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Debian Lenny Installer RC1 Arrives

Posted by timothy on from the not-lenny-from-of-mice-and-men dept.

nerdyH writes "It appears that Debian 5.0 (aka "Lenny") will soon take its big binocular eyes out into the wider world. Only two months later than expected, the Debian project has completed the first release candidate of Lenny's installer. Featuring much faster installation from "live" CDs, and expanded support for ARM-based devices such as NAS servers, Lenny has gestated for 19 months, compared to 21 months for the previous "Etch" release. Lookout, world, Debian releases are picking up speed! The download is here."

23 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. why bother with a liveCD? by thermian · · Score: 3, Informative

    Lets be honest, almost everyone interested in Debian won't be put off by its already excellent text based installer. Has it suddenly become 'old fashioned' or something?

    Anyone of the livecd liking type is likely to be better off with Ubuntu. Well I think so anyway.

    --
    A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
    1. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by squisher · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nope, I disagree. I have no problems with a text installer, but I still think the live cd installer is a useful feature. I'd prefer to use that if I have the option.

      I just think it is nice to have the option to do something with the computer while it's installing. Installing is I/O heavy, so i.e. surfing the web or playing a little game does not slow it down.

    2. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by renegadesx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Knoppix: "Hey, I'm still alive you know!"

      Poor old Knoppix, really was the first to prefect the whole LiveCD thing and now its commonplace amongst distro's most people forgot where it really came from.

      --
      Make SELinux enforcing again!
    3. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by mpapet · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've been a Lenny user for at least 6 months and performed a number of server and desktop installs with some versions of the new installer.

      The most important part of the installer that has changed for the better is you can easily start the installation by selecting from gui and text options from a menu. The Etch installer you had to type something to start the installer.

      The Lenny installer runs circles around the Ubuntu installer. Among other cool details you can configure LVM, or software raids prior to the disk formatting and installation.

      I got KDE4 packages from http://kde4.debian.net/ Absolutely the best way to go for kde4.

      --
      http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
    4. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by rcw-home · · Score: 3, Interesting

      most people forgot where it really came from

      Yggdrasil?

    5. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm inclined to agree with you on that one. I have nothing against text based installers(heck, I don't mind the bit in the OpenBSD installer where it recommends a calculator); but LiveCDs are really useful on occasion, and making a LiveCD that can also be an installer is an obvious convenience measure. I wouldn't mind having the LiveCD installer just be the text based installer in a window; but LiveCDs are an obvious good, and once you have a LiveCD, adding an installer is simple and useful thing.

    6. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by paganizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm using Debian know. But I would switch to whatever Distro that allowed me to run Compiz Fusion (or even Beryl) on a Nvidia card without sacrificing a large portion of my life to researching "how?".
      I'm NOT a linux geek. or a windows geek, for that matter. But I have been running slackware since 95, maybe 94, was a solaris & hp-unix sysadmin before I turned to the dark side and went primarily into Wintel-related jobs. If it was simple, easy, or even moderately difficult to do, I could do it.
      But I just don't have the time or spare brain cycles right now to research in-depth something that is just to make Vista users shut their yap about glass.

      --
      Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
    7. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by thermian · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh go fuck yourselves mods!

      Dude, if we could do that, we wouldn't be here modding comments, would we....

      --
      A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
    8. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by somersault · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Anyone of the livecd liking type is likely to be better off with Ubuntu. Well I think so anyway.

      You don't need a full LiveCD to do a graphical install, so I don't see what that has to do with anything. Has it occured to you that it might be nothing to do with the installer?

      I have gone through plenty of text based installers over the years without issue, they're basically exactly the same as the graphical installers, just the graphical ones aren't as fugly. What's wrong with wanting to make things look better? Not 1337 enough for you?

      For me it's always been about being able to test out the distro with your hardware, or just seeing if the latest version is worth upgrading to. You can do that in a VM but that doesn't test with your actual hardware (depending on the solution you're using). The Ubuntu 7 liveCD would just lock up on my machine before it ever got into X, but 8.10 went right on through and even had support for my laptop's wireless card, keyboard backlight and function keys etc, so I knew the driver support was finally good enough.

      LiveCDs or USB based distros are also useful for IT support stuff like verifying if some hardware isn't working because of Windows or because it's just plain broken; also for recovering files or performing other maintenance on an OS that won't boot, etc.

      --
      which is totally what she said
  2. Don't install Lenny! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It has very poor mouse support.

    1. Re:Don't install Lenny! by eln · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oh come on mods, this was funny! I think someone needs to get a little culture.

      It's well known that Lenny does not do well with mice. Or puppies, for that matter.

