Debian Maintainer Hints At September Release for Lenny

nerdyH writes "The Debian project's maintainer, Luke Claes, announced in an email Saturday that he will freeze the 'testing' or 'Lenny' tree, in preparation for a new stable release of Debian Linux in ... September! The freeze means that open source software developers have only a couple more days to package any applications that they want to be included in the next release of Debian — and by extension, in the inner sanctum source lists of distributions such as Ubuntu that are based on it. After the freeze starts next week, Debian maintainers will turn their attention to 364 release-critical bugs, and half-a-dozen high-priority goals. Given the work to be done, is September really feasible? Lenny always was a little slow getting back to his right place ..."

Comments

Packaging... meh.

[AllIGotWasThisNick]

only a couple more days to package any applications that they want to be included in the next release of Debian

If you've left packaging until the freeze announcement, you don't deserve to be included.

Re:Packaging... meh.

[AllIGotWasThisNick]

Moderation -1

100% Overrated

Sorry. "Frosty piss".

Obligatory "does it matter?"

[neapolitan]

I run Debian in several capacities -- stable on my work server, and unstable on my personal machine.

A lot of people are going to (quite accurately, I guess) point out that for anybody running unstable/experimental there is not much to this. I mean, release numbers are soooo 1990's, as a simple apt-get update; apt-get upgrade brings you up to the latest packages. Even experimental seems to lag waaaay behind other bleeding edge distros though (gentoo).

Of course, the release is more important for new installs or people running stable. I have been very impressed with Debian stable, the SSH bug nonwithstanding.

As software packages and Linux get more mature, I see the definition of a "release" issue becoming even less important for the non-server / non-corporate user. Continuous upgrades are the way of the future. Even on the M$ side this seems to be true, with their MS office 200x and "automatic upgrades."

Thoughts?

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[jchawk]

It matters in the sense that it's a way for Debian to release a new installer or move to a new standard for device management, but as a whole it doesn't *really* matter. If you are using "stable" in your sources.list verses the actually release name you'll in all likelihood just upgrade right along to the new release, and probably without much fuss.

I'm excited either way because I 3 Debian!

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Darkness404]

I'm excited either way because I 3 Debian!

Well, I 4 Debian so I beat you.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[AmonEzhno]

I agree that the release idea is a little outdated (especially being a freebsd user myself), however it is nice especially with desktop distributions to get new releases. I gather from your post that you seem to have a pretty good grasp of linux so it is not as much an issue for you or me, but more for the common(?) user. For example in ubuntu most releases indicate a significant change in feature set or update in packages. Most home users are not running unstable, so in all likelihood most users are not going to see the latest and greatest in features (unless they have some distinct need and compile from source); the point being that it is a cause for excitement and something to look forward to, at least in my experience.

On a side note: congrats to you for using Debian unstable, I have had poor luck in the past :P

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I 8 Debian and she loved it.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Cyberax]

No. I've tried several distributions with "rolling updates" but very often upgrades broke something on my machine. That is not a problem for me, but it WILL be a problem for Joe User.

Time-based releases two times a year are fine for most users.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Nimey]

I used to use Unstable years back, but thought better of it when a nasty lilo bug rendered my hard drive non-bootable. This would have been in the period between 2.2 and 3.0.

After that I switched to Testing.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Threesome?

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Bob54321]

I have to say the man has a point here. Rolling releases can be quite stable but every so often something will break and require you have a bit of knowledge about your system to fix it. Personally, I use Arch Linux and really enjoy using it, but I recommend other "stable" distros to people who want their computer to just work.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[jchawk]

LOL

Nice dude! I guess it (slashdot) eats the less then symbol to avoid posting html tags?

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Darkness404]

Yes, I think stray HTML tags get eaten up by /. to avoid posting invalid HTML that crashes IE.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[beav007]

I've never know invalid HTML to crash IE. I don't think I've ever know IE to take any notice of the code at all. From what I've seen, it downloads the page, strips the code, and then throws whatever is left at the screen...

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[wellingj]

Agreed. If you need Unstable you are either a Debian developer, should think about becoming a Debian developer, or better off using Gentoo.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[cheater512]

I agree, but rolling releases are bloody fantastic for power users who can fix the little odd breakage.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Sir_Lewk]

So invalid HTML is good for something after all!

