Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Debian Considering Long Term Support for Squeeze

Posted by Unknown on from the thank-gnu dept.

Via Bits from Debian, comes news that the security team is considering adding a Long Term Support suite for Squeeze (Debian 6) after Jessie (Debian 8) is released sometime next year. From the mailing list post: "At the moment it seems likely that an extended security support timespan for squeeze is possible. The plan is to go ahead, sort out the details as as it happens, and see how this works out and whether it is going to be continued with wheezy. The rough draft is that updates will be delivered via a separate suite (e.g. squeeze-lts), where everyone in the Debian keyring can upload in order to minimise bottlenecks and allow contributions by all interested parties. Some packages will be exempted upfront due to their volatile nature (e.g. some web applications) and others might be expected to see important changes. The LTS suite will be limited to amd64 and i386. The exact procedures will be sorted out soon and announced in a separate mail. ... It needs to be pointed out that for this effort to be sustainable actual contributions by interested parties are required. squeeze-lts is not something that will magically fall from the sky. If you're dependent/interested in extended security support you should make an effort to contribute." If successful, the LTS idea would possibly be carried over to Wheezy. With all of the changes coming in Jessie and its aggressive release schedule, this sysadmin really likes the idea of having a bit more breathing room for updating infrastructure between releases. The email also contains a bunch of other info on changes coming to the security process.

In related news, the Debian Installer team announced the first alpha of debian-installer for Jessie. Just the installer, not the distro as a whole (Jessie will be frozen in November). XFCE remains the default desktop, ia64 was kicked out of the archive, and a few new ARM variants are supported.

46 comments

  1. Squeze Wheezy! by bobbied · · Score: 1

    I feel a song coming on!

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  2. Re:So what is "squeeze"? by bobbied · · Score: 2

    Is it the release name?

    Yes, it is a release name for the Debian Linux distribution. http://www.debian.org/releases...

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  3. Ha? An even slower to release Debian? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously, WTF?

  4. Is that so? by oldhack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It used to be that people would joke about the geological time interval required to produce new Debian versions. Now things are moving so fast, it's considering LTS.

    --
    Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    1. Re:Is that so? by Lazere · · Score: 1

      It took less than ten years, people just can't take that kind of breakneck pace.

    2. Re:Is that so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The main problem is that Debian only supports releases for, what, 6 months or something? That's no good.

      I have lot of squeeze servers so I would be happy if they made it LTS. I do not want to upgrade them any time soon, it's risky and is very expensive.

      Consider Windows where you can go 10+ years before being forced to upgrade. This is much nicer.

      Note that I'm talking about back-end stuff, not the desktop. On the desktop you want a faster release cycle so you can run the latest and greatest. The back-end on the other hand, once it works you generally don't need or want to ever have to touch it except for security fixes.

  5. im no linux expert by any stretch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but is it me or did squeeze just plain work?

    1. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by oldhack · · Score: 2

      You might wanna try wheezy (7) - the suspend works out of the box on my old (PII) hardware.

      --
      Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    2. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      All my VPN devices and routers are built on Squeeze, and while it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things to upgrade, I'd prefer with devices that sit on a shelf and just work unattended for months on end to stick with stable configurations. I'm using Wheezy on my VM hosts, and have had no problems with them, but particularly with devices running at remote locations, I admit to a bit more paranoia and skepticism.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by worf_mo · · Score: 4, Informative

      [...] but particularly with devices running at remote locations, I admit to a bit more paranoia and skepticism.

      Reminds me of upgrading a famous rpm-based distro in the nineties, it ended more often than not with a fresh install.

      I find Debian's upgrades to be painless. Last week I upgraded remote servers (sitting in another country) to Wheezy; the whole process went so smooth it was nearly disappointing. These servers have now survived a few Debian release upgrades without ever seeing a remote hand.

    4. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by UltraZelda64 · · Score: 1

      Every Debian I've used in the last several years just plain worked. Back to 4.0/Etch, which marked the beginning of my interest in Linux and my early distro hopping days.

    5. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by EmperorArthur · · Score: 1

      I was sitting on Kubuntu for years before I jumped to Debian Testing with KDE. Those upgrades were anything but painless. Circular dependencies, broken audio, etc... Basically it was hell. Debian is much better.

      As a bonus with Ubuntu deciding to switch to systemd with Debian there isn't really much of a difference between Kubuntu and Debian KDE Testing.

      --
      So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
    6. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      I've had the odd problem. A Grub update once went awry and there were a few minutes of panic while I had to reinstall the bootloader. Another fun one was a change to the Debian KVM permissions model which meant none of my guests could start. The solution was simply to reinstall the QEMU/KVM packages, but still, it was rather irritating.

