Slashdot Mirror
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 Set for December
dolson writes sends in a heartening update straight from the Debian project's news page: "The Debian project confirms December 2006 as the date for the next release of its distribution which will be named Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 alias 'etch'. This will be the first official release to include the AMD64 architecture. The distribution will be released synchronously for 11 architectures in total.
At this stage, the upcoming release will ship with Linux 2.6.17 as its default kernel. This kernel will be used across all architectures and on the installer. A later version may be selected during a review in October.
New features of this release include the GNU Compiler Collection 4.1 as default compiler. X.Org will replace XFree86 as implementation of the X Window System X11. Secure APT will add extra security by easily supporting strong cryptography and digital signatures to validate downloaded packages."
OK, I know that the various testing levels have had updated software for a while, but pushing this volume of changes to the mainstream distribution does seem like something of a shock. Debian's historic reliance on "tried and true" versions seems to be giving way (at least partially) to the realization that many people don't want to use it because it lacks significant feature updates.
I'm impressed.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
You know, funny you should mention that. I've been using Ubuntu for at least a year, first tried it about 2 years ago. When Dapper came out I was amazed, all the configuration tools, menu editor, update manager and such.
I'd used Debian before, but not a lot, probably around GNOME 2.6 and lower. That all certainly wasn't there. Then, I decided to fire up VMWare and install Debian Etch just to see how things are moving. It was practically Ubuntu without the splash screen and Add/Remove Programs in the Applications menu.
Now, granted, I know that is certainly not the only thing the folks at Ubuntu have been up to, but it goes to show that Ubuntu isn't the only one making progress in the Linux world. Debian is still chugging along, faster than ever it looks to me, and Ubuntu is benefitting from that more than anyone.
I found that 2.6.17, with the improved IO handlers, definately added a performance boost to my machines. The main headaches I've had with testing have revolved around X.org 7.x being quite a bit different from previous versions (more componentized) and issues with getting it to work with the NVidia stub (you need to tell it where to find the new lib location), etc.
However, all-in-all I've found that running Debian/testing has gone pretty well, and Debian/stable+backports has worked pretty well too. I'll be looking forward to when the features in testing happily merge back into stable.
Oh, and hopefully the rather-cool FPS Nexuiz will merge into stable as well, as it's pretty impressive to see something like that ending up open-source and available in the standard repositories (it's available in testing+ right now). It's also the first OSS app that's really given my graphics card a run for its money.
MORE TIME TESTING = MORE STABLE PRODUCT
:)
Or an outdated product, as I've come to realize. I have a rented server running Debian, which has given me nothing but headaches because some of the packages are horribly outdated, namely PHP5. I mean, PHP 5 is what, over two years old now, how come they didn't think it was stable nor tested? This is one of the reasons why the next server I rent will be running something else. Better to have "untested" (use that word carefully) stuff working than no stuff at all. Must be that "security-through-obsolence" paradigm rearing its head
At least when compared to MS. Three Debian releases between XP and Vista. And people say Debian is a slow mover.
Well, at least assuming that both "Etch" and Vista will hold their target dates... Is this a too bold assumption to make? Perhaps.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done