Slashdot Mirror
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (r0a) Quick Tour
linuxbeta writes "At OSDir there's a tour of the fixed Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (r0a) release. After 3 years we finally get to have a look at the new Debian, including their new installer. Release notes. Only occasionally does this new release differ from Ubuntu."
I thought Linux was still at v2.6.xx?
After 3 years we finally get to have a look...
Mod me troll, but how many GUI's have I seen that look exactly like that?
There is truth in humor.
Only occasionally does this new release differ from Ubuntu.
As a casual linux user, I see that Ubuntu is much more 'non-geek' friendly than Debian. That is probably the biggest difference.
Also, take a look at the Unofficial starter guide.. http://ubuntuguide.org/. This is exactly why users like me are flocking to Ubuntu.
If there is a comparable guide to Debian, I am not aware of it... or havent found it yet.
Because I don't like paying for software, yet I don't really want to warez everything. Linux is a programmer's system, as far as I am concerned, so it makes sense that there are more Free programs for it. For games, I still use windows. For me, it is always the best tool for the job which gets used.
Ah, these installer screenshots bring back memories... of RedHat's installer... from 8 years ago.
It used to be Debian was the distro you used when you wanted a minimal system with guarenteed security patches. It was the "reliable" server distro.
In the last 5 years the distro's availabile have expanded. Want a reliable server? - use Suse, want the latest and greatest of everything? - use Gentoo. Want a nice stable reliable desktop - use Ubutu.
What exactly does this new release of Debian offer besides retro-linux creds?
KDE still seems to be there to me.
s .pl?keywords=kde&searchon=names&version=all&releas e=all
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_package
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
After 3 years they really should have bumped the number more than that.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
If Debian is 7 CD ISOs, it had better have KDE.
Heh heh. You know, sometimes I wish we all could take a step back and see the humor in saying things like:
After 3 years we finally get to have a look at the new Debian.
And then link to a picture of an empty desktop that looks like everyone else's Gnome. No wonder lay people don't care about what we care about.
Kinda worries me they didn't switch over. Maybe they will with the next release in 3 years.
It's 14 CD iso files.
I hope feeding trolls is a little like feeding wild birds, they'll starve in the wild as soon as I stop doing it.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Warty was the god of distributions at the time. I (and most I think) was awed by how robust and simple it was. So when warty finally went gold I was anxious to try it out. I am now back to using warty at least a few more months. I hope the next release will be better, but given all these changes being made I don't have a lot of faith in that happening.
I wish there had been a "warty point five" release where they kept the old (and reasonably well performing) X system and the old fam (which, ironically, had finally been fixed to pretty robust operation just weeks before warty came out using the newfangled and terribly misbehaving gam) and updated nautilus and firefox and gaim and gimp.
Ubuntu was the best and may still be for "non geeks" but warty has enough problems that any non geek who experiences any of the very common problems it has is likely to be overhwlemed by it before they even get past the initial login screen.
Why is my screen stuck at 640x480?
Why is there no sound?
Why is the sound out of sync in all my videos?
Why can't I unmount my encrypted hard drive space?
Why can't I rename files in nautilus?
These are the sort of very simple problems few had with warty and everyone seems to have with hoary and the "solutions" are often difficult or impossible to find and the descriptions of the repairs pretty geeky when found. I truly wish the devs the best, but I hope these changes aren't all too ambitious to meet the next release date.
Does anyone have any experience using Debian on PA-RISC machines? I currently have an HP P9000 running an older version of HP-UX. Would it be possible to replace it with Debian? Would I be able to use the newer X.org X11 implementation?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
That's not the point of Debian.
I tried Debian a few years ago and hated it. Now I love it. Why? I have 2 boxen that *have* to work or I start losing money. If you go for Stable, which is currently Sarge, then, yes, it is behind the times. Problaby none of the major programs in Sarge are the latest versions, but they are stable and have been tested more than almost any software declared stable on the planet. I know I can install Sarge on these systems and not have to worry. That's the point of Debian: to provide a rock-solid and stable distro that is done right -- in a style developers, admins and programers know is most likely to produce stable programs once they are installed.
