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Debian Plans for Freeze, Potato Release
marshall writes "I was reading the Debian Weekly News and was happy to see that Jan 2 will be the no new packages freeze for potato and Jan 15-16 will be the final freeze date with any new packages going into a new dist called woody. Then after some test cycles it looks like they are planning for a release at the end of Feb. The e-mail is here "
I've used RH since 4.0 came out, and I've been really looking into Debian lately.
Could anyone who has made that switch throw some info to me? It it worth it? What advantages does Debian have over RH (and any other for that matter)?
Finkployd
I was very happy to hear this. I am running Debian potato (unstable) right now, and I am quite happy. It works great and there aren't many bugs.
There is definitely a big improvement in the Debian distribution. I still consider it to be the best distro.
I am also a proud owner of one of the first boxed Debian distributions - it includes a CD, a Debian bumper sticker and a book from O'Reilly. It's actually pretty neat.
I hope that with the help of VA, SGI and O'Reilly (they are the sponsors of the boxed disribution) Debian will finaly become a mainstream Linux distribition, just like RedHat and the rest. It's quality is amazing. The only thing that it lacks is the commercial support, but hopefully somebody will take care of this.
Red Hat has the money and marketing clout to continue its progress towards making itself synonymous with Linux. Users of the Debian distro will slowly find themselves being 'disconnected' from the main body of RedHat/Linux users and development.
I've been using Redhat for.. well forever. I tried making a switch to Debian at 2.0 (what was that called?) but never made it past the install. The mind boggling array and internconnectednessness of packages proved to much for me. I guess I didn't have a high enough geek quoient at the time. ;) Now 18 months further down the road Redhat is increasingly frustrating with just a few too many bags on the side for my liking.
That debian have taken this long to get their next 'blessed' release out bodes well for their quality control. I can't wait to give it another whirl. Aptget sounds like the closest thing the Linux world has to FreeBSD's cvsupdate. Does anyone know how Debian handle things like PAM and sysv vs. bsd style init scripts?
... with eskimo chains i tatto my brain all the way...
Red Hat is Linux as far as the general public is concerned and they now have the market capitalization to keep it that way. Why would anyone use this distro anyway?
However the general public has very little bearing on anything that is happening in the linux community. There is a massive user base that can't be called general public.
And no matter how much money RH has, they cannot own linux, it is open source, as is most (all?) of the software on RH's distro.
Look if you pick an operating system based on what is popular, go with Windows.
Finkployd
Well, this is where you are wrong.
1. Debian actually has the largest market share now. It just does not have the hype.
2. Before Debian it used to be slackware. Once again it did not have the rhat hype.
3. But it was never ever redhat. And considering what you get when you buy redhat (without the additional CD's) and when you buy Debian redhat will never be.
It is simple - bang for the buck. Redhat does have hype and some support but it has never had Debian's bang for the buck (especially after taking into account security and stability).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
RedHat 4 was my first Linux. Then I switched to Slackware and finally tried Debian. These distributions have a lot of things in common, but there are also some differences. The major difference is the look-and-feel of the distributions. I think that they are appropriate for different kinds of users.
RedHat is a newbie's Linux - it keeps everything very simple and stupid (compared to the other two distributions). It helps you avoid making mistakes. It's very hard to fuck up the system. Of course hardcore Linux users will not like this, but they can use Slackware or Debian instead. For the majority of the newcommers to Linux RedHat is a very good choice.
Debian, on the other hand, is the absolute hardcore Linux distribution. The DEB package format is the more advanced and versatile than RPM. It manages the dependacies between the packages better, but still allows you to ignore its suggestions. If you really know what you are doing, Debian will be a good choice. And of course, it is still one of the biggest distributions - 2.1 binaries take 2 CDs. It definitely gives you a lot of options.
Switching from RedHat to Debian is not _very_ easy. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody without at least one year of Linux expirience. Debian is still an administrator's OS and it's not very well suited for the general public. I think that this is a good thing. We need different distributions for different people. Puting a newbie in front of a Debian box will be as frustrating for him as putting an administrator in front of a RedHat box.
Watch for Corel Linux: it uses the debian package format but it's oriented towards new Linux users - stressing on the user-friendliness. I have not tried it, but may be it will be better choice than RedHat and Debian for the average Linux user.
Like, yeah, man.. Redhat used to be cool..I like their older stuff, but then they sold out & got all popular & stuff. They suck, dude..even my MOM uses Redhat now. It's so uncool.
