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Debian Sarge Coming Soon
daria42 writes "The long awaited 3.1 release of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution - codenamed Sarge - is due out next week on the 6th of June, according to the project's release team. Around 50 release-critical bugs remain to be fixed. One more update to Debian 3.0 will also be released prior to that date. And it's about time - the last formal release was back in July 2002. Debian 3.0 will probably be supported with security patches for another 12 months."
Who wants to enter our sweepstake for when Debian 3.2 will be released? Pick a date, and if you're the nearest, you'll win ... well, nothing.
I take July 4th, 2007.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Does this mean thaat Duke Nukem Forever is coming out soon too? Or just that hell has frozen over?
Not to troll, but what is the main advantage of sarge vis-a-vis other distributions based on the debian unstable/testing tree (like knoppix/ubunto and a dozen other main ones)
Releasing Sarge will be hugely cathartic for Debian, it will get a monkey off of their back so they can move forward on the reduced platform list.
People need to remember that Debian is not trying to be Fedora or Gentoo. There are already numerous distros providing the bleeding edge with various degrees of config assistance/packaging options etc. Debian is offering the "must work" (as opposed to "just work" which seems less mission-critical) alternative, and its useful for someone to perform the heavy testing and fixing they do.
I am satisfied that the Debian crowd is making moves to keep itself relevant with a new team leader, a new set of targets, and a release in the bag. Having been burned in the past by the "maybe it works" distros in the past, I will be seriously considering their future offerings.
On a slightly related tangent: just who do those Ubuntu guys think they are? They are releasing a Distro that claims to be Debian compatible, and yet their packages are not 3.5 years old. What's worse, they seem to be a popular distro. If this doesn't stop, we might have to cooperate with someone else in the Debian space! We might end up like (gasp!) Fedora, and have to deal with multiple repositories in a Bazaar-like fashion instead of doing things in the Cathedral-like fashion that we are accustomed to. Where will it all end?
...is that the original release date was around 33 B.C.
I can see herds of pigs flying over a completely frozen hell!
Could someone tell me how long until this trickles into the debian based distros?
Thanks!
which runs on my desktop, at the moment.. after being 4 yrs with Debian..
here: http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php
:)
The June 6 date still depends on how fast the level will drop -- at the time of writing, it is at 17 RC bugs, it will have to be at 0 on June 3, so they have some work to do.
Security support is already in place, though, so there is not really a reason to hold off upgrading
Jan
Now, if they could backport all the nice features from Ubuntu to Sketch... That would be awesome!
As much as I like Ubuntu, I'd love an consolidated repository under Debian control.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/index
Fedora Core 4 is also scheduled for June 6.
Banu
You can read more about it here: Munich chooses Debian
Hi,
only 12 months of security support for the old Debian release, after a new release has come out?
Isn't that a bit short? If Microsoft had stopped supporting Windows 2000 in 2002 (one year after Windows XP came out), everybody would have gone NUTS about it.
Considering that Debian "stable" is targeted at users who are very conservative about upgrades, Woody should be supported for at least a few more years. IMHO.
bye,
Till
The only problem was getting networking going, but that was more to do with colinux and the pain with trying to create TAP devices on Win32. I sure hope that MS ship with TAP-Win32 in their next release. They really, really should.
Hmm 50 is an over-estimate (maybe it wasn't when the story was submitted); according to http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ there are only 28.
To prevent some Debian trolling I want to clarify some facts about the release model used by the Debian project.
Debian always provides a stable distribution. This distribution is guaranteed to, yes you guessed it, be stable. That is if you install Debian stable on a server you know that you won't have to update configuration files because the application has changed its internal format and suchlike.
This does not mean that the stable distribution is never updated, in fact Debian has a security team that fixes security bugs and backports security fixes from newer versions of a package.
The stable distribution has a quite slow release cycle, but there is no reason for a desktop user to run the stable distribution. You can run either the unstable distribution, that regardless of its name is quite stable, or you can run the testing distribution.
The unstable and testing distributions have really large collections of packages and are updated each day, updating your distribution is as simple as typing:
A desktop user can also opt to run a Debian-derivative like Ubuntu.
I think I came already. Sorry Sarge.
Linux debian 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i686 GNU/Linux
Three years between point releases, 3.0 -> 3.1, is just much too long to wait.
There were 5 point releases since Woody.
