Two Major Debian Releases In One Day

AndyCater writes "If all goes according to plan, Debian should release both an update to Debian Sarge (3.1r6, henceforth to be oldstable) and a new stable release (Debian 4.0, which was codenamed Etch) — and announce the results of the election for Debian Project Leader — all within 12 hours. Sarge was updated late on April 7th UTC, Sam Hocevar was announced as DPL at about 00:30 UTC, and preparations for the release of Debian Etch are ongoing and look good for later on the 8th."

Comments

TWO! in one day?

[utexas delirium]

I don't know if the Universe can withstand that.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[cyphercell]

Hey if you were using FF 1.0 you'd be happy too.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[mgv]

I don't know if the Universe can withstand that.

Definitely a sign of the upcoming apocalypse..

Michael

Re:TWO! in one day?

[arivanov]

I had to check the calendar twice if it is not the 1st of April...

Re:TWO! in one day?

[ajlitt]

If Duke Nukem Forever is announced as going gold on Monday, the Universe will suddenly cease to exist.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[SeaFox]

I'm tagging this "pigsflying" which will group it with the story about Vista being released to manufacturing.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[Krunch]

Actually, the release was to be announced on April 1st but it has been delayed (again).
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007 /03/msg00023.html

Re:TWO! in one day?

[martin-boundary]

I don't know if the Universe can withstand that.

It's ok, as long as they don't cross the releases. Oh, and everybody make sure to not think of anything!

Re:TWO! in one day?

[Loconut1389]

watching too much ghostbusters?

Careful the staypuffed penguin man might appear.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[martin-boundary]

If Duke Nukem Forever is announced as going gold on Monday, the Universe will suddenly cease to exist.

Oh no! How will we know?

Re:TWO! in one day?

[marcosdumay]

Now Debian also delays april fools jokes?

Re:TWO! in one day?

[charlieman]

And can not withstand it!

Re:TWO! in one day?

[logic hack]

I know Linus isn't exactly thin, but that was just hurtful.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[LiquidCoooled]

You will wake up with a massive hangover and a traffic cone in your bed.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[pogson]

This is a Great Day!

Debian is one of the great old distros that just keeps getting better and not by adding frills. It is a large distro on many architectures supported by package managers from around the world. It is not hard to install as the reputation was. It is huge with many thousands of packages all smoothly (well, mostly ;-) integrated. I favour it for anyone migrating from that other OS, a new installation or on a large or small system.

One of the neat features of Debian Etch is the smooth set of packages for installing LTSP (See http://ltsp.org/ ). One can go into a school on the weekend, set up a server and support all the old equipment as thin clients whether they be iMacs, i386, i486, P-what-evers and manage hundreds of accounts by Monday.

I have been using Testing for a couple of months and there are few bugs. Nothing has prevented me from using it in production.

Congratulations, Debian.org!

Re:TWO! in one day?

[ajlitt]

It's not a good night unless you get a traffic cone!

Re:TWO! in one day?

[dalutong]

I don't know if universe can handle it either. I just hope they let the repos propagate before they make the announcement.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[matt me]

It's now 1700 UTC, and Debian Etch has officially been released. I've performed experiments and Planck's constant is constant. I think spacetime is safe from a resonance cascadAODF~@AFAL:VXCV SCV END CARRIER.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[Toby_Tyke]

I wonder what form the other three horsemen will take?

Re:TWO! in one day?

[Gleng]

As long as it's not the Amiga OS 4 version, we should be OK.

Re:TWO! in one day?

[aldm]

one /. surge

Re:TWO! in one day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it: when the headline says "Two Major Debian Releases In One Day", it doesn't matter what day of the year it is. You assume it's a joke.

Sweet

[cyphercell]

Openoffice 2.0
firef.. er Iceweasel 2.0
php5
life is good again.

Hmm... I can still see bugs in their tracker

[Cyberax]

I can still see 17 release-critical bugs in their bugtracker: http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php?bydist=etch

Have they decided to postpone their resolution until R2?

Re:Hmm... I can still see bugs in their tracker

[cortana]

The bugs tagged with 'security' are probably not important enough to delay the release. They can be fixed at any time with an update from the security team. That leaves five bugs, none of which seem so important that they can't be fixed for 4.0r1.

Re:Hmm... I can still see bugs in their tracker

[Anonymous Coward]

Some explanations about how to count:

The official release-critical bug tracker[1] is still not updated to handle "versioned bug-reports". Meaning it counts _all_ open bug reports, while in reality the bug might be "closed" in the _version_ of the package in Etch but the entire bug in not closed (because it still effects Sarge and older?). So the official sources are a bit misleading.
A debian developer called "Sesse" has an updated tracker[2]. This one gives a bit better indication about the truth. Hopefully his code will be moved over to become the official version.
As also previously mentioned, Andreas "aba" Barth has his own bug tracking tool[3]. This gives a bit more information about each release-critical bug and has filtering capabilities.
All sources indicate that there are many "RC" bugs left, but using aba's tool[3] you can see that most open bug reports are security issues. Security issues will come up all the time. There is already infrastructure in place to provide security updates for the stable distribution, so there's no need to hold back the release because of these issues as they can be fixed at any time.
The few remaining issues are new bugs that has just recently surfaces and hasn't yet been analyzed. They might have a too high severity set, noone knows until they have been analyzed. This also doesn't give much reason to hold back the released, there will always be a few really new bugs that there hasn't been time to analyze yet.
All in all, having all bugs fixed looks promising, even if noone can promise that the CD-images are 100% bug-free.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
[2] http://people.debian.org/~sesse/bugscan/
[3] http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php?bydist=etch

Regards,
fatal

Re:Hmm... I can still see bugs in their tracker

[cortana]

That graph does not take into account the version-tracking info associated with each bug. Try http://people.debian.org/~sesse/bugscan/ instead. From that graph, you can see that etch has been less buggy than sarge for almost a month. :)

Re:Hmm... I can still see bugs in their tracker

[pogson]

etch has been less buggy than sarge for almost a month. :) ... and less buggy than that other OS since Etch began to boot. It is absolutely amazing that a loose, democratic organization like Debian can out-perform a giant of industry with giga-bucks in the bank and tens of thousands of slaves but it is true, the bazaar works. Freedom and empowerment take some work and spine but the result is worth everything many times over.

