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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."
Heh, kernel 3.2... this OS comes outdated out of the box.
It's not outdated. It is well tested.
Debian places a strong emphasis on stability compared to most distros. Instead of being on the bleeding edge they are conservative and try to provide a stable, bug free, and secure system which is well tested and well understood. Debian also has an extremely strong stance of software freedom, which appeals to some people. Debian is a solid enough distribution that plenty of other distros use it as a base, that should say something about the quality of the work they do. Without Debian there'd be no Ubuntu or Linux Mint since they both pull packages from the unstable (read: under testing / "current" ) Debian repos.
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Linux has been historically considered a good OS for servers, where uptime and stability are very important. Don't forget the Debian project goes back really far, 1993 or so if I'm not mistaken.
Once you have a server running that many people depend on, you become change-averse to it, because change = risk. So having mature, well-tested, stable software is more important than having the latest and greatest.
I always used to feel that Debian was a bit behind the curve in regards to included packages. 10 years ago there was really visible progress, like anti-aliased fonts in GTK or the X compositor, so I went with other distro's that were more bleeding-edge. The install and configuration also was a bit hardcore (it still somewhat is, where is my DrakX?).
Nowadays I feel it's just the right spot. No over-engineered crap like systemd or journald. You can easily disable pulseaudio. And everything and the kitchen-sink is available in the repositories. And for just Firefox or Chrome you can easily add packages. There's no real need for bleeding-edge anymore. Linux is mature and stable.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
Until you put it under load on a mission critical server somewhere.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
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 .
I didn't realize that Debian was so user-friendly.
"Debian can now be installed using software speech, above all by visually impaired people who do not use a Braille device."
That's pretty awesome, when you think about it. Maybe add in memories of slaving your butt off to make drivers work while trying to install Linux, and the awesomeness is increased by a couple orders of magnitude.
I really want to see this installation - I'll download it soon. Stick disk into computer, boot up. "Computer - I want to use drive sda1 for installation. Use the existing virtual memory on drive sda3 please. Just use default partitioning on sda1, only use free space though. Yes, use enhanced security. I don't wish to join any networks. User name is Muppet. Password is CookieMonster. There will not be any other users. I choose the K desktop environment. Yes, go ahead. What? You didn't understand me? Very well - proceed."
Yeah, I've made it all up - but that's about the way it should go. Simple, to the point, and all verbal.
"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
Debian places a strong emphasis on stability compared to most distros. Instead of being on the bleeding edge they are conservative and try to provide a stable, bug free, and secure system
That generalized claim is wrong. Three prominent examples:
The KDE Workspaces/Apps releases 4.8.4 are less stable than 4.10.2. The 4.8.x releases as well as 4.9.x reached End Of Life quite some time ago and don't receive any bugfix any longer. 4.10.2 contains many bugfixes upstream doesn't bother backporting to older releases (at least not 4.8.x which is two versions behind).
Same with GNOME. I could understand if the package maintainers decided to use 3.6 instead of 3.8 because 3.6 still includes the Fallback Mode but 3.4 is old and unmaintained.
Xfce 4.10 is already a year old and 4.12 should be around the corner. 4.8 just unmaintained and lacks many crucial bugfixes from 4.10.
Not being cutting edge means not blindly jumping towards the latest dot-0 release. It means sticking to software with long term support (eg. Mozilla's ESR versions which regularly receive bugfixes).
However skipping releases that contain many bugfixes just for the sake of shipping >1 year old software has nothing to do with providing stability or security. On the contrary.
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
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