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Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" Frozen
edesio writes with a snippet from debian-news.net, trumpeting an announcement from the ongoing DebConf10 in NYC: "Debian's release managers have announced a major step in the development cycle of the upcoming stable release Debian 6.0 'Squeeze': Debian 'Squeeze' has now been frozen. In consequence this means that no more new features will be added and all work will now be concentrated on polishing Debian 'Squeeze' to achieve the quality Debian stable releases are known for. The upcoming release will use Linux 2.6.32 as its default kernel in the installer and on all Linux architectures.""
is called a slushy, smoothy, orange julius, or a lemon shakeup.
Note the bit about "Linux architectures." Squeeze will include GNU/kFreeBSD: Debian running on top of a FreeBSD kernel.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Debians policy is always that fixing problems takes priority over release schedules. They don't release a half-finished product. They'll wait years if its required to get things the way they want it.
Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
What a terrible attitude to have. The Open Source community is about shared effort for shared gain, not personal recognition. No matter the distribution that gets all the 'spotlight', it's Linux that reaps the reward, and the more ground Linux gains the better off everyone with a PC is.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
Thats not exactly true. A lot of stuff Ubuntu does/fixes gets sent back to Debian. Its a mutual relationship that they both benefit from. The same is true for many other debian-based distributions. And hey, its open source, the people who makes Debian want others to reap their benefits.
Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
Compared to a few years ago, yes, debian is a lot more up to date. I'd recommend running testing, or unstable if you know what you're doing. Stable doesn't get updated after release except for critical fixes like security updates (which is the way its supposed to be, so you can throw it on a server and not have to worry about a future update breaking things), but debians testing and unstable quality is higher than the stable of most distros.
Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
Most of the time when ubuntu needs to update a package they first check if debian has an updated version, and most of the time it has. And if you compare the package count of the distros debians is higher. It happens, but is pretty rare, that ubuntu adds some package that debian doesn't have for some reason. You've probably come across a few of those. You shouldn't be running experimental. Things that gets put in experimental are things that are known to be very likely to break stuff. Its mean for debian developers and people who want to help test things and report bugs only. And even they don't install all of experimental, just the packages they want to test. Chances are you didn't run experimental unless you know a lot about how the package system works, as you have to specifically specify that you want stuff from experimental when you install or update a package, just adding it to the repos doesn't do it. Its pretty unlikely that you got a system working with no problems if you really did install all of experimental.
Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
The Open Source community is about shared effort for shared gain, not personal recognition.
Have you spent a moment in the "Open Source community"? The majority of contributions to Linux are from profit-making corporations. Most of the remainder take glory in advertising their contributions for CV and geek cred. Certain projects are so cliquish that a friendly attitude (read "sucking up") to the core team is a far better way of being welcomed as a contributor than technical expertise.
My original post included specific project examples, but since the most political organisations also have the most time to loudly whine at their detractors, I thought I'd remove them. I can think of at least one major open source Unix distribution the central developers of which seem to deliberately so poorly document their work that getting up to sufficient speed on what they do to make a positive contribution requires mentorship.
FWIW, Debian as a whole doesn't suffer so much from this problem. I guess because it doesn't attract the glamour-seekers, nor does it consider itself elite. If politics is a hindrance there, it's more about idealism than personal power struggles.
And ubuntu's community has to spend time dealing with the newbies, that's a huge weight off of debian's shoulders, it's a symbiotic relationship.
While ubuntu is derived from debian that doesn't stop them from packaging newer stuff than in debian. The big name stuff is often newer in ubuntu's development versions than in sid. More obscure stuff will generally be either at the same versions or newer in sid than in ubuntus development version.
Debian and ubuntu have very different release cycles. Ubuntu makes a release every 6 months and releases are prepared one at a time. This fast turnaround means more up to date software at relase time but also means little time for things to settle and bugs to get rooted out. Ubuntu won't delay a release unless there is a cripping issue with a package they consider particulally important.