Great News

[dracocat]

Seriously, this is very good news for us.

This means we can finally start buying new Dell Servers again, instead of relying on ebay to obtain servers that had hard disks compatible with the stable release of debian. For the past two years, Dell had been phasing in new Sata drivers that sarge just refused to work with, but that etch has had no problems with. Hurray! Any chance of an upgrade path so we don't have to support both sarge AND etch?

Re:Great News

[cyphercell]

What if I went outside of the package tree? Should I uninstall those first or will they get wiped out by apt anyways?

Re:Great News

[jawtheshark]

Yes, it is good... Except for me the Debian newbie. I chose Debian Etch because I didn't want to run Unstable but Stable seemed too old. Testing ran fine, but what do I do now? Do I have to do anything special to stay on Debian Etch, I mean 4.0? Or is such a thing not possible.

Re:Great News

[Exter-C]

Actually you can always use these images which include a backported kernel. They work well http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/ with opensource being opensource you can easily just make your own kernels and build it all up no problems.

Re:Great News

[pedestrian crossing]

Testing ran fine, but what do I do now? Do I have to do anything special to stay on Debian Etch, I mean 4.0? Or is such a thing not possible.

It depends on your /etc/apt/sources.list.

Each line will either end with the word "Etch" or "Testing".

If it ends with Etch, then you will stay with Etch (Stable).

If it ends with Testing, then you will start getting the new Testing packages.

Probably the best thing to do is to stay with Etch for a couple of months while the new Testing settles down, then dist-upgrade back to Testing.

Re:Great News

[jawtheshark]

Thanks a lot... This helps! :-D

Re:Great News

[osu-neko]

Probably the best thing to do is to stay with Etch for a couple of months while the new Testing settles down, then dist-upgrade back to Testing.

I disagree. If you're just going to switch back to testing in a couple of months, don't bother switching off of it. There's potential hazards with either route, but I think the headaches of dist-upgrading in between major releases are more likely and more significant than the potential problems with testing over the next few months.

OTOH, it sounds like you really wanted to go with stable all along, it's just the existing stable (now oldstable) was just too stale, in which case, the point is moot, since you're probably just going to go with stable for the next year or two.

Re:Great News

[pedestrian crossing]

The reason I suggested staying with Etch for a little while is that there is likely to be some breakage in Testing as the backlog of Unstable updates move into Testing. For newbies (like the GP), this can be disconcerting.

If it's only a couple of months, the dist-upgrade back to testing isn't likely to be too big of a deal. I think Testing is the sweet-spot for the desktop, so it makes sense to be there, but Testing can be a little unstable immediately after a release.

Re:Great News

[cortana]

FYI, you could always have used etch's kernel 'backported' to sarge if you went to http://backports.org/. Another option is Kenshi Muto's Backported d-i images archive page.

These pages will probably continue to be useful once Etch's default kernel gets out of date; although they may not be necessary as I have heard rumours of plans to push out updated Linux kernel image packages from time to time, with point releases of Debian 4.0 (etch).

Re:Great News

[micheas]

Funny,

I find that experimental/sid is in the sweet spot for my desktop.

But, then I remember having cron doing a cvs pull from mozilla.org and make followed by rebuilding galeon every morning just because that made my webbrowsing the least painful

Re:Great News

[cortana]

It can't hurt to remove third-party packages before upgrading. You can always install them again after the upgrade. If you have a recent version of aptitude installed, you can run aptitude search '~S~i!~Odebian' to find out which these packages are. If you have the version that shipped with sarge, then comment out any third-party repositories from your sources.list, then run aptitude (which will get you to the interactive, text-mode user interface), and scroll down to 'obsolete & locally created packages', where they should all be listed.

If you don't want to remove most of the packages, you should get by OK as long as you do remove any that ship any files in /usr/X11R6/bin.

Of course, the ususal upgrade procedure still applies--read the release notes before upgrading, pay attention to the steps that aptitude says that it's going to take, don't hit enter blindly, etc. :)

Re:Great News

[marcosdumay]

And we'll also get FAI in stable, what is very good.

Re:Great News

[Randle_Revar]

I don't know if it will happen but at least one person is calling for DDs to not flood unstable and testing with really broken packages.

http://stratusandtheswirl.blogspot.com/2007/04/etc h-lenny-and-future.html

Re:Great News

[petermgreen]

that depends on the package,

if the third party packages install anything in /usr/X11R6 you should certainly remove them before upgrading (it should be safe to install them again afterwards)

otherwise they can probablly stay without causing any problems unless they are deeply integrated into the system or very badly packaged.

the tools will normally only remove packages if there is an explicit conflict or versioned dependency that makes them do it. of course if there is a more recent version of the same package in the repositry the package manager will upgrade to that

btw it is strongly advised to ALWAYS read the release notes BEFORE upgrading, there is usually a bit of handholding required for an upgrade as big as going from one stable release to the next.

Re:Great News

[multi io]

The reason I suggested staying with Etch for a little while is that there is likely to be some breakage in Testing as the backlog of Unstable updates move into Testing.

