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Debian 7.0 ("Wheezy") Released
First time accepted submitter anarcat writes "After two years since the last Debian release (6.0, nicknamed "squeeze"), the Debian release team has finally published Debian 7.0 (nicknamed "Wheezy"). A newly created blog has details on the release, which features multi-arch support (e.g. you can now install packages for both i386 and amd64 on the same install), improvements to multimedia support (no need for third party repositories!) and improved security through hardening flags. Debian 7.0 also ships with the controversial Gnome 3 release, and the release notes explicitly mention how to revert to the more familiar 'Gnome classic' interface. Finally, we can also mention the improved support for virtualization infrastructure with pre-built images available for Amazon EC2, Windows Azure and Google Compute Engine. Debian 7.0 also ships with the OpenStack suite and the Xen Cloud Platform. More details on the improvements can be found in the release notes and the Debian wiki." An anonymous reader points out (from the announcement) that "[t]he installation process has been greatly improved: Debian can now be installed using software speech, above all by visually impaired people who do not use a Braille device. Thanks to the combined efforts of a huge number of translators, the installation system is available in 73 languages, and more than a dozen of them are available for speech synthesis too.
In addition, for the first time, Debian supports installation and booting using UEFI for new 64-bit PCs (amd64), although there is no support for Secure Boot yet."
It took a while, but all the effort was worth it.
Heh, kernel 3.2... this OS comes outdated out of the box.
It's not outdated. It is well tested.
Ubuntu pulls packages from Debian unstable on a rolling basis, and then has their own release cycle. So the releases of stable Debian versions aren't that relevant to Ubuntu releases.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As someone that is new to Linux I've always found Debian to be somewhat weird. I guess a lot of Debian users uses it since they are used to it. But as a new Linux user, why would I use Debian when the software is so old and outdated? We're at Firefox 20 and Debian has only version 10. OK that Firefox revs every six weeks, but you get the point. If it's old from day one then how old won't it be when Debian 8 is released.
Worked just fine with apt-get. Did it on an installation that started out with 2.2 and that has been upgraded from version to version.
You can use steam on basically any Linux distro.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
your comment demonstrates your ignorance
Looks like debian is still using Apache 2.2.... no wonder nginx is gaining ground. Apache 2.4 has OCSP stapling support which gives a huge boost to SSL performance.
Im sorry but the concept of since its old its very stable is non-sense, i havent seen an actual "unstable" kernel in years (2007 was the last time i seen a kernel panic for no apparant reason)
Debian could ship a system with kernel 3.8 and the newer stuff that most distros use and be just as stable instead all 3 of their branches (stable, testing and unstable) are equally old and all 3 have kernel 3.2.0, whats the point of unstable if its packages arnt all that much newer to begin with.
the fact that everyone who runs debian runs the testing version just makes my point, debian needs to have a revival, it could be a hot system that everyone uses if they would get their head out of the dark ages, they can keep a "server" version for those who want the old moldy stability they seek, but the desktop version of debian should be cutting edge, it has to be to keep up. Debian has been in this lousy state for years, theres no reason ubuntu/mint should even have to exist (not that they fix debian that much anyways, cross-compiling is a mess, even though it works fine on any non-debian distro)
but thats the way it is i guess, and thats why i am glad Manjaro Linux exists. Debian development has 2 speeds: slow and slower and if they develop any slower their gonna grow roots and demand daily waterings.
Until you put it under load on a mission critical server somewhere.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
As a Debian user, I didn't notice the GNOME 3 switch because not everybody uses Linux as a desktop. It's fairly popular as a headless server.
I run it on a desktop and I didn't notice either, but that's because I'm using fvwm2.
Well, almost at least. A lot of applications that has been upgraded to GTK+ 3 looks really bad now when not used under GNOME. Looks like they have not thought much about other WMs/DEs. :-(
Here's your quick and easy way to give back. I don't code in c/c++, I hate writing documentation, so share some bandwidth and seed the torrents for a few hours or a few gb.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
re: for many people it's not the main OS but more like a solid reference implementation.