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[HJED]

Time-based releases two times a year are fine for most users.

but wheres the fun in that? the best part about linux is constanly fixing it

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[yomegaman]

The problem with 'testing' is that it doesn't get security updates in a timely way. You have to do some gyrations to get the package out of unstable just that one time or else wait two weeks. That's how it was a few months ago anyway.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[benuski]

There's now a security repository for testing, just like there is for stable, and the repos are in a default sources.list if you install testing directly. http://secure-testing-master.debian.net/

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I stay on testing and I install a specific package from unstable or even experimental when I realy need/want it.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is illegal! You are breaking the law, and hurting yourself and your family with your ILLEGAL SOFTWARE. Your ip has been noted and is being forwarded to the SPA with a reccomendation that they investigate your CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. Please destroy all your unpatriotic linux software before the government finally cracks down on you people and you all end up as lampshades or soap.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Baloney.

I'm not a developer, don't even have any programming skills beyond light bash and python scripting, and yet I've run Sid on my desktop for three years now.

I've had one major bug hit me in 3 years. Iceweasel 3 seg faults every time I open it, and it's been doing that since 3.0 hit Sid. I run Firefox 3 to work around it. That's the only but I've run into that hasn't been fixed or I haven't discovered a work around for in a day or so in 3 years.

I run Etch on my servers, but as far as I'm concerned Sid is my desktop of choice. People always talk about the "cool" stuff in the latest Ubuntu release. Well, I've normally been using that technology for at least 6 months "before" it gets released in Ubuntu.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Jurily]

or better off using Gentoo.

I would, but I don't have a quad-core box yet.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Jackmn]

Use '>' and '<' for '>' and '<', respectively.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Darkforge]

I've never know invalid HTML to crash IE. I don't think I've ever know IE to take any notice of the code at all. From what I've seen, it downloads the page, strips the code, and then throws whatever is left at the screen...

It has been known to happen! http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885932 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811751 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913788 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909363

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[LostInTaiwan]

You should give Sid another try. I've been running it on my laptop since Woody release and and I'm no where near the level of a developer. I run stable on all my servers but Sid is the only way to go for laptops. Etch is a lot better than Woody, but for personal machines, Sid is even better.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[zsau]

As for me, of the machines I manage (my own and others in my family), the machines that cause the least troubles and have the happiest users are the ones running Debian Stable. I typically put Debian/testing (by codename) onto new computes as I acquire them, and once testing's become stable, I change them to stable. When I get a new computer, the old one goes to whoever wants it most.

The changes that happen to testing often bring nice new features with awful icky bugs that I don't really want to deal with, and change much too often to be bothered sorting things out. Stable is absolutely the way to go for home users who have someone who can manage their computer (but wouldn't manage it themselves, no matter what operating it runs), and indeed for anyone but people who want to spend too much time working with their computer instead of on their computer. The only problem is if you buy a new computer after the release it'll never support all your hardware...

In that spirit, I am excellently pleased a new Stable release will be coming up—and right on time too, because from about October I'll have much less free time to manage my computer.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[millosh]

I am using testing at my servers and unstable/experimental on my desktops and laptops. Actually, in some cases, like TV servers are, I am using there unstable/experimental, too.

At my old laptop, I installed unstable in late 2004 and ran that until February this year without any significant problem except that for some time I ran Firefox 3beta until it didn't become stable enough to go into Debian unstable (and became Iceweasel) :)

A week or two ago, after one of apt-get update--apt-get upgrade iterations I've got some (I suppose) Synaptic derivate: "live update". And I am now perfectly happy with a little wheel on my task bar which becomes orange when new updates are ready.

Besides that, installation of operating system may be interesting and funny at the beginning. But, after years of professional usage of different kinds of OSs, reinstallations became a very frustrating task for me. When I switched from SuSE to Debian in in the middle of 2004, I felt like I loosed a big rock from my neck: I didn't need to think about new major versions, I had always the latest stable software -- I didn't have to compile new Apache (with PHP and the rest of important modules) whenever some major feature was released...

I think that ordinary users are not *so* happy with reinstallations of the system and big upgrades (like switching from one version of Windows to another is), too. Software should be useful, not a goal per se.

So, yes, I think that in the future, software distributions will be based on upgrades: for free or for fee.

If similar is possible for, let's say, cars -- I am sure that the most of car owners would prefer silent fixes and upgrades than buying new cars and fixing and upgrading it manually.

Of course, there would be always people who prefer to do everything alone. But, I don't think that it is a majority. Or, at least, someone may prefer to play with car hardware, but not with computer (or even car) software or refrigerator.

