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Debian Freeze Rescheduled
from debian-devel-announce@debian.org:
I was too hasty when declaring this freeze. Adam di Carlo assured me that the boot-floppies are just not ready yet, and won't be for a number of weeks even if they get help. Also, the count of release-critical bugs is going back up as fast as it came down. (I think that many of them are not really release-critical, but there are so many that just evaluating them takes a significant amount of time.)
I hoped that a week or two of old-style freeze could get potato in shape in time for a mid-December release, but it's just not going to happen. Adam says that the boot-floppies can be ready for freezing on December 1st, and of release-quality on January 1st, and that those dates are somewhat optimistic.
I think that freezing on either of those dates is not useful, due to the winter festivities and the end of the world. I'm rescheduling the freeze for mid-January, the weekend of the 15th and 16th. This will be a freeze according to the original plan for potato, with all the pieces ready beforehand and a fast track to a release in February.
Please keep this freeze date in mind; don't start anything that you can't finish before that time. In particular, with library upgrades and package reorganizations, keep in mind that other packages will have to be recompiled. I'll ask the archive maintainers to actually hold back such packages starting around December 20th.
The good news is that James and I spent a day processing most of Incoming in preparation for the freeze (and I apologize to James for not actually freezing after all that), so the backlog is now gone.
In the meantime, the boot-floppies NEED HELP. If you want to get involved, you can check out their code with this command: cvs -d youraccount@cvs.debian.org:/cvs/debian-boot co boot-floppies Make sure that CVS_RSH is set to ssh.
The mailing list for coordination is debian-boot; CVS update messages are also sent there. The bug reports are collected under the package name "boot-floppies".
Richard Braakman
Maybe now they can include KDE. Or will that be for Debian 3 (err Debian 3k at the rate of development. Don't get me wrong, I love debian and use it everywhere, but the dev cycle is sooo slow)
yea, its not how the computer industry works, thats the point. and its good so.
A "release" in the industry means, giving out the product for the first time, selling it, whereas in the open source movement it means stating it as usable, stable, good, perfect, whatsoever, but the product is always available, even before it is actually released, but it is not "released" for general use.
so thats absolutely NOT silly!
misanthrop
No need to recompile. If you need sound (like a warning when Apache crashes, cron quits, or even if you Internet connection quits), then you can simply do:
echo -e "\a"
Not in ash. And we can all thank Herbert Xu for that.
Address-collecting spam robots don't know how to crack ROT13. Do you?
Ok, thanks for the pointer, but why isn't this linked from somewhere obvious, like www.debian.org ?
I mean, when I was searching for 3.3.5 for slink I searched everywhere for about a week, and I couldn't find any pointers and, if I couldn't find anything for a week, there surely is a problem here.
-- the cake is a lie
Its all very well of you to say so. Of course you are probably one of the Debian members who voted to decide that new members should not be admitted to Debian right now. Pray tell us, if you expect us to contribute, why we cant be provided the same facilities you enjoy?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Debian Slink is _not_ "Linux 2.2-ready". Slink dhcpcd, netbase (ipfwadm and ipautofw) and sysutils (procinfo) break under kernel 2.2.
Assuming you only use the software the system knows about.
So here we are, different distributions, people arguing about what release of Linux is more stable and what ones are more or less bug ridden.
Out of date software, incompatabilities in gettign the latest software to run on your system, tips and tricks for partial upgrades and people running older systems for stability.
This is the revolution? This is the crowd that laughs at Windows users?
Buggy software, late updates, incompatabilities and rebooting crashed boxen...
Sounds like the same old stuff to me.
I am running Slink with kernel 2.2.9 and have absolutely no problems
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
In fact, more developers will simply burden the administration process for the release at this stage.
Typically, in late software projects, you're better off telling the "lesser" developers just to stand back and let the core crew get it done without interference.
- A person who doesn't want to make 8 floppies to install linux.
Actually, RedHat had glibc2 in its 5.1 release. I know: that's when I switched from Debian to RedHat (for my user machine -- my servers run Debian, of course). I got tired of waiting for all the latest toys to play with. I'm happy putting up with an "unstable" machine for my day to day play. I don't blame RedHat for being willing to fill than niche, in fact I'm glad they did (although these days I use Mandrake). I for one an quite happy to have the choice.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Hmmm... hadn't considered that possibility. I was using a non-PnP SB16 at that time, and never really thought about it.
As for Debian's libc6 upgrade what is difficult? I was testing ext3 journalling, which required ext2fsck >= 1.16. Being too lazy to compile, and not wanting to override my Debian installation, I just changed my /etc/apt/sources.list to point to unstable. I updated my packages lists (apt-get update), and installed the new ext2fsck (apt-get install ext2fsprogs). The install notified me that I should upgrade libc6 from 2.0.7 to 2.1.?, I said yes, it upgraded libc6 for me (and a couple of other things). Is there something difficult about typing "apt-get install libc6" ... I must be missing something.
X-mas? Don't you mean Hanukah? I jus' love dem latkes (potato pancakes)...
Of course, the Hamm distribution is problematic in this case.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I prefer the FreeBSD model - its a close crew of people who are confident in their collective abilities. The team is kept fairly small, and is highly productive.
Making the team too large means you end up spending more time on adminstrata than coding.
Wait a minute. I'll grant that the guy did not do a great job upgrading his Debian. He needs to RTFM, and hang out on IRCs a bit more. Fair enough. But he only posted about his frustration with the upgrade process. (This was his motivation for changing distros--ease of use.)
./-ers, so that these kinda problems can be addressed.
:)
But does that make him a troll? No. I think it makes him just one of the many users who are not exactly thrilled with the Debian upgrade tool. (BTW, the entire d-whatever stuff is being rewritten--perhaps an indication that our "troll" is not just blowing hot air.)
Calling this guy a troll because he failed to upgrade properly trivializes his frustration, and the shortcomings of the Debian tools. Why not let this guy be heard by more
Right now, Debian is a great distro, provided you're an above-average user who will not give up on a problem. Debian developers should hear what parts of their tools are preventing more people from enjoying the distro.
Well, I've said my peace. Now moderate me down to a troll, you bastards.
Debian is run entirely by volunteers, who spend much unpaid time slaving away keeping packages up to date and fixing bugs.
Do we, the users have *any* right whatsoever to complain about the slipping date of the freeze? If you want to see Debian go stable sooner then get out there and help bugfix. Whining won't get you anwhere.
You're right. In my opinion Score 1 would have been apropiate.
That's all fine and dandy, except Debian isn't accepting new maintainers right now. So I can't even do any non-maintainer uploads of packages I own, never mind taking up orphaned packages or something.
Also, I'm a computer-savvy, novice C programmer (can hack others' code, can't start my own yet), average sh programmer, who wants to help the Debian project. Where can I find odd jobs to do, and where do I send updates?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
See1 1205&cid=147
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/11/07/16
I wanna help, but I'm not a C guru. What do I do?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Added to which, there is the general issue of the linux community pissing all over users who do not contribute. Not everyone can or wants to get involved. Not everyone who uses Debian is a developer. Soliciting widespread assistance, and then pissing all over people who just want to use it, is unrealistic.
And thank God for that. Look at the last four or five releases of RedHat. Every one had a vast pile of errata within a month, or sometimes within just a week of release, just to fix bugs that should've been caught beforehand.
:)
I'm glad Debian spends so much time getting things right, and I'm more than happy to be patient. Besides, I've been running servers on potato since June without a single hitch, or reboot.
Slink isn't as 'outdated' as people would have you believe. There are debs for Slink that cover upgrades to XFree 3.3.5, October Gnome, etc.
Slink is a beautiful and workable distro. Potato is fun. Debian, I love thee =)
What gives? Are the Debian people just perfectionists or something? All other distributions seem to release new versions a LOT more often.
All the other distributions are beholden to their marketing departments (or even shareholders) to keep the profits rolling in. That means a steady revenue stream. That means quarterly releases. That means things like version number jumps because the other guy is using "6". That means things like releases going out half-baked because you're losing revenue to some knock-off product.
All that said, most Debian developers do feel that we could stand to release more often. I am one of them, and along with Joey Hess and others I hope to spend some time coming up with an updated version of slink before the end of the year. It would collect all the security fixes (which I hasten to add are available on websites all over the world and are even burned onto CD's by vendors in most cases), pull in a 2.2.x kernel, maybe an updated glibc, definitely an upgraded XFree86 if I have anything to do with it, etc. Kind of a "slinky potato", if you will.