    2. Re:Don't install Lenny! by the_humeister · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or women...

    3. Re:Don't install Lenny! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or bullets to the back of the head...

  3. Re:What about bugs? by jonadab · · Score: 5, Informative

    > What about release critical bugs? Currently there are 173 of them:

    Most of those bugs are not in the installer. If you read the summary (not even the actual article, just the summary) carefully, you'll note that this is a release candidate of the *installer*, not of the whole distro. I would imagine the distribution as a whole is probably still on schedule for the originally promised timeframe of "when it's ready".

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  4. Re:Lesbian Denny? by Ecuador · · Score: 2, Funny

    My bad. I guess not many /.ers would like to read about lesbians rather than debian...
    I would swear there would be Ubuntu & Opensuse fans here ;)

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  5. A couple of months more, perhaps... by Respect_my_Authority · · Score: 2, Informative

    Only two months later than expected, the Debian project has completed the first release candidate of Lenny's installer.

    Unfortunately, an installer RC is not the final distribution release.

    Lookout, world, Debian releases are picking up speed!

    I don't think so. It'll still take a couple more months before the final Lenny release will be out. There will yet be another installer release candidate (RC2), and that will also need some further testing before the final release.

    Still, I think the Lenny release will be well worth the wait for users who want a stable server OS. (Desktop users would prefer Debian's "testing" branch because it has more up-to-date software.) Debian doesn't put out half-assed and buggy releases just to meet arbitrary release dates, like Ubuntu does. Debian won't make a stable release until it's really ready and stable.

    1. Re:A couple of months more, perhaps... by Respect_my_Authority · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Also Debian has release cycles, you know. But while Ubuntu's release cycles are inflexible and tied to arbitrary release dates, Debian's release cycles are more flexible and they can afford to wait until the release has actually become stable and ready.

      You mention GNOME and Linux as examples that other projects should follow, but you should remember that the early GNOME2 releases were unusable crap, as were were the early Linux 2.6 releases. KDE4 also makes time-based releases now, and so far their releases have been crap. But once GNOME2 and Linux 2.6 matured, they started to make quite usable releases. And it looks like KDE4 will also mature soon, so I'd expect they'll too start making usable releases in the near future.

      With distros it's a bit different, though. Distros package software from various sources, and they can refuse to include software that they consider to be just development previews (like early GNOME2, early Linux 2.6, or early KDE4). Distros can cherry-pick stuff that is known to work without problems, if they want to. Or they can include the latest and greatest versions of software and then put their hands together in prayer, hoping that everything works -- even if they haven't really had time to test it.

      Ubuntu wants to include the latest versions of software in their releases (even in the so called "LTS" releases), and they have a strict release schedule they need to obey. Quite often this means that they don't have much time to test the software that they include in their releases. Ubuntu is also known to ship with pre-release versions of some popular software programs, even in the "LTS" releases. With such a misguided release policy, Ubuntu can never become mature enough to make releases that are actually stable and well-tested.

      Debian, on the other hand, cherry-picks software that is known to work, and they also take time to carefully test software that goes into their stable releases. They only release when the developers think that all the serious bugs have been fixed and the release has really become stable. That's really the reason why Debian releases are so much more stable and trouble-free than Ubuntu releases.

  6. Using Lenny now by chrome · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Been running Lenny on my servers, and its been pretty solid. I notice a lot of people suggesting Ubuntu for servers. I'm not keen, for several reasons. Mostly, because Ubuntu generally keep things 'fresher' they also tend to drop in beta or alpha quality versions of things that they shouldn't. Case in point was the DRBD packages recently were broken on Ubuntu because they dropped in an unstable development version. Oops. Ubuntu is great for the desktop, and Debian is great for the server farm.

    1. Re:Using Lenny now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      debian is great for everything.

      ubuntu is great for laptops that want an easier way to get 2.6.27 running their wireless until testing gets un-frozen.

      that's the only reason i'd recommend ubuntu for longer than a week

  7. SNI support in Apache? by Matt+Perry · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Do the versions of Apache and OpenSSL support SNI so we can have virtual hosts with SSL?

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  8. Re:What about bugs? by setagllib · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The point is that the variety of open distributions give you the choice between mature and immature. Debian has long been an extremely reliable distribution and I hope it stays that way. There's no point in Debian existing if its releases are buggy like Ubuntu's. They should take as much time as they need to get it stable, because that's what Debian is for in the first place.

    --
    Sam ty sig.
  9. Re:Lesbian Denny? by jimicus · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ok, am I the only one who read Lesbian Denny?

    Thanks.

    I administer a whole bunch of Linux servers and I'm never going to be able to get that out of my head.

    I'm going to be ringing up hosting providers and asking if they support "Lesbian Denny".

    I'm going to be emailing software vendors and asking if their product runs under "Lesbian Denny".

    I'm going to be posting on mailing lists asking if anyone's succeeded in installing the latest build on "Lesbian Denny".

  10. Re:testing by X0563511 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The net installer keeps breaking when they play with the repo signing keys. Don't use a net installer for testing. Try this RC instead.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...