In other words, if installing software is not your job or your passion, it is much better to spend your time in reading a book, playing WoW, having sex or whatever else, than in trying to do something which other people are doing much better for you, than you are able to do.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[ilovegeorgebush]

What the hell are you talking about? Using Sid is fine whether you're a Debian developer or not. I've used it for years on various machines and it's never bitten me. I do development in various languages and platforms, as well as need to compile C, C++ applications.

Your comment is typically elitest, and damnright wrong.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[petermgreen]

Using stable in your sources.list is generally a bad idea. Moving from release to release should be a concious dessision done with a copy of the release notes in hand. Going in with a blind dist-upgrade often causes problems which may be tricky to recover from.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[daemonburrito]

Good advice.

Etch is maintained to 2009-09. dist-upgrading a production server on release day, just for the fun of it, is probably a terrible idea. I'll be sticking with etch well into next year.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Eunuchswear]

If you are using "stable" in your sources.list verses the actually release name you'll in all likelihood just upgrade right along to the new release, and probably without much fuss.

Never do this in any kind of production environment! You'd be crazy to do any release->release update without testing your own apps first.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[potHead42]

Your comment is typically elitest, and damnright wrong.

eh? he's just speaking the truth, Sid certainly has some serious bugs now and then. I also got bitten by a GRUB bug which made my system unbootable, and with bigger transitions there's always some dependency breakage. but you just have to get accustomed to this things, and be careful when doing big upgrades. I still run Sid on my home machine and my personal server, but I would only recommend it if you already have experience with Debian.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[MadMidnightBomber]

Debian 'unstable' is still more stable than Windows. Don't mod this funny, I'm entirely serious.

PS. You wimps who don't like living on the edge can always use 'testing'.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

" Using Sid is fine whether you're a Debian developer or not."

Using Sid is fine... as long as it is *your* concious decision. But, please, don't advise others to use a distribution that it's considered a development tool, not a product for third party consumption, by its own creators.

"I do development in various languages and platforms"

So you are one of those that give a f* about stability and unconciously force non-needed dependencies just because you find cool to stay "in the edge", don't you? For a developer, staying on "Stable" should be a must, except when overwhelming needs explicitly force the use of newer underlying libs/tools.

"Your comment is typically elitest, and damnright wrong."

I'd say the same, but about yours, more that about the parent post.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[FakeSkeleton]

If you've got only a few machines, it's easy for you to say that upgrading is not a big deal.

However, if you have to administer a hundred machines in a company or university, it's not that easy. There's always something that goes wrong or requires extra configuration, and you have to test the new release with all sorts of hardware before you can consider pushing it to the users' desktops.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Daimanta]

Linux == Cannibalism?

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[ilovegeorgebush]

Using Sid is fine... as long as it is *your* concious decision. But, please, don't advise others to use a distribution that it's considered a development tool, not a product for third party consumption, by its own creators.

Absolutely. It's about the user here - as long as they accept that Sid is unstable, then that's OK. The risk is theirs. I wasn't advocating its use for all purposes. I just didn't agree with the statement that it was "only for Debian developers". Some people don't need it, but they want to use the latest software.

So you are one of those that give a f* about stability and unconciously force non-needed dependencies just because you find cool to stay "in the edge", don't you? For a developer, staying on "Stable" should be a must, except when overwhelming needs explicitly force the use of newer underlying libs/tools.

Your reading more than what was written. Don't put words in my mouth.

I want to stay 'on the edge' because I like using the latest development tools. I use testing on my production server because its stable and reliable. It all depends on what you're using it for of course.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[bsims]

I used to use Unstable years back, but thought better of it when a nasty lilo bug rendered my hard drive non-bootable. This would have been in the period between 2.2 and 3.0. After that I switched to Testing.

If you are going to run Unstable, apt-listbugs is a darn good idea. It might have spared you some grief.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been bitten once by sid. It was a couple of weeks ago. udev was updated and the rules in the udev update messed up the permissions on my devices. /dev/null was set to 660, and /dev/random was set to 660 with the user:group of root:root. OpenSSH could not start. Lots of error messages about not being able to write to /dev/null on login. Massive chaos and anarchy. I rebooted my machine because of a kernel upgrade (which was a PowerPC with LUKS on a LVM setup) and the machine would not recognize the LVM PV where / was located. Instead of fighting, I reinstalled (I wanted to dual-boot with OS X due to probably selling this laptop soon anyway) and all has worked fine since. I was happy that I had a backup schedule and had nightly backups of all of the work on the laptop.