I may be mistaken here, but isn't the old unstable (sid) the new unstable, not the new testing? I was under the impression that the previous testing (Etch) is just duplicated into stable and renamed to "Lenny" in the testing branch, and nothing happens to unstable (i.e. it's not like the old unstable is becoming the new testing or anything).

Re:Great News

[pedestrian crossing]

I may be mistaken here, but isn't the old unstable (sid) the new unstable, not the new testing? I was under the impression that the previous testing (Etch) is just duplicated into stable and renamed to "Lenny" in the testing branch, and nothing happens to unstable (i.e. it's not like the old unstable is becoming the new testing or anything).

You are correct, Etch and Lenny start out as the same thing.

But since Etch has been frozen for so long, there is a backlog of updates waiting in the pipeline. As those roll into Lenny, things will probably be a little less stable than a newbie might expect things to be.

Personally, I'm staying with Testing, but since dist-upgrade is so easy, the smoothest path for someone with less experience is probably to stay with Etch for a little while before moving to Lenny.

Upgrading Debian is easy, downgrading is not so easy.

Re:Great News

[Lord Ender]

with opensource being opensource you can easily just make your own kernels and build it all up no problems.

Ahh, the words of a college kid with no real-world experience, I see. People with actual jobs require vendor support and patching, using the vendor's tools to do so. Deploying 20 servers with custom kernels, which will all need to be updated by manually compiling new kernels if bug is later found... well... that sounds like a disaster.

Sam Hocevar won DPL elections

[timecop]

Sam Hocevar won the Debian Project Leader election by 8 votes over Steve McIntyre

Re:Sam Hocevar won DPL elections

[timecop]

http://master.debian.org/~srivasta/leader2007/
more info here

the devs must be observing passover : )

[plasmacutter]

western nations base their entire diet around bread, so passover takes a huge chunk out of nerd diets (i know first hand), so to compensate for the scarcity of kosher food, they must have guzzled more caffeinated beverages.. thus resulting in the warp speed rush to 4.0 ..

well that's at least my theory : D

Re:the devs must be observing passover : )

[denttford]

Yeah. Why not guzzle caffeinated beverages? On Passover, Coke is real.

Look for the yellow cap, while they last.

List of Etch release parties

[Tyndareos]

If you would like to celebrate the release of Etch, check out if there's a party planned near you or throw one yourself :)
http://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyEtch

The Wow Starts Now!

[Jazzer_Techie]

Cue the:
Two releases in one day! This is like a turtle suddenly accelerating to lightspeed. It should shut up the people who say the Debian cycle is slow! Good thing they've nearly caught up to Windows; only 2.0 more versions to go!

In all seriousness, this stable came out over a year more quickly than 3.0 -> 3.1. That's nice to see. I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl.

Re:The Wow Starts Now!

[Seumas]

over a year more quickly Ouch. You hurt my brain, you bastard.

Foo Country

[itomato]

See you all in Foo City!

BYOFB! (Free Beer/Foo Beverage)

2010/01/01

Re:Foo Country

[alienmole]

I live too far away in Bar Town, you insensitive clod!

Kinda OT

[systems]

But I can't help but to think, life is changing

Distros are not a hot topic anymore
where are all the debate about the best distro
or the best desktop environment

the source based vs binary based

where is gentoo where is mandriva where is slackware

The distro arena kinda became dry, or it matured I dunno

Is it time to really standardize linux?

Re:Kinda OT

[xtracto]

where are all the debate about the best distro

It finished when user friendly distros based on Debian and with Apt became available...

In all seriousness I still remember (at the time of Red Hat Linux 8) that the "Debian" distributions was very criticised. Does anyone remember the "Lesbian Linux" parody?, and the Teletubbies parody of Mandrake (not that they have changed their style =oP)

Re:Kinda OT

[that this is not und]

I still think of it as 'Little Debian Snack Cakes.' If they wanted to do it right, the releases would have nicknames like 'Nutty Bar.'

Re:Kinda OT

[Zantetsuken]

Actually, the Debian naming conventions are apparently after the "people"/toys from the Pixar movie Toy Story - making it sound even more like its for little kids.

Note: I still haven't actually used pure Debian out of the fact that every time I've gone to their servers, there's *no* transfer speed. Which is kinda annoying because I finally got an iso just yesterday - but if what I hear is correct about how upgrading takes you to the next release, it should all be good (I'm used to Fedora where if you want the new release you're just as well reinstalling the system with the new version.)

Re:Kinda OT

[wellingj]

You should really give Debian a whirl. I have generaly stuck to Ubuntu on the laptop for ease of use,
but Debian has really gained some polish in this latest stable version so I'm running it on my Desktop.
So far I have no complaints. Etch did a lot better job configuring X than Sarge did when I installed it
on my circa 2002 IBM NetVista (odd name now...) with a 1.7 Celeron, which only has 256mb ram. Gnome
worked fine on startup, but I quickly installed Xfce (Fluxbox had some kind of problem but I didn't look
to hard into it) and now it's every bit as snappy as my computer at work (HP laptop, Win XP, 1G ram, Core Duo 1.8)

go figure.....

Re:Kinda OT

[Single GNU Theory]

My signature has been unchanged since I created my Slashdot account, but the retroactive-ness of signature changes here means you'd have to hit the Google cache to verify it.

I'll even admit that I was using the signature before I actually ran Debian. :-)

Re:How much of a role did Dunc-Tank play?

[cyphercell]

Doesn't seem like dunc-tank has done anything since '06, I might be mistaken but here's their press release
http://www.dunc-tank.org/press.html

Sources please?