If you want more "up-to-date" packages, run Testing (currently Etch) or Unstable (always Sid). The packages are still in the process of being tested and migrating to a stable state, but the latest bells and whistles can be found there for you to play with if a pretty GUI is all you need.
The point is not to look pretty. If you like that, Windows has some very nice wallpaper, and a much prettier installer. If all you're worried about is a GUI, then I suggest you try that OS.
As for gaining market share, if it weren't for the way Debian works, we would not see all the Debian based distros out there like Mepis, Knoppix, Kanotix, and Ubuntu. I know there's more, but they charge too much and don't have enough to make the price worth while.
So Debian guys are not behind everyone else. They are, in many ways ahead -- at least to those who know what they are doing and why they are doing it. If you don't like it, go back to Windows or spend a few bucks on Linspire. When you get to the point where you can appreciate more than a need to gain marketshare or pretty GUIs, then look at Debian.
Hey buddy, why don't you write a graphical installer for them which works reliably on eleven architectures?
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
"It used to be
Are you saying that it is not anymore? It seems rock solid to me. The only time it is ever rebooted is to install a new kernel.
Again, are you saying that Debian is NOT a reliable server? I have 6 Debian boxes and they seem stable and reliable.
Ummm, Ubuntu is based off of Debian.
You left off "recovery CD" which would be Knoppix (again, based off of Debian).
The same thing that Debian has always offered, reliability and stability.
Just because you can find OTHER distributions that have similar features does not mean that Debian lacks those features.
Unless you can show that Debian is less stable/reliable than SuSE, then all you are doing is complaining that different people make different choices in which distribution they run. And how does that rate "insightful"?
> Why is Debian so behind the ball on this? Sure, its target market might not be desktop users, but it will never gain *any* marketshare in that area with that horrible installer and the GUI that looks like shit.
Actually, it would do Debian better if they stopped *trying* to get market share like this. Debian is becoming more and more a technology platform, with actual end user distributions provided by third parties like Ubuntu. Sadly, most Debian developers do not want to accept that new role, and instead are considering some changes that would cut the real strengths of Debian. (Without fulfilling the hope that it becomes a viable end user system after all.)
As for looks, I prefer the old-fashioned text based Installer over all the graphical ones. It's a matter of taste, nothing else.
All my comments get moderated +-0, spotless.
The best thing about Debian is that the best things about Debian can be copied. My favorite distro is Conectiva, because they connected apt-get to rpm. You can have the Red Hat installer with the Debian updating system.
Gnome and KDE are installed by default. You can select either of them from gdm.
good. Having used Sarge for about a year on both desktop and server, and having a few years prior experience on the desktop with other distros (mostly Suse, some earlier Mandrake, a bit of bonzai, Mepis, Knoppix) I still consider myself a newbie. Not a programmer, not a guru.
Been waiting & waiting & waiting for Sarge to go stable, my poor excuse for not implementing Sarge more widespread. I think the biggest suprise after updating/upgrading nearly every day is that as soon as stable was announced and my installs turned into stable from Sarge all on their own, the biggest surprise is there is nothing to upgrade. What a relief! It's been a bit of a task to keep after each install to make sure they stay updated to ensure the latest security patches are installed. And taking a look at the portscans and hits on port 22 I'm seeing on the servers, it's been a little worrying to stay after everything. Now that stable is here, maybe I can relax just a bit and start thinking about trying to get a mail server up and running.
The problems? Had to have someone walk me through creating my own "devices" when they weren't created on their own, don't know why. Lost my mouse on several different machines at just about the same time. Now making coasters on CD-R's while CD-RW's appear to burn ok, both burning knoppix isos. Are the CD & CDRW SCSI with 2.6.x or are they ATAPI? If ATAPI, why am I getting error messages when attempting to enable dma? If SCSI, why does the docs and warning messages in k3b talk about ATAPI instead, with SCSI being broken in 2.6.x? Googled and looked around all I could, still can't figure out how to get my CD burner working correctly. Can't get smartmontools or whatever it is called to work, so don't know temp/fan speed. Can't get raidtools working with my raid card. So don't know if/when a drive dies on me, or when hot spare dies on me, until it is too late or until the next time I boot in a few months from now.