Address-collecting spam robots don't know how to crack ROT13. Do you?
I think deb should go for two releases... One ultra stable and tested and one more or less alpha/beta. Then System admins could run the "official release" and "I" could run something partialy beta. Then we would get more beta testers. (And by the way it's petty cheap to print extra cd's)
DAMN! I had planned to finally rid my primary hard disk of Red Hat 5.1 and - dare I say it - Windows before the year 2000. Originally I thought of doing it even a couple of months back, but as the next Debian release seemed to be just around the corner, I decided to wait. And this is the reward I get.
to bake potatos:
.sig
dd if:/dev/random of:/vmlinuz 512k
matisse:~$ cat
So then are they going to host their own mirrors of the central servers, mirroring only what they choose? Hmm. I guess that makes sense, but... awful lot of duplication there too, and seems that it would lead to lots of problems like the one you are citing. Not to mention that they could be devoting that energy to helping Debian out. Oh well...
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Don't use linuxconf, I don't. RH's init scripts and setup scripts are really well layed out and quite simple to follow. I quite frequently go back and forth between editting stuff by hand and using their gui tools. 6.1 includes up2date, which will keep you system upto date with security update and package updates for critical bugs. Personally I prefer autorpm, which does the same tihng, runs from cli, and can be cronned :]. GNORpm allows you to easily download new programs. The only time you really need to reboot is when your upgrading your distribution, which imho, is not such a big deal.
Umm... You haven't tried apt, have you? It takes care of package dependencies automatically, so if for example you want to install the newest mutt from unstable, apt will ask permission to download the new glibc, new slang etc etc. and install them in a sane manner. Debian is really an easy system to upgrade, compared to most other distros.
Raw dpkg.... yecch. I can see how people could hose their systems with it :-) Tho, the same is possible with rpm-based systems as well; just use the --force switch a few times too many.
This is ridiculous. Literally. People are ridiculing Debian for this.
I use Debian at home and at work. I already de-stabilized my home machine with potato, and slink is really old at work.
Potato is now scheduled for release a year after slink. That's an eternity.
No wonder we are being ridiculed. Debian can't get it up.
apt-get install viagra
--
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
This "combo" is no better than my soup-up RH6 distro...some package actually came from 6.1 and there are months of customization into it - changing to any other distro would be a major drag. RH is meant to be "broken" and I secure it down and runs pretty stable. Debian had a chance on my desktop - it will be Corel but if Corel put up a pretty gui with lots of outdated crap... It make sense to run stable release on your server or filewall box but not on the desktop when everything is so outdated.
"it's going to take MORE than..." Does that mean a pretty installer is a necessary condition (just not a sufficient one)? If that's the case, forget it. Installs don't get much uglier than Debian.
I wouldn't say anything to get you to switch. Try it yourself. If you like it, switch, if you don't, stick with RedHat. There is no one distribution that serves everyone's needs the best. I maintain three Linux machines, and I don't run the same distribution on each. I can't begin to guess at why you might want to run Debian rather than RedHat, or why you'd want to run RedHat rather than Debian. I know why my Debian box runs Debian, and I know why my RedHat box runs Mandrake.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Since when do you need a new version of a distribution to keep your system up to date? Just looking at the stuff I use the most (the kernel, X, Netscape, Enlightenment, Eterm, XMMS, Word Perfect, ssh, X-Chat, GIMP... the list goes on) - I built/installed all of it myself. No waiting for packages - or worse, a new distro release - to get new stuff. Sometimes I purposefully avoid packages because it's more fun to do it yourself (for me, anyway). And for small updates, you'll save time patching and rebuilding as opposed to downloading and installing a whole new package.
The kernel-2.2.13 images in potato currently ship with every sound driver known to man modularized.
In fact, the kernel-2.2.13 images in potato don't depend on anything special, so you can drop them right into a slink install. Just read http://www.debian.org/relea ses/slink/running-kernel-2.2 first.
As far as running a mission critica server goes, the stable debian distribution is great. Granted it's dated, may lack some features, any you may have other issuses. But if you want to find a distribution that is going to be stable right away after installation, debian is great.
/var/cache/apt/package.deb
Potato is called unstalbe for a reason., but in my experiences with potato most of the broken packages have been overwrite errors. As in "Package XYZ is trying to overwrite file ABC which is also in package ZYX." This is simple enough to fix. dpkg --force-overwrite -i
Yeah it can be a pain, but that's why it's unstable. On the other hand, I have a potato success story.
Linux destiny 2.2.12 #5 Sat Sep 4 20:11:28 CDT 1999 i486 unknown
8:49pm up 64 days, 1:43, 17 users, load average: 0.20, 0.12, 0.04
This "server" serves up e-mail for about 40 people as well as doing light (in comparsion to slashdot) web trafic. It's happily running potato.
Something debian should consider is not abandoning stable while working on the next distribution. From memory, gnome and X11 where the main packages that got any attention in slink.
Personally, I'll be staying with debian (for now) but am planning staying with stable (once potato is stable anyway...) unless something I really, really must run just won't run or compile under potato.
And for those of you running slink, you may want to look into this, and the debian might want to consider maiking a sudo-distribution like this offical.
Acconding to apt on #debian:
hybrid is, like, a system based on slink with selected packages recompiled from potato (it does not officially exist; it's a phenomena). You must update apt by upgrading to slink-R3 ('apt-get update; apt-get upgrade') then ask me about 'sources'. Visit [ this site ] for_some_ recompiled packages, courtesy of xk. or the memory hog of an ircd efnet uses.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
I wouldn't call it openmindedness and a drive to censor so much as an unwillingness to participate in religious debates.
:).
Every group tends to have hot topics which attract fanatics. Distribution vs. distribution on Linux groups; GPL vs. BSD on advocacy groups (check my user profile for what may well be the one non-vitriolic discussion on the merits of the GPL and BSD license, ever) Canon vs. Nikon on photo groups; objectivism/libertarianism vs. the rest of the world on all groups
The point is that when the religious debate pops up, critical thought goes out the window. Should everyone who wants to fruitfully participate in a group be forced to witness rehash after rehash of this? I'm not claiming that I'm innocent of rehashing, because I'm not. In the past, I've blown as hard as any other blowhard. I hope I've grown up since, though.
Moderation is a method of peer evaluation. And people can be moderated up even after being moderated down - somebody moderated down an article of mine, once upon a time, calling it "flamebait" or "irrelevant"; it ended up at +3 after a few more moderators passed through and disagreed with the first. The point is that no moderation is irrevocable.
Not to mention: moderation down isn't the same as removal. You are moderated down, not removed. If people want to read what you have to say, they can. If you still consider moderation to be censorship, perhaps you could extend the label to literary criticism, for example, since less people will read a book with a bad review.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
You blame getting hacked on the distribution you used? You can't blame holes in daemons on any particular distribution. I would imagine you were hacked by a script kiddie several weeks after an exploit came out for a particular daemon. If you bothered to check the errata you would have nber been hacked. If youc ouldnt bother to do that, you could have installed autorpm and croned a job to keep you in sync with security updates in 5 minutes.
After reading all the postings here, I understand why some people are so angry about a late Debian. First off, staying in slink is difficult: there are hardware not supported, and those software which has only been Beta last year remains to be beta even if it is released 20 times during the year, and so on. Upgrading to Potato is sweet, but it is not an option for many system. First off it require large downloads if you already have a moderately large install base of slink. And there is nothing called security fixes in unstable: there is only a concept of "new", meaning that if you want a secure system you need to upgrade the whole system every day. Even worse, the package system does get broken every now and then (to perform package reorganization), making it impossible to upgrade a significant part of the system for quite a period of time (how long did you wait before upgrading all slang-using packages after slang-1.3 is released?).
But no, releasing Debian potato quick is not the solution. What's the biggest advantage of Debian? Stability and uniformity. Why people install Debian? Stability and uniformity. If one need to trade stablility and uniformity, say, with newer software, in order to compete with Redhat or SuSE, it will backfire and lose its loyal followers. Is there any way that release cycle is accelerated? Maybe. People are talking about it after releasing slink, after slink is freezed but not released for months. And the consensus is that potato still need to be slow to freeze.