      Since then I've been a lot more cautious with critical hardware. Debian is great, but there are still risks to just assuming painless upgrades. My policy these days is to try very hard to leave servers at current OS versions until replacement or reinstall.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    7. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every Debian I've used in the last several years just plain worked. Back to 4.0/Etch, which marked the beginning of my interest in Linux and my early distro hopping days.

      Another moderately old Debian user here... you probably started around 2007-10... I started with Woody (released 2002) in 2003... I remember having to fiddle a lot with 2.2 vs 2.4 kernel and loading driver modules...just to get my basic hardware (network cards/etc) working. Linux today is so much easier for a noob to get started... and that's a good thing(tm).

    8. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by rujasu · · Score: 1

      Yep, Woody was very difficult to set up. At that point, Linux didn't auto-detect much of your hardware, so you had to go through a lot of configuration to get X working. Woody was about where I started, and the release before it was even worse. Fortunately, the following release (Sarge) was dramatically easier, as was the release after that, which I believe was Etch. Since Etch, it has been very straightforward to set up Debian. Obviously there are still things to learn if you're new to Linux, but the out-of-the-box experience is very nice now. Still, Debian still has a bit of a reputation for being hard to install, based on the difficulty people were having with it 10+ years ago.

    9. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by FreonTrip · · Score: 1

      I'm an old timer, and have been around so long that I want to be sure of something. When you say PII, do you mean Pentium II or Phenom II? I've seen that used for both.

    10. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 1

      I've always been kind of confused by statements like that. "Just plain worked". The implication is that others don't just plain work. Well, what does debian not do that others do that make them not just plain work?

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    11. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, Kubuntu is pretty independent project. It just drags "ubuntu" in its name, but is not developed by Canonical and even offers commercial support.

    12. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by LVSlushdat · · Score: 3, Informative

      You think Debian, circa 2002-2003 was bad? you shoulda tried Slackware back around 1995 or so.. Umptysquat floppy disks, handediting ALL the config files for EVERYTHING.. Since most of the time I was building a server to run ftpd or httpd, I didn't bother messing with XFree86 and its mindnumbing configuration... Today's Linux is da BOMB!!

      --
      THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
    13. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Slackware had the X configuration script, but I never managed to get the config to work without further editing. I always loved selecting monitor settings with the ominous message that I could cook my monitor if I got it wrong.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    14. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by oldhack · · Score: 1

      Pentium II.

      --
      Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    15. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was sitting on Kubuntu for years before I jumped to Debian Testing with KDE. Those upgrades were anything but painless. Circular dependencies, broken audio, etc... Basically it was hell. Debian is much better.

      As a bonus with Ubuntu deciding to switch to systemd with Debian there isn't really much of a difference between Kubuntu and Debian KDE Testing.

      No offense, but you're an uninformed idiot. Testing means just that - frequent updates, as for circular dependencies - that just illustrates, as if more evidence was needed, that you don't know what you're doing.

      Squeeze - you know, the release being discussed is old-stable. Stable != Testing (sigh).

      Kubuntu is built from Debian Testing. The bits that work are unchanged - the bits that don't are Kubuntu "customizations". Systemd is default in Testing. Testing != Stable and default != mandatory.

      Ignorance is a choice that requires effort to maintain. And you, are a jackass.

    16. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well ill just try and put it as best i can when i swtiched from ubuntu hardy 9.04 i think? over to squeeze, i did seem like it took a tad more configuring to get it to my liking but it didnt seem like i had any hardware issues and most of the packages i was after were either there or easy to get up and running. my experience with debian is pretty limited but so far i am liking it, im using it for desktops not servers.

    17. Re:im no linux expert by any stretch by rujasu · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I'm aware it was even worse in the 90's.

  6. Debian Timeline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Relevant, Debian's timeline:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Timeline

  7. I feel like William Tell! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maid Marion as well.

  8. consider... by znrt · · Score: 1

    links on slashdot articles are clickbait by default. use your favorite search engine.

    however the article is correct. the title itself makes it pretty obvious that squeeze is a release of debian (why else should it get long term support?) AND the article explicitly relates it to the release number (debian 6). and anyway, if you don't already know what "squeeze" means in the context of debian, why should you bother to read articles about debian at all, let alone coment on them?

    please improve your trolling or refrain. this is pathetic. you are smudging the illustrous name of anonymous coward!

  9. graphics card by znrt · · Score: 1

    i too started with woody and never had a problem apart from having to install nvidia driver and a bit of x configuring. it wasn't really that hard and there was more than enough help available on the net, just the frequent kernel recompiling was a bit annoying. maybe it's that my requirements were just that modest, but i'm very grateful that there are still solid and reliable linux distros around like debian. cutting edge fancy distros are nice too but they tend to rot (see ubuntu) and fortunately when that happens you can always return to debian. long life! love it.