The step between Woody and Sarge is similar to those between Win95 and Win98 -- and just like products of the Evil Empire, the gap is three years.
Having a release every a couple of months is good for a desktop-only release with all the newest bells and whistles -- but for a server, I expect something that can be installed and largely forgotten.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Yes those are the STABLE releases, and it takes that long to ensure that they are STABLE. When Sarge is released most of its packages will already be out of date, but STABLE. If you want to use debian on the desktop, do a minimal stable install, change your apt.sources to unstable, and do a dist-upgrade and install the packages you want. You'll end up with your ubuntu/knoppix'y type desktop system with up to date releases.
I wish people would stop moaning about stable! It isn't a desktop distro! It is for those that want to do an 'apt-get install apache' and KNOW it won't fail. That means a lot to admins.
Yes, but I've paid for Windows 2000. I can move to sarge for free with a simple dist-upgrade.
Does anybody know if it will allow creation of LVM2 volumes during install?
Then don't wait... You act as if you don't have other choices. Sheesh..
It's just a matter of issuing "apt-get dist-upgrade" on the console, and your Woody box will became a Sarge box.
Sarge is the new stable, the migration should be transparent on most installations. For those few installations that are so customised, or that had some kind of problem, they're giving a 12 month period to adjust and migrate.
Debian is not like Windows, you don't have to do a full installation to upgrade you system. The upgrades are a natural path if you keep your systems up-to-date with the repositories. That is one reason I love to use Debian.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Then i can just use knoppix/ubuntu from the beginning... (and don't need to start with Debian)
After Sarges release there will be nice new things coming to unstable:
;)
KDE 3.4
GNOME 2.10
gcc 4.0
xorg 6.8.2
python 2.4
Long live Debian
In case you didn't notice, Ubuntu is based on Debian, without Debian, no Ubuntu.
Further, a lot of the Ubuntu devs are also Debian devs.
Still further, Ubuntu and Debian are working together. (Yes, they really are, despite what some people interested in starting a flamefest try to say)
Seriously, I'm also running Ubuntu and one of its main attractions is, that it is based on debian. So how anyone who runs Ubuntu can think that trashing Debian is a good idea is simply beyond me.
Red Hat has moved to a slower release system, and your PHB seems to think it's a good idea.
Instead of an upgrade cycle that happens every six months, your company can build an infrastructure on a system that should be around for 2 or more years(based on history). The development is open, which should be appealing for companies that are developing software products on Linux. You could even setup your own apt repository for updates. I find it odd that companies like Oracle,HP,etc don't actively endorse Debian for server/software products. They could have been preparing for Sarge's release for three years now, following development, and ensuring thier software would run on Debian.
Yep thats fine, but lets not forget that Ubuntu/Knoppix need to start with Debian..
unselect debian in your preferences and stfu then.
Well, the difference is that noone pays us Debian Developers to do the work. The security team is pretty small and their work is needed for the new stable release. But I'm sure that if you volunteer to do all the security fixes for 4-5 years, noone would mind too much (well, you'd have to pay for the diskspace too, of course, since this would mean that we'd probably end up with old-old-stable, old-stable, and stable...
That was exactly my thought when I read this. Even if Debian is planning on moving to a much faster release schedule, this goes directly against the extremely stable argument I often get in Debian's favor.
I hate to hold Ubuntu up as an example every time Debian comes up, but they've at least got the right idea: A new release every 6 months, supported for 18 months. They also have plans for an 'Enterprise' release every 12-24 months, sporting Debian-like stability testing.
Personally, I'd argue that even 18 months is a bit on the short side for a production environment, but it's certainly better than 12. This isn't even taking into account that there's also a stable release pattern, and since 3 releases should be supported at any given time, there's nothing to stop you from picking one in the 'middle' if you prefer tried and true to the leading edge.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What version of Windows are you using? For me, the coLinux installer (0.6.2) created those for me. I might have told it to, but I had more difficulty getting my firewall to play nicely than configuring the networking.
Errr....or so they say anyway...
Hi Till,
If you want unpaid volunteers to support an already aged/creaking system for a few more years, you had better come up with something more persuasive than that!
Sam
Hi,
I think the argument "it's free, you can't expect much" just doesn't count nowadays. The Debian concept shouldn't be "it's inferior, but at least it's free".