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That others use Debian as their "backroom workshop" does not define Debian's true role, no more than one person using another person as a slave manifests that slavery as being the defining characteristic of that other person.
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I disagree with your statement that debain's role has changed "more towards being a professional backroom workshop for other distributions". Debian has stayed being what it has always been. It's just being used more as the foundation that supports the work of the facade builders and marketers that put a pretty face (or not-so-pretty Tammy Faye Baker clown-makeup face, if you want Gnome 3, imho) on top of all that and market it as if they made the whole thing.
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I agree that Debian is a solid implementation. But I disagree with your contention that it's more like a solid reference implementation. A "reference implementation" would imply that it is a demo of some of the capabilities of what can be done and that others are to build upon it. (whoops, the second half of that sentence is actually true! That's exactly what GNU's GPL licensing allows!) A "reference implementation" implies that it's built specifically just to be a partial implementation, which debian definitely is not. While others may build atop Debian, that is not Debian's sole purpose.
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For details on Debian's purpose, see Debian's own documentation about their "social contract", or read about it on articles about it.
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For info about how it started and about Debian's manifesto, read about the Ian who makes up the "-ian" half of "debian" or read the original Debian Manifesto .
Friends don't let friends install ubuntu !!
ubuntu is just a frozen snapshot of debian sid, ubuntizied so it's not compatible (binary) with debian anymore.
Ubuntu exists for profit and lazy people who don't want to set up "what they want in a desktop OS"
Pretty funny post IMHO
OUCH !
More relevant would be, "When will LInux Mint Debian upgrade to this Debian release?"
Think I'll go browse the Mint Debian forum to see . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You seem to have a somewhat valid view of things.
I see things a bit differently though. Debian provides a solid backbone upon which to customize an installation. Debian doesn't necessarily have the time and resources to create their own desktop environments.
Want the best of two worlds? Install Debian, then install the stuff you actually want. Mate desktop might be a good start. That's what I'm using, thanks to Linux Mint Debian.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Since LMDE tracks testing, the answer would be it already did, and has moved on since then.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
I really like the emphasis on stability, but for web browsers I think it is a problem. Debian 7.0 ships with Iceweasel (Firefox) 10.0.12esr that is EOL. The security updates will be backported, but with the many changes to the next supported ESR, it may not be possible to backport all security updates. Considering that the browsers these days are major targets, I would rather have a possible more unstable browser, but a browser with the latest security updates.
This is only a problem if You want to use Debian as a desktop OS. When installing as a server OS, the older but more stable packages, is perfect for my taste.
Nothing wrong with kernel 3.2. If I had any serious gripe about this release it's the fact that it comes with XFCE 4.8. Since 4.10 released over a year ago, there's really no excuse for shipping a stable distro with the older version. Thankfully there are third party repos for thse of us who want to run stable, but with a reasonable version of XFCE.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Heh, kernel 3.2... this OS comes outdated out of the box.
It's not outdated. It is well tested.
Isn't 2.6 even more well tested?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Sure, but the idea is not to necessarily ship the most tested software. The idea is that the software that is shipped is well tested before moved a major new version.
I think you absolutely have a valid view of things. Indeed, I see things a bit differently myself, however. When a kernel update is pushed out, it's not just for bug fixes. They add support for new hardware. Half of the reason I stopped using Debian initially was that they simply refused to provide up-to-date NVidia drivers in any fashion, drivers that my card needs to work. Drivers that future NVidia cards I buy will -also- need to work. If Debian stable fixates on a version of the kernel that doesn't support my hardware, if they aren't willing to at least go the rpmfusion route and have another group do the grunt work... No switch of WM or DE is going to fix that.
Look at the numbers of people running Debian vs. Ubuntu on a desktop, I'm guessing you're going to see a significant lean toward Ubuntu in those statistics. Ubuntu does what people want it to do, right now. Debian -might- do what I want it to do, sometime in the future, but in the meantime there are perfectly good alternatives that work. I don't see any reason why I would switch to Debian when they're quite clear about the fact they don't cater to desktop users.