Other problems? Sarge installed a generic 386 kernel I think, instead of one for my AMD cpu. Now I have to figure out how to upgrade a kernel even though I planned to stick with the stable one Sarge gave me, 2.6.8-2-386.
Wishes? Yast on Debian. So I can more easily configure OpenLDAP. Tried without Yast, didn't work. I had someone point out that there is an effort to port Yast to Debian. Hope it happens soon. Would also help with controlling which services startup after a reboot. Right now trying to figure out how to get snmptrapd to start after a reboot instead of snpmd. Pgadmin3 backported to Sarge. Other backports made available asap. Postgres 8.x.x maybe? NX maybe?
Good things? Lots. Too many to mention. Not too many to thank, so thanks Debian developers and package maintainers. Thanks to your work to make the latest and greatest even better. A lot of credit should go to the work behind the installer. I tried my installations some 3 months and more past. It is far better than earlier versions. The only real issue is having to create devices. Which is really a non-trivial thing until you know how to do it. Definitely not for a newbie.
Keep up the good work Debian developers. And let's all hope the crew can stick to the 1 year deadline for Etch.
I mean, it wont be long before the new release of Ubuntu, Breezy, is out officially. I'm already using it with little trouble. It is going to have TONS of new improvements, most notably the new Gnome. I can't see how Debian is going to keep up the rapid pace of Ubuntu releases at this rate.
Come on now.. I've been usign Sarge for at least the last year without any problems. Not to mention I use the so-caleld unstable branch of packages and such. No problems..
What is your penile percentile?
"Only occasionally does this new release differ from Ubuntu."
Duh. Wouldn't it rather be appropriate to put it the other way round?...
All my comments get moderated +-0, spotless.
I am a Debian junkie. Recently I had to switch over to Redhat due to the fact that Debian was not certified to run Oracle (which doesnt run on any system whether its certified or not). How do you Redhat people update your systems??? Up2date, rpm (lots of man pages later), tar balls If anyone knows a good Debian to Redhat doc then I would be a happier sysadm, until then give me apt-get dpkg and a 100% up2date working system.
To everyone his/her own distro!!! But Debian is still the best one around. Cheers to the Debian crew, all +1000 of them.
Hey buddy, isn't Debian the one talking about de-supporting all but a core set of architectures? So, that excuse won't last much longer.
Or indeed from kdm :-)
source is 15s arge-amd64/)
ia64 is 15
i386 is 14
amd64 (unofficial) doesn't seem to have been built yet (according to the announcement when built it should appear at URL:http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/
other architectures i haven't checked myself but i belive they are all 13 or 14 (depending on mow much is missing and how big binaries for those architectures are etc)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
That is what I meant. I am actually downloading them right now and happened to have 7 done when I posted that, so perhaps that caused the Freudian slip, which of course a simple preview could have fixed, but the point is still there that there are a WHOLE lot of packages that one has to be KDE.
out of interest why are you downloading the full cd set?
are you just a collector who wan'ts a full set or is there some other reason for wanting all of them?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It is partially because I am a collector, but also because I have no idea how much and in what cases I will use them, the next version probably isn't coming out for a little while, I have some extra bandwidth to waste, and I want to seed and help other people download.
If I recall correctly, in expert mode the installer will ask if you wish to configure manually instead of DHCP-ing prior to actually doing any configuration. Might be a little easier than the disable_dhcp parameter.
(Personally I have a dhcp3 server running on the network, handing out IPs based on MAC addresses, so my machines get configured fully in that DHCP step, including correct hostname, unless I've changed the network card and failed to update the records)
I run Testing as a Desktop environment, and Stable (OldStable until the security updates year is over) for servers. Works very well. More toys for my desktops, servers never go down, and all I have to do is apt-get update; apt-get upgrade to keep up with security patches.
are considering some changes that would cut the real strengths of Debian.