There is one interesting thing to notice. Most people care only that they can run their system and their favorite software, not that the newest software ones are being installed. Even if Gnome 1.0.54 is now the current stable, people are reasonably happy with 1.0.5. But people are quite angry even with XFree 3.3.2, since quite some hardware supported by 3.3.5 are not there. They are not happy with libc6 delay, since then they cannot run their mozilla milestones (without compiling themselves). On the other hand, nobody is going to care that the Slink version of rosegarden crash much more frequently than that of Potato: they just compile their own and replace the binary. Also, for the worst lags, there are always unofficial debian packages installable on slink, just that the packages are always difficult to locate.
Why don't Debian people try to collect all links (or even archive) to these slink un-official packages? Only a few of them are needed to keep people happy using Debian. And since there are only few, it can even be placed into the bug tracking system.
Bingo! If you don't like it, don't use it. I hate idiots who complain about "censorship" on Slashdot when in fact there is none. (Is it censorship on USEnet when I choose to only keep the newsgroups I'm interested in in my
As for Debian's libc6 upgrade what is difficult?
You are. The difficult part is not typing the command. The difficult part is when the installation aborts and leaves the system unusable. At least, that was my experience trying to upgrade from slink to potato. For more details, see:
Debian Bug report logs - #48455
libc6.1: libc6 fails to install and leaves installation broken
(Note: I am not Michael Neuffer, I just happen to have had the same experience...)
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
On the installer thing, I'm used to using the NT installer as a base - everything is better than that :)
I'm specifically looking for the value that Debian add (not necessarily in terms of proprietary software - isn't Debian under the Social Licence or somesuch, with *only* Free Software?) but in terms of layout/nifty tools etc.
I'll give it a whirl. I'll either like it or I won't, but I will give it a fair crack of the whip (like I did with SuSE - ran 5.2 for about 6 months before YaST rotted my mind one time too many).
One question though. I run a couple or three boxes, and at the moment, they're all Red Hat. So can I manage a Debian box properly with LinuxConf?
Ta for your time
Peter.
--
Peter
Far more insidious^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfun is
/usr/src/linux ; make vmlinux
:( Somebody, try this on your system, and tell us what happens :)
cd
for i in $(count 10);do
dd if=/dev/urandom of=vmlinux bs=1 count=1\
conv=notrunc seek=$RANDOM
done
make zlilo
This would be much more fun, because this would build a kernel which wouldn't fail its CRC check on uncompressing. (I think the kernel does a data check when it decompresses, which would stop you from mucking with vmlinuz directly
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Debian really has gotten too big and decentralized. In the past I've said that we'll see Linux 2.4 before we even have a Linux-2.2-based Debian release. Now that's definitely true, and I'm beginning to doubt that we'll ever see another Debian release.
linuxconf is the reason I switched from Redhat to Debian. It's not as simple as "don't use linuxconf if you don't like it". Redhat's initialization scripts are written around linuxconf, and if you don't want to use it you really have to jump through hoops to get around it. I spent a lot of time hacking the Redhat init scripts in 5.2 because linuxconf makes to (poor) assumption that dhcpcd is the only DHCP client deamon around (I use dhclient from ISC). Then an upgrade wiped everything out, since the init script RPMs did NOT consider network startup scripts to be configuration files! Debian packages dont't make this mistake.
Not trying to start a holy war here! I like Redhat otherwise! I just don't like the way the init scripts assume the use of linuxconf, which itself is set up to assume the use of other programs. These tangled inter-dependencies seem to go against the whole "modular-system" paradigm.
seems awfully M$ish.
Hold on, Pappa Gates taught me to do things diferently. Rush the product out the door, the release updates/bugfixes. This open source mentality of fixing things before releasing them is silly.
/* CDM */
The bug tracking system, especially the release-critical bug list, and the debian-boot mailing list.
where do I send updates?
Email them to bugnumber@bugs.debian.org
Yes, this is exactly what I do. I run slink on my desktop PC and my Alpha and run potato on my laptop.
/usr/local software installs with symlinks.
On top of slink, I build my own 2.2/2.3 kernel and my own Xserver [XFree86 3.9.16] (the "old" clients are fine; they don't really change much).
For software packages I've build myself, I recommend looking at the "stow" package. It's a little GNU utility for managing
The Debian process is unwieldy and slow, but it produces a really good distribution. I for one am willing to wait. I'm curious, though, what Corel thinks of this- assuming that they are working from slink, they are already working with a very dated distribution, and I wonder how they are going to try to keep themselves current while working within the Debian framework.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
What about StarOffice and Abi? As for the PPC side of things, anyway, USB is supported quite well. I'm typing this with a USB keyboard and pressing the send button with a USB mouse.
Hahahahahaha!!!! Linux is not going anywhere
Umm, obviously you have no idea what "Linux" is if you think the failure of one distribution means the entire thing is fucked.
You can never have enough testers.
Will the new boot floppies have sound card drivers on them? It's a bit annoying to have to recompile the kernel just so that you can get sound support.
I really like Debian - and hope that the stable version gets out soon so that friends of mine without fast net connections can install it. Slink is just getting to be too old to be useful.
(OT - This message posted using Mozilla M11 build 1999110608. It's very nice and I recommend you try it out)
I agree KDE would be good with Debian, but I think there are licence problems regarding this, they might have been resolved. However you can download KDE debs on KDE sites - I know, this isn't the point.
I have also emailed a few people at Debian asking them to cut down the number of packages in Debian, and also consider splitting it in two. A core/pure OS part and an extras part. Then new distributions should appear more often.
I think its time to rethink what Debian is. Its a linux distribution first and foremost. If potato is taking this long, then how long will the next one take?
Upgrade, and just put up with what breaks?
Why would I want to do that?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
dd if=/dev/random of=/vmlinuz bs=1024 count=512
Which is easier to understand as well. Anyway, assuming you're planning on whacking vmlinuz, your most efficient methods are as follows:rm -f /vmlinuz
dd if=/dev/null of=/vmlinuz
--
forgot to mention - assuming you're bent on using /dev/random you should know that device may stall while waiting for more entropy to get stirred in from the keyboard. You really want /dev/urandom which is non-blocking. Getting random data is a rather expensive operation... /dev/zero or /dev/null are almost always better choices...
--
If you're too proud to file bug reports and packages, drag your ego over to the debian-mentors list and show them how damn smart you are. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to see you.
PS A big "You're Number One" to the Slashdot site for not letting me login. Blow me.
My discussion with him regarding the preparedness of the boot-floppies, in particular, is just to make sure he has all the information he needs to make this wish into a reality. The whole point is to go into the freeze with a feature-complete and beta-ready installation system; with that in place, a 4 week freeze is plausible. Without it, it's not. For those who remember the slink freeze, that was about a 16 week cycle (it froze in mid-Nov, release in mid-March), and was quite stressful to all. Our goals is that freeze is predicated on a pretty stable set of packages, which makes our own ability to test installation from scratch and slink to potato upgrading in a more sane fashion.
Let me just cover a few other points, quickly.
I'd like to thank all of you who have expressed support and tolerance for Debian here.
Yes, I regularly checked the RedHat Errata, and in this case the fix came out long after the exploit was used. (I don't anymore since I don't run RedHat)
Slightly off topic here, but I saw a posting to debian's security mailing list that RedHat posed a exploit in one of their packages, and debian had fixed that hole long ago. If I still had that announcement, I'd post it here. And besides I'd rather control and know what level of patches my systems are running at. That way if there is a finger to point I'd know where to point it, rather than cron'ing some job to do it. Yeah, it may be more work for me, but as soon as I get a mailing from Debian's security list, I install the update, no problem.
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
There, there, if those kids don't want to play with you they're not worth being friends with anyway.
Adding more developers to the _same_ code will cause problems. Adding more developers with more code (ie more programs in the distro) is another matter.
debian isn't ready...
debian is taking too long...
i wanna skipped to slackware...
whine.. whine.. whine... ooh woo-ish me, someone hold my hand.
go freaking use what you want. everyone is aware of the time frame that debian is taking. it's taking *TIME* to get a good distribution. all the other distro are *companies* so they have full time employees to make new version of there distributions and guest what, THEY FREAKING SUCKS sometimes. anyone use REDHAT 5.0? i liked it when 5.2 came out. look at slackware, that took a very LONG TIME and slackware is a labor of someone's love.
i'm using debian, i'm using potatoe and it's what's called "cutting edge".