Concerning the problem of having old-old-stable, old-stable, etc... WELL... right now, Woody is stable. Next week, it may become old-stable. No problem, right? Only when the next stable release after sarge comes out (who knows when... maybe 2008), THEN woody would become old-old-stable... by that time, security support could indeed be discontinued. But not in 12 months!
I can understand when cutting-edge distros who always have the latest package versions, like Gentoo or Ubuntu, don't provide long security support for old versions (actually, even Ubuntu provides security updates of old releases for one year after the new release came out!). But those who really want a rock-solid system, and go through all the pain of still using Woody because of that, deserve more than that.
Of course one could simply do a dist-upgrade. And yes, this is free and it's much less hassle to upgrade than with ANY other distro. But still, in a highly customized server that's running in production use, you can't just type apt-get dist-upgrade, and expect that everything works like before.
bye,
Till
> Three years between point releases, 3.0 -> 3.1
:P
don't worry, Debian 3.11 for Workgroups will be out soon after sarge
It's likely that third party companies will happily sell you support for beyond that period.
That's what I understood from reading the headline. And that's what most threads are about...
Interesting choice of release date, with it scheduled as the released date of Fedora Core 4. Fedora. http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/
I sure its just coincidence...
apt-get update
apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-1-686
Duke Nukem Forever will be relased shortly thereafter...
No matter where you go... there you are.
Uhh? Hello? It _is_ free. If you want to provide free security support past the 1 year mark, you go right ahead. Since you feel that somebody should be offering it for free, put _your_ money (well really, time) where your mouth is.
"Obscenity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." - cloak42
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
So Ubuntu's releases are supported for 18 months. Debian Woody has been supported for 3 years, and still has another year left. If you really want to compare, Debian is supporting its release for 12 months after an upgrade comes out, and Ubuntu is doing the exact same thing.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Try MEPIS. It's an advanced distribution with all the nice stuff like Ubuntu, but it runs on the Debian testing repositories without compatibility problems.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
If it was free to upgrade Windows to the next version, and the upgrade only required one command, then your analogy would make more sense. As it is, upgrading Debian is a much easier process than upgrading Windows, and I have a hard time imagining someone taking more than twelve months to do it. And if you really want, I'm sure there are third parties like Progeny that are happy to support the old release themselves for as long as you want to pay them to.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I've been running Debian 3.0 on my home desktop for about 18 months now. Yes, there are a lot of ancient versions on it. However, there are plenty of backports of popular packages available too. I've never been more than one minor release behind on Mozilla. I'm a little out-of-date on OpenOffice, but I'm certainly not stuck on 1.0. And I built GCC 4.0.0 myself from sources yesterday.
In all that time, three things have broken and all of them were installed from sources other than Debian packages. I have a driver for my onboard NIC from Intel. They didn't release it under the GPL until they were happy with it, which was a later version of the kernel than I'm running. When the kernel is patched, I have to reinstall their driver. The other two are very similar issues. I've had the same sort of problems with drivers for hardware that's newer than the kernel I'm running on other distros. This isn't solely a Debian issue.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
...they should have named this release "Godot".
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
The point that you, and the grandparent, are apparently missing is the fact that the 12 month support window is not for the new (Sarge) release, but for the old (Woody) release that came out in 2002. The support for Woody is thus approaching 3 years, and if the developers hold true to form Sarge is looking at approximately the same length of time for support. In any case, you can almost bet it'll be longer than 18 months.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
The upgrade path to the new release is fully supported. Unlike Windows 2000 -> XP (or even unlike other distributions, such as Fedora or RedHat), a distribution upgrade is guaranteed to be smooth and flawless, and has been tested hundreds of thousands of times.
No comment.
Just so long as he doesn't jump off the Tallahatchie bridge.
cd /usr/ports/www/apache[13|2]
make install
Never fails. FreeBSD is still stable as well.
cat
My Debian machine isn't Internet-facing anyway, do you think I'm crazy?
Yes, I know that Ubuntu isn't exactly Debian, but it's close enough to make my point valid.
..........FULL STOP.
For those of you that are curious, the actual email that Andi Barth sent out is here.
And there are never any missing deps?
Maybe this will be a good time to get their amd64 port out the door!
Doom 3 kept telling me telling me that "Sarge is coming", but eventually I got bored of waiting and stopped playing.
Same here.
Debian is a different kind of distribution compared to other popular distros. I wrote an essay on these differences here if anyone is interested. Bottom line in the essay; Debian continues to be more important as a community collection of tools and knowledge for building and distributing an operating system than as a standalone distro itself.