It's very uncommon to be bitten by something in sid, especially if you have apt-listbugs installed - it automatically checks bug reports during apt-get upgrade and will warn you and allow you to pin (prevent update) of packages that have serious or higher priority bugs filed against the - but to say it doesn't happen is silly.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Nimey]

I rather doubt apt-listbugs existed in 2001. I'd certainly never heard of it back then.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[bsims]

You are right it entered the repository in November of 2002
according to the changelog.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[ceswiedler]

The fact that most Debian users recommend running something other than stable is exactly why Debian is becoming more and more irrelevant as a distro (as opposed to a repository for other distros). If you can't have a stable release which is frequent enough to actually be USEFUL to people, you've failed.

And moreover, to your point about how the grandparent's comment is "elitist, and damnright wrong": the problem with Debian unstable and testing isn't the stability of the individual apps (which is generally excellent), but the rate and unpredictability of change. Many people do not want to run a distro where packages will suddenly upgrade to versions with new features (as opposed to bugfixes), since that frequently requires at least configuration changes to keep existing functionality.

That said, if you're happy running Sid, more power to you.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh that lilo bug came at the worst time for me.
Back then Debian was my main desktop and I used Windows only for JBuilder. It was finals week in college and I was almost done with my final java project. I decided to take a break from programming and boot into Debian. I updated Debian system, rebooted and boom. Can't load Windows. Tried everything and couldn't restore the MBR. Had to struggle to find a place to move my data from the hard drive before I formatted it. That was the last day of using Debian for me and I've been on Windows and OSX since then.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[ais523]

A few years ago I wrote a web page which was simply a recursive frameset; each frame was the webpage itself. On the version of IE available at the time (I think it was IE4, maybe IE3), this was quite effective at crashing not just IE but the computer it was running on, because it would use up all available memory, and then crash both IE and Explorer. (The kicker here was that it realised it was running low on memory and put up a dialog box asking if you wanted to stop, but it continued whether you said yes or no until it actually ran out.) This bug was fixed years ago too (IE6 shows a blank page if it sees that sort of thing), so I don't mind telling people about it (and I never did anything with the resulting HTML other than run it myself to see what would happen).

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[shutdown -p now]

Agreed. If you need Unstable you are either a Debian developer, should think about becoming a Debian developer, or better off using Gentoo.

Regarding Gentoo, it's the other way around - if you use Gentoo, you're probably better off using Debian unstable. You get all the bleeding edge releases, and none of the mess with compiling. Plus, there are much fewer broken packages in Debian unstable repositories than there are in Gentoo ~* trees, and at least Debian can figure out when the dependency graph is broken before updating...

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[wellingj]

That is indeed where I do live. The moral: never live outside your means.

Re:Obligatory "does it matter?"

[marty23571113]

It matters in the sense that it's a way for Debian to release a new installer or move to a new standard for device management, but as a whole it doesn't *really* matter. If you are using "stable" in your sources.list verses the actually release name you'll in all likelihood just upgrade right along to the new release, and probably without much fuss.

I'm excited either way because I 3 Debian!

The "new" Debian GUI installer seem like its for the masses. I have a RAID 1 setup with two primary partitions as the physical RAID devices and a /boot partition on an extended partition (separate is required for booting). Thought I'd try the GUI installer. Bad mistake. It's just a "lousy" frontedn to the text installer EXCEPT you can't specify the location of the MBR. On a multiboot setup like mine that made Windows as well as other OS's unable to boot. Had to use terabyteunlimited BootItNG to recover MB funcionality. Don't use GUI installers blindly. Naturally you have no choice with Windows but who cares since it can only be setup on the first drive and partition anyway.

Lenny? Lenny?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

After the freeze starts next week, Debian maintainers will turn their attention to 364 release-critical bugs

Ow! I'm not supposed to get bugs in my eye!

Will the next release be Joe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Law and Order fans want to know.

Lenny?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about Carl? You can't leave them separate like that!

Lenny Brisco

[Maestro485]

It's about time we had some Law and Order in that rogue Debian distro!

Re:Lenny Brisco

[kesuki]

but but it said they're going to Freeze Lenny!
cryogenically preserved he won't be able to do much...

Re:Lenny Brisco

[Trogre]

Not Lenny!

Re:Lenny Brisco

[Anonymous Coward]

No worries. Squiggy will just set his hair on fire and thaw him out.

Re:Lenny Brisco

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian Release Critical Bug #12:
Ah, my eye! My doctor said I wasn't supposed to get pudding in it.

