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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...
That pig flying was about this. Was wondering wtf that was about.
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
I want to use Debian but I need to get my CD burner from 1992 working and need at least kernel 2.2. thx.
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.
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
Just practicing.
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.
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"
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.
X.org is already stable in 11 architectures? Who did that?
Its relatively easy to do it just for i386 (It's the original target). As I know most of the efforts to port X to most architectures comes from Debian.
Ubuntu and others have i386, AMD64 and PowerPC basically. They make a great work. But doing it for 11 architectures and with the stability that Debian does...
I can't understand you. I think you are just to ignorant to understand.
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.