supported), mozilla is version 1.0, openoffice.org is not even included, and KDE is still stuck at version 2 (which conflicts with version 3, so that you cannot run *any* KDE 3 application).
So whatever happens to sarge, it is going to be *way* to late. Plus sarge is not nearly up to date either. It is still based on XFree 4.3, and has no support for amd64. Which means it will be obsolet way before Etch can possibly be released.
It is a shame, because apt-get is so much superior to any rpm based solution I have seen. But unless you can run testing, Debian is not really an option on the desktop.