When they release a double live album, you know they have sold out.
Finkployd
It comes as quite a surprise to me that Debian is keen to accept new packages so late in its development cycle. Does anyone know why Debian doesn't freeze out new packages earlier?
--
Xenu loves you!
And I am not sorry about this. Most of the time even Debian *unstable* is rock stable. I can compare my impression about Debian unstable to my impressions about RedHat stable.
I think Corel linux will be great for Debian because it will give more beginners the option to try Debian and get used to it. Probably later they will select the real Debian, because this is a real thing.
BTW, Upgrading from Corel linux to Debian should be very painless.
I am waiting for some real cool things like FreeBSD based Debian and HURD based Debian. And after FreeBSD, I am sure NetBSD and OpenBSD will be given a try in Debian!
Go Debian!
Just kidding... *grin* I don't mind the slow release cycles since the end product is for the better (hey those of you who were saying Debian can't compete with a certain commercial distro... well you're right... it has a lot less bugs!)
.deb's are only compiled with the lowest common denominator in mind.
There's only two things I could nitpick on:
1. You can't 'make world' like in *BSD. I like to squeeze every little bit of performance out of my hardware, and the
2. A freshly installed Debian system in not as secure as it could be. Lots of open ports, named running as root and not chroot'ed, no wheel group, etc... This isn't really a problem for me since I know how to fix these problems, but leaves newbies wide open. I think Debian could learn a lot from the OpenBSD project...
Ever get the feeling that waiting for a Debian release is like waiting for Rip Van Winkle to wake up? It'll happen - just not on a timescale you are accustomed to.
The there are two excuses for this delay that are often quoted (1) Debian has a better quality (2) Debian is not behind other distribution in terms of software versions since people can always download from unstable. Make no mistake - these are excuses and not reasons, and let me explain why.
1. Better quality : Quality is always a tradeoff against time to release. Redhat, IIRC release their first distro with a 2.2 kernel somewhere around June. Sure they had bugs, but assuming that Redhat tripled their QA efforts, in order to improve stability and security, they would still have delayed by possibly another two months. Even Slackware, which has a much better reputation than Redhat, was able to beat Debian handily.
Lets face the facts folks, the Debian organization is just slower. Some of this slowness may be attributable to quality. Most of it is not.
A glaring example of this slowness was seen recently : look at when the Y2K compliance release was released.
2. Latest software from unstable : Hah! Are the Debian people who spout this nonsense contending that a distribution labelled as "unstable" is release quality? If so, then release it.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I've heard some stuff this month that it was still too unstable to be released. If this is true, then it is too early for a package freeze.
I use Debian slink on my IP Masquerating box at home. If potato is really as stable as they say, I'll be glad to try a version that's faster and better.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
I believe that the key to Linux success is to give the user more freedom. Freedom to look at the source, freedom to contribute to the development. Freedom to chose his or her distribution.
Having many different distributions is very important for the Linux community. We need to have a suitable distribution for everybody - ranging from a Linux newbie to a hacker guru - and there is no way a single distribution can satisfy them.
It is clear that there are more newbies than gurus, so it is not surprising at all that RedHat is more popular than Debian. Their target user groups are different. RedHat is more mainstream, Debian is the underground distribution. There is nothing wrong with this and we should keep it this way.
Making Debian user friendly by limiting its features is wrong. It will make Debian users unhappy. Making RedHat more powerful by limiting its userfrienlyness is also wrong.
What do we need to do? Nothing. Both distributions can happilly coexist together: make love, not war :-)
The new Corel linux is Head and Shoulders above Redhat in the newbie-friendly catagory. The greatest thing about it: they not only use dpkg, they also use apt-get format. You can add debians package servers to the sources.list and install packages from debian using corel's "Corel Update." This works great unless you are going to go with a complete upgrade to Potato, Corel does not play well with Potato... Yet.
Another worth mentioning would be Stormix. They seem to have built a middle-of-the-road distro around Debian. Looks pretty similar to Redhat in philosophy. I need to check it out.
These different flavours of Linux are very hard for the world to get used to. Why isn't there just one O/S?
Because there will always be some who says "I can make it better than that". The great part is (unlike some other OSes), you can.
The world will just have to get used to it, this really makes for a better system. You can download the source code to just about any linux program and compile on all of these systems, or you can use packages (rpm, deb), so there is compatibility between them.
Finkployd
It IS one OS.
The binary and even more important source compatibility must be preserved, but in the future there will be Debian with non-linux kernels.