~/
"you get hit and your mind goes ping"
--rocky horror
"you get hit and your head goes ping" --rocky horror picture show
You imply that Debian developers are not also upstream providers. But, in reality, over 134 of the packages in Debian were written by Debian developers, including well known things like sysvinit.
see shy jo
I'm running 2.2.13 and have no problems. The guy is wrong; you don't use ipfwadm with kernel 2.2, you use ipchains, and it's included in netbase, and it works just fine. I don't currently use dhcpd, but I've set it up for testing between two Slink machines, and had no problems with it.
--
Most make files have a "make uninstall", keep the source around and try that when you want to get rid of it.
That's what I took "Added to which, it is unlikely that adding more developers in general to Debian will make it more succesful over the long run ..." to mean.
Generally there are only one or two people in charge of each package and I don't know of any proposal to change that, so I assumed you meant what I said.
It's not clear what is being asked for anyway - testers (which doesn't slow anyone down), bug fixers (which would only slow people down if they have to ask too many questions) or developers (who have coordination issues). I suspect it could be the second, in which case it would probably help. This thread seems to assume the third.
"What about those days? When nothing would compile on your slack box?"
I've never seen those days and I've been running
slack since day 0. This is complete crap.
Everyone else jumped to glibc before it was even
stable. Pat stayed with the stable lib, libc5,
and everything worked just fine. Your compile
problems seem like a personal problem to me.
You don't happen to be Linux Certified, do you?
I know those certified MS guys sure do know their
stuff.
That's right. Debian's marketshare is losing.
That means fewer profits. They'll have to pack up
and send everyone home.
Did you just step off of the "I need a clue" boat,
or what?
I believe you can, but I'm honestly not sure. I never use linuxconf myself...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Does anyone know how to get apt-get to support proxies? I pretty much need this for web access, and I've not found any documentation on doing this.
Stow has the right concept, but its behind on its implementation. Check out encap (http://encap.cso.uiuc.edu). Basically, 3 or 4 years ago encap was at the state that stow is now, a perl script that handled this stuff, without many wistles and bells. Two newer implementations, encapper, and later epkg were written in C to be faster, more efficient, and more featureful. epkg is the only one I know of that is still being actively maintained. Encap is really a great system, and has let me keep from reinstalling for several years now.
All distributions allow you to select which packages get installed, and RedHat is no exception. If you really hate linuxconf - don't install it.
Even if you've already installed linuxconf, you can still do things the old way - i.e edit the initialisation files for packages directly.
I dislike linuxconf too - I find the GUI is not very friendly - but I often use the GUI to get my setup nearly right before messing around with the initialisation files of the app for fine tuning.
Actually I've never had too much problem with any RedHat release [I did 4.0, 5.2 and 6.1, plus some extra packages and kernel updates in between], but it may be because I only leave my server powered for a maximum of a month or so before I find another toy I want to add to it.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I partly agree with you... one thing I really think that Debian should have is an "upgrade" session for the current dist. No just security updates, but also package updates (which they do say exist, but are unsupported. I'm yet to find them, though.).
A new version of application foo comes up with a nice new feature? Make a new slink package, aside from the obvious potato one that will come up overnight. I don't know if things are done this way with other distros, 'cause I have only used Slackware (3.1) and Slink (now Potato). But the KLPP does exactly that way: packages for both Slink and Potato of KDE applications (aside from RPM's for RedHat).
I initially switched to part-Potato because I wanted Gimp 1.1 (unstable). But, let's see... why not a XMMS package for Slink? I now upgraded to full-Potato (and apt-get upgrade every week at home, every day at work - I'm near a mirror there), and it's nice to get all the new versions of apps. If they could spare some time to make new packages for Slink for some apps, the lifetime of the "stable" dists could really grow.
Ok. So the guy posted some unkind words. Sounds like Debian had it coming. But can you honestly say this was a troll comment? I really don't think so, though I understand if some people are not happy with the blunt language used in the post. I suggest the original post be moderated up a tad; it's not a troll.
Corel is on 2.2.12 currently.
But that isn't the issue here.
1:31pm up 144 days, 12 min, 2 users, load average: 1.08, 1.09, 1.03 this has over 700 user accounts, and heavily used as a file server, web, mail etc. And the students who are running it are having alot of fun with the new enlightenment on it....
See "man sources.list" on a recent system.
I don't expect to see another stable Debian ever again.
Put simply, there's no real pressure on the core group to produce a stable version of Debian.
Users who ask for stable code get Slink, and those who ask for more recent features get told to type apt-get-random-stuff-hope-it-doesnt-explode
I don't want to place any blame, but the simple fact is that these partially-upgaded users are a big support load for those of us maintaining Free Software.
I'm seeing a much disproportionate number of bugs from Debian users which turn out to be mismatched libraries, and every time the user must be SHOWN step-by-step that they've screwed up, because they believe that their Debian system is infallible.
When you buy your next Debian CD, be sure to get a box of CDRs for all the software that didn't exist back in 1975 when they last had the courage to freeze their distribution.
But then again, potato is called unstable for a reason. While it is surprisingly usable, it's the little things that get to you.
Basically the other respondants to the posters tout debian's easy upgradability. With RedHat, you really don't need to upgrade off the internet continously because if you are using a recent distribution, the programs are recent, not out of date. As for installing software, both distributions have package management systems and both ahve methods of easily getting software from the net, auto-resolving deps, and installing (see: GNORPM). If you are just interested in installing critical bug fixes or security fixes you can crontab autorpm or use up2date to keep your box stable and hax0r free. As prior posts have said, debian doesn't maintain a security list for unstable release which means you either have to follow each exploit explicitly or you have to upgrade your _whole_ distribution each night. As for the 'ease ' of debian's upgradability, I would just suggest reading over the ocmments in the forum to see how easy it really is. One point to concede, you cann't upgrade the distrubion without rebooting in redhat.
I used Slackware ages ago. I was somewhat happy. I had updated it to the latest kernel (it was 2.0.26 or something like that) and glibc and things. But then everybody started to talk about how great Debian and its packaging system was. I started to consider moving to Debian.
Finally, I got Slink and installed it. I did not like it.
I don't get the concept of packages.
When a developer makes an application, he usually writes a configure script adhering to GNU's coding standards (usually because they use Autoconf to generate it). The configure script performs checks in the system it is running on and defines different C preprocessor symbols so different portions of the code are compiled according to the results of those tests.
For example, lets say I'm making an image manipulation program. My configure library will check for libpng, libgif, libtiff, libjpeg and many other libraries. It will define a different symbol in the Makefiles (which are usually created using Automake) so my application will be built to support different file formats according to the libraries I have installed in my system. After I compile the application, it will depend on those libraries. If I remove any of them, I will have to reinstall the application since it will no longer work (unless it called dlopen or did some other weird thing; I have never seen any application that does it).
With the packages, I download a precompiled binary/library. It has been linked against whatever libraries the one who made the package thought are a sane choice. If he who made the package linked it against a lot of libraries, I will have to go and download them, even if I don't want to use them at all. If he linked it against very few libraries, I will not be able to use other libraries, even if I have them installed and the original application supports them.
For example, my friend with a FreeBSD box installed Vim using his operating system's packages system (I think it is called the Ports, or something). Needless to say, when he passed the `-g' command line option to the executable, it was ignored. For those of you who don't know Vim, the `-g' option causes it to open a new window and show Vi in that window. For that to work, you need to have GTK installed in your system. When you run your configure script, it looks for it and, if it finds it, it links Vim against it. Since the one who made the package for Vim thought it was better not to link it against GTK, my friend was then unable to see Vim's GUI.
For this reason, I would much rather install an application and leave it running the way I want it to work, using all the libraries I have installed, than using the choice that some packager thought was sane.
When I install an application, I like to leave it's code hanging around for sometime. If it fails or crashes, I will recompile it with debugging symbols and use GDB to see where are the problems. If it does some interesting things, I will go and read the code if it is of any use for the applications I develop. That's one smaller reason why I don't like packages: I like to leave the code around for some time (most of the time I leave it compressed). Debian's packages don't even come with their C header files, you have to get a -devel package for that.