A bit old maybe, but not outdated or useless. It is a supported file system.
dd if=debian.iso of=/dev/usbdevice
Not exactly rocket science. Actually it's even simpler than writing it to a cdr.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Well, it's just now moving on: Debian's testing has been frozen since June 2012 for the wheezy release cycle. Now with the release having happened, it's unfrozen so new packages can start migrating from unstable again.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
the fact that everyone who runs debian runs the testing version just makes my point
Except not everyone does. Most machines under my control run Debian stable, because I don't want any trouble from them. I just need them to do their job.
Good model -- Debian as an oak tree. Doesn't need 'watering', by the way, because it has such a well-developed root system!
Agreed, worked fine for me. Only downside was GNOME 3, but I switched to XFCE4 which does all that I need from a desktop.
So it is, so it is. I'm already updated, no sweat, no muss.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's harder than to use Unetbootin, point and click and not destroy the USB drive's content in the process. Sadly that didn't work when I tried to do that with a Wheezy iso a few weeks ago.
Im sorry but the concept of since its old its very stable is non-sense
Bad premise. This appears to imply that the goal is to run old stuff. The concept of "Since it has been tested well, it's very stable" is where Debian is. New kernel means everything needs retesting. Are you volunteering the time and equipment to run that kind of testing? And it's not just the kernel that needs retesting, it's all of the rest of the packages. (I haven't checked to see if they want to ensure that the kernel is the same rev on all platforms as well...)
Debian could ship a system with kernel 3.8 and the newer stuff that most distros use and be just as stable
Maybe. But without the testing to back it up, that's too much of a risk. Now that Debian 7 has been released, I kinda expect the latest kernel to be making its way into experimental and then unstable soon. You can run a mixed branch installation should you so choose. Use stable for most everything, and bring Iceweasel in from testing (or even unstable).
There is a sweet spot (with that argument, we could say why not use 2.4). The thing is Debian is fantastic for certain things, such as servers or development workstaitons - things where you want to have something very dependable that's going to be solid. And Debian is solid, and their conservative approach means we run it on all our Linux servers.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel
Take a look at Maintenance. Linux 3.2 is the version with longest support: until 2015.
Right now, I am running wheezy with kernel 3.8.5. Noone keeps you from building your own kernel. It's just that the stable version (and the installer) come with 3.2.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Well... Version three doesn't bite, indeed. It just sucks.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Good point, but you got it wrong from the very beginning though: it's not ``since it's old it's stable'', it's ``since it's in Debian stable, it's stable''.
It would seem it is not harder, since uNetbootin dosn't work at all. I'll take one quick command that works over several commands to install a GUI to click a button that downloads an ISO to unpack onto a USB....and then fails
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
I've found that pulling tools together from desktop environments other than KDE and Gnome and just using a few of the indispensable apps from them is the best way to go. For example, I use Thunar instead of Nautilus or Dolphin. The simpler desktop environments tend to have more portable components, not as tied to their parent.
Then again, except for a web browser, e-mail, and feed reader, the majority of my time is spent on a terminal anyway, so I may be the outlier here.
I have found that Gnome3 has some significant irritants that Gnome2 did not have. I found it cumbersome to actually get work done with, not completely unlike the way Unity is difficult to work with. The changes that were made (such as removing the taskbar, for example.) are arbitrary as far as I can tell. We've had literally decades to figure out good fundamentals, and while I'm not opposed to experimenting with user interfaces, doing it to the most widely used interface seems obnoxious. Especially among geeks, who develop habits and scripts around the tools they regularly use, such changes either need to be rolled out slowly or presented as an option.
I'm not trying to say that Gnome3 is useless. It is pretty much standard now, but saying that "it won't bite" ignores some significant problems. There are other options, whose only limitations are that Gnome and KDE applications seem to like their respective desktop environments to be running, and they're worth paying attention to. After all, this is Linux, these are geeks -- being "the standard" has never been a good reason to use something before, why start now?
Fish don't fry in the kitchen,
Beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lot of trying
Just to get up that hill.
Now we're up in the big leagues,
Gettin our turn at bat.
As long as we live
It's you and me baby.
There ain't nothing wrong with that.