Such as?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I wouldn't be surprised if all of this talk about Ubuntu replacing Debian as the "end user" distribution becomes true. However, if it does, it would only be due to a self-fulfilling prophesy. Debian itself is a very good distro for a new user or an experienced one. It was a first distro I ever installed (piece of cake), and it is still the one I prefer today. I personally feel that Debian has a future as much more than just a base for other distros.
Or even one.
Last I looked, XFree was such a beast that time spent on getting a "graphical" installer using XFree would be better spent on other things....
besides, you only install debian once.
I was specifically referring to the plans to throw out most architectures.
(Actually, I wouldn't generally oppose a change in the method how architectures are managed; but just throwing some out in the vain hope that this will make Debian more competitive -- like some seem to intend -- would be silly at best, and actually very harmful.)
All my comments get moderated +-0, spotless.
Funny, my Debian box has KDE.
Back under your bridge now, silly troll.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why on earth would you download the .isos?
Net install is the way to go.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
im not sure i get the apeal of ubuntu , other then is't ugly gnome theme what does it have that debian doesn't ?
> when you are installing an OS over network connection into a annex server attached to the machine via a serial port, a text install is not a matter of taste.
:-(
:-(
Well, I mean it's a matter of taste if people (like me) are preferring a textual interface *in general*, while others would like to see a graphical one *where possible*. My point was that not everyone considers graphical installers the One True Thing (TM) to go for.
> Debian is meant to run on everything, whether that thing comes with a 256Meg Video card or not.
This "run on everything" is exactly the aspect they are considering to cut back on
> Debian developers do not accept any role. They code what they code. Its their code, how dare you criticise it.
While the exact words are mine, and maybe I have been developing that notion myself for a while, it were actually Debian developers who made the observation I am talking about.
The real value coming from Debian today is the technology platfrom, not the end user distribution. That's a fact, and I hope the developers can accept this and sustain that value, instead of damaging it in vain attempts at (direct) market share.
Some at the Debian project make observations how Ubuntu managed to deliver a Debian variant very appealing to end users. But instead of enjoing Debian finally getting a really viable offering for typical end users this way, many see Ubuntu as a *competitor*, and try pushing absurd plans attempting to "regain" some market share from Ubuntu, at the expense of the real strengths of the Debian project.
It's really a pity to see some Debian folks trying to "beat" Ubuntu, instead of celebrating it as their own victory
> If there is a real problem then issue a bug report, and if you really want to get things going in the right direct, submitt a patch.
A bug report or patch doesn't help, if the issue at hand are plans to drop most architectures from Debian.
If you believe it all comes down to bug reports and patches, you seem not to be aware of the *enormous* amount of politics, the endless discussions involved in every step the Debian project takes. I just hope the discussions will not lead to a decision that would destroy Debian's value. And by commenting on it, I try to contribute my own little bit to make Debian folks aware how people are perceiving Debian today, and what might be at stake.
All my comments get moderated +-0, spotless.
"But if their latest release is barely out the gate and its obsolete, something IS wrong."
What is WRONG is people considering software packages a point release or two behind bleeding edge to be obsolete.
No you don't understand me -- or don't understand Debian.
Name another release that supports even half the architectures Debian does. It's way ahead of all distros there.
Name a release that has the stability Debian Stable does so you can install it on a server and know it'll run 24/7 without trouble?
Name a relase that not only has regular security updates, but that you can count on adding those security updates automatically every night and know you won't get beeped at 3 am because something's gone down.
Name a release with as many packages available, in easily installable form (without any variation of RPM hell) as Debian.
While you may be a Linux user, and you may respect Debian, your statements make it quite clear you don't understand what Debian does and what the purpose of Debian is. There are 3 branches of Debian: Stable, Testing, and Unstable. The current "release" just means that the Testing branch has gone to Stable. If the eye candy is important to you instead of stability, and you want Debian, use Unstable (which is still more stable than some other distros).