I know that in Debian I can install things by hand. In fact, most of the applications I use (let's see, jdk, games, windowmaker, acrobat, apache, bash, cvs, gimp, gnome, gmp, gpg, guile, gzilla, hb, kaffe, lesstif, lsh, memprof, mesa, mutt, netscape, postgres, perl, queso, rxvt, ssh, tex*, vim, tf, egcs, textutils, wget, xscreensaver, linux...) have been installed by hand. That way I can have them optimized to work the best way in my machine. As you see, I have even removed and installed my own version of some of Debian's Required packages.
So what are the advantages of packages?
Uninstalling software? That's just a matter of doing `rm -Rf /usr/local/app-x.y.z'. I mean, whenever I install something, I pass an appropiate `--prefix /usr/local/app-x.y.z' parameter so all of its files will go to that directory. I then modify my /etc/profile to add some paths to MANPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, PATH, CFLAGS (-I and -L options) and the like or I create symlinks from a standard location.
Keeping track of dependencies? I can use `ldd' to find out what libraries a given binary depends on, so I know those `hard' dependencies. Other are obvious. For example, I know I can't erase GnuPG or I won't be able to encrypt/sign my mail when I use Mutt.
Automatically updating software? That ignores the `don't fix what ain't broken' rule. I used to run `apt-get update' and `apt-get upgrade' often, now I avoid doing that as much as I can. I don't want to go into the `sorry, pal, this application now uses a different syntax for the configuration file, you're fucked up now' unless there is a real reason to update. So I don't really consider `apt-get upgrade' an advantage of packages over plain tar.gz files.
I suppose the problem I have with packages comes down to just a few things:
1. I, like you, hate things that do their work without my knowledge. Fuck linuxconf. Fuck packages. It's not that I want to know absolutely all of how my system works, but I at least want to know what files belong to what programs and to use the interfaces (ie. configuration files) provided by the applications themselves, rather than some scripts that create them for me. I like to go straight to the point, not talk with some stupid script that doesn't do what I want it to do. If I wanted wizards I would be using Windows.
2. Packages assume all GNU/Linux boxes are equal. Which is wrong.
Oh, and let's not mention all the practical problems with many of Debian's packages.
I have heard there is something called `source packages'. Could someone point some advantages of that over plain tar.gz's?
Anyway, I'm still running Debian, but I hardly use it's packaging system. If I had to start from scratch again, I would start with Slackware 7. But I suppose I don't have any reasons to update to Slackware. I can just continue to do things my way (not apt-get's and Debian's packager's way) and survive.
On a side note, something that I *really* like of Debian and does matter for me to choose it over others is their clear attitude towards freedom.
Flame as much as you want.
Alejo.
apt-get is cool for developers but not good for business environments, where you just can't have things changing under your feet and goodness knows what breaking all the time.
Also although I do have T1 net access I much prefer to have a physical CD with the distribution I'm using on it. That way I know where I stand and won't be screwed if I need to do an install or grab some source when there's no net access available for some reason.
Anyway, good luck with Slackware. The new version is really splendid - an up to date kernel, glibc 2.1, KDE 1.2, October GNOME and so on. Best of all it has nice standard ASCII configuration files and rock solid stability - great if you know what you're doing and don't want the distribution to screw things up in an attempt to be overly clever.
At first sight it's surprising that a tiny development team can roll out stable releases faster than the huge army of Debian developers... but then I think about the problems maintaining conceptual integrity in committees and realise it's not surprising at all...
For a newbie I would recommend RH/Mandrake/Caldera instead, because the installers do a better job of holding the user's hand. The smart money's on Slackware though!
Not only a rant, but borderline flamebait/trolling. I'll bite though.
If Slink isn't your bag, why didn't you even TRY Potato? You say you're an experienced sysadmin. Potato is nowhere near the bleeding edge. The bleeding edge is where people download every new bit of software, compile and play. Debs don't even make it INTO potato until they've been playtested (they'll sit in Incoming before that)
Horror stories from going Slink -> Potato? Do you realize that they don't even have a Potato base system? That even a bare Potato install is a Slink upgrade process (on a smaller scale)?
Please, if you want to go to glibc 2.1, go read the docs on doing it for Slink. It's not difficult. Otherwise, try potato. It'll surprise you, I've never seen it crash. I'm on it RIGHT NOW.
Some people..
The only time there is an E in potato is in the plural, potatoes.
However, on the bright side, this gives me a chance to get my package into Debian before it freezes, meaning it could be in a Debian "stable" before the 21st century (2001). That's always nice. Well I hate to be the one to break this to you but the 21st century is 2000, 2001 is the 22nd ;)
Sheesh, so many people here saying "2.4 will be out before Potato", "Slink was out of date when it came out, and so will be Potato", etc.
My favorite was the one saying Debian needs to speed up their bug resolution process. Don't you folks get it? If you want it to improve, you've got to help. Don't sit there complaining expecting some mysterious software overlord to fix all the little problems and hand you a nice new Debian distribution for Christmas. Get your hands dirty, fix some of the problems in the boot floppies, or shut up and don't complain when they don't get fixed as soon as you would like.
Debian isn't some monolithic software corporation, it's people like you, like me, like everyone else who thinks that Linux is fun, that's it's a priviledge and a responsibility to give back. I know not everyone is a programmer, but each and every one of you can do something. Spend an hour writing a HOW-TO, or updating a man page, or trying to reproduce a bug, something, anything other than complaining on slashdot that Debian is delayed.
Please, re-read the letter. They are asking for your help. So, if you really want Debian to succeed, quit being a consumer in the gift economy, and start being a producer. It doesn't have to be much, but anything is better than whining.
Sorry, rant mode off.
Some guy named Chris
I use redhat, so I don't have this problem as much as you do, as you pointed out :], however their are times I want to have multiple versions of a program installed or use a program that doesnt have an rpm built for it. What I usually do in these cases is just add a prefix to the configure comand. E.g. ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ . That way all the program's files are contained in one directory, which allows for easy deletion when I get that rpm, or don't want it around any more.
I often use your method of prefixing applications to their own directory, however I much prefer using packages since they usually place common data in common directories. E.g. all program libraries generally wind up in /usr/lib. All images wind up in certain directories, etc. , etc. etc. Your problem reguarding vim could be easily solved using Source RPMS (I would assume fbsd and debian have similiar entities). You can basically add specific options, then compile the src, build the rpm, and install that. Best of both worlds. Customization + Easy uninstallation. Personally, I have 54 compiled applications, and 657 packages installed.
I use debian daily, so when you mention the security fixes, i wonder why they don't show up in apt-get update?
/etc/apt/sources.list and they will.
Not by default they don't, but add
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable updates
to your
your apt isn't new enough for that, you might want to ask how to get the newest version of apt for slink on a mailing-list. /.?
Debian's user community is pretty strong -- did you ever bother to take advantage of it or just decided to rant on
Like I said in another follow up, I am subscribed to debian user, and approximately twice a week somebody complains that the upgrade to glibc 2.1 hosed their system.
Then somebody else posts that to upgrade to potato, you need the new version of dpkg/apt-get/foo-baah something, and even then there might be problems.
Look, I need this system to work, I don't use it for fun, but to actually put the bread on the table, while it's true that I am in a ranting mood because of the XFree 3.3.5 screwup (read in the other post) I still find the debian development model to be fairly wrong.
You can't have an extremely old, out of date, unsupported (for new software) distribution and a bleeding edge, sometimes screwed-up (anybody remembers the perl problems in potato a little while ago ? ) distribution that only developers use.
People need to wake up and realize that a significant part of Linux's user base doesn't want to use Linux but use Linux to get some work done.
I knew that I would be moderated down, because it seems that nobody can say anything about Debian/FSF/etc. without being grilled.
I am very supportive of the open source model, heck, I started putting stuff I wrote under the GPL several years ago, so I have the feeling that I have the right to say that the emperor is naked when I see that it is.
-- the cake is a lie
Why would you call them losers?
Besides, every poll I've seen Redhat takes the lead,
then slackware and debian are nearly tied. Show me
one that's different.