[VGPowerlord]

I hate to nitpick, but is there any actual evidence that Etch will replace Sarge as stable today, or is this just unsubstantiated rumor?

Re:Sources please?

[jeffreymsmith]

See the draft etch release timeline. Looks like the release should be Sunday/Mondayish.

Re:Sources please?

[phrasebook]

Possibly this activity:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2007/04/m sg00007.html

Re:Sources please?

[mvdwege]

Strong indications, I'd say that the release will happen today, or within three days at most.

Yesterday I installed a new box in our home using an Etch netinstall disk, and found out after the install was ready that the /etc/issue file now referred to 'Lenny' instead of Etch.

Mart

Re:Sources please?

[jazzmans]

Debian Etch is officially stable. see www.debian.org

I'm downloading the xfce4 install image cd right now.

I'm also aptitude dist-upgrading my server from sarge.

Good Times!

jaz

Re:Sources please?

[X0563511]

http://www.debian.org/ reports 4.0 as stable.

finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[phrasebook]

For me there is nothing exciting about the stable release itself. The real significance is that all the new stuff backed up in experimental can start moving into sid, then into testing again. Debian should have a way of branching testing and making a release out of that branch, rather than bringing the whole thing to a halt while a release gestates.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[BJH]

You're misunderstanding the purpose of testing - it's there to help stable be stable, not to help sid be more.. um... unstable.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[phrasebook]

I know what the purpose of testing is, but that's just not how most people see it or use it. testing is the ideal happy balance for most Debian users and releases mess that right up.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[mcubed]

For many Debian desktop users, testing, under normal circumstances, represents the sweet spot of desktop distros: just timely enough, just stable enough; not as fast-moving or susceptible to breakage as Sid, not as hopelessly dated as stable. As a rule, not a bug-ridden as distros based off Sid (Ubuntu, etc.). Those circumstances change, however, when Debian goes into release-mode. And in Debian, releases take months to complete. Testing stagnates, at least from the point of view of those of us who normally prefer it to the other options out there. IMO, Etch is more outdated than I'd like and has been for a good four months or so. It may not be the purpose of testing from the Debian Project's POV, but that's the use many Debianistas make of it. Personally, I would be thrilled if the next time someone decides to derive a new Debian-based distro, he versions off testing instead of unstable.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[SnowZero]

Yeah that's exactly my sentiment. Every time my testing updates slow down in their rate, I know that a release is coming. After the release, development heats up again and I will have new toys to play with. It also means I can cut a few unstable/experimental tags from /etc/apt/preferences.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[gmack]

The downside to that idea is one of the reasons Linux no longer has an unstable branch. With two separate branches it's more fun working on the cutting edge new stuff rather than spending time working out bugs in the old.

With all new work grinding to a halt it forces developers to fix the bugs in the old before working on the new.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[Cthefuture]

If you want all that then it's already available and the branch is called Ubuntu. Even better is that it is stabilized and releases are made every 6 months.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[swillden]

If you want all that then it's already available and the branch is called Ubuntu. Even better is that it is stabilized and releases are made every 6 months.

Sort of. Ubuntu is a fine distribution, but they frequently don't seem to get the upgrade process fully debugged, probably mostly because the semi-annual release schedule is really aggressive. As a result, Ubuntu users have to accept that there's a good chance they'll have to do a complete system reinstall every six months, or else stay with a system that gets further and further behind the cutting edge.

The great thing about pure Debian is never having to reinstall. I'm typing this on a new Thinkpad T60p, with a 2.2 GHz Core Duo and 2 GiB RAM, but the system image running on it was first installed in 2001 on a Thinkpad 600E, with a 233 MHz Pentium II and, IIRC, 128 MB RAM. The image has been copied, complete with all of my data and preferred configuration, to two other laptops in between, and it has been smoothly upgraded by apt-get from potato (or maybe slink? Don't recall) all along the way. Hopefully Ubuntu will eventually get to where the same thing could be done with it, though I don't know that I'd have a reason to switch even then.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[phrasebook]

I don't want a stabilised branch myself. The whole idea of fixed releases coming out every X months is antiquated to me. I like the 'rolling upgrade' of running testing and I imagine that's how most people use Debian (on their desktops at least). The problem is that the upgrades stop rolling for months at a time once Debian decides to do a release.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[pogson]

All true, but many want to use their systems for productive work, not debug them. If you develop software and want to live on the cutting edge, testing/sid is your environment. I teach. There is nothing worse than showing an interested crowd some new software and having something freeze. Ask Bill Gates: http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9804/20/gate s.comdex//

Last year I installed a new system based on LTSP (http://ltsp.org/) on EdUbuntu. It was a few days before school started and I had the staff in my computer lab to show them the basics of the new system (teachers are usually not adventuresome like kids...). I was a few clicks into the presentation when a display driver started corrupting data eating away at the bottom of the screen. It turned out that good old Vesa driver did the job, but I did not figure that out during the presentation. What a flop I was! My boss dozed off! When school opened everything went smoothly except I did not have LDAP properly configured so some users had different passwords on different servers (not Debian's fault) and some memory going bad in one server. There are times when the software just has to work and that is much more likely with something that has existed in testing for quite some time.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[grumbel]

'stable' in Debian revers to the package dependencies and versions, *NOT* the software within the packages. If a driver has a bug and it get fixed you will sooner or later have that driver in 'unstable', there however is a good chance that you will *never* see that driver in 'stable', unless that bug is somehow security relevant, which most aren't.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[swillden]

What would the main difference, besides release scheduling, between the two distros, and what would be the benefit for me to check out Debian if I wanted to?