Yes, Suse and Redhat are making a lot of sales for servers, but if you want a system that you know is stable and won't need sudden service after an update and where you can install virtually any package (and, again, Debian has more packages than any other format or distro as well as making them available for more architectures) in Debian and count on it working with little or now tweaking.
So, you see, there is more to be up to date with than just the latest release number. No other distro tests their packages as much as Debian does before declaring them stable. So it took three years for Sarge to go Stable? That just means that there are packages that have had 3 years of testing before being declared stable. Name another distro where that is the case?
If you want stability, support of multiple architectures, dependable security updates, the dependability of being able to install virtually any package without trouble, then Debian is way ahead of other distros. You even get your choice: as stable as possible, moving toward stable, or just recently packaged and still being fixed.
It's your choice: do you want the latest, or the most stable? You can't have it both ways because the latest just hasn't been out long enough to be tested as well as packages that are in the Stable branch.
Only occasionally does this new release differ from Ubuntu. I am a Ubuntu fan, but let's keep things in perspective here. There are about a zillion more packages available for Debian than there are for Ubuntu. You have a hell of a lot more options about how you want your system to run with Debian than you do with Ubuntu.
"One gets used to the Gnome wm in Ubuntu, but I would like KDE. Sorry to see Debian going without KDE."
Debian is not going without KDE. I repeat, it is NOT going without KDE.
During install, you are asked which wm(s)/desktop(s) you want to install and have available to use.
There is a good selection of desktops (including KDE) that you may install during or any time after installation. You may choose which desktop to boot into at the login screen.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
i hope this miracle release from debian will keep the ubuntu folks from straying too far from the original core... it's nice when all your apps just work(tm)
Get your torrents...
You're missing the whole point of Debian, I'm afraid. Let's take a recent analogy: Debian is like the Doom3 of OSs, excellent graphics (awsome stability), crap gameplay (ugly installer). Having said that, check out http://distrowatch.com/ and you'll see that Debian doesn't need more market share. Debian and its clones (e.g. Ubuntu, Knoppix, Mepis and countless others) always rank in the top 5-6 most downloaded distros. Hoping not to drag the game analogy too far, one might say that Debian is like the Quake3 of OSs in that more games are built on top of Quake3 than any other game in the same way as more Linux flavours (some prefer distros) are based on Debaian than anything else.
I don't want to hear any of your horseshit about how Windows does work, because you know damn well that you need a couple of friends helping you on how to get it installed and running.
Read and then talk.
>Linux is not user-friendly.
It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
That's just flawed reasoning. Many distros can achieve very high reliability without sacrificing the new-er packages. Debian just operates on a deathly slow release cycle.
If my machines go down, I lose a tremendous amount of money as well. I used Redhat, on two servers, (poor hardware I might add) and both achieved 99.99% uptime (all factors included, like hardware failure -- had a NIC card fail -- DNS failure, upstream provider failure, etc). You're not going to get much better than that unless you load balance or include some kind of redundancy.
The fact is, one machine is one machine. If you don't know what you're doing, install Redhat, and check all the defaults, you might very well end up with software you don't need in your situation. That will be the same for any distribution. Aside from that, the small statistical difference in uptimes would be negligible. I haven't read or written any studies about this, so its conjecture, but many stability problems come from hardware and other miscellaneous causes like upstream providers... If you took 100 Redhat computers and 100 Debian computers in the same configuration on different hardware and networks, I'd say there'd be negligible correlation between one Distro and uptime.
Having said that, many other distributions are FAR ahead of Debian. For example, why not include an X11 interface, with a fall-back text-based interface? I don't worship GUIs, but its an advance that is there and has been there. As another poster diligently put it, this "brand new installer" looks exactly like Redhat's 5 years or so ago. And it's not just the installer GUI, the desktop looks *horrible*!