The Sarge release is great, but Debian's success is also in its franchisees. I remember a press conference where one of the marketing types predicted that there would eventually only be two major distributions. Robin 'roblimo' Miller piped up and burst his grand vision by asking 'Debian and who?' He got a laugh and made a point that continues to be made today. Debian is a fantastic laboratory to grow operating systems and the knowledge on how it happens is right there in its mailing lists, utilities and documentation.
Go Debian!
DaGoodBoy
My God! It's full of Voids!
Did you just verb "Asymptote"?!?!?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Honestly, you're dumb.
Go smack yourself.
Yeah, that's valid. I don't buy into the "well, they're doing it for free!" argument: it doesn't work, because without the longer security support for a distro (as is almost needed on a long-term-use distro like Debian), the 'stable' release is negligible in proportion: it takes a long time to upgrade a large infrastructure from one distro to another - much more than a year in many cases. Particularly when so much has changed from woody to sarge.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
A valid argument, but it doesn't always - or even usually - work that way. Most companies that use debian (and support it, subsequently) will have a problem upgrading due to a 3rd party application or a specific application deployed in an uncommon configuration. This will undoubtedly cause problems resulting in delays: the 3rd party application will need to be fixed, or custom development will need to be done on linux libraries, etc. in order to get it working. It's all a big hastle.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
apt-get dist-upgrade
"What do you mean oracle wont start now???!!!!"
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Because all Linux users worship Satan, the release time will be 6 o'clock.
that's the intent. but from my own experiences it's hardly ever the case. of the last 3 servers i upgraded:
-one didn't upgrade PPP properly, leaving me with a machine without a net connection and unable to finish the upgrade (broken dependencies)
-another didn't upgrade some modules at all, exim was broken, most perl modules weren't installed, mysql was broken, apache was broken, some libs were missing (gd), and the upgrade process installed the wrong version of php4
-the last one worked
i like debian, all of my servers uses it. but the upgrade process is hardly painless
While many complain about the long cycle time for major debian releases, I'd just like to voice the opinion that I *like*.. no *LOVE*...the fact that it doesn't change often.
As a hobbyist - I really enjoy *using* linux to serve webpages for recreational use, mp3s, ssh sessions, downloading torrents and learning about unix.
If I have to keep up with a continual stream of what I feel to be cosmetic and superfluous updates, that leaves me less time to do the things I enjoy. As far as security updates, debian does a great job of notifying users of security updates with their mailing list, debian-security-announce. When ever I get an e-mail from that list - I just run apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade, and all is well.
Then again, I'm the type of person who takes great delight in installing linux on a crusty old (but wireless enabled) laptop with no X and just alt-F[1-4]'ing for my 'window environment'. I don't *need* the latest release of gwingding or kflipflop depending on the latest libraries of whatever, so I am probably in the minority here.
I think the saying you are looking for is "knocks on wood".
"Touching wood" has a totally different meaning.
My Xbox Live Gamer Card
### Sarge is the new stable, the migration should be transparent on most installations.
Have you ever actually tried that? Its true that Debian might do a dist-upgrade better than any other distro out there, but its still *FAR* from being transparent, there is tons of stuff that breaks and works completly different with the new version. It might not be any issue at all in a @Home installation, but if you have a larger installation of Debian machines and a larger number of users you have quite a huge amount of work todo with a dist-upgrade, there is just to many stuff that has drastically changed in the years and which you can't fix in an evening.
"only 12 months of security support for the old Debian release, after a new release has come out?"
Sure Not!!!
I would be terrified if that were the case!
No, no. It is plently 12 months after more than a year of Sarge "being there" for you to plan your migration path from Woody to Sarge which, you know, is license fees-free and for most cases, just a matter of editing about three words at a single file and issue two commands.
"Considering that Debian "stable" is targeted at users who are very conservative about upgrades, Woody should be supported for at least a few more years. IMHO."
Considering I do use and administer Debian systems extensively I say you neither use nor administer Debian systems. IMHO.
I would like to point out that OpenBSD has a release cycle of 6 months and is completely stable. There is no reason Debian cannot release with similar frequency and stability.
You have shorter release cycles then you simply make smaller changes for each one. Everyone else moves in 6 month cycles. OpenBSD, Ubuntu, and Fedora. Obviously they all have different goals for each release, but I don't think anyone thinks OpenBSD is known for releasing half baked distributions to meet short deadlines.