That will work for now, but over time many GTK+ 2 applications will migrate to GTK+ 3; and if GTK+ 3 is not a go on other desktops then that's a problem.
Im sorry but the concept of since its old its very stable is non-sense,
There's a difference between "It's been tested to actually work in under condition X with config Y" and being "old". Also, there's another name for a diehard... Hard to Kill.
What if one is happy with one's desktop setup from last century? Mine has, more or less, looked the same since about 1998, although I've updated the underlying packages, e.g., I now use awesome window manager rather than icewm, and I now use rxvt with unicode. I still use gnuit as my file manager (the name changed from git because of the popularity of version control program). I've tried various other things on occasion, such as Gnome/KDE/XFCE/LDXE, but I always go back to my home rolled "desktop". I'm not a programmer (academic in the humanities), but still appreciate the control this combination gives me using my very rudimentary ability to write scripts using such languages such as bash and lua.
Best wishes,
Bob
FOAD A/C. KDE is the desktop of choice. Gnome has always been an MS Windows wannabe with it's use of a registry and such shit. I'll take kde over it any day of the week because I can get stuff done. It's the entire reason I use Linux - I gave up fighting with MS about how to use MY Computer.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Not just browsing history but local search history...
Correct me if I'm misunderstanding something, but a particular application should not depend on what desktop environment is running, since Gtk is primarily responsible for drawing. They may not interoperate with other applications, but they should run.
Having said that, it seems like there are basically two ways to go if Gtk+3 applications won't run outside of Gnome. The one I hope for is that the smaller window managers will support Gtk+ 3 (or, conversely, distributions continue to support Gtk+ 2). The alternative is that I'm forced either into using Gnome/KDE or using outdated software. The latter option bothers me deeply, so whatever work I am able to contribute to prevent it, I do.
It's not that the software won't run, but that it will just look really bad at best. But it depends. Especially applications using the dark themeing is really bad and almost unusable. At least gnome-boxes had that issue when I tried it last week. The same program works just fine under Gnome 3. But it's a common problem among all GTK+ 3 applications and from what I understand the problem is in GTK+ 3 itself.
It's not outdated. It is well tested.
And yet half my hardware won't work since the last kernel with working drivers was for the 2.6 'series' and only found in non-kernel dev's public tarballs on old blog posts.
Just because Linus' (or your distro's) kernel has a higher version number does not make it any better. And sometimes much worse.
You can blame that on people making tarballs instead of getting a maintainer accept patches. Watching the Linux Kernel Mailing List for a day should teach you that a lot of people would rather move on and do work than fight with someone about positioning of braces and white space in a world where the lint tool exists.
Heh, kernel 3.2... this OS comes outdated out of the box.
It's not outdated. It is well tested.
Pro Tip: Guys/Girls: Do not use that phrase to describe your genitals.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What if one is happy with one's desktop setup from last century? Mine has, more or less, looked the same since about 1998
Mine has looked the same since 1992 or so -- it's what I ran on Solaris at the university.
I still haven't understood what's the big deal with a desktop anyway. You need ways to move your windows around, a way (like a menu) to start your favorite GUI programs, and a way to logout. A way to lock the screen too if you have people around you. A clipboard, but that's built into X11. I can't come up with a lot more useful features, and yet there's all this heat generated by various desktops reinventing themselves and pissing people off.
Linux 3.2 will be supported until 2015. That's longer than the support lifetime for any other kernel version at the moment, unless the maintainer for 3.4 decides to support it past 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Maintenance
You have a curious definition of "fact". I, for one, run Debian Stable on both my desktop and my laptop.
Why? That already exists in other distros. If I wanted cutting-edge, I could have it. I use Debian precisely because I got tired of all the constant changes and wanted some stability. Not stability in the sense of "no crashes", but stability in the sense of "let's actually keep the same technology for more than three months before everyone gets bored of maintaining it and starts a rewrite from scratch".
Why are you so offended by the idea of a distro having different goals? Why are you so threatened by the existence of a thing that is not what you personally want? I don't mind that Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora don't offer what I want; why do you care that Debian doesn't offer what you want?