Why not just add a simple custom theme to it? Hell, use one of the ones already available. It'll get people excited for your product. You just can't deny the marketing factor. What's one of the pillars of marketing? Packaging. People tend to judge something based on how it looks. So make it look nice! You'll gain market share any way about it.
See, here's another problem. And I have karma to spare to say this.
Another user made a comment about a distro I don't personally work with. I said if he's correct, then that's a problem.
2 things happened: I got modded down for asking an honest question "Is this other person correct?" instead of worshipping debian blindly, and another user followed up attempting to argue with me on a huge tirade. I never claimed I understood what Debian does or what the purpose is, although I do on a surface level, I'm not a guru nor a debian user. That's why I asked.
I never said anything was wrong with the precious Debian. I said if the newest release is "obsolete" (as claimed by the parent); then thats a problem.
~Rebecca
Let me disagree slightly with Ubuntu being "non-geek friendly". Granted, its installer was easier, and there are little tweaks to make the system more usable (some aren't particularly effective as that, like the butchering of spatial nautilus in hoary hedgedhog). And of course, was more up to date. So I used to recommand it to people without broadband, that couldn't pull debian testing from the net.
However, in "non-geek friendlyness", there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made. Most of the configuration helpers are the default gnome ones, and they aren't too great. In particular category, Mandrake is bells and whistles above Ubuntu. Even if it cannot claim the polish that debian-based distros are characterized with.
I never said anything was wrong with the precious Debian.
Sarcasm is not necessary. If you're that emotionally involved, maybe your judgement here, as well as in that other discussion was effected and you may have been more negative than you thought.
If you re-read your post, the very way you asked carries a loaded implication. I even went back and re-read it to see if you were implying or I was inferring. So maybe you might want to consider how you ask a question next time. Your statement implied your point of view included that it was obsolete.
As for it being another problem: from what I see, it seems to be your problem, and you can fix it by dropping the sarcasm.
That's just flawed reasoning. Many distros can achieve very high reliability without sacrificing the new-er packages. Debian just operates on a deathly slow release cycle.
Numbers for proof? I know I've seen more crashes and more install problems on all the RPM based systems I've used than I've ever seen on Debian. When I went from Windows to Linux, my system crash rate dropped about 98%. When I switched over to Debian based, while the crash rate was low, it dropped about another 50-60%. I'd say more, but to accurately measure a higher rate, I'd have to have systems running another few years.
People still tend to be moving over to Debian and you may notice that the newer distros and the ones that are increasing the most rapidly in popularity are Debian based. While popularity doesn't prove anything, as long as I've been watching, people running servers tend to migrate toward Debian. I wish I could cite the articles I've read, but I didn't consider the numbers important enough to bookmark. I know a lot of servers ship with Redhat or Suse, but that's a different story.
You also completely dodge all the other points I made in that post. You talk about what other distros have, but you skip the fact that those are only for a few architectures. If you think others are far ahead, show me one where their packages and installers work on as many different architectures as Debian. And if you can't, then you are welcome to write a reliable GUI for the installer that works on more than i386.
Remember (and you ignored this in your response), that Debian supports more architectures than any other, and even the installer has to work on all of them.
As for a desktop, I fail to see why anyone would complain about any desktop. There are so many choices of WMs and so many customization choices within most WMs, if you don't like the desktop, it's your fault. If you've got a number of systems, you can always save your preferences on a flash drive and transport them.
I used to hate Debian, but once I gave it time and got used to it, I found the apt system so much easier than RPM hell (it's even easy to install some of the tricker Perl mods with only apt -- I don't even worry about CPAN).
If it's themes and GUIs you want, go get yourself a copy of Linspire or Xandros. I know that's a bit sarcast, but I am very visually oriented (the whole reason I have a business is to finance my digital video/digital film production company), and I'm tired of hearing people gripe about something they can change and configure so easily.
"Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting"5 /03/msg00012.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/200
The proposal currently being discussed is that we shall continue to support architectures apart from x86, x86_64, ia64 and ppc, but at release time, problems regarding second class citizen architecture support will no longer be allowed to hold back releasing a stable distribution for the core four.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
But I don't want one that will work on eleven architectures, I want one that will work on one:
namely i386.