Release scheduling would probably be the most compelling reason to switch to Debian, either because you want the long-term stability of Debian stable (which you can probably also get with an Ubuntu LTS release) or because you prefer the daily micro-upgrade approach of testing or unstable.

Another potential advantage of Debian unstable is that, on average, its packages tend to be a little newer than Ubuntu's. There are exceptions, and those are largest just after an Ubuntu release. You could also use Ubuntu's development branch, but I understand that tends to be pretty rough. Debian unstable is actually quite reliable and rarely requires user intervention to untangle upgrade problems.

A third possibility is if you need/want packages that Ubuntu simply doesn't have. Ubuntu's repositories are large but they don't package everything that Debian does. According to my system there are currently 20,491 packages available for Debian unstable.

My recommendation, though, would be that unless you are unhappy with Ubuntu for some reason, (like you get tired of the big bang upgrades, or frequently need software that Ubuntu doesn't package) stick with it. The downside to Debian is that it's a little less polished, so you'll more frequently have to figure out how to make things work that would have been automatically configured on Ubuntu. I guess that's an advantage if you like being forced occasionally to figure out how things work, but a disadvantage if you just want to get stuff done. I know that Ubuntu would automatically configure some things that I do manually, but at this point I have all my scripts written to do everything so it's less work for me to keep what I've got.

Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again

[swillden]

Thanks for the input. Would there be any inherent danger or stupidity in adding Debian sources to my apt sources.list?

Danger? That depends on you, really. I've actually done this. I installed Ubuntu on my desktop, then decided after a few months that I preferred Debian, so I replaced my sources.list entries and started upgrading. Things broke, but not so badly that I couldn't apt-get them back into working. Doing so, however, required a moderately sophisticated understanding of the packaging system, including knowing what I had to be careful replacing. Eventually the system was converted to a pure Debian box.

If you're adding them, rather than replacing them, I'd definitely suggest setting a lower priority on the Debian repositories. Odd are that there are lots of packages that you could easily pull in from Debian and run on an otherwise Ubuntu system -- but there are also a few that might cause real problems if you replaced Ubuntu versions with Debian versions, unless you were prepared to work your way through the issues and convert most everything to Debian. If you prioritize the Ubuntu packages, though, you should only get Debian versions for packages Ubuntu doesn't have. Nearly all of them will work, and the ones that won't probably either won't install or won't hurt anything.

The great thing about *nix systems is that they're heavily componentized, and the components are largely independent. You can generally replace lots of stuff without breaking anything, and if you do break it it's usually not too difficult to boot from a LiveCD and fix it up. Still, I wouldn't recommend heavy mixing of the distros unless you're just doing it to see if you can, and are willing to deal with the problems you create. I wouldn't try the Ubuntu to Debian migration again, even though it worked and was interesting, because it was a lot of work. If your goal is to migrate, just back up and reinstall, it's easier.

Please have them...

[regexes]

update their news... or have I overlooked it somewhere?

cold day

[webmind]

I hear there is 2 souls for the price of one, on the devils iceskating track :)

Tags

[FishWithAHammer]

I wonder if the "holyshit" tag is appropriate here.

Re:Tags

[n6mod]

If you're dumb enough to have 'stable' in your apt sources file, that tag will become *very* appropriate.

BTDT. (when Woody released) Never again.

Haiku day?

[jtolds]

Distros are not a hot topic anymore
where are all the debate about the best distro
or the best desktop environment

where is gentoo where is mandriva where is slackware
The distro arena kinda became dry, or it matured I dunno
Is it time to really standardize linux?

Linux haiku fun
Debian is number one
Apt-get what you want
Stolen from http://www.allyourbase-arebelongto.us/node/24

AMD64

[Short Circuit]

Any word on when the updated AMD64 version will come out?

Re:AMD64

[pedestrian crossing]

Any word on when the updated AMD64 version will come out?

Etch includes AMD64.

Re:AMD64

[AndyCater]

AMD64 / EM64T is in Etch as a fully supported part of a stable Debian release.

Re:AMD64

[lgftsa]

AMD64 is in etch by default.

Now I get to downgrade two Sun x4200 machines, and do a clean stable install on a new pair. Here's hopeing that the SAS RAID is recognised as sda rather than sdi. GRUB was not happy!

Re:AMD64

[cortana]

FYI, if Grub guesses the correspondance between the order of drives-seen-by-Linux and drives-seen-by-BIOS incorrectly, you can correct it by editing /boot/grub/device.map. See http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/ Device-map.html for more info.

I have abandoned any hope that we will ever see PCs migrate off the shitty 20-year old architecture that makes this timewasting crap necessary. :(

Re:AMD64

[that this is not und]

What you're criticizing is what is known as an open architecture, no?

And you're saying it would be better if the architecture were defined more centrally, by one entity? I.e. closed.

Hmmmm.

Re:AMD64

[Ash-Fox]

Why not run Solaris on those boxes?

Solaris doesn't work on my Athlon 64 hardware. It doesn't recognize the SATA controllers nor does it have a 3d accelerated X-server with my graphics card.

Besides, it's slower (package management, admin tools, the same software I've ran on both OSes) and doesn't have a large repository (like Debian's) of software available on demand.

ven the guy who invented Debian has dumped it and switched to Solaris.

Ian Murdock went to work for Sun, but I can't find any information on 'switching' the OSes he uses.

Re:AMD64

[cortana]

I'll use Solaris once they turn it into a port of Debian.

obligatory Simpsons quote

[Krunch]

I, for one, welcome our new DPL overlord.

Article?

[gringer]

How can I not read the article if there's no article avaliable to not read?

Where's the actual source for this posting?

[advocate_one]

I can't find anything on the Debian site itself...