Debian is refusing to allow new members to join. What this means is that Debian's current maintainers want people to contribute but they will refuse to allow proper credit for their work. This is theft. In the free source community if one isn't getting paid then it is even more important to give credit and acknowledgment where it is due. Regardless of whether the license permits, this is why it is immoral to erase the name(s) of previous contributors and substitute one's own claiming credit for the work. The existing closing of Debian was inspired by scenarios of malicious trojans that never occurred. This is very similar to dictators who use imaginary threats to justify imposing martial law.
stability, uptime, and glibc 2.1 applications? i don't know anybody that is running glibc 2.1 (or a 2.2 kernel) in a server that requires stability and uptime. the fact is that they aren't there yet.
.....away the competition!
All around, I think it's a very solid, friendly, powerful distrubution.
The installation, while not perfect, has certain advantages over every other Linux installer I've tried.
The package managment is quite cool. The praises of apt-get have been sung by enough people already, so I'll voice my support for the underdog, that little much-maligned workhorse named dselect. YES, the interface does take a BIT of work getting used to, so I wouldn't recommend setting up a Debian system for absolute computer newbies. YES, it can sometimes get slightly psychotic and try to do things you don't want it to do. But this is pretty rare! For the most part, it's a very powerful animal, and quite useful.
The packages themselves are very nice also. The additional features they support over RPMs are quite cool, but I really love the default configs that come with the packages. It really does help reduce the learning curse... I don't have to spend hours reading documentation for a piece of software I know NOTHING about to make a functioning config file, Debian packages have a FUNCTIONAL config file right from the start, which I can tweak as I need, or completely redo once I've actually learned something about the program. Who has time to learn the structure of every config file on eir system? When I wanted to run an ssh server, but didn't really have time to read hundreds of pages of documentation ABOUT ssh servers, I just ran a couple quick apt-get lines, and I had a fully-functional ssh server configured and installed in just a few seconds. Sweet stuff.
Hooray for Debian.
Why should anyone agree to become a peon without even being allowed the simple credit of becoming a member? You seem to think the amenity of having a debian.org address is worth something, so why deny even this to someone who might make a major contribution to the project. The current Debian leadership simply closed the project under false pretenses. First it was claimed that membership admission had to be tightened up because of the threat that some malicious person might introduce a trojan into Debian. Then Debian leadership refused to admit for many months that in effect the project had been closed. Now the project asks for help from people whom it will refuse to grant membership in any reasonable length of time. If this help doesn't materialize, I have no doubt the leadership will claim the chaos of not being able to make a release will prevent it from allowing new members! Congratulations on turning Debian into the new Cathedral.
Debian unstable is amazingly stable and with apt you don't so much upgrade as tell computer to upgrade itself.
Oh well. I got all excited for nothing. Debian is a great distro, if it takes time to put things together then that's perfectly understandable and I'm willing to wait. But then, maybe not. When slink entered freeze and I bought the CD, it came with all the latest and coolest stuff. But as the months went by, it got old very quickly. And guess what? No more updates for slink unless it's related to security. They kept up with gnome-1.0 for a while, but only for a while. I'm still stuck with mutt 0.94, so I can't use the new PGP6 I downloaded. I would compile programs myself and make install them, but if I do that, what's the point of having a great packaging system like Debian's? Let's say I compiled mutt 1.0 on hamm and linked to libc5. When it's time for an upgrade to slink, apt-get dist-upgrade won't even know mutt 1.0 is installed, and won't upgrade it to the glibc2 version. Now I can't install the newer mutt that comes with slink, unless I trace through the steps of make install and delete the current mutt files that were scattered into /usr/local. Imagine doing this for some 15 to 20 programs. Debian developers should come up with a way to keep packages updated in the frozen releases. Perhaps just the current stable release, as it would take too much time to keep things updated on all the past releases. Debian is already a great distribution. This addition would make it the ideal distribution, and I won't have to envy those RedHat users that always get the latest packages. Just my two cents.
Difference is, you can grab the newest, most bleeding edge devel debian any time you like.
Knowing when to push back the date is a good thing. Especially when it isn't about trying to get people hooked on vaporware to kill your enemies.
This sig is false.
This is what I do to keep my slink boxes current without upgrading to potato:
Manually download the potato debhelper package and install it with the 'dpkg --install ...' command. You must have the new debhelper (which is just a collection of scripts) to get the potato packages working.
Edit '/etc/apt/sources.list' and add the line 'deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free'
Run 'apt-get update'.
Run 'apt-get source PotatoPackage' from /root for anything that you need updated.
Move into the new directory that apt-get will create. Run 'debian/rules binary'. (Note that you could use dpkg-buildpackage instead.)
You will now have current debs that are linked against the slink libraries. This is very handy indeed, especially if you want or need only a few new packages.
I use debian daily, so when you mention the security fixes, i wonder why they don't show up in apt-get update? I basically need to go and get them myself (which isn't hard, but I thought the whole point of apt was to be able to automate package updating).
I must be honest though, I was able to update into slink without a single hitch! (it was a great feeling!) The only reason I can see the packages not being listed by apt would be if they were not slated for slink.... (which sucks since the point of a security upgrade is like a -dare i say- hotfix, which should repair what software is in place, not what software will be COMING SOON TM.)
I was just confused as to why apt could update my hamm to slink, but not anything else for slink...
Thanks for the interesting link, your comment has been constructive but let me ask you one thing why hasn't XFree 3.3.5 released for slink ?
I don't buy the crap that it's not stable, it's actually needed to get some stuff running, and since it's been released for redhat 5.2 (glibc 2.07) it's just a repackaging job so why don't the powers-that-be get off their high horse and repackage this for slink like it had been done for 3.3.4 which was just an interim release ?
I'm sure that many slink users would appreciate that.
-- the cake is a lie
I'm quite interested in the next release of Debian, and I've been thinking about trying it out over the RedHat CD's I've been installing for the past couple of years.
.debs instead of .rpms, but what else is there to know for a first time user?
I know I want it - I just don't know why. Would some Debian users be able to tell me the main differences between Debian and RedHat? I already understand that Debian uses
insignificant sig
Yeah, right. What about those of us running a server that requires stability, uptime, and glib 2.1 applications? According to you, we either take our chances with an unstable development tree (and get what we deserve), or abandon Debian.
The ever increasing Debian delays are forcing some of the Debian faithful to choose the latter. Sad.
In addition, many would-be newcomers won't go with Debian, because it's 2.0.36/glib2.0 on CD. They don't know if and how they can upgrade to 2.2/glib2.1. Sad.
re, the FreeBSD ports collection you refered to: these are not packages in the linux sense of the word, the ports collection is basically a directory tree full of makefiles, that can check program source directly out of CVS. You always have the latest stable version, and it is configured and compiled for your system. the failure of 'vim -g' on your friends system was most likely caused by something that was missing during the compile, such that the code for '-g' couldn't be included, not because of a precompiled binary missing that feature. personally, I've used slackware for 3 years before switching to Debian last year. I have always used the unstable version of Debian, and have only had 2 major problems because of this 1) teTeX broke for 1 week last spring 2) I keep having to relink /usr/include/{linux,asm} to /usr/src/linux/include/{linux,asm} which is just a weird debian quirk I guess... also I couldn't get enlightenment to work for a while, now I can... this wasn't really a problem for me, WindowMaker eats less cpu/mem, but E is pretty :) I do also happen to keep a lot of things in /usr/local, there's nothing that prevents you from rolling your own binaries. the source packages you speak of work as follows 'apt-get source vim' 'cd vim-??' 'debian/rules binary' this runs configure, and then make, just as you would have done your self had you downloaded the source and compiled it... it also includes some scriptness for 'debianization' but that is just for uniformity/tracking/pkg-dependencies of the system, which i believe is a "cool thing" I _loved_ slackware when I used to use it, and I downloaded and recompiled nearly everything interesting that I had everytime a new version came out, but then again, between my learning curve at system administration, and total lack of dependance tracking or file-system-standards (configs go in /etc for instance) I would end up having to do a complete reinstall about once every 3 or 4 months, which is a pain in the rear, especially when you are a poor student, and do not have spare ives/cdrw's/tapedrives to backup things on to... using Debian, I have had to do a few head scratchings, and a few compiles, and a bit of cursing at dselect before i found apt-get, but I have never had to reinstall from scratch. I even upgraded from slink to potato without a single hitch. of course, then again, I am not quite living in reality, being on a campus, with a 100mbit outlet 5 feet from my bed, so that i can easily do apt-get every afternoon. Now that I think about it, I can understand why the home user, who relies on CD's for upgrades would be upset about this. so goes life.... -me
THIS is how I updated from glibc2.0 to glibc2.1
/etc/apt/sources.list
1. Updated
2. apt-get update
3. apt-get upgrade
If I'd known about dist-upgrade, it would have been even easier.
