Debian 4.0 'Etch' Released

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier today we discussed the possibility that Debian Etch might be released soon. Well, according to debian.org, it has already happened. Etch has been 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.'"

Comments

Yay!

[Compact Dick]

I still remember my Woody days *sniff*

Re:Yay!

[wuputah]

Don't worry, you can still get a woody with etch.

*ducks*

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any loss of employment or productivity by clicking on any link in this post.

And its not even the 1st...

[arlo5724]

For a second there I thought maybe this was a late April fool's joke...

Re:And its not even the 1st...

[dirtyforker]

Don't be silly. Debian don't release their April Fool's jokes until October.

Re:And its not even the 1st...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did actually intend to release it on April 1st, but it got delayed ...

Re:And its not even the 1st...

[koxkoxkox]

Parent should be modded informative and not funny, as it is true : see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007 /03/msg00023.html

Our secret plan was to announce the release on April 1st
(that would have been fun, don't you think so :) ), but well - quality is
more important.

Multipath broken in debian etch!

[ljaguar]

etch ships with CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_MULTIPATH_CACHED (experimental) enabled in the kernel. This breaks the multipath route behavior in iproute. As the google search shows, it is wreaking havoc with anyone using multipath and dual-wan systems. Those who upgraded this morning to the new stable may be in for a ride. This is a known and documented issue but cannot be found in debian's bug tracking system. This issue is not unique to Debian but it should not have passed through the release engineering for the new stable release.

Re:Multipath broken in debian etch!

[ljaguar]

i didn't know about it until i updated and things broke.

as a debian stable user, there's a reasonable expectation that, after 21 months in development, they don't ship a kernel with experimental feature that is known to be broken?

I don't mean this is an experimental feature that breaks sometimes. This feature is just clearly documented to be broken. As in it doesn't work.

I only found out about the stuff that I posted because I updated this morning and all hell broke loose.

I know I should have tested it on a test machine before bringing it into production. (or maybe waited a bit) But this is a small machine in an informal setting. I don't have a test machine. But I do have 20+ users with slow internet. and it's really not asking for too much to expect a thing so blatant.

Re:Multipath broken in debian etch!

[cymen]

If you have no test system and the machine is providing service to users then do not upgrade to .0 releases. It's simple common sense. Maybe you had some overwhelming need to get this release that goes against the need to keep service reliable but you didn't mention it so I'll assume not. Let other people do the testing of that .0 release to find all the bugs and huge gotchas that are basically inevitable.

Re:Multipath broken in debian etch!

[dondelelcaro]

This is a known and documented issue but cannot be found in debian's bug tracking system. This issue is not unique to Debian but it should not have passed through the release engineering for the new stable release.

The reason why it slipped through the release engineering for the new stable release is quite simply because no one reported it as a bug.

If someone had reported it, it would have been dealt with and otherwise resolved. Indeed, it may still be resolved in a point release, but it definetly won't be unless you (or someone like you) who experiences the bug files a bug in the bug tracking system (using reportbug or your MUA). Since (as of a few days ago) no one has filed such a bug related in anyway to MULTIPATH_CACHED, it has not been fixed.

Considering the sheer number of people who (supposedly) use testing, none of whom apparently found the bug and/or bothered to report it, it was just not a popular feature to have been tested properly. Like it or not, a critical part of Debian's QA are the users who are using the testing and unstable distributions and reporting bugs. If they don't find it, no one will. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, there's nothing magical about being a Debian Developer in this regard; we're users too, and do the same type of testing.)

Re:Multipath broken in debian etch!

[Anonymous Coward]

When you start with Linux, you use the stock kernel, because it is easily available and works. When you gain experience, you start to compile your own. When you become a professional sysadmin, you use the stock kernels, because they are easily available and work.

Re:Multipath broken in debian etch!

[daveewart]

Any serious Linux user is capable of and knows the value of compiling their own kernel.

Which includes knowing when it is not necessary to do so. Unless you have extremely strange hardware, or very esoteric requirements for the system, the packaged kernels are absolutely fine. Building your own gains very little over the packaged kernels in these circumstances, either in performance or convenience; it will probably actually make life more complicated, as you will need to keep your kernel up-to-date manually, rather than just using the newer packaged kernel for your distro.