Just installed it on my old box, Pentium II, 8.5GB HDD and 96MB RAM. Most of other modern distros hanged in the installer.. It's simply works and the installation is very easy.
dd if=debian.iso of=/dev/usbdevice
Not exactly rocket science. Actually it's even simpler than writing it to a cdr.
I love linux install instructions that assume you already have linux installed. xD
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
You need to use unetbootin 494 or earlier. I don't know what they changed to make later ones stop working for Debian, nor do I remember where I learned this fact, and since 494 seems to work for every linux distro I've tried (Suse, both types of Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora 17) I question whether that change even has a purpose.
peaople use Debian with monitors?
I used to be
Well you'll have to forgive me. Since I never ran Windows to begin with, yes I tend to think in terms of UNIX-like systems for everything.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
I thought it was still the FS of choice for flash drives, because no journaling, so less writes.
Though I think you can run EXT4 journal-less now, as an option.
Sent from my PDP-11
Debian does ship a system with kernel 3.8. It's called "experimental". I'm running Debian with this kernel, all packaged nice and neatly, installed using Debian's standard package commands.
Funnily enough, I hit a problem with it. My wireless card occasionally drops connection. Works flawlessly under 3.2, though. I haven't traced the problem yet, but when using my wireless, I boot up into 3.2 for the moment.
That will work for now, but over time many GTK+ 2 applications will migrate to GTK+ 3; and if GTK+ 3 is not a go on other desktops then that's a problem.
?? Everything will move to GTK 3, obviously. It's a library to draw components. It will be supported everywhere. I'm running GTK 3 apps now on KDE, and they looks much, much, much more lovely than the GTK 2 apps. Get your facts right.
The summary may have missed this, but Debian now provide a live CD image. To me, that's probably the biggest news for this release.
I managed to play every single game I have available for Linux on my Wheezy desktop (around 20-30), all of them with satisfactory performance.
No, Ubuntu does not pull from Debian "stable". Even a cursory look would tell you this is false.
I believe what they do is pull from either Debian experimental or debian sid (most likely). Even Debian 'testing' is more likely than 'stable', which is improbable at best...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
So you run KDE? B'cos KDE has themes that can make it look like OpenLook or CDE - the UIs that Solaris had before GNOME took over. The big deal is that once people are used to and comfortable with a certain look & feel, it's disruptive to change that and make it work differently in an environment that's supposed to be a successor to that. If the GNOME guys wanted a new GUI, they should have started a new GUI, rather than call it GNOME 3. Ubuntu did it right - came up w/ a totally new UI called Unity, which many may have hated, but which at least didn't claim to be anything else. KDE preserved its look & feel, although they had a lot of bugs in 4.0 and the first few releases since, but have since cleaned up their act.
You honestly think 3.2 kernel is OLD?
What does that mean? Should everyone be average, running identical things? What's wrong with not being like regular people?
It seems like some ACs here are promoting the idea that Linux should be about promoting itself and being new and cool in order to attract a big audience and thus destroy the proprietary operating system world. Instead quite a lot of people use Linux because it gets the work done for them, not for any political reasons.
Yeah, where I work, we are not allowed to run any testing versions. Has to be the supported stable versions.
Can't Steam install on Debian stable, since it obviously works on Debian unstable? I mean, which version of Ubuntu did Steam debut on - isn't there a Debian stable equivalent of that - as yet?
I wouldn't put it like that. Gnome remains big because it toes the FSF party line the most closely despite its flaws. In a distribution that maintains an emphasis on having as much GPL as possible, Gnome gets top billing over KDE.
It always did seem a bit ironic to me that while promoting a GPL approach, Gnome felt like the least configurable desktop choice with the biggest "do it our way" style (granted, I haven't used Gnome in ages, so maybe it's improved).
There's nothing wrong with not being like regular people. HOWEVER, being familiar with the stuff regular people use keeps in the loop so far as how technology is progressing. For example, I would never try to convert my wife to Linux as the software she needs (Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat) doesn't exist in Linux and the alternatives are not satisfactory. So I remain knowledgeable about Windows and find out, hey, Windows ain't that bad after all. Maybe there's more to the world of operating systems than in my sheltered viewpoint.