You know, the one that the vast vast VAST majority uses. And can be emulated by the other important one (AMD64).
But you have highlighted an important downside of this obsession with portability. It's all well and good, but forces developers to code to the lowest common denominator.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Nonono. A better Debian-Doom3 analogy would be that when you start the thing up, for a split second you get all sorts of weird messages no one understands anyway on the terminal, and then boom, the thing will start up and it will blow your socks off with its amazingness.
In the greater scheme of things, the the ugliness of Debian installer weighs about as much as the cryptic Carmackgrams in Doom3 start-up =)
There are about a zillion more packages available for Debian than there are for Ubuntu.
No, there aren't. The list of packages that are not in the Ubuntu "universe" repo (essentially a snapshot of stuff in Debian Unstable) and that are in Debian is extremely short. I don't have real first hand knowledge but I would expect it to be less than 100 packages. Anyone know the exact figure? Or is it zero?
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
That's true, there's definately work still to be done.
I think the biggest difference (and this comes from personal experience w/ Fedora and RH before that and Debian) is that Debian is rock solid. I personally cannot recommend any other distro than Debian for servers. It's also very nice for setting up a minimalistic desktop as I do for my nfsrooted HTPC boxen. I've tried to do something similar with other distributions, but have always gone back to Debian as it just works for that kind of stuff.
:-)
And I almost forgot, as I take it for granted nowadays, apt is simply the best packaging system there is. The first thing I do with my Fedora systems is to install apt w/ ATrpms
Regards,
Mikko.
apt-get install gnome-themes-extras
See the librsvg site for screenshots.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
All Debian "Stable" means is that the packages and their inter-relations are stable, and that you can install it and log in and do some useful stuff. But every released Linux distro guarantees that.
It doesn't mean "this thing will never, ever fail" especially as the older releases typically incorporate fewer bugfixes.
... not only reliably, but almost _identically_ on the 11 supported architechtures.
Want to install on i386? You got it.
Want to install on hppa? You got it, exactly the same process.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
After 3 years we finally get to have a look at the new Debian
Yeah, 'cause the Debian development is generally so hidden from view. No way they'd let you try the new installer before the release.
That the new installer forces you to format your drive? I can understand it wanting you to format one partition for the root filesystem, but you have to wipe your entire partition table or you can't get past the partition dialog.
Not for me there isn't. I will pay, usually, up to $50 dollars for a game or other piece of software. If I can't get a reasonable alternative for free. I'm 16, and I can tell you that I would much rather have a car, and use the GIMP, than have Photoshop (legally) and walk.
As I said, I'm not opposed to some changes, including some conditions for inclusion in the mainstream distribution and/or a different system for managing ports, that would put more responsibility on the porters. However, the *original* proposal about dropping the architectures, was suggesting neither. It just wants to impose a few completely arbitrary conditions, with the express purpose of throwing out almost all architectures. I can only hope the proposal will not get implemented in the original form.
All my comments get moderated +-0, spotless.
There is an excellent project called zen linux that is based on debian. www.zenlinux.org
What makes it very special is that it isn't just based on debain but it *is* debian, as in, fully compatible with debian. Compatibily with repositories etc... It just has a far nicer installer and the ability to boot live.
I wish others, such as ubuntu etc, woul track with and work with Debian more closely. having seperate repositories is the biggest problem around.
Maybe just have the sub distro track time when "unstable" is in a very good state, and make a release based on it. Zen has a zen -upgrade command that does something similar, upgrading to the version of every package specified by zen, but doing it from debian repositories.
It is a wonderful system, and although very early in development, it already works amazingly well.
It also has automatic remastering, which means yo can change it in any way, and make a new installer cd using the "zen -remaster" command as root. Then you just burn the iso.
I started contributing once I realized what a great thing that was. Zen could use your help. Maybe with some community support, Zen could even become an official part of debian.