Shoddy rushed release

[canadiangoose]

So this is what happens when you rush a Debian release out in less than 2 years, eh?

Seriously though, this is a rather surprising bug to slip through.

Re:This release begs the question...

[Doctor Crumb]

Short answer: no. Long answer: not until those sites release their content in a format that can be legally distributed by debian. "Free Software" does not only refer to the price.

Next testing is "Lenny"

[cyber_rigger]

Debian's next testing version will be code named "Lenny" (from the movie Toy Story).

http://times.debian.net/1034-Release-update:-Etch+ 1-=-Lenny,-Call-for-Testing,-Time-shift

Missing package

[Bob54321]

Doesn't even include firefox...

Might take some searching:

[Kadin2048]

Just to follow up, by "non free repository," you'll need something outside the normal Debian repo system -- probably Penguin Liberation Front, certainly nothing U.S.-based -- in order to get that software. (Although I think the Debian/Ubuntu PLF mirrors are down at the moment.)

In addition to Flash (patent issues) and the Win32 codecs (patents), you'll also need libdvdcss2 (DMCA) if you want to play DVDs, and you might as well get LAME if it's not in there by default (god knows -- probably patents).

Putting
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ stable main
into your sources.list ought to work, but I'm not sure how actively that repo is maintained (it still lists sarge as the stable tree). The VideoLAN people likewise just have instructions for Sarge but hopefully that'll change soon.

Re:Might take some searching:

[Novus]

I am not a lawyer, but I have read the applicable law reasonably carefully, and I'm familiar with the cases mentioned here.

Redistributing the Flash player is less a patent problem than side effects of a restrictive licence. For example, openSUSE goes out of its way to install browsers compatible with its bundled Flash player; Novell apparently has a deal with Adobe to allow redistribution of acroread and flash-player. Debian seems to circumvent this problem by having the package installer download Flash straight from Adobe. Nice and legal either way (assuming Adobe isn't violating a patent somewhere or something like that, which I doubt).

libdvdcss2 is trickier. Using Finland as an example of an EU country (applicable law), the situation seems to be that you are allowed to circumvent CSS to watch a movie, but I'm not lawyer enough to tell whether CSS qualifies for legal protection (that depends on whether it's an effective copy protection mechanism, I think) and whether the law requiring the copyright holder/distributor to provide a circumvention device, if necessary, is applicable. You'd also be very hard pushed to argue substantial non-circumventing use, making redistribution quite risky. In conclusion, I think libdvdcss2 users in Finland are safe, but redistributors may have a harder time. Other EU countries should be similar, as most of this legislation originates with the EU.

The win32 binary codecs are, in part at least, straightforward copyright infringment (unlicensed derivative works), but haven't been subject to any legal action I've heard of. Some of the codecs developed from scratch (e.g. some MPEG variants) seem to need patent licences in some areas; this is the primary cause of problems with MP3 (openSUSE circumvents this by using Real's Helix engine for MP3 decoding, which is licensed).

In conclusion, the situation is a mess and if you want to be safe, stick to what the major corps tell you is OK. If it isn't, they take the heat.

Is it 1997 or 2007 ?

[Muki]

As I was recovering from a spring flu, I was bored enough and decided to upgrade from sarge to etch on my trusty old 600Mhz 256MB Compaq Deskpro. For the most part it went smooth and nice, but what amazes me is why the X stuff is still somewhat awkward. Hardware is certainly not bleeding edge. Maybe I'm just without a clue after a decade of professional multiplatform unix administration, but it sure beats me why X stuff still needs to be this clumsy - we're in year 2007, aren't we - ? Recently I installed two Dell 2900's at work and with Fedora FC6 it was surely as smooth as ever could be. Now someone jumps in and tells that 'Debian is not intended to be easy'. OK, but how is this intended to boost anyone's productivity to battle with stuff that was perhaps ok back in the early 90's ? Debian is such a stable (pun intended) and rock-solid platform to run servers on, I sure like it, but I'd like to see some minor refinements in getting wheels to roll. Used to run sarge at work, used to set up sarge systems for friends small businesses and home use, but have since then moved on to Fedora due to these unnecessary issues. Beat the living daylight out of me but I just don't feel like attacking the xorg.conf or XF....conf with vi anymore "cool" these days. Especially on very common hardware. Other than that, thanks for the debian folks for the release !