Re:Lenny Brisco

[unPlugged-2.0]

Oh my god they killed Lenny. You Bastards!!!

Re:Lenny Brisco

[Maestro485]

Watch it, if Jack McCoy gets wind of this you're fucked.

I didn't do it, man, I only said it.

[iminplaya]

Oh wait...Wrong Lenny.

I use Slackware, the one, true Unix like operating system... Punk!

Freeze just now?

[gmuslera]

So next stable Debian version will not have KDE 4.1?

Re:Freeze just now?

[bh_doc]

Put simply, no. See: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/01/msg00001.html

Re:Freeze just now?

[jd]

Just looked through the Debian package list. Looks like there's a lot I'd have expected that isn't there (ATLAS seems to be missing, as are the MUMPS and Fortran 95 programming languages - gfortran's f90 support is considered an old dialect, buggy and inadequate by a number of Fortran sites, and I didn't see Erlang on the list either). There are also a lot of ancient versions. For example, HDF5 1.6.6 has not been supported for some time. HDF 1.6.7 is the supported current version in the 1.6.x branch and has been since February, but the website makes it clear that the 1.8.x branch is intended as the official current release.

This is something that isn't Debian't fault -- there are way too many packages with way too many updates and far too few people helping -- and is something that all distributins suffer from. The specialist distros may help, but I don't like the concept. Beter to have a single core distro with extensions for specialist needs, as then you can combine extensions according to problem-space rather than dealing with the version hell that always happens when you mix distros.

Re:Freeze just now?

[xenocide2]

You have confused me:

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=erlang

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/gfortran

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/atlas3-base

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?ordering=normal;archive=0;dist=unstable;repeatmerged=1;src=hdf5 reports no bugs of any kind reported -- You should send bugmail requesting the new release of HDF5 if it really is stable.

(Mumps is missing, but I really wouldn't say I was missing it.)

Debian is renowned for its breadth of packaging; just how did you go about looking through all 16 thousand packages?

Re:Freeze just now?

[jd]

Being confused is healthy. G95 (g95.sourceforge.net) is NOT gfortran, which is a Fortran 90 implementation, not a Fortran 95 implementation. gfortran is also listed by organizations such as NASA as not to be used due to severe bugs, with instructions to use g95 instead. Hey, I can only go by what they say. I can't access the other pages you linked to - I suspect they're now slashdotted. However, HDF5 1.8.1 is extremely stable and is the version people are supposed to be using. No idea what version of ATLAS Debian is using, but the latest stable (and yes, it is stable) version is 3.8.2. If Debian is using anything later than 3.6, I'd be surprised. MUMPS is used in specialist areas. By not including it, it obviously won't impact anyone who does use Debian since, if they needed MUMPS, Debian isn't something they'd use. It's self-fulfilling and therefore quite useless as a measure of interest. The question should be one of "if MUMPS was included, what changes would there be in the size and nature of the userbase, if any"? That is entirely different, as it does not fall into the recursive dependency trap.

Re:Freeze just now?

[jd]

Ok, I finally got a response back from the atlas3 link you gave, but you might not like it. I'm thinking it's a false message, though, and more of a timeout issue:

Error

Package not available in this suite.

Re:Freeze just now?

[Anonymous Coward]

(ATLAS seems to be missing, as are the MUMPS and Fortran 95 programming languages - gfortran's f90 support is considered an old dialect, buggy and inadequate by a number of Fortran sites, and I didn't see Erlang on the list either).

I don't know what list did you read, but Lenny includes ATLAS (libatlas-* 3.6.0), gfortran 4.3, which includes fortran 95 support and many 2003 and 2008 extensions. Also Erlang is available through the erlang package.

Re:Freeze just now?

[petermgreen]

his link was wrong

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/libatlas3gf-base

Re:Freeze just now?

[gnalle]

I am getting curious here. Do you have a link to a webpage where NASA instructs people to use g95 instead of gfortran? I would like to read that. BTW: I also had problems with early versions of gfortran, but I believe that the compiler has improved.

Re:Freeze just now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Complaining about not having ATLAS binaries is stupid anyway. You're supposed to compile ATLAS from source. The make scripts profile and benchmark your hardware, and automatically tunes the library. That's the "Automatically Tuned" part of "Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software". If you don't tune, you might as well just run BLAS.

Re:Freeze just now?

[Rolgar]

This does seem like a bad time to freeze, but the package I was thinking of is OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is scheduled for September, especially when the wait for the next Debian release (based on history) won't be until 2010. That, along with Firefox 3 would really make a great base system. I use testing, and will get OO.o 3 within a week of it being available, and I guess you've got to freeze sometime, but I think you should really look at at major packages like that when you set a date for a distro release.