Debian has to play so much catch up work with each release because their work is two stable versions behind the latest release. I highly doubt Debian has put all that much more work into Gnome 2.8 than anyone else considering they had to rush it in at the last minute anyway.
Shorter release cycles. That way if your stable package is one version behind it's not 3 years old, it's 6 months at most. Nobody's forcing server admins to upgrade. Just provide keep providing security updates for a couple cycles back. I'm sure that's less stressful on the community than this horrible release debacle.
"But still, in a highly customized server that's running in production use, you can't just type apt-get dist-upgrade, and expect that everything works like before."
...but of course, I know you have not neither that kind of resposibility nor that kind of knowlege, so there's no problem anyway.
Nor you should. If you can't properly plan a migration path after three years of stable Woody life, over a planning window of about two years for an open source Linux distribution, then may the problem is not Debian's but yours.
in my experience, the cost of suppoorting an upgrade often outweighs the cost of the upgrade.
For those wanting more precisions from Debian mailing lists, here's the related post.
Release update: minor delay; no non-RC fixes; upgrade reports
You make it sound like I'm not glad to hear that the next incarnation of Debian stable is coming out. I had just been hearing about it for so long that I was shocked. I mean, if it is really happening, why can't my other perenial vaporware products be too? Moreover, why can't I display my shock with a (cliched) comment?
You can figure that comments like that are either going to be modded funny, redundent, or troll, and browsing with funny -6 will save you from having to read comments here (and everywhere) that aren't interesting or insightful for the most part.
That said, I appologize. It was not my intent to thoroughly annoy anybody.
This is very good news.
Yes sarge is, technically, available now, but realease means two important things:
security updates, when DSA is issued bug is fixed for stable and unstable versions, thus if one is running sarge at the moment, fixes don't come right away.
not realeasing sarge is stopping other development, e.g. there is no KDE 3.4 or X.org in unstable because sarge is not released yet.
I have done updates from woody to sarge (and older updates in the past). Yes, things change, usually you will find only a very small handful of things you have to fix (these will be related to things you already setup/changed on your system) and you will be warned about most/all of these changes during the update. If you have a large debian install, then you most likely have a clue what you are doing and hence 12 months should be an over an order of magnitude more then the amount of time you will actually need to do the update leaving you plenty of time to mull over any decisions and put have some test systems running for a while. In fact, thanks to debian's development model, anyone who has a large debian installation should already have those machines running and know all the problems they will face (bar changes made from now to release which should be very minimal), any issues they will have they should have reported as bugs and they will probably have the answer by now (either a fix or a good work-around).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
There is also the problem that even Debian Sid doesn't get updated once the freeze starts. In Sarge's case the initial "freeze" started late in 2003. So while some packages have been updated since then you end up still not having any version of Xorg in Sarge. Also there are no Gnome 2.10, or KDE 3.4 packages in unstable either since it has to be stablized in unstable so that it can go into testing for eventual release.
Just curious what others who are in my position plan to do when sarge is moved to stable. I'm currently running sarge on all my production servers because woody was just too far in the past. I was originally planning to just keep all my sources at sarge, but I'm worried that sarge will become like woody and fall far behind in updates. Now I'm thinking maybe I should just change all my sources to testing and stick with that. What do others plan to do?
"Debian is offering the "must work" ... alternative, and its useful for someone to perform the heavy testing and fixing they do."
While I think that's a good goal to have, and I aplaud Debian for shooting for it, the amount of time it is taking to get this release out is in itself hurting that goal. The world's hardware has been changing rapidly while Debian has been sitting still. Getting a strict Woody config to install on modern hardware can be near-impossible. That is bad.
(And please don't come back with "Just pull from sid"; that rather defeats the purpose of having a stable, tested release without rapid changes and with a consistent configuration management profile. If I wanted that, I'd just run Fedora Core.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
You're comparing apples to oranges. For the server croud, the upgrade to Windows 2000 Server is Windows Server 2003 - a couple of years after Windows XP. Secondly... does Windows offer a clean migration path like Debian does? By the time official support for Woody ends, Debian will have supported it for four or five years... how many other Linux distros do that? If Sid is anything to go by, there will be continued security support beyond that date, but perhaps not official. Chill out.
