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Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" Released
Alexander "Tolimar" Reichle-Schmehl writes "The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed Lenny) after 22 months of constant development. With 12 supported computer architectures, more than 23,000 packages built from over 12,000 source packages and 63 languages for the new graphical installer, this release sets new records, once again. Software available in 5.0 includes Linux 2.6.26, KDE 3.5.10, Gnome 2.22.2, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6, Apache 2.2.9, Xen 3.2.1 and GCC 4.3.2. Other notable features are X autoconfiguring itself, full read-write support for NTFS, Java programs in the main repository and a single Blu-Ray disc installation media. You can get the ISOs via bittorrent. The Debian Project also wishes to announce that this release is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian Developer who died on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident. As a valuable member of the Debian Project, he will be sorely missed."
Still KDE 3.5 - so perhaps this will be the KDE user's distro of choice?
Need an ISP in South Africa?
Good to see that in the time of bleeding edge releases-every-6-months distros there's still a choice that actually allows you to get work done.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Don't forget the 'best' install out there: NetInstall. Unless you actually want to download 31 CDs or 5 DVDs worth of stuff. The best part about Debian is the mix and match of installing what I want. I honestly can't fathom trying to download 20Gigs of stuff just to make a desktop unless I plan on installing in middle of nowhere.
There's no legal way to do many worthwhile things in this world. Don't worry about it. You're here to live your life, not obey laws.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think I was not bitching but asking a question. The problem is that I would love to buy (yes buy) stuff with Linux support - problem is, that it often simply does not even exist.
Please name a product you have been searching for, where you cannot find something which suits your needs which has Linux support.
My original question was exactly about one of the things I would consider to be of major importance: the ability to play blue-ray movies on the desktop. As far as I can see there is no legal way whatsoever to do this on Linux and there is no legal way in sight either.
My point was that this is a result of the legal manouverings of the people behind Blu-Ray. If you buy Blu-Ray then you are voting with your dollars for standards which make interoperability difficult or even impossible. You have no one but yourself to blame.
At some point you have to decide if you have principles or not. Clearly, you do not believe in the ability to play purchased media on Open Source platforms if you actually spend money on Blu-Ray discs. There's no third way, and I wish people would stop pretending there is.
I guess my point is that these are serious problems for making Linux more common for a broader user-base and I would love to see constructive ideas how to deal with them instead of ignoring the problem, routinely putting the blame on hardware companies and disregarding anyone who raises the issue as a troll.
Obviously you don't understand that the world is capitalistic, and/or don't understand how capitalism works.
The only vote that you have that matters is how you spend your dollars. Whether that's what products you choose to buy (or not) or whether you elect to pay your taxes (or not) or activities you choose to engage in (or not) due to their tax situation... it's all based on money. The entire world (yes, China too) works on the principle that what makes you more money is good. Therefore if you choose to spend money on closed standards, the world will provide you with more closed standards, because obviously there is money in them. If you choose to spend money on a shitty movie or a crappy album just because it's a member of your chosen genre or put out by someone whose other work you like, you are voting for them to make more shit. Do you see how this works? By the same token, if you buy a Blu-Ray disc when it is difficult to play on Linux, you are voting for making it difficult to play media on Linux. And at some point you have to take personal responsibility. You have to make the decision to only support media which is delivered on your terms.
Different people have chosen to achieve this goal in different ways. For some, they make the decision to engage in civil disobedience by using a program whose use is actually proscribed by law in their jurisdiction to play the media that they've paid for. I am unaware of anyone actually ever being arrested for playing a DVD or Blu-Ray disc that they actually purchased on an unlicensed device, and do not believe that laws should be followed simply because they exist. I am skeptical that you actually follow every law in effect where you live, and in any case if you have not memorized the code you can't be sure, so I am not clear as to the precise nature of your objection.
Anyway, by the same token, following the DMCA is equivalent to voting for it. Don't obey unless you aim to be a slave. Yes, it is risky to disobey. Yes, you have an obligation to disobey an unjust law. Let me just go ahead and terminate this thread by invoking Godwin here by saying that "just following orders" is not and never has been a valid excuse for supporting tyranny.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> > One would think so. After all, proprietary operating systems
> > sometimes go twice that long between service packs.
> But they aren't tied to the software they run so tightly.
Debian isn't that way because of anything Debian does wrong. It's that way because when application developers put out a new version of anything for Linux, they typically make it *require* the absolute latest version of every library it uses, which effectively means it won't run on an operating system that's more than a couple of months old.
It isn't just that there aren't ready-to-install packages. You can't install the latest Firefox on Debian etch even if you're willing to go to the trouble to compile it yourself, because it requires a newer version of GTK than the one in Debian. Bear in mind, GTK is the main widget set, the thing used to draw windows and scrollbars and checkboxes and so on in the graphical operating environment (Gnome). That's NOT something you're ever going to upgrade independently of the operating system (and even if you wanted to, you generally can't because the new version of GTK probably requires the absolute latest versions of twelve other things, and so on; when you get to the end of the chain, you probably find out that libc or something requires a more recent kernel than your system is based on). New versions of applications *SHOULD* support three-year-old versions of GTK. But they almost never do.
And if it's not GTK it's libc or glibc or some other basic part of the platform API. Again, new versions of applications *SHOULD* support three-year-old versions of these libraries, but the almost never do. I don't happen to know which library is (or which libraries are) the holdup for Subversion, but if it were possible to just compile it for etch, somebody would have done so, and the package would be available -- probably not from the official Debian etch repositories, but from backports or somewhere. If it's not available at all for Debian stable, it's almost certainly because it won't compile, because it requires a hyper-recent version of some library or another. And that's NOT the platform or distribution's fault. That's the application developer's fault.
Now, when the curmudgeonly sysadmin insists on running oldstable for months and months after the new stable release comes out, that's arguably a different matter. In that case, you don't necessarily expect new versions of application software to work. Although, on other platforms (e.g., Windows, or Mac OS X for that matter), you still would.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.