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Debian to Run on AMD64
dark-br writes to tell us TechWorld is reporting that the next Debian release will be able to run native on AMD64 processors for the first time. From the article: "The GNU/Linux 4.0 operating system, also known as "Etch," is planned for release in December, the group said. It will also have new security features, including encryption and digital signatures to ensure that downloaded packages are validated."
This is great news! I do contracting work for Maas Digital, and we have a 30-CPU renderfarm running a weird combination of Debian-32 and Red Hat 64 bit binary overlays. This should simplify things immensely!
At my other job (lylix.net), we had to move away from Debian to Gentoo for this reason (among others), so it's good to see it finally being
http://www.debian.org/News/2005/20050811
Although Sarge (the current Debian stable) was not released with AMD64 support, it was added as an official, fully-supported architecture two months after the release -- way back in August of last year. TechWorld didn't read the recent news announcment correctly.
Running Debian/Sarge for i386 architecture on an AMD64 machine I wonder which steps I need to do if I want to change to AMD64 architecture with the new stable release in December. I guess apt won't have the arch-update command, but does it mean "reinstallation" or is there some smart strategy to migrate from i386 to x86_64?
Debian has a Sarge (current stable) version that runs on x86-64 natively. It's just not a official port. AMD64 wasn't around long enough to make it.
Ubuntu is Debian, basicly. It's based on Debian, but more importantly it's basicly a snapshot of Debian Unstable (aka Sid) with latest Gnome packages and some Ubuntu add ons.
You know how when you enable 'universe' and 'multiverse' repositories those are all almost pure Debian packages recompiled for Ubuntu.
People here on Slashdot.org who come out of the woodwork every time Debian is mentioned and say ignorant crap like how Ubuntu is 'stealing' Debian's 'market group' just don't realy know what they are talking about.
This is the POINT of Debian. This is why there is such a paranoid licensing review and such. It's designed specificly for other people to use it for their own purposes without those other people having to worry about covering their asses legally.
Ubuntu and Debian are very mutually benificial. Without Debian Ubuntu wouldn't be able to spend all that time working on supporting users and providing polish.. and without Ubuntu there wouldn't be all this neat new stuff being ported back into it.
It's time we got past that A vs B attitude and grow up a little bit.
I am perfectly happy with Debian stable on my 60+ _SERVERS_. That's the important thing. Both of my 2 desktops run SID. It's simply not a desktop oriented distro. But it excels in server space. Besides backports are available. Not to mention, that netcraft would be able to detect about 1 of my 60+ servers as debian. Since I disable all such info leaks on important boxes.
The problem is this:
Many people have the impression that:
What everyone else considers stable is packages which usable and relatively free of fatal defects.
What Debian considers stable is packages which are hopelessly out of date
When I've tried Debian I've been extremely disappointed. Sure, the packages may be stable, but what good are they when the kernel is so out of date that, say, an 865 or 915 chipset won't boot the install CD without a kernel panic? (I'm sure that the latest stable release will boot just fine on those chipsets now, but even at the time, when I tried the then-current stable release, neither the 865 nor the 915 chipsets were bleeding edge and have been around for a while).
Debian was great back in the day where chipsets had a fairly long lifespan, but now where a chipset may be around for only 6 to 9 months until the next generation comes out, they really, really need to revisit their standard for stable.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I sure hope not. In my own experience even Debian unstable is better by a little margin than Ubuntu, stability-wise (and the current debian unstable has apt signed packages, xorg, dunno about amd64 as i haven't got one). Some headaches when config files change too much, or when evaluating a dist-upgrade vs an upgrade to get rid of some obsolete stuff, of course.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
First, this is just an announcement that 64bit support will be included in a stable branch, and secondly.. how many people truly benefit from 64bit?
Not to be negative, but I'm yet to see any benchmarks showing a marked improvement (for general PC usage) from going 32bit to 64bit. All it really does is let you use more RAM (REALLY not useful for the average desktop user at this time) and perform 64 bit calculations natively (really only useful for scientific applications, certainly useless for desktop users 99.99% of the time).
On the downside, binaries become larger (64bit addresses instead of 32bit) and old binaries may have to be emulated (if using a 64bit-only CPU).
Still, I guess it'll excite some desktop users, wanting the "full functionality" from their brand new 64bit dual-core system. Personally, I only went to a x86-64 chip recently because it was the best price/performance chip I could find - 64bit processing had and continues to have no positive influence on my computing experience.
P.S. Sorry to be so negative, but I'm sick of hearing all this phwoar! stuff about 64bit, when it really isn't that exciting. Guess I haven't had my morning coffee yet..
Will program for karma.
I run Debian unstable on my home computers and Debian stable on my servers. That way I get lots of experience reparing debian, while having very reliable servers. It works quite well, in that every time another stable release is made, I already know the ins and outs of it and I'm ready to fix it in the freak chance that it would break.
Never eat more than you can lift -- Miss Piggy
I've been running a debian MPI cluster for, ooh, two years now.
Ok, it wasn't simple getting everything to work, as it wasn't in the stable release, but I got there in the end.
In all that time it hasn't had any problems, nd only needed rebooting when the mchines were moved once.
Intel's first name for its implementation of the x86-64/AMD64 architecture was of course IA-32e. I suspect Intel chose this name to belittle the importance of the architecture in comparison to IA-64 (i.e. Itanium). These days the Itanium is widely referred to as the Itanic.