And think in this way: Why should there be one OS? Where goes the diversity of ideas?
We have Caldera installed on the workstations for our regular workers (We are 100% M$ free at our company)..the install is so simple, it's actually FUN to install Caldera. It even has a game of tetris you can play while installing. Although, it is definitely not an admin's Linux. Network tools are nil. EndUser tools are rampant though. (comes with StarOffice and Wordperfect preinstalled by defaul) :)
Caldera is DEFINITELY a distrib to show off to the brass of your company. It booted into a gui WAY before RH..Plus, at the graphical login screen, you can choose KDE, Gnome, IceWM and 4 other WindowMans. I prefer Debian for the servers though
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Now if only Deb would take a page out of Linus' book and start having more frequent final releases. You see outside of the Hacker community ( I.e. Debian developers and the authors of the many packages included with debian ) You don't use something unless it's a final "stable" release or is included with a distribution that is "final and stable".
So yes, by all means hack the code until it shines. Make sure it works well but pleas do it quickly. As long as all that's out there is a stable release that's many months old and a self professed incomplete "developer release" you are essentially demanding that everyone interested in Linux try out something else.
Finally there is the question of KDE and Debian. Sure Corel Linux == Debian + KDE + Corel stuff; but dose the real Debian consider KDE 2.0 free enough for distribution ?
For the uninitiated KDE 1.x is not part of the official Debian because it relies on an unfree QT. QT 2.x ( on which KDE 2.0 depends ) is free so what's the word ? Are you just waiting for technical stability and completeness before this is included ?
PS : KRASH didn't crash on me so a stable KDE 2.0 isn't such a distant thing.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I have installed Debian on a lot of different machines. In all theses cases i have used the "unstable" version. The problems you mention with the "internconnectednessness of packages" i guess comes from the install utility that Debian uses. I too found it irksome and confusing. So i just used the dpkg-command instead. It was more work , but i got by.
Hower with the arrival of APT. Things got so much better. When i install a new machine now, i get the system up and running. I do not install any packages, but go to the command line and install apt-get( if it is not there already). Then i use apt-get to install whatever i want.
Apt-get can retrive packages from your harddisk, cdrom or several different sites on the internet.
Upgrading the whole system is easy( if it is connected to the internet.). You just use two steps.
1. apt-get update #Locates new or upgraded packages.
2. apt-get upgrade #Upgrades only those packages that you have installed and which there exits new versions of.
That's it. You could put these in a cron-job and you would have a constanlty updates system.(depending on how often you run the cron-job). I belive there is a repositoy for security updates to, called security.debian.org where all the latest security pathes are put. If this is so - add this site to your apt-configuration and you could have a very secure system.
Installing a new package is easy. TO install Windowmaker for example:
1.apt-get install wmaker
By the way. I have used the unstable version and i have had no trouble with it. But then i may have been lucky. Thanks to Debian and a happy new year to you all.
I'm very interested in the HURD-based Debian. I have yet to try it because I'm still working on piecing (is that spelled right? it looks wrong) together a Linux box capable of installing it.
Has anyone out there tried Debian/HURD, and what are your impressions?
No, that's be VA Linux (LNUX) now :)
-BrentThe previous message just was one too many...
I have got to disagree with RedHat being the newbie's Linux AND Debian being the administrator's Linux. Common, look at what Corel did with Debian: Can you spell "Userfriendly"? They didn't have to re-do all of Debian, mostly just the GUI things.
RedHat certainly doesn't keep things stupid, that's pure FUD. "Newbie OS?" LOL!
At RedHat they have reasonable defaults, at most. Yes, the install is a lot friendlier than the strange floppy install I had with my first ever Linux install from Slackware. Later on I tried RH 3.0.3 and it just felt better, it was a complete OS, not a whole lot of packages dumped together on one HD. What's wrong with this?
Debian being hardcore? Oh please! This just makes me feel sick. Please, give me one good and counting example of why RedHat is less hardcore, more newbie-ish and less an administrators OS than Debian and I will instantly agree. Or is the packaging system the only thing you're talking about here? I'm happy with RPM and if I want to install an tar.gz, who's stopping me?
Grrr... Stop dissing RedHat! We owe them more than we can imagine.
Thimo
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
Breathe...