  10. They regret systemd and decided for LT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That was the consequence of the systemd adoption.

    1. Re:They regret systemd and decided for LT by bobbied · · Score: 1

      It was an illusion to Toy Story's closing credits.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    2. Re:They regret systemd and decided for LT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was an illusion to Toy Story's closing credits.

      The word you were looking for is allusion.

  11. Too late! Wheezy should be the LTS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I upgraded to wheezy on my old server a few months ago because security support was supposed to be ending soon. Now it's going to be a LTS? Too bad I didn't know that was going to happen a few months ago. This announcement in came a bit too late to benefit me.

  12. Dammit, Debian was the last good ia64 distro... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been running Debian on my ia64 for a while. I like it because it's a "source" distro. Sad to see them drop it. They were the last major source distro to support ia64. I don't want to use pesky custom-for-the-architecture distro.

    And LTS would be *GREATLY* appreciated in ia64-land!

    1. Re:Dammit, Debian was the last good ia64 distro... by unixisc · · Score: 1

      From the FOSS choices, don't you still have FreeBSD as far as Itanium goes? I'd think that even 10 supports it

    2. Re:Dammit, Debian was the last good ia64 distro... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's community-maintained. You would need to contribute to see it stay.

  13. easy. by znrt · · Score: 1

    they test.

    1. Re:easy. by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 1

      Of course, that's a BS answer. Its not like Debian is the only distro that "Tests". You might as well say its a better operating system because it has "Codes". Or "uses a cpu". Its bland, non-descriptive and utterly useless as a comment.

      Its not like debian users are the only ones guilty of this kind of worthless praise. So, I'm not beating up on debian users, just everyone who makes similar statements.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  14. I dunno Who asked for this by Pluvius · · Score: 1

    My wife has a desktop with Debian 6 installed and it's nothing but trouble, crashes, dropped Internet connection, etc. What really sucks about it is that she likes to stay up late playing Tux Racer and whenever something goes wrong she wakes me up out of a good rest to fix it!

    .

    .

    tl; dr: Momma's got a Squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night

    1. Re:I dunno Who asked for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If she's gaming just upgrade her to wheezy already.

      I have a squeeze box with a heavily, heavily customized exim config that does a lot of automation based on received emails. Upgrading to squeeze was a nightmare of its own, it's waiting until I can spare a test system to duplicate the exim config onto and make sure I can get wheezy to work before I go through that again.

  15. Oldstable? by antdude · · Score: 2

    Isn't that what oldstable is for?

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    1. Re:Oldstable? by iroll · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't Wheezy (7) be oldstable when Jessie (8) becomes stable?

      Now Squeeze (6) will be oldoldstable =)

      --
      Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
  16. Cooking the monitor was a real hazard. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I blew up 2. Luckily I'd just bought the PC so the place replaced them both.
    This was 1990 or 91 I guess.

  17. peasy by znrt · · Score: 1

    the equivalent of "other's" release is debian's "testing" release. it only becomes the official "stable" release when enough testing has been done and it's deemed stable and mature. that's why debian avoids lots of integration problems other distros suffer and why you might say it "just plain works" in comparision: because it's way more tested.

    this was implicit in the answer if you had made use of a couple of neurons. and of course if you'd really wanted to know, you could as well have read it off the debian homepage where it is clearly explained, instead of displaying you utter ignorance and calling others BS just because of your own mental laziness (or because you enjoy being a dick, be my guest).

    1. Re:peasy by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 1

      Frankly, that's a BS answer as well. Other distros test. Are there any metrics that show this "Just works" in detail? If not, then its no better than those scam adds that promise one weird trick to solve your weight issue that doctors hate.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  18. hi doc by znrt · · Score: 1

    the thing is nobody is trying to sell you anything, here. debian is a gift for you from a dedicated community, but i couldn't care less if you use it or not or prefer another distro or even some propietary product of your liking (talking about scam ads!). the simple idea that someone is trying to "sell" you "debian" is absurd. of course there will be always fanboyism but this is rare for debian in my humble experience.

    "just works" is subjective. it describes well my experience with debian (as compared with other distros/oses), but then it's also very vague. for someone else it can mean an easy peasy install out of the box and voilà, there you have your mediacenter running, regardless of the fact that you have to reinstall everything months later because the system "just chokes" or "crawls" or got compromised. for me it means you have a consistent system where you (the user) are in control and that behaves as expected over time. this you only get from systems where reliability is a priority and thus enforce rigurous release methods and policies. this is naturally incompatible with release rush pressure, feature races or marketing fluff of any sort. well, debian is such a system, built for reliability, to "just work". of course not the only one but one of the most prominent examples today indeed.