Dangit.. Every year it's the same thing... they promise us ;>
:P
vegetables.. and then at the last minute, they take them away.
We're hungry computer folks out here people....I don't
care if they're frozen or not... I actually prefer them piping hot...
with lots of cheese and sour cream w/chives... Yummmm
Do you think they could pass out holiday Ramen blocks in the meantime?
Mmmmm... crunchy!
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
Look, I love Debian but their latest stable release still uses the 2.0.36 kernel. They should really get something out the door soon. OK, I know you can just download stuff from the unstable tree (and I do), but that can be very intimidating for the new user, and sometimes there are some problems with package incompatabilites and some packages requiring other packages which aren't there, etc. that can really screw up your system if you just go with the suggestions dselect makes (usually involving removing just about every package on your system). I was very much looking forward to an actual stable release.
What gives? Are the Debian people just perfectionists or something? All other distributions seem to release new versions a LOT more often.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
We've been waiting far too long for Potato already. I've really started to enjoy Debian, but this reschedule is not a good thing. I'm still on the 2.0 Kernel, some of my servers will be for a long time, but I think its time for Debian users to get at 2.2 kernel in a stable distro.
On the other hand. It is a Good Thing that they wait until things are really stable. Releasing unstable products is a Bad Thing when people want to use the product on mission critical servers.
But, as someone already has pointet out. Will we see Potato released stable, before we see Kernel 2.4 stable?
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
When boot floppies are so difficult to make, how come that a dozen other distributions already have them?
And why does every distribution need to re-invent this wheel?
Isn't it time for some more cooperation instead of fighting distribution wars?
If at any time it was clear that distribution wars are holding back progress, it is now!
A question brought up by reading: "In the past I've said that we'll see Linux 2.4 before we even have a Linux-2.2-based Debian release.. (anonymous)" >> Does anyone know if Corel is built off of 2.1? and if they are going to have an more recent kernel then 2.0.36(?) that was in deb2.1?
Well, you could always add:
`deb-src http://debian.mirror.here/debian stable main contrib non-free'
and `apt-get source package' to get the source, including headers and all. Then compile to your needs and install.
Does Debian actually have a roadmap? Do they say "OK, let's get these changes, and whatever minor packages are stable by this date, into a new release?" Or is it just "hey, I woke up this morning and decided, let's do a release!"
The former, mostly. If you search the debian-devel list archives you'll find people talking about what should be go into the next release. I believe the big upgrades for slink-to-potato were perl, glibc, XFree, and, of course, the kernel.
The title says it all, I'm really fed up with how stuff is going with debian, I've installed slink quite a while ago because everybody was talking about how good debian was etc. etc. etc.
Now, every single distribution switched to glibc 2.1, while I am stuck with 2.0, I have many many many outdated packages, that I can not upgrade with dpkg because the new versions all depend on glibc 2.1 which is available in potato.
There are -many- horror stories of people who partially updated to potato for the same reason, and I don't want to risk to hose my system.
Honestly, it's just not worth it, debian screwed up badly, and big time, and won't surely get any recommendation from me in the future.
Before you ask, no, I'm not a newbie, I've been administering various flavours of unix systems for about 6 years now, and for quite a significant part of that time I had a sort of home-grown distribution.
I thought that the possibility of using packages and the reputation of debian would have been worth my while, they were not, I was much happier when I could simply download any source (or foreign package converted with alien) and installing without caring about dependencies and stuff rather than the situation I am now, when I have to try and dig up Redhat 5.2 packages in order to run XFree 3.3.5 (yes, it's been compiled for 2.1, not 2.0)
This is degenerating into a rant, but anyways the point that I want to make is that people that run Linux tend to want to be able to easily upgrade to new software when it comes along.
If the debian people weren't living in their small little world of T1+ internet access, apt-get, and bleeding edge, they would have put out a long time ago an official guide to move to glibc 2.1, which packages are needed, how to do it, etc. etc. so normal users would be able to use new software without feeling like they are lepers.
I honestly thought about going to RedHat as well, but I already have so many bad experiences with it at work, that I honestly don't want to be bothered ( hint, I hate linuxconf, and generally speaking any gui program that does things behind my back)
This leaves pretty much only slackware, maybe I'll give it a last try to update this debian box to glibc 2.1 if somebody posts here a guide on how to do it WITHOUT using apt-get (I'm on a modem here, and I'd like to download the packages first) otherwise in a few weeks when I'll have some time, I'll probably wipe everything out and install slackware from scratch.
-- the cake is a lie
Never, ever, run servers off an "unstable" tree - that would be a bad idea... ;-)
So releases are still important for many of us.
The problems which I experienced with a large Debian installation were because apt-get wasn't used to switch cleanly from one stable version to another. We had Slink but people needed newer versions of certain bits of software, so the sysadmins grabbed them from the unstable tree with apt-get (it was a rule that one had to use package management if a package existed).
However the new software was linked with different libraries and had lots of dependencies, so all kinds of other things got fetched as well. Now we can't say "we've got version X" because we don't really know what we've got!
By comparison, when this problem occurs with Slackware (which it does, since they've been slow with stable releases in the past also), I grab only the new program a user has asked for, compile it from source and stick it in /usr/local or /opt - keeping it clearly separate from the distribution, which remains the same as on my CD. Folks who need the new program can pick up the new path, others aren't affected. When I upgrade the whole distribution to a newer Slackware I go through /usr/local and see what can be retired since it now comes with the distribution itself. It's a bit more work for the sysadmin but I find it a very safe, reliable method.
Also to clarify what I said about apt-get "breaking" things, I didn't really mean due to any fault or inconsistency in Debian itself, even the "unstable" version. The difficulties arise simply because bits of software people didn't expect to be upgraded changed to newer versions, with slightly incompatible config file formats. The stuff which broke were the users' startup scripts - it felt like a lot of effort just to avoid software rot, never mind getting on with actual work.
Essentially apt-get is great technology but seems to encourage rather dangerous things, at least to a real stability-devotee such as myself!
My first distribution was Redhat 4.0 (well, actually Slackware 3.1, but that was just for play :), and since i heard a lot of positive comments about Debian, i switched as soon as 2.0 (hamm) was released. I've never regretted it, since the distribution is very clean, feels mature, and is less 'messy' than i perceived Redhat to be.
But, more than a year between releases is too slow in my opinion, especially when development goes as fast as it does with Linux at the moment. Slink was allready out of date at the moment it was released, and when Potato keeps lagging it will suffer the same fate. Stable shouldn't have to mean fossile. I'd really be a happy camper if Debian would speed their bug tracking up a little and released twice a year or something. Dunno how feasible that it though.
I use potato on all my boxes including the ones at work.
Enjoy
--
My preferences are set to uncut and raw comments, and that isn't going to be changing anytime soon.
I'm fed up with the holier than thou triumphalism that has run rampant on slashdot and other geek communities. Our success comes mainly from our openmindedness, not blotting out unpopular words.
I am not a lawyer.
.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I've been wondering about the release cycle of Debian. It seems to me that it's not at all thought out. For example, slink came out just as the 2.2 kernels and the new release of XWindows occured, neither of which made it in. It seems to me that those are pretty damn big pieces of a Linux system, and if any software update warrants a new release, then they would.
Does Debian actually have a roadmap? Do they say "OK, let's get these changes, and whatever minor packages are stable by this date, into a new release?" Or is it just "hey, I woke up this morning and decided, let's do a release!"
I think people wouldn't be clamoring so much for a new release if Debian had just planned to include the new XWindows and the new kernel in slink. Do they pay attention at all to what other projects are doing? Seems to me like they are on the road to once again miss out on a major kernel upgrade, if what we hear about 2.4 is true. Granted, it is a major pain to let a kernel settle in, but perhaps they could plan on doing a minor release in, say 4-6 months after 2.4 comes out, and hopefully is settled down?