Debian's release cycles on the other hand are generally on the order of two years these days and they tend to spend a large amount of time at the end of that release letting things stabilise and working on the bug count.
Things got particularlly bad a few years back. The sarge development cycle was debians longest ever and it came at a time when linux in general was improving a lot for the desktop but it still gets annoying near the end of a cycle.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Is debian any more up-to-date these days?
Debian is always as up-to-date as you want it to be. It's just a question of which version you run.
Debian "stable" goes in cycles. Shortly after a release, it's fairly up to date. As time goes on, working towards the next release, packages get a little dated because they are intentionally not updated. Security and bug fixes are applied but no upgrades or new features -- this is why they call it "stable", because it doesn't change.
Debian "testing" is a less cyclical and tends to stay fairly up to date all the time. The exception is during a freeze, like the one we just started. Since the current testing is being morphed into a new stable, it has just stopped receiving updates, and won't start again until the new stable version is released.
Debian "unstable" is always quite up to date. All new features and packages are introduced in unstable first. Don't let the name confuse you -- it's about as reliable as most distributions' released versions. It's "unstable" in the sense that it gets constant updates, which means that things are always changing. Every once in a blue moon, a change will actually seriously break something for a day or so. Maybe once every 3-4 years in my experience.
Debian "experimental" is more of a layer on top of "unstable", and it is what it sounds like: experimental. The Bleeding Edge.
In addition to those versions, you can mix-n-match a bit by running stable plus backports. That allows you to keep a very stable, consistent base platform, and just pull in newer versions of particular packages, as needed.
I switched from Debian to Ubuntu three years ago, but I'm very seriously considering switching back. My theory was that Ubuntu LTS releases were roughly equivalent to Debian stable, and that regular Ubuntu was somewhere between testing and unstable. The second half of that works out sort of okay, but using Ubuntu LTS as an alternative to Debian stable is a bad choice. The upgrade path from one LTS release to the next is horribly painful, because you have to upgrade to each intermediate release. And, in practice, I find the every-six-months big-bang upgrades more intrusive and problematic than the continual, incremental upgrades on Debian testing or unstable.
All in all, after giving Ubuntu a good try, I think I'm going back to Debian stable on my server, Debian stable+backports on my laptop and Debian unstable on my desktop.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Well the first announced freeze date for squeeze was part of an unpopular plan to sync up with ubuntu by having a very short release cycle. That was abandoned pretty quickly (unfortunately after that)
Asside from that there afaict are a couple of reasons to delay the freeze.
A big reason is what are referred to as transitions. A transition is a group of package updates (usually a new major version of a library and the various updates and rebuilds associated with it) that need to move from unstable to testing at the same time to leave testing in a consistent state (unstable is allowed to be in an inconsistant state, testing isn't). The release planners will have a set of transitions that they really want to get in for a given release, transitions can easilly get held up by build failures and other rc bugs and they don't want to do too many at the same time because then they become intertangled leaving the release team with one big transition which is even harder to make migrate.
Also they want to pick a good time to freeze. Freezing the application level stuff while there are still big issues to fix in core package won't affect the release date much while it will mean releasing with older versions of the application level stuff (which is the stuff that is most visible to users and often the stuff that needs the most security updates).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
In mid June I set up my latest server based on Squeeze with the expectation that it would go stable this summer. For a while I thought perhaps I had jumped the gun and would be stuck with a relatively unstable system for a longer period, but I guess not.
In particular, I'm happy with Squeeze because I could use it to get my Kerberos-OpenLDAP-OpenAFS system working on both the file server and workstations. Not that I've ever use any FOSS other than Debian for my server, but after my attempts failed to get the latest Ubuntu client to run the necessary client software for this (unfortunately) uncommon, but very capable distributed file system, I suspected the same Debian version for the workstation represented my best chance of success. And sure enough: it worked straight away! Ubuntu may have certain benefits, but it seems that if you want a desktop system that is a little out of the ordinary, Debian is still your best bet.