Re:Where's the actual source for this posting?

[AndyCater]

The source is a brief comment from me - which kdawson redacted. Preparations for release are continuing - .iso images are being built and "stuff" is happening. 3.1r6 was released late last night, as planned and on schedule. .iso's for that should be built after Etch's formal release. Various minor changes have already taken place - the last bit is the big final check and symlink switch over. oldstable -> sarge, stable -> etch, testing -> lenny. On past form, the website news may lag slightly, though this is not intentional. There will be support for sarge for a period - upgrades should be (relatively) seamless.

Re:Where's the actual source for this posting?

[AndyCater]

It's been pointed out that it's a good idea to read the release notes BEFORE upgrading in place. There may be kernel changes, daemons need to stop/start and a recommended procedure is in place to try and make this as painless as possible. READ THE RELEASE NOTES BEFORE BLINDLY UPGRADING PLEASE :) Did I mention release notes? They're cool you know and they can save you some time/worry/frustration. There are release notes provided, please use them ... :)

Re:Where's the actual source for this posting?

[Valtor]

http://www.debian.com/News/2007/20070408

The ISOs for Etch are already out there...

[jafo]

The ISOs for Etch are already available at http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/
Use the "bt-cd" or "bt-dvd" sub-directories for the torrents. The torrents are well seeded, I'm getting 3MB/sec (24mbps) download speeds right now.

A few useful torrent links:

i386:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/i 386/bt-dvd/debian-40r0-i386-DVD-1.iso.torrent
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/i 386/bt-cd/debian-40r0-i386-CD-1.iso.torrent
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/i 386/bt-cd/debian-40r0-i386-netinst.iso.torrent

AMD 64:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/a md64/bt-dvd/debian-40r0-amd64-DVD-1.iso.torrent
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/a md64/bt-cd/debian-40r0-amd64-CD-1.iso.torrent
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/a md64/bt-cd/debian-40r0-amd64-netinst.iso.torrent

Sean

Re:The ISOs for Etch are already out there...

[Respect_my_Authority]

Download mirrors:

http://www.debian.org/mirror/mirrors_full

Re:The ISOs for Etch are already out there...

[cortana]

It installs XFCE instead of GNOME by default.

Re:The ISOs for Etch are already out there...

[repvik]

It uses xfce as its default desktop environment?

Re:The ISOs for Etch are already out there...

[jazzmans]

Yes, it's xdm and xfce4. I just finished installing it on a machine. Very nice not to have all those gnome apps.

jaz

In tribute of this momentous occasion

[mushadv]

Hell and winged pigs have collaborated in an effort to simultaneously freeze over and fly. Unfortunately, Satan's poor planning concerning the sequence of these events has rendered the high temperature conditions of the pig launchers devastatingly unsuitable for the hopeful swine. Meteorologists the world over predict a torrential rain of bacon.

Re:In tribute of this momentous occasion

[evilneko]

I knew hell had frozen over yesterday, when it snowed in April, in TEXAS. This just confirms it!

Congratulations Debian!

[Respect_my_Authority]

Ah, Etch is finally out the door and it's time to start tracking Lenny. Congrats to all you developers whose amazing skill and hard work ensures that debian stays my favourite distro!

Sam Hocevar had this year the most interesting DPL candidate platform, IMHO. Not that my opinion matters 'cause I'm not a developer myself and, hence, not qualified to vote. Also, it doesn't look like the DPL would have much power to change things. Best of luck Sam -- this time next year we'll know how good you are in herding cats. And don't forget to write those regular DPL reports you promised in your platform.

BTW, does anyone have any idea why so many votes were rejected in this year's DPL election?

Re:Congratulations Debian!

[ct1972]

A lot of votes (267) got rejected. It seems that the accents in one candidate's name caused some problems with broken mail clients and the GPG signing. That didn't, as far as I can see, affect the outcome in anyway since most developers had plenty of time to recast their vote if it was rejected, and the problem was well discussed on the debian-devel mailing list. The announcement was at http://vote.debian.org/2007/vote_001.

Re:Congratulations Debian!

[tbtkorg]

Congrats to all you developers whose amazing skill and hard work ensures that debian stays my favourite distro!

Thanks for the gracious welcome.

Sam Hocevar had this year the most interesting DPL candidate platform, IMHO. Not that my opinion matters 'cause I'm not a developer myself and, hence, not qualified to vote. Also, it doesn't look like the DPL would have much power to change things.

If one may ask: why does it not look to you as though the DPL would have much power to change things? Or maybe the question is better put: what sorts of things did you have in mind to change? (The questions are asked, not to dispute your post, but for information only.)

Re:Congratulations Debian!

[Respect_my_Authority]

If one may ask: why does it not look to you as though the DPL would have much power to change things?

It's just the general impression I got after reading a former DPL's blog note, written about a year ago.[1] It looks like the DPL needs to be a resourceful negotiator rather than a strong leader in order to push changes into debian. If he can "sell" his ideas to other developers and convince them that the kind of changes he wants to make are desirable and good for debian, then things start happening. But it will be very hard to persuade so many developers to agree on which new direction will be the best.

Take, for instance, the various proposals to improve the release methodologies for Debian.[2] I would very much like to see debian testing to become a constantly usable "rolling release" with "beta" snapshot releases (a la "DebianInstallerReleasesAreDebianReleases"). Then there could be the actual high quality stable releases just like they currently are, and unstable would stay the free playground for developers to break things and to introduce new ideas and new versions of software. But I doubt that this kind of big change in the release methodology would be possible for the DPL to push without causing major flame wars. ;)

[1] http://www.cyrius.com/journal/2006/03/09

[2] http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseProposals

release-critical bug is not what you think it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't bugs that will prevent the release of Etch.