I tried getting 2.2 up and running, but it turned out to be just a lot easier to go out and get Mandrake instead.
I still use Debian on my laptop, and I do like it a lot. I just wonder about their scheduling.
I'm not sure where people are getting their misinformation here. Debian Slink is "kernel 2.2 ready" (in market-speak). Just download the source and build it like you normally would. The module utilities, compilers, and binutils will handle a 2.2 kernel just fine. Yes, Slink is really old, and Debian should release much more often, but Slink works just fine with 2.2 kernels.
--
Uh... what?
Would you care to explain how we are going from the 20th to the 22nd century in 2 years?
Must be that darn Y2K bug.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
thanks Dan for the insight...
Pork is not a verb
I'm running kernel 2.2.9 on my Debian-slink system along with a number of other pieces not included in the distribution, none of which comes from the 'unstable' branch. One of the things I like about Debian is it doesn't get in your way if you want to download, compile, and install your own stuff.
For those pieces I don't need the latest-greatest for, I use packages from stable- for everything else, I compile. No problem.
I -have- downloaded pieces from unstable before, but I've always been disappointed with the results, and the same with importing precompiled binaries from non-Debian sources. There's always another library to deal with. Compile yourself and you know you're linked to the library version that you have.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Debian does take too much time between stable releases for my personal taste - seems I'm always stuck between running a far-outdated "stable" and taking my chances (mainly with broken dependencies) running "unstable".
However, on the bright side, this gives me a chance to get my package into Debian before it freezes, meaning it could be in a Debian "stable" before the 21st century (2001). That's always nice.
---GEC
Bow-ties are cool.
I am a strong Debian believer and I find this fact somewhat disappointing but not much. I use Slink, and I am retty happy with the software that slink includes. I even found places where you can find "unofficial" "official" slink deb packages for GNOME,KDE, WindowMaker, and latest XFree86, anything else really does not matter to me ..
Just forget releases. Apt-get update/install all the latest changes from the development tree. Then put up with what breaks and wait for someone to fix it (or fix it yourself). Works for me. :) Most of the time its stable enough.
Odd... your email address came out looking fine... hmmmmmmmmmm...
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I'm a long-time Red Hat user, but I'm curious about Debian.
Now, it's going to take more than a pretty installer to make me switch distros, but I could be persuaded...
So, I guess the question is this: what would you say to persuade me to switch? What does Debian do better than the rest? Or even just better than Red Hat?
--
Peter
I've only been using Linux for a few years but when I started I tried quite a few distributions. I tried Caldera, Redhat, Slackware and finally Debian.
I came to rest on Debian because I liked what it represented and I liked the fact that these people were all volunteers. The install was also easy and after a bit of an awkward start the package system made perfect sense.
In defence of Debian I'd say that it is much more important to have a nice stable release rather than rushing something out the door when they know it isn't ready. Rushing is something that Microsoft would do.
I recently started to use apt-get and have updated my system to the bleeding edge unstable release. My system isn't going through any unexplainable crashes or bugs and it behaves just like a Linux system should. Rock Solid.
It has been posted before but I'll say it again. If you are concerned with the amount of time it is taking to make this Debian release stable then jump in there and lend a hand.
Cynicide
Yeah, debian may be a bit dated when it rolls out a release, but nevertheless I can feel confident to put it into production on our 12 linux boxes at work. These boxes rule the network, DNS, NIS, DHCP, central syslog server, ftp servers, and a firewall to a fairly trusted vendor.
:)
With these boxes being so important to my network and my reputation, no way in hell do I want RedHat in there (wtih all of it's cute features, many many open ports, and many ways to be compromised). I want stability and ease of maintenance, I have to deal with HP/UX on 9 other machines, and they are a pain in the ass to maintain as easily as apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade. But if we're going to compare comerical unixes to linux, debian shines brightly in comparision, it's rock solid, stable and secure. HP/UX on the other hand isn't as up to date, it's stable thou (if you configure it right), and secure if ya beat it into submission.
Nevertheless I used to be a RedHat user, it's what I started using when I got into Linux. It's great for newbies on standalone machines, but once ya learn, debian can very much be your friend (don't bitch to me about slackware--I tried that first, could never get the damn thing to run, although I probabally could now, but why? I've got enough gnu utilities to compile on my HP and Sun boxes to add functionality and fix broken utils.) An example of this for a few years I ran a RedHat box at college, and it was a webserver, majordomo server and a few other things for my college organization, Circle K International. It was all fine and dandy until I got hacked (hard core). By this point I was messing around with Debian on my home box, and decided when I went to re-install that machine, I would put in a kick ass and bolted down Debian box. I put the Debian box in and it was up for several months at a time...the only things that took it down was 1) a power outage, 2) some moron pressing control-alt-delete on the keyboard, 3) some other moron unplugging it from the network.
All in all, I'm grateful to the Debian developers for all their time and attention to detail, this is what makes this distribution kick some serious butt. I've even got my friends (who were big time RedHat lovers) to even switch to Debian, especially when they look on freshmeat, find some kewl new update and gee, there happens to be a debian package for it.
So in the meantime potato may be delayed in becomming the stable release, I'll be happy to wait until the developers are happy with it, and not until then. If I'm overly anxious, I can always upgrade to potato anytime, ya gotta love how debian is set up.
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
This isn't a troll - its going to be very hard to stay competitive when you are trailing so far behind the perceived market leaders.
...but for all the whining I've read about the freeze being pushed :-)
forward a bit, I haven't seen a single whiner jump in to offer their
help. I mean, really. Linux is software By the People and For the
People. And Debian is IMO the distro that sticks the most closely to
that credo. Help was asked for on the floppies.
Anyhow, I've been running 100% potato since June (and I don't
dual-boot. Debian GNU/Linux is the only OS on my system, and has
been for three years). It's always been rock solid.
If you've got a mission critical system that you don't want to risk
anything with, Slink should do the job.
If you've got an extra box handy, put Potato on it and enjoy.
It really *is* turning out to be a great distro.
Don't forget the fact that when you use debian packages to install software it will automatically update the root menus of all debian compliant window-managers and enviroments. This saves lots of time reconfiguring menu rc files, expecially if you are a compulsive WM switcher like I am.
V
When slink became the stable version I simply grabbed the apt .deb from slink and installed it on every hamm system. Then I typed "apt-get update;apt-get upgrade". Webservers, squid proxy servers and mail servers were all upgraded in place, without reboot, without error. Upgrades included critical things like libc5->libc6, there wasn't a problem. I did the upgrades in the middle of the day. People were using the servers throughout the time they were being upgraded. As soon as a server package is upgraded debian restarts the process so each service, httpd, pop3, smtp, proxy, etc. was only unavailable for 2-3 seconds. Easy, reliable, in-place upgrades are what make a distribution suitable for business. I used SLS for a few years, Slackware for a few after that and Debian for the last two years ... I do not foresee any reason to go backwards.
My experience trying to upgrade a Slackware 3.0 system's libc several years ago taught me that bulletproof, dependable, package management and dependencies are my friend.
Yes, Debian's release cycle is slower than most distros but it is also undeniably the stablest one going. Potato has been very slow and I was disappointed at this announcement but I am not concerned. I believe Debian will be making changes to their release procedures to allow older releases to be kept up-to-date from official sources. Also, there are numerous unofficial sources of .deb packages, many apt-gettable ... I have KDE 1.1.2, the latest gimp and many other packages installed from unofficial sources, it isn't hard to keep Debian on the cutting edge if you want to.
You've lost me here. Debian comes on CD, I got mine from CheapbytesWhew, I'm out of breath now, go Debian!!!
Keep in mind that glibc 2.0 was declared UNSTABLE by the glibc people themselves!!
So, if Debian STABLE was using this UNSTABLE library, it was not very smart. And, with the dlopen() bug causing glibc 2.0 (unstable) to be incompatible with glibc 2.0 (labelled stable), it wasn't too nice to the users of Debian, either.
Am I mad at Debian? No, I'm mad at Red Hat, for releasing 5.2 with a clearly marked UNSTABLE c library.
potatoe!
Last time i checked, debian was using glibc far long before slack. What about those days? When nothing would compile on your slack box? That's why I started using debian in the first place. Anyway, it's usually better to compile glib yourself.