Umm, a release named "potato"? Pleeeeease!!! /. to provide me with an example to the contrary! :)
History repeats itself. Does no-one remember the potato blight which killed millions in Ireland all those years ago? It was due to the practice of splitting seed potatoes in two to increase crops - once the disease took hold, there was insufficient genetic mutation in the crops to provide resilience against this sort of thing. Still, it did have an upside... A lot of Irish emigrated elsewhere, which is why there's always an Irish pub in most cities (and I challenge
I do find it worrying, though, that all the Irish pubs around here are all advertising "good craic"..... Craic detroys lives, just say no!
And what the hell is woody all about? I know we're nerds, but I think it a little odd to say "I just gave my computer a woody"...
Where on earth do they get their release naming conventions, anyway? Is the ghost of Frank Zappa alive and well, and using Linux? Can we look forward to a "Moon Unit 4" Slackware release soon?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Debian actually has the largest market share now. It just does not have the hype :(
Umm, proof, please? I would be convinced if you'd either post a link, or failing that, a large cheque... Damn, I've been working in the City too long...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
It's the little things that count- things like the fact the Debian developers decided that having your "delete" key alternate between your backspace and actual delete key depending on whether you were in an xterm, using emacs, using vi, typing in a form in netscape, etc, etc, sucked, and deciding to do something about it. Ok, so they had to create a new termtype to solve the problem, but it saves a lot of hassle in the long term.
More care seems to have been taken with Debian to ensure consistency and quality throughout than with Red Hat- this is part of the reason for the time taken to freeze potato; another one worth noting is that the Debian maintainers are all volunteers; there's no-one being paid a salary to work on the Debian distribution.
The biggest problem with Red Hat is that whilst their install procedure is smooth, their package management is only average compared to apt; you generally only install once, but manage packages all the time- I know which one is more important to me.
jtjm
According to LWN 108.
-BrentBut that's irrelevant to most of us because most of us don't speak Spanish and didn't know the Spanish meaning of the word. Deborah and Ian, who created Deb-Ian (geddit?) probably didn't know either.
Personally, I think Debian is a rather cute name. Before I checked out the distros for my second Linux installation (the first was Slackware), I already had a more positive attitude to Debian than Red Hat, simply because I liked the name better.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Just a quick caution:
sticking apt-update; apt-get upgrade in a cron job is not necessarily a good idea for several reasons:
1. For some packages, apt-get upgrade will expect some user feedback (whether to overwrite your config files with the package maintainer's versions, for example, or various prompts necessary to configure a new version of a package). Obviously cron-jobs deal poorly with interaction of this sort. You can minimise the amount necessary with a -y switch (which will answer "yes" to all Y/N questions), but if apt-get is then faced with a question which doesn't expect a Y/N answer, (eg, it asks you for the hostname of your ldap server), or if the maintainer has decided that allowing automatic answering of this particular question is too risky, then the update will just abort).
2. I also like to keep at least a casual eye on what's been updated, just in case (this is also sensible if you are running off the unstable version, since it might give you a clue as to why the system isn't behaving as expected when a buggy package is uploaded (a rare enough event, admittedly, but it always seems to coincide with the moment when you absolutely need that package to work in order to meet some deadline or other).
jtjm
One thing that I have seen everybody neglect to mention about apt-get is the method in which it downloads software.
One of the most frustrating things with RedHat as I remember was installing complex packages. My worst experience was installing Gnome on Redhat 5.2 Back then Gnome was not a standard part of the distro and it required ---ALOT--- of packages from all over the world to be downloaded and installed in the correct order. I got so frustrated at one point that I removed all of the RPMs and just installed using sources which was documented much better.
Then I switched to debian one day and got the notion to try out Gnome again, so I typed,with an almost joking manner:
# apt-get install gnome
and gawked when I saw that it knew every single package I would need to download(from ONE mirror), listed them for me, and then asked me if I wanted to continue, telling me about how long it would take to get everything.
A few minutes later with absolutely -no- intervention I had Gnome up and running on my system, complete with full documentation so I could get started and working with it.
Once you do that, there is no turning back. I still try out other distributions from time to time just to see where the market is, for instance I tried out Corel Linux on my other partition. They are coming along, but nothing beats Debian when it comes to power and stability. With RPM I find myself banging the keyboard in frustration way too often, searching the internet high and low for some hard to find required RPM on somebodies low-bandwith server.
-Disclaimer, I havn't done anything with Gnome recently, the last time I tried apt-getting it was about a year ago. (I don't care for DEs very much, I just wanted to try it.) Your results may not be as good as mine were.