Re:Freeze just now?

[gmuslera]

September is more than a month away. KDE 4.1 is supposed to come out in 4 (?) days.

Re:Freeze just now?

[jd]

Ok, I'm going to have to make one of those rare corrections. (ha!) It was on the fun3d.larc.nasa.gov website and on some of their other CFD pages, but is no longer present. If you go to g95's website and look under status (or just go to http://www.g95.org/g95_status.html), and look for fun3d, you will see an excerpt from the authors to the same effect.

Re:Freeze just now?

[jd]

Fairy nuff. Still, the stable version is 3.8.2, not 3.6.0, so there's still a distinct gap in updates, though it's not as bad as I'd thought (ie: missing).

Re:Freeze just now?

[xenocide2]

Well conferring with an Ubuntu developer I know, he suggested you should look at Debian Science and Debian SciComp, if you think there's too many packages and too few people for specialists. They seem to be quite healthy. You might ask them why the Debian gfortran package is described as a f95 compiler if you believe that it's not. And take a look around while you're there -- you might discover Debian is more substantial than you thought.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

A new release already? That doesn't sound right.
This isn't the Debian I grew up with.
Something's fishy.

Re:What?

[WK2]

This is just a release announcement. As usual, they give you the month, but not the year.

Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[SuperBanana]

I've noticed that Debian, Mozilla, and Gentoo all have a nasty habit of saying, "that's not a bug!", and then when finally convinced:

"Well. We can't look at it for THIS release." And then your perfectly valid bug is shuffled off into a nice category where it won't upset their bug count for the release effort.

Note that the total number of bugs in Lenny is actually around 1800- only by a pretty fine comb have they been able to claim "only" 360 bugs.

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[setagllib]

There's a big difference between a release-critical bug (one that would basically ruin a whole release for everyone) and an annoyance (such as spewing diagnostic messages under certain circumstances on certain hardware).

Ubuntu has stuck to its schedules by releasing with plenty of release-critical bugs still in the air, and fixing most of them in post-release updates. That's cool for getting a release out there, but it basically makes every official release feel like an RC1.

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[SuperBanana]

an annoyance (such as spewing diagnostic messages under certain circumstances on certain hardware).

A system which spews diagnostic messages will fill up /var, and is far more than an "annoyance". If Debian Stable had such a bug, it would be inexcusable. People rely on it to run critical production systems.

How often do we complain about vendors shipping buggy software? And look at the graph for bugs for stable- in the last few months, it's skyrocketed!

Ubuntu has stuck to its schedules by releasing with plenty of release-critical bugs still in the air, and fixing most of them in post-release updates.

Yeah, I still shudder from the utter mess of Gutsy upgrades from Feisty. Not a single Ubuntu user in the office had a clean upgrade...

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[setagllib]

You're right, my example about diagnostic messages was a bad one. Nevertheless I've had dodgy hardware that produced regular messages on Linux and even BSDs, and while I didn't file a bug for it, I can see how somebody else would. Diagnostic messages are there for a reason, and it's usually your hardware's fault if they're flowing too thick.

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[xenocide2]

The problem with local investigation of upgrade quality is that dumb ideas spread locally ;)

I.e. one guy tells a friend about a package, and its upgrade is broken. Perhaps it was a third party package containing the old artwork and themes without setting up dpkg-diverts correctly. Or maybe one guy sets up everyone's computer in the office, and uses Automatix every time. It's hard for me to say who's fault it is or debug the past.

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[FooBarWidget]

"A system which spews diagnostic messages will fill up /var, and is far more than an "annoyance"."

Yeah, so instead of the 8 years that it would normally take to completely fill up /var, it'll now take 7 years and 11 months. Boo hoo.

Different bugs have different severity. Get used to it.

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Note that the total number of bugs in Lenny is actually around 1800-"

No it's not. you fail at research. 1800 is the amount of RC bugs in etch, lenny and sid.

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[turbidostato]

"A system which spews diagnostic messages will fill up /var, and is far more than an "annoyance". If Debian Stable had such a bug, it would be inexcusable. People rely on it to run critical production systems."

Such a problem may be by itself a "critical" bug, but then, making the offending package dependant on logrotate (if not already) and configuring it to rotate logs at a sane rate would avoid /var being filled by default, thus lowering the buglevel from "critical" to "normal". Maybe such a solution is not good enough for you, but it is reasonable and as long as it is good enough for the guy doing the hard work, it's the solution that you will find on the end product -but, hey, you are not only free but even hailed to offer your own hard work to reach for an even better solution.