You people (especially the original poster) talk as if Debian owes you something (a release). Tell me, how much have each of you contributed to the debian project, economically or otherwise? Debian are doing its users (and users of its derivatives, like Ubuntu) a *favour* by releasing distros. None of you (well, except those who have contributed) have any authority to bash Debian for anything.
You love grammar like a frat boy "loves" a drunk girl.
"It's just a matter of issuing "apt-get dist-upgrade" on the console..."
For individuals who don't have anything major to loose or anything special to worry about, sure. But not for large organizations with a support structure (help desk, local docs, procedures, etc.) that needs to be ramped up to support new changes. And not for anyone doing anything special or mission-critical that needs to test things before deployment. The rule in any production environment is "Test, test, test, and then test some more". You simply cannot just type "apt-get dist-upgrade" (or "yum upgrade" or any other variation on the theme) in the Real World, I'm afraid.
In general, I find that this whole concept (which is a major part of the disipline called "configuration management") appears to be alien to Debian people. When your business/mission is on the line, answers like "Just pull from sid" or "Just apt-get the fix" and so on just don't cut it.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I've seen a longer version (don't know where it came from) of the classic Calvin and Hobbes quote:
"It's not the verbing that weirds language so much, but rather, the renounification."
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Because every time this subject is discussed (pretty often), a lot of people make the exact same "cliche comments". It might be funny when you see it first, but after a while it's just redundant and annoying.
I like funny comments, so I don't want to browse at -6. But these are just not funny anymore. (I'm sticking to this opinion in spite of you comment's moderation).
[Rummages around in drawer, muttering "where did I put that cliche"]
Only another few years and they'll reach the watershed version 3.11
So, you're telling me that on June 6th both Debian and GTA:San Andreas PC will be released? This is quite a dilemma for me.
Well, the difference is that noone pays us Debian Developers to do the work.(...) I'm sure that if you volunteer to do all the security fixes for 4-5 years, noone would mind too much
So? Anybody pay FreeBSD, OpenBSD? Yeah, some sponsors do, but that's because of their organizational skills, which shows up in code and release engineering cycle too, by the way, allows someone like Theo to live of his free software work.
As to participating in Debian: it's too cumbersome to get into Debian. In other free software distros it's more organic: you show up and to the work and you get commit status. In Debian, it's a fucking burocracy. Even Stallman gave up.
Want to know what's really bad for Debian: people don't have committer status, they have developer status. So they think they're above human. When people complain about Debian falling short, they whine they're not paid. Why don't you go work for Ubuntu? You'll get paid there.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
It contains security updates. Even though it has a weird version number, it is actually an upgrade. I find it also is a performance boost for my hardware vs the generic bf2.4 compile.
:) That's what iptables/netfilter is for!
Ironic how June 6th was the D-Day landings....hmm...
Nope. The ports tree handles all of that wonderfully.
If you add this one year to the other three years of woody's existence, this OS will have at least 4 years of updates behind it when all support is finally retired. Not too bad for a completely volunteer driven project (granted, I suspect the amount of time that it took to come up with a replacement for woody probably wasn't intentional or desirable).
Is it April 1st already? Man, I really did sleep long!
Linux debian 0.01 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 1992 i386 GNU/Linux
:)
And they say it's been forever since the last Debian release
I was tempted by the hype about Ubuntu, so I tried installing Hoary Hedghog. It looked great, and everything Just Worked...except for sound. Hours of plowing through the forums and tweaking settings didn't solve the problem. My computer was silent.
I reinstalled sarge a few days later (this was early May), and the sound worked fine. Printing took a while to set up, and it also took some time to get the resolution right under X Windows. But I've been using Debian for a year, and I know how to deal with these problems.
Ubuntu is on its way to being a great distribution, but there are some kinks that still need to be worked out. If it works for your hardware, and you're a beginner, it's probably a better choice than Debian. But if you're using Debian now, and you're comfortable with it, I don't see a compelling reason to switch.
To all of you shouting "apt-get dist-upgrade won't work!",
I clearly stated that "For those few installations that are customised, or that had some kind of problem, they're giving a 12 month period to adjust and migrate."
So, yes... I'm aware that dist-upgrade can break things. But I'm also aware that I can put packages on HOLD, just in case there's some problem on upgrade.
If you put your key packages on HOLD, and do a "dist-upgrade" chances are that your base-sistem will be upgraded with no problems at all. I do it a lot, because packages like slapd are problematic to upgrade (specially when using custom schemas), but I'm still able to upgrade the rest of the system.