Most of the time when ubuntu needs to update a package they first check if debian has an updated version, and most of the time it has.
That's probablly true for the more minor stuff but the big name stuff like glibc, gnome, kde etc is often newer in ubuntu's development version than in debian unstable and sometimes newer than even experimental.
as you have to specifically specify that you want stuff from experimental when you install or update a package
You can pin the whole of experimental at the same level as unstable and therefore cause apt to install stuff from it automatically (you can even pin it higher but thats a bad idea because often older versions get left in experimental after unstable is updated). I've done it in a chroot but never tried it on an independent system.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The man pages are a much more effective resource.
>don't call it FreeBSD.
that's why its kFreeBSD (notice the "k")
anyway, what else would you call it?
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Mod this guy as informative! Having worked with Ubuntu developers on some bugs, I can say that non-Ubuntu specific fixes are sent upstream where they get commited.
Pretty much this. And just because everything is somewhat political, it doesn't mean every venture is as bad as every other
True that. I'm pretty sure Thomas Jefferson knew what politics was when he made it the basis of our political system...on purpose...as though it was going to solve problems we used to and no longer have.
Like women and unlike wine, all man's endeavours grow more wrought with bitterness over time.
Depends on your time scale and your skill in choosing either one.
That's only true for non-LTS releases. You can go from one LTS to the next and skip the intermediate releases.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Well for Ubuntu they're both numbered and named. The numbers are year.month (e.g. 9.10 is October 2009) and therefore go up in the expected manner. For the names, they're alphabetical (or at least have been for the last 5 years), so Intrepid came before Jaunty, which was followed by Karmic.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Having a friendly attitude != sucking up, necessarily.
I had to learn this the hard way, back when, so pay heed: politeness is a social lubricant. It gets in the areas where different peoples' rough edges would otherwise rub and create friction, and it costs nothing to be polite.
For example, a few months ago I opened a bug report with $LIBRE_PROJECT asking for help making a Windows build, or whether they'd be kind enough to start releasing Windows builds of the stable tree, rather than an occasional build from an unstable branch. After a bit of back and forth - the guys who weren't involved in making the Windows build were a bit rude - they eventually pointed me to the non-obvious way of compiling their code, and eventually their Windows guy started releasing regular semi-stable builds (the Win build isn't quite there yet).
A little politeness as social lubricant, and I might have helped some other poor schmuck who wanted a free Windows program that does what $PROJECT does.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Less then a few months ago a kernel update in squeeze changed ide addressing from hda to sda. Bricking my debian boot sequence.
The recommended route is using uuid now, for example in /etc/fstab:
UUID=3e036498-60fb-44a9-a3d1-205a3ffaeb7d swap swap defaults 0 0
or something like this in grub:
linux /vmlinuz-2.6.32-3-686 root=UUID=903040df-e1af-4c1e-86e3-c954a30ce948 ro
You can also change the udev rules (/etc/udev/rules.d/) to rewrite particular drives as whatever you want, but who knows how long udev rewriting will be around?
FWIW, my laptop is using sdXY naming for partitions, but I think it's always been like that based on the comments in my fstab.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
"I wish they'd just cut the bull and focus on unstable and testing."
Why should they sacrifice QUALITY in order to do that, when you can just run Unstable, Testing, or another distro?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The Open Source community is about shared effort for shared gain, not personal recognition.
Have you spent a moment in the "Open Source community"? The majority of contributions to Linux are from profit-making corporations.