Engineering efforts are always full of trade-offs or else functional goals would never reached (things can be always done better -at the cost of the diminishing returns law). But then, as every other effort where people is involved there might arise (and *do* arise) personal conflicts. That's what the technical comitee comes into the equation.

Morale: the more you get involved into the Debian world the more tools you get to make it aligning towards your goals, and that's what open source is all about -but, hey, if you find what it's for you a better deal, for instance putting your money on an "enterprise" distribution such as Red Hat, or even Microsoft Windows, by all means go for it.

Re:Will they keep the bug count artificially low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single Ubuntu user in the office had a clean upgrade...

I did.

If only...

[jd]

...this release had been called Lemmy instead, the jokes would have been, well, I guess louder for a start.

It is feasible

[ghostbar38]

There's quite a lot of stuff to do but in august there'll be the debconf in Argentina and I believe there'll be a lot of work made during this conference hopefully releasing a lot of weight of the goals established for lenny...

Debian: Last year's software... tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said.

Open Java

[spikeb]

Is either icedtea6 or openjdk going to make it for lenny?

Re:Open Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out here:

http://packages.qa.debian.org/o/openjdk-6.html
http://release.debian.org/migration/testing.pl?package=openjdk-6

Looks like it is blocked by a new FTBFS on sparc.

September?

[Anonymous Coward]

And maybe I'll buy a ranch and breed rabbits.

Re:September?

[Kjella]

Sometime during Eternal September.

More current packages that Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

[Anonymous Coward]

Lenny will have more up-to-date packages than Ubuntu's latest LTS offering. For once (momentarily) a stable release of Debian will be ahead of the current LTS Ubuntu release!

Re:More current packages that Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

[smchris]

Guess it depends on where Ubuntu will be in September. I'm on an 8.04 64-bit boot today. If I can fix the Samba and ipp funkiness, I _might_ consider switching from my Lenny boot for the 64-bit coolness.

Pretty much half of one, half of another from what I see. Not using FF3 on Debian because they didn't have the DOM-inspector package last time I looked and Ubuntu does. Debian pushed Drupal5.8 last week, Ubuntu pushed a 5.7 security update this week. So if you use both packages, which distro is ahead?

The one thing for sure is that Heron is pretty and I have never gotten compiz to work properly in Lenny (maybe because nvidia-glx is only in unstable?).

Re:More current packages that Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

[angrykeyboarder]

It won't go that far, but it will be damn close and I have to say I'm impressed.

Their previous "new" releases were old at the same time as they were "new".

I installed Lenny last week (I've not used Debian in about a year or so) and I was practically "shocked" at how up to date it is, given that the final release is coming up.

Kudos to the Debian team!

Now if they could just do something about that Iceweasel/Icedove/Iceape/Iceowel nonsense...

Why the name "Lenny"?

[kyjl]

Trump Ubuntu in their weird names, call it Lemmy instead.

You might at least get a good look at Debian from people other than us just on the name alone.

Re:Why the name "Lenny"?

[arrenlex]

All Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters. Lenny is a pair of binoculars with feet.

Re:Why the name "Lenny"?

[angrykeyboarder]

I've always found that odd. I never thought of "Toy Story" as a movie that is popular with geeks.

I'd have thought Debian would have named its releases after character from a Sci-Fi or Fantasy movie rather than a (very good) animated (for kids of all ages) movie.

Nevertheless, I think it's much cooler than using something from Sci-Fi or Fantasy (genres I don't care for).

Re:Why the name "Lenny"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody know what is the name of the next testing, i.e. when lenny becomes stable?

Re:Why the name "Lenny"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'd definitely classify a movie about living toys as fantasy. You know, I've never managed to catch my toys running around by themselves. But perhaps it's just me and my stompy feet.

As regards the connection between Toy Story and Debian, Bruce Perens, who was the Debian project leader at the time of the first three stable releases, used to be employed by Pixar, the producer of Toy Story (see, e.g. http://condor.madoka.be/various/bruce_perens3.pdf). I also seem to remember something about Pixar donating servers to Debian at the early days of the project, but unfortunately I'm not able to find a link to back up that claim.

Regards, Simo Kaupinmäki

Spinal Tap

[pipingguy]

Is there (or will there be) a Squiggy?

About time!