Of course there will be issues, here and there things will break, but apt and dpkg can handle this quite well...
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Hey I ordered a computer off the web and it will be here before the release. How many times is this release supposed to have moved to stable now ? Cheers to the team and debian ! Maybe my nubus-powerpc will make the switch from woody to sarge if it doesn't die before then ;)
1. Compliments on Sarge.
I use Sarge for a desktop over the last 6 months and am quite satisified. Yeah, it's not -perfect-, but no show-stopper problems and whatever issues I find get fixed quickly. Big thanks to Debian volunteers. When it hits stable it will be even better!
2. Dumb Server Question
For desktops, there seem to be a couple of debian-based projects like Ubuntu. Are there similar server-specific projects or even a sub-project that sticks close to Debian? I'm aware of Adamantix, (which I couldn't get to install) but not others.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Longhorn, which they blatantly stole from, will be out way before that.
I am Spartacus
I haven't touched my Debian box since 2002 (cron-apt that), so can anyone recommend any good linux revisited books?
Incidentally, how is a Debian release like an orgasm?
Because you know it's coming and there's nothing you can do about it.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Stability is a great thing but distributions like SuSE 9.x and even Fedora Core x are up to date and stable, so, what's the deal with Debian?
- confused linux user
Rev 13:18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a release date; and its number is Six hundred threescore and five.
"Do you really think that's right? Shouldn't 'release date', whatever that means, be 'man'?"
"Hmmm... Yes, probably. I just had this odd vision of a curly figure and it seemed to beckon me to that number and phrase. I was probably seeing it wrong."
"And six six five doesn't seem very mystical or frightening. More like the distance down the road to the Roman garrison."
"Six six six has more of an odd sound, doesn't it? Yes, let's go with that."
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
What I want to know is, does it still kill all XP partitions on the machine and hose the MBR?
No, I guarantee it doesn't, because it's still kernel 2.6 and despite much hard work by people showing that a serious showstopper bug exists and is reproducible, people keep releasing distros where dual boot installs hose the MBR. You'd think that someone would create a distro that doesn't use parted and label it "Dual Boot Safe", but I've been telling people not to install Linux of any flavor until this is fixed.
A company I contract for stopped a 2000-desktop W2K and XP to Linux migration because of this bug!
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
That's interesting, because OpenBSD only provides support for releases for 1 year, too. Some guy was making a big stink about it in the slashdot article on the latest release. I suppose I could spend the time to see how long FreeBSD provides free support, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be roughly the same.
Agreed on the whole 'too cumbersome to become a debian dev', though. I started the process once but gave up before I got too far. However, I don't see what being called a developer vs. committer has to do with being 'above human'. I think your rant was starting to fall apart about there.
I noticed in a couple of other threads on this article you have some unflattering things to say about debian. Is there something in particular about debian that bothers you, something that you want to get off your chest? Or is this just a case of 'a lot of people seem to like [item a], therefore I do not like [item a]'? I mean, (and this is kind of ironic), as I'm sitting here typing this I am wearing a t-shirt that says "Nothing is any good if other people like it", so I can understand if that's the motivating force. I mean, I know people that would run Windows everywhere if it had the marketshare linux does. I don't know, maybe I'm just getting too old for the internet, but I just don't "get" why someone who doesn't like debian, who obviously has no use for debian, would come onto a story talking about debian just to say, in essence, "debian sucks". Meh, it's probably because I have kids. When you only have a very limited amount of time allotted to 'computer stuff', you tend to focus on just the stuff that is actually productive. On the other hand, I just wasted five minutes typing this reply, so who the hell am I to talk about being productive?!?
I can't speak for the others, but you might not have noticed that python2.4 is already in Debian unstable, and has been for some time. (You have to install it explicitly, since the python package presently depends on python2.3.)
### There were 5 point releases since Woody.
Which are basically just bundles of the security updates of the past, so they don't provide any new softwar.
### The step between Woody and Sarge is similar to those between Win95 and Win98
Nope, Windows and Linux are totally different beasts when it comes to releases. Windows just provides a very small base system, kernel + gui, no applications at all beside some very small ones (notepad, calculator, etc.), basically everything that you use on a day to day basis comes from third partys and is released independedly. With Debian on the other side absolute everything comes bundled with the OS, which makes non frequent releases a FAR bigger problem than Windows.