V
Oh, go bother Microsoft and tell them to rename their operating system every time some random application install program starts replacing system DLL's.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
First of all, I'd like to mention that potato is a rock stable and incredibly rich distribution. Debian keeps its technical edge as an all-purpose multi-platform OS/software distribution. With about 4400 packages, we will be able to entertain any computing needs. Adding to that the configurability, consistency, reliability and support it offers together with its open software development model, Debian 2.2 may well be the ultimate GNU/Linux distribution. It would seem only a coincidence that Microsoft's competing product will be released around the same date.
/. uses :) ]
Second, the new distribution is going to get update packages by timely intervals. I suppose that's what the mighty Debian Project Leader had said. The updates from now on are going to be regular, so that the usual antiquity of stable release won't be such a hunchback. Which was to my opinion the only drawback Debian really had...
I've been personally using potato for more than three months, and no distribution I see stands as a replacement for Debian. It is brilliant as the only distribution for the developer, a fully-armed internet server, a great environment for the scientist, and yet a fulfilling one for any user as a desktop/internet machine. [What's more, I suppose the one
I send greetings and wishes of happiness in the new year to all Debian users and developers.
--exa--
I like the fact that you can get Debian for ix86, Sparc, Ultra Spark, m68k, PowerPC, Alpha, ARM, MIPS.
I can't think of another distribution which tries this.
Now, if only there was an M88K port...
Deleted
Your question of KDE and Debian has already been answered by The Debian Project Leader Wichert Akkerman here at Slashdot. It's almost on the top, 2nd question.
I hope Wichert's answer satisfies you.
All kidding aside, KDE2 will, I think, be included. Looking for references to back that up, I found this. Using the sources.list line given, I'm installing some KDE2 packages right now. Now, this isn't coming from a debian.org mirror so this doesn't look official or anything, but I thought there wasn't an easy, clean way of installing anything KDE-ish on a Debian system so I'm quite happy to have stumbled onto it.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
If anyone in the upper echelons of the Debian team is reading... its getting on near 1 year since slink was released, and the distribution is getting HUGE.
1 *year* in open source software development terms is an eon.. and I can't see that using the current model, Debian 2.3 (or 3.0, or whatever woody is going to be) will take any less time to stabilize.
Now for something hopefully constructive
What I would suggest, is that maybe the *core* distribution be shrunk somewhat, and the gigabytes of other additional software be part of maybe an "applications" distribution, or even broken down further - ala slackware almost
Example (pretty much in order of importance):
Core system:
The kernel, C library, the base networking tools (PPP, telnet, ping, traceroute, etc), vi, pretty much all the stuff which is installed before dselect (or apt in future) is launched
Network tools:
Ngrep, netcat, tcpdump, etc etc.
APPS:
The various shell only tools... editors like Emacs, joe, pico.. mail readers etc.
X11:
Maybe the base X system, and possibly include the various window managers, and desktop environments (KDE, gnome).
XAPPs:
All the associated X cruft that people seem to love (x toys etc), and applications.
And maybe, a contrib section, where things can go without going into the main distribution straight away.
My point is that the main distribution is getting huge, and to get it stable with new things being added all the time is only going to get harder.
I know there is some sort of package voting system (i dont think i paid much attention to it seeing as i dont have a permanent internet connection), maybe the results from this could establish which parts of contrib go into the NEXT distribution as one of the base sections.
Thats pretty much it...
Just as a note, I am one of the people who happily runs unstable, and does not particularly care about the "stable" release. I have had no major problems even running unstable for the last 12 months, and will most likely continue to run "unstable"
However, i can see that the "unstable" name is keeping people away... and that more frequent 'stable' releases would help to promote the distribution better
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
(Spoiler Warning.
Some movie theaters are running ads for a movie information service which looks like an ad for a film featuring a potato)
V4.3 was much stronger than SysV
Just for clarity, FreeBSD can't build executibles that run under Linux. FreeBSD don't use glibc, so it can't link programs with Linux based libraries. (including Database libraries) On the other hand FreeBSD runs most Linux programs faster and with more stability that Linux does. [esp. Database Servers]
As to the prior writers attempts at FUD, GNU has had much less impact on any of the BSD's than it has had on Linux. In fairness, I think the conversion to using gcc was a major step in making BSD on PC more universally available.