They are bugs that threaten the package's inclusion in Etch.

Re:woohoo!!!

[cortana]

Left the upgrade from woody a little late don't you think? ;)

Stop nitpicking. Time to party, dude...

[msauve]

Some people think it's party time, anyway.

Re:release-critical bug is not what you think it i

[Cyberax]

Well, there are bugs in QT4 which should be included in Etch and in imagemagick which is used in tons of projects.

Re:Blocking packages

[Cyberax]

Lots of these bugs are just small one-liner fixes, but they require testing on all supported architectures.

You have got to be fucking kidding me

[ZakuSage]

I literally spent the bulk of yesterday installing Sarge to a new server I set up. Son of a fucking bitch.

Re:You have got to be fucking kidding me

[jascat]

It's Debian. If you have stable in your sources.conf, you'll get upgraded next time you run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade (once it is released).

Re:You have got to be fucking kidding me

[Respect_my_Authority]

It's better to read the release notes first -- these notes warn about some potential SargeToEtch upgrade problems and point out a safe upgrade path.

http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/releasenotes

Re:You have got to be fucking kidding me

[petermgreen]

It's Debian. If you have stable in your sources.conf, you'll get upgraded next time you run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade (once it is released).
which is why admins with a clue don't put stable in thier sources.list (the installer used to do this but i belive it has been changed).

the reality is while the package managers get most stuff right there is nearly always some level of handholding involved in an upgrade from one stable release to the next (e.g. on sarge-etch it is easy to end up with no kernel installed if you are not carefull) and it certainly isn't something you want happening to you without warning.

use release codenames in your sources.list and read the release notes before moving from one stable release to the next especially if you do not know how to repair broken systems.

it's done

[alfino]

etch is out. Happy Easter.

Re:Debian Etch

[AndyCater]

Done. Mirrors synching - release announcement on its way. CD images available. Signed off by Debian release manager. Etch is go :)

Re:How much of a role did Dunc-Tank play?

[Lavene]

Not to ask any leading questions one way or another, but how much of a role did Dunc-Tank play in this release? Did their funding help or hinder the process? I don't think it did anything at all really. Two people working full time on bugs, pissing off a few people that did a little sabotage, and thousand developers not giving a damn about the whole thing that kept on working as they normally would... seem like the whole dunc-tank/ sabotage business was like pissing in the ocean... after three days without a drink!

Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 released

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 released

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of
Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0, codenamed "etch", after 21 months of
constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system
which supports a total of eleven processor architectures and includes
the KDE, GNOME and Xfce desktop environments. It also features
cryptographic software and compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and
software developed for version 3.1 of the LSB.

Using a now fully integrated installation process, Debian GNU/Linux
4.0 comes with out-of-the-box support for encrypted partitions. This
release introduces a newly developed graphical frontend to the
installation system supporting scripts using composed characters and
complex languages; the installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has
now been translated to 58 languages.

Also beginning with Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, the package management
system has been improved regarding security and efficiency. Secure
APT allows the verification of the integrity of packages downloaded
from a mirror. Updated package indices won't be downloaded in their
entirety, but instead patched with smaller files containing only
differences from earlier versions.

Debian GNU/Linux runs on computers ranging from palmtops and handheld
systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A
total of eleven architectures are supported including: Sun SPARC
(sparc), HP Alpha (alpha), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Intel
IA-32 (i386) and IA-64 (ia64), HP PA-RISC (hppa), MIPS (mips,
mipsel), ARM (arm), IBM S/390 (s390) and -- newly introduced with
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 -- AMD64 and Intel EM64T (amd64).

Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media
such as DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or from the network.
GNOME is the default desktop environment and is contained on the
first CD. The K Desktop Environment (KDE) and the Xfce desktop can be
installed through two new alternative CD images. Also newly available
with Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 are multi-arch CDs and DVDs supporting
installation of multiple architectures from a single disc.

Debian GNU/Linux can be downloaded right now via bittorent (the
recommended way), jigdo or HTTP; see for
further information. It will soon be available on DVD and CD-ROM from
numerous vendors , too.

This release includes a number of updated software packages, such as
the K Desktop Environment 3.5 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME
desktop environment 2.14, the Xfce 4.4 desktop environment, the
GNUstep desktop 5.2, X.Org 7.1, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4a, GIMP 2.2.13,
Iceweasel (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3), Icedove
(an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5), Iceape (an
unbranded version of Mozilla Seamonkey 1.0.Cool, PostgreSQL 8.1.8,
MySQL 5.0.32, GNU Compiler Collection 4.1.1, Linux kernel version
2.6.18, Apache 2.2.3, Samba 3.0.24, Python 2.4.4 and 2.5, Perl 5.8.8,
PHP 4.4.4 and 5.2.0, Asterisk 1.2.13, and more than 18,000 other
ready to use software packages.

Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 from the previous release, Debian
GNU/Linux 3.1 codenamed "sarge", are automatically handled by the
aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a
certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As
always, Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded quite painlessly, in
place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to
read the release notes for possible issues. For detailed instructions
about installing and upgrading Debian GNU/Linux, please see the
release notes .
Please note that the release notes will be further improved and
translated to additional languages in the coming weeks.

ISO download: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r0/i386/is o-cd/

Hope that T60p has a massive hard drive!

[Cid Highwind]

...the system image running on it was first installed in 2001 on a Thinkpad 600E, with a 233 MHz Pentium II and, IIRC, 128 MB RAM. The image has been copied, complete with all of my data and preferred configuration, to two other laptops in between, and it has been smoothly upgraded by apt-get from potato (or maybe slink? Don't recall) all along the way.