With a Windows it doesn't really matter if you run a five year old release, since you can still run basically all the current applications. With a Linux on the other side you are in throuble if your distro is out of date, you are basically left with two choices, either stick with it, which results in that you miss a whole lot of upstream development or you can start compiling everything yourself, which is a major pain. The lack of binary compability across Linux distros makes it basically impossible to run a old distro together with current software without doing a whole lot of manual work.
### but for a server, I expect something that can be installed and largely forgotten.
For a server I expect something that is current AND can be largly forgotten after install. A distro with frequent releases and long security updates offers that, Debian doesn't, since it provides infrequent releases and short security update support after a new release is out.
Using a Debian stable these days feels sadly far too much like a walk through a museum. Most software in there isn't just a little bit outdated, but large parts are completly obsolte, superseded by much better software upstream.
The headline should read: Debian Sarge STABLE coming soon. Debian Sarge has been out for a while, what makes this news is that it moves from "unstable" to "stable". Before:
Codename: woody / sarge / (sid)
Distribution: stable / unstable / testing
>=6th June 2005:
Codename: sarge / etch / (sid)
Distribution: stable / unstable / testing
Note that sid is not actually a codename, so it will always denote the "testing" distribution. Woody, the now-stable, probably becomes "deprecated".
stolen from the comments here:
http://lwn.net/Articles/134531/
Jesus RMS Christ! And here I had long expected the second coming to happen years before the release of Sarge. But watch out, because Jesus said, "Another will come in my name and him you will receive."
Second, I did as you said, running unstable. I lived to regret it. I've heard the claims that debian's unstable is more stable than most distro's stable releases. I think I've even uttered such nonsense in my early linux years. However it only took one spectactular crash to cure me of that. In all my time using computers (including though hazy microsoft years in to distant past) I have only had one software failure that took every thing out. In the past, I have even gone so far as to scan a disk for partion headers using a sector editor so I could rebuild a partition table and several filesystem headers by hand to keep from losing data.
The one crash I didn't recover a single thing from was a pre-woody unstable. In exchange for being current enough on packages to be able to interoperate with the rest of the (still small) linux world, I had gone with debian's unstable. They tweaked something major, but I can't remember what. I never found out specificly what killed me, only that I wasn't the only one. After weeks of not being able to recover data and being reminded by the debian folks that "it's called UNSTABLE for a reason", I vowed off UNSTABLE and was pretty much incompatible with all the folks I knew on more up-to-date distros. I continued to use the same hardware when I switch back the the then stable release and continued to use it whan I switch to MDK. I never had problems with the machine except that it eventual wasn't fast enough to run games once I began to take intrest in the growing market for real games.
So, I guess I'd say that if it isn't a desktop system, then dump the desktop packages and lighten the testing and maintenance load. If there is a desktop element to the system, then realize that the desktop moves faster than debian currently does and that bragging about stability of your Mosiac, vtwm and egcs install really isn't a useful. Don't, absolutely DO NOT suggest unstable if you plan to dump the user to the curb should it turn out to be unstable, as the name would suggest.
To be honest, I finally gave up on debian when they started spending more visible time on arguing over which ballot system will shape an election to get non-free as far away from the main debian repository as possible. They got to be more about politics than about good software. Begin ages behind even in package like xfig, transfig, lyx and g++ while hearing about the great work on vrms so I could have my system berate me for using non-free packages like netscape, xanim and xv for which there was no (reasonable) available alternative (at the time) was the camel that broke my straw back. It wasn't useful. I can't do my work if the tools aren't there and my work wasn't to replace all the tools that weren't there.
Debian had some features that I still miss and have yet to find any replacement for (like dselect (I'm serious, the easy, guided control over conflict/dependency management has never been matched (I'm a control freak about what goes on my box))) and I did genuinely like the effort to include free alternatives to non-free packages when they existed and has reach a state where they might be of some use to someone. But at this point, I couldn't take the down grade in virtually every piece of software I use just to go back. And I'm not being bitten again by unstable. I was gone before testing had been implemented, but it sounds like it has been a joke. Desktop or not, debian need to make up it's mind and plan accordingly. In either case, something has been broken for a long time and don't pretend it's not.
AFAIK sarge was supposed 4.0, but a mistake was made in the numbering scheme and 3.1 was used instead...
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series