Re:Is it 1997 or 2007 ?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

For the most part it went smooth and nice, but what amazes me is why the X stuff is still somewhat awkward. Hardware is certainly not bleeding edge

apt is pretty magical, but expecting a dist-upgrade to upgrade your hardware is a bit much.

Re:Is it 1997 or 2007 ?

[krmt]

We know it's a pain, and it's a major goal for the next release. The Debian X Strike Force burned the entire release cycle moving first from XFree86 to Xorg, and then from the monolithic Xorg to modular Xorg. By the time it all that was finished, about a year and a half had passed and there was a few months to polish things up for the release. During this time, essentially an entirely new team was built up (only one person from the team that worked on XFree86 in Sarge is still an active member) and there was huge changes as the entire codebase was repackaged for 7.0 and we moved from a private SVN repo to git.debian.org, which was no small feat while we did our best to keep the updates coming at a good pace.

So expect to see some improvements to this stuff in the next year or so. A lot of work is happening at X.org to improve autoconfiguration, and Debian is moving to help develop it and deliver it to the users. Lenny is going to be really exciting from this point of view.

Re:So, which version of Ubuntu is this?

[alienmole]

It's Ubuntu's dad.

The *only* serious distro

[alienmole]

I'll see your flamebait and raise you...

Who takes a distro seriously

Oh please, does anyone other than script kiddies take any distro *other* than Debian seriously?
Let's see:

• There's Gentoo for the script kiddie/ricer set
  
• RedHat for the clueless corporate types who're lost if they can't use a purchase order to obtain it
  
• Fedora for the lost souls who haven't yet figured out that it's never going to recover from RedHat's abandonment
  
• Suse is a German distro owned by Novell -- see RedHat
  
• Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning "I can't configure Debian" (as someone's sig once said)
  
• Lots of other small distros with funny names that won't be around in two years time
  

OK, Slackware is great for hobbyists, I'll give you that.

So anwyay, which are the distros we're supposed to be taking seriously? Besides Debian?

Re:Too late?

[gweihir]

You know I spent a couple of years bitching about how slow Debian is to upgrade. Now I say let them be slow. They serve some market and plenty of other distributions serve those that want more up to date systems. Why change Debian? Slow releases are a core feature.

Actually, ''testing'' is usually reasonably current. If not, you can roll your own package or lock the package and install your own stuff over it. A bit of a pain, but that way I had X11 support for my 7600GT well before Debian had it.

I will likely be going to the next ''testing'' in a month or so.

Re:This release begs the question...

[Professor_UNIX]

Will I be able to have Debian perfectly handle [all] my basic multimedia requirements well by default? I would like to play Yahoo, CNN, ABC, BBC andd FOX video and audio by default.

No, but it's not really the fault of the Debian (or any GNU/Linux distribution) maintainers. Many of these sites are defective by design and only work properly with Windows... sometimes only with a certain version of a Windows web browser: Internet Explorer 6. As a MacOS X user it's a *little* less painful to get a lot of these sites to work in Firefox or Safari in order ot get streaming video to work, but by no means does everything run smooth. The situation is even worse with Linux in regards to how poorly these sites choose to support that platform.

The only thing I'm happy about is that most of these sites are migrating to using streaming video using a Flash-based player like YouTube does so they just use normal HTTP for the transfer mechanism and are simple to get working through a firewall. In the bad old days I had to worry about shit like RealVideo proxies, Quicktime, RTSP, PNA, Windows MMS, etc. While they're probably more efficient, they require your firewall to have a specialized application proxy and it's just an extra pain in the ass if they break the protocol in a new version. The sites that aren't using a Flash player are just streaming Quicktime/Windows Media over HTTP as well so it has the same effect. The main pain-in-the-ass site I experience is with CNN and FoxNews.

Re:Debian - still alive?

[Clazzy]

Ubuntu users do. Ubuntu completely relies on the Debian upstream packages for each release. Ubuntu them patches everything and submits the patches back to Debian. You could argue that Ubuntu could do all this by itself but Debian is massive and is known for its high packaging standards which is a good thing. Ubuntu and Debian, at the end of it, are two different things with two different goals. Debian wants stability, Ubuntu wants the latest technology and packages. Ultimately, Debian should still be important for servers and Ubuntu for the desktop. Just don't dismiss Debian yet.