Hey, I'm trying to track down copies of X11Amp, libc5, and Gnome 1.0. Would you mind tarring up the ones on your laptop and mailing them to me?

Re:Hope that T60p has a massive hard drive!

[swillden]

Hey, I'm trying to track down copies of X11Amp, libc5, and Gnome 1.0. Would you mind tarring up the ones on your laptop and mailing them to me?

Sorry, apt-get deleted those years ago.

Re:Hope that T60p has a massive hard drive!

[Nimey]

I have my Debian 2.1 CDs around here somewhere. They're pre-Gnome 1.0, have libc5, and I don't know if X11Amp is on there, since my machine at the time was too slow for X. Want me to check for you?

Re:Hope that T60p has a massive hard drive!

[cortana]

Try archive.debian.org and snapshot.debian.net. The first archives old Debian releases, the second attempts to archive every version of every package ever uploaded. Its history probably does not go back that far, however!

Re:Sources please? (Link to Debian News)

[pogson]

http://www.us.debian.org/News/2007/20070408/

It is too good to be true, but this is not an April Fools joke.

Not a Debian dev, but

[sconeu]

Agree with the Pesach comment.

For you, plasmacutter, I have but two words: Matzah Brie, and lots of it!

PARENT IS NOT A TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, take a look at timecop's posting history.

Why is nobody even bothering to mention the fact that Sam Hocevar is a known GNAA troll and that his website has been used to host shock pictures and browser crashing exploits?

The silence on this issue is rather deafening.

Re:PARENT IS NOT A TROLL

[ajk]

Why is nobody even bothering to mention the fact that Sam Hocevar is a known GNAA troll and that his website has been used to host shock pictures and browser crashing exploits?

This was addressed during the campaign.

Re:PARENT IS NOT A TROLL

[Sam H]

I admit, Bill Clinton is my pot dealer. Who is yours?

Back to normal?

[pavon]

I know that slashdotters like to dig on Debian for having slow releases, but sarge is the only one that took a ridiculously long amount of time to get out the door:

1.1 - 1.2: 6 months
1.2 - 1.3: 6 months
1.3 - 2.0: 13 months
2.0 - 2.1: 8 months
2.1 - 2.2: 17 months
2.2 - 3.0: 23 months
3.0 - 3.1: 35 months
3.1 - 4.0: 20 months

I think that 18 months is a reasonable amount of time between stable releases. If Debian can stick close to that in the future then I will be happy.

Re:Do you know who SAM Hocevar really is?

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Yes I know who he is :).

Btw zoy.org isn't exclusively used by him even if it belongs to Sam, if you want to go to Sam's website, the proper URL is http://sam.zoy.org.

Yes he is somewhat of a troll and he's a GNAA member, a goatsex troll fan and certainly more, so what? He's also an excellent hacker and Free Software contributor (he played a major role in VideoLan/VLC which is now the best video player around here). What's more, his platform was the best. I for one am really satisfied with this year's DPL election.

Re:Do you know who SAM Hocevar really is?

[A.K.A_Magnet]

First I don't know who you're talking about, I'm not aware of GNAA hacking into corporate networks, but then again I highly doubt that Sam finds time to get involved in such play given his quite prolific contributions and the fact that he's got a job. Job + Debian/FS projects don't let much time to waste on child play. I doubt even more that he would condone such behavior. As for other illegal activities/sites, WTF? I can go to Secunia and click on a link that will crash my brother. The kind of troll the GNAA and Sam enjoy are the "Hi everybody, I'm looking at gay porno" style. I don't think it's illegal and I see the whole thing as pranks. I'd really like to know what kind of security breach/hack you're talking about.

Regarding people knowing who he is, on the contrary I think the Debian crowd knows very well who he is. He trolled enough on Debian regarding Dunc-Tank to be known for his "humor", website, GNAA involvement and activities. People just don't care because his external activities don't get in the way of his Debian involvement and qualities. Have you been trolled using VLC?

Another example would be Dattebayo and timecop who fansub the Naruto and Bleach anime watched by hundreds of thousands of people every week (yep, really). They are in involved in GNAA, and they regularly troll their fan base distributing fake Naruto torrents, but nonetheless the "official" releases are top notch and everyone loves Dattebayo releases. GNAA even succeeded in trollin CNN. But then again, I find them amusing rather than disruptive or harmful.

All-in-all, given Sam abilities and desire to make a better Debian, I think that his appointment as DPL is good to Debian (and Debian-based distributions) and to the movement as a whole.

Sam and GNAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Sam's not a GNAA member in any sense. He has commented about his trolling on planet.debian.org too. "My obvious social mistake was my Etch release stress-o-meter"

Re:Sam and GNAA

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Thanks for the links.

Why does this sound so familiar?

[alienmole]

Sources in Satan's inner circle are saying that the problems began after the project was outsourced to major services conglomerate Helliburton, on the advice of one of Hell's top minions, currently serving an Earthly stint under the name of Dick Cheney. An internal review board is conducting an investigation, and has questioned the wisdom of putting critical projects under the control of the demons responsible for the corruption of Earthly governments.

Re:Do you know who SAM Hocevar really is?

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Fortunately for me he stopped reading /. ;)

Re:woohoo!!!

[Billly Gates]

Wahoo and kde 3.x!

Re:Buggy kernel

[cortana]

Sounds like it is your hardware that is at fault. If you disable the onboard sound card in the BIOS then it shouldn't be visible to the operating system in the first place, or so it is with the hardware that I have used.

You can always put 'blacklist nameofmodule' into a file inside /etc/modprobe.d and that will prevent the module from being loaded at boot.