Not true for the Linux Kernel. Most of the contributions to Linux come from individuals without a company. After that are unknown contributers. Then companies.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/sites/main/files/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.pdf
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
We discussed what Ubuntu gives back here: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/08/01/0326208/First-GNOME-Census-Results
If you want to see some Ubuntu criticism, search for Greg Kroah-Hartman Linux Plumbers Keynote, where he explains why distributions based on other distributions aren't really helping development.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Individuals without a company and contributors with unknown affiliation add more to the Linux kernel than any _individual_ company, but that does not negate the statement that "the majority of contributions to Linux are from profit-making corporations". Red Hat, Novell, and IBM together make more Linux kernel contributions than all of the unaffiliated and unknown-affiliation contributors combined.
The document you appears to have misread even includes this sentence: "It is worth noting that, even if one assumes that all of the 'unknown' contributors were working on their own time, over 70% of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work."
Morton works at Google, Viro pops up as basically an alias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Niels_Olson/Al_Viro, Miller works at Red Hat, Baechle at MIPS, etc.. You just gave a list of Corporations and actual top developers all working for those corporations. Thanks for reinforcing the prior fact that the bulk of the kernel code is paid directly or indirectly by corporations.
Rather than using apt-pinning to pull packages from testing/unstable into stable, I'd suggest using it to pull packages from the backports repositories. That way you'll get newer software that's built against the stable versions of the supporting libraries.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I have had about a 95% success rate for doing upgrades without console access.
Which sort of sucks that one out of 20 times the server just goes away.
The only supported upgrade is if you do it in single user mode. Although this seems to be understood to not be a completely realistic assumption by the FreeBSD team, so this may change.
Work bio at MMWD
Well duh! Of course libc uses reserved identifiers for those. If it used non-reserved identifiers, it would conflict with valid user code.
Nope, sorry, not true. Parameter names never conflict with identifiers in any other scope. Identifiers beginning with an underscore are reserved for the 'implementation,' which can be interpreted as including the libc as well as the compiler, however the GNU C standard reserves ones starting with a double underscore for the compiler, yet unistd.h (and other headers in glibc) are littered with parameters starting with double underscores. In particular, the __block parameter name means that you have to do hacky work-arounds if you want to compile code using blocks on a GNU platform. Meanwhile, this code work out of the box with any other libc implementation.
It requires one or more of the macros that, according to POSIX / SUS, the code needs to define.
Which would be fine, except that the glibc man pages don't say which functions are from which standard, so you need to hunt around looking for every symbol. If a function comes from 4BSD but was later adopted by POSIX and SUS, what do you define? If you define the POSIX macro, then you may find that you've suddenly hidden a load of other things that were working correctly. There are some really fun cases where no combination of the public macros expose all of the features that you want and you need to define some of the glibc internal ones.
On other platforms, the macros work in a much more sane way. Everything the libc supports is exposed by default, but if you are writing portable code then you can define a specific set of standard macros and it will disallow anything not in those standards.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I really wonder why some people seem to hate the notion of companies paying developers to work on Linux.
Yes, Linux is an excellent example of how successful open source development can be. Especially in the sense GNU HURD isn’t.
The fact that most development comes from various companies should be counted as a success of Linux.
I mean, think about it. Unlike other operating systems, developed either by monopolists or by relatively small communities, Linux is now a result of joint effort of both numerous independent programmers and several large companies. All scratching their own itches, all working on making Linux better, all sharing their improvements with everybody else.
This is also the greatest success of GNU: without the GPL, there would have been no strong incentive for everyone to share their improvements (even though it would be a good long-term strategy; the modern corporate world is more interested in quarterly statements, it seems).
Ignore this signature. By order.
At a time when cutting-edge distros were all moving to Linux 2.6 and conservative distributions and ones that hadn't been updated lately were still using 2.4.x, the Debian installer was asking users if they wanted to try the "new" 2.2 kernel, which might not be totally ready for prime time yet, or stick with the tried and true 2.0 kernel.
You exagerate. When 2.6 first came out the current version of debian stable was woody which offered either 2.2 or 2.4.
Still I agree that debians longest release cycle ever came at about the worst possible time.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register