[_Shorty-dammit]

I can't believe how bad the sentences are for killing a rabbit.

Re:About time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only two references so far? No one has read Steinbeck? (Or watched the movie?)

Immediately I associated the name with a violent retard who ended up shot in the head by his best friend.

Otherwise it's been:
Law and Order
Laverne and Shirley
The Simpsons

All TV shows...

And not a single Lenny Bruce joke? (He's not afraid!)

Ubuntu isn't based on Testing

[tolan-b]

"and by extension, in the inner sanctum source lists of distributions such as Ubuntu that are based on it"

Ubuntu is built off a snapshot of Unstable, so I don't see how Debian's freeze will affect it.

Re:Ubuntu isn't based on Testing

[Fri13]

Because Ubuntu is snapshot of unstable, isn't a LTS version somekind "snapshot" from the "Stable"?
Like now Canonical can maintain LTS version again longer when Debian's unstable where current LTS is, change to Stable?

Re:Ubuntu isn't based on Testing

[Anonymous Coward]

Because when Testing gets frozen a lot less packages get added to Unstable. (i read this on debian's website a few days ago).

Re:Ubuntu isn't based on Testing

[ichthyoboy]

Because Ubuntu is snapshot of unstable, isn't a LTS version somekind "snapshot" from the "Stable"?

Nope...it just means that they will support it longer (security updates for 3 years for desktop, 5 years for server) than the regular releases (18 months for server and desktop). Hence the Long Term Support moniker.

Re:Ubuntu isn't based on Testing

[petermgreen]

Ubuntu is built off a snapshot of Unstable,
Not exactly, changes are auto-imported from debian unstable only for packages that don't have any ubuntu specific changes.

so I don't see how Debian's freeze will affect it.
Debian tries to keep testing and unstable pretty close to each other. Changes in unstable that are not wanted in testing can be a major PITA when bugs need to be fixed (there is another way into testing but they prefer not to use it because the packages get far less testing when they are introduced by that route).

So while unstable is not technically frozen developers are strongly discouraged from uploading stuff to unstable that are not intended to become part of lenny

Re:Ubuntu isn't based on Testing

[Rolgar]

Well, the early releases of Ubuntu were based on stable, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that they aren't anymore. Ubuntu has made enough changes to their system that haven't been passed into Debian that I don't think they use testing as a base system any more. The best way to prove that though would be to find if there were packages from stable or unstable Debian in the Ubuntu release.

The LTS is a Canonical business distinction that specifies that this version has longer patch and fix support. Regular releases are supported for 18 months from release (so they support the 3 most recent releases at a time), but the LTS is supported for 3 years, which is good for businesses which tend to be more conservative in upgrading. So in two years, besides the 3 most recent releases, HH will still be supported.

How the history get changed

[Fri13]

Just to mention, this is oddly enough that Mandriva get's called as GNU/Linux and Debian gets called as Linux.... :-)

Because no one anymore cares what does something mean and why it

Can't wait!

[djveer]

I'm pretty excited about this. I run Etch on a handful of servers and i've never seen a Linux distrib have such a wonderful combination of absolute stability, ease of use, and community support. This is, of course just my opinion ;) Can't wait for Lenny!

September?

[Cro Magnon]

Great! Did they say what year?

Corrections...

[Maulkin]

1) It's Luk, not Luke
2) He's a Release Manager, not the Debian project's maintainer. Whatever that is.

Software quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly, Debian has its problems, but first of all, it is from my perspective the operating system distribution that is most quality focused. At the same time it is the one that is easiest to use.

The stability of "stable" is legendary and outperforms everything else in the industry. The fact that you can run "testing" or "unstable" and update your working environment every day, if you so wish is awsome.

I have been updating my systems very frequently for the last 10 years or so, and only once, on one machine have I had to reinstall the system from scratch. In all other cases I have been happily doing dselect/apt-get/aptitude to bring the lastest releases of software onto my computer.

Certainly, there were some breakages in "testing" some years ago, but the Debian project has improved the stability immensely. Thuis cycle, I haven't experienced a single bothersome problem.

I used to roll my own Linux kernels and I used to install the latest versions of Firefox and some other software that I considered to be too skow to show up in Debian, but I have stopped doing that. The lag is fairly small these days and if there is a delay, it is usually because of a problem I'd rather not battle with.

I've come to a point where a software package has to be _very_ compelling for me to install it from source. I have better things to do with my time than wrestle with compilations, installations and upgrades. The volunteer Debian maintainers are doing that for me and I am _very_ grateful.