There had been some discussion on some of the Debian lists, to making a more stable release of debian using the BSD kernal. That was a few months ago, I don't know if anything came of it..Check the same article in debian weekly that has caused this discussion initially. Or check the linux journal when it is out (january issue).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Friends, I wanted to talk with you today a bit about the Debian distribution of the Linux operating system. While it is obvious to the unencumbered observer that the Linux system itself is a morally bankrupt and anti-American endeavor, the Debian distribution is a particularly egregious transgressor against capitalism and the American dream. If Satan is a Linux user (and I am convinced that he is), there is no doubt in my mind that he uses the Debian distribution.
Debian, with its criminal anti-corporate and anti-capitalist attitudes, is a key contributor to the moral decay found in the world today. Unfortunately, a lot of this moral decay is seeping its way into our once-great United States of America. Friends, we've seen the sad state of affairs in Europe, with socialism running rampant along side of other such undesirable problems (homosexuals, low churchgoing rates, etc.) And we've seen this state of affairs try to establish itself as the status quo here in the God-fearing U.S. of A. There is nothing that embodies this social outrage more than the Linux operating system, the Debian distribution in particular.
Linus Torvalds, who is bankrolled by the liberal socialists who are hell-bent on destroying American families and corporations, is spearheading the effort to brainwash our children and instill in them a hatred of everything that is wholesome and clean about America. Just look at Microsoft. The criminal actions against this wonderful innovator and bringer of technology are physically sickening.
But Debian is worse. It takes all of the communist principles of the Linux operating system and takes them a step further. It has at the base of its very principles a hatred of anything commercial. It refuses to touch anything that has been blessed with the breath of capitalism. Friends, this is an outrage. Will we stand for this? Obviously, the answer is a resounding "no!" We will fight for our country, our God, and our way of life. We will not use Linux, but if we are forced into using this substandard communist propaganda vehicle, we will certainly not use the Debian distribution.
Thank you for your time.
Since all of the base tools, libraries, and APIs are the same, and any tool from any distro can be used on any other distro with minimal fuss, they are different distributions of GNU/Linux OS (distros). With effort, it is even possable to write a script front end to rpm or apt to automate switching from one distro to another, though I don't see that as being worthwhile for the most part.
The distribution is named Debian, not Debían (note the acute accent on the Spanish verb). By the conventions of Spanish orthography these are different; the distro name is a bisyllable with stress falling on the "e", while the verb is a trisyllable with stress falling on "i". Since stress is distinctive in Spanish, and many words are distinguished by where the stress falls, these could never count as the same word in Spanish.
Anyway, I'm a native Spanish speaking Debian user and I never ever thought of a possible connection.
---
Almost right. But this shows the word as having three syllables, while it has only two.
I'd say that the pronunciation in Spanish and English is very similar; if you want to say "Debian" in Spanish, say it as in English but with a Spanish accent ;-)
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1. back up all your config files, hone dir, etc. unless you want to reconfigure everything.
/etc/apt/sources-list file to "potato". Doing this points the "apt-get" program to all teh latest packages for potato. You can also have it changed to "unstable" which will move apt-get to Woody when there is a directory for it.
2. Install SLINK. Yes. The older then dire 2.1 version. It's stable, and as you will see, updated packages are a moot point during the install.
3. compile a 2.2.x kernel. Some of the Potato packages you are going to install aren't going to like the 2.0.36 kernel in Slink. Don't worry about changin over, it's going to be ok =)
3. point your
4. after you reboot with the 2.2.x kernel. type "apt-get update" this will scan all the packages in potato with the ones you have. and let apt-get know what you need.
5. type "apt-get dist-upgrade". This will install the latest version of everything on your system. E DR16.3, the latest gnome. All sorts of fun stuff.
6. That's it, reuse your old config file settings. untar you home direcotry so you don't loose all you personal configs.
7. Enjoy. You now have a linux distro that is more updated then RedHat 6.1 is. and you will NEVER have to re-install to upgrade. And you'll also see how un-important it is to rush a distro out the door with Debian. All the latest packages are there. Just "apt-get update" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" whenever you feel the need to.
*note about RPMS. Debian DOES come with RPM. But it's always better to use the command "alien --to-deb filename.rpm" which will change it to a DEB. You install local DEB files with the command "dpkg -i filename.deb"
Has anyone used Debian/m68k on, say, an old 68K-based Mac?
I have a Centris 650 with about 64 MB of RAM (tiny HD though) and I was wondering if I could get some more use out of it.
Jay (=
apt-get, as has been mentioned, is exponentialy better than the Redhat Package Manager. .deb files kick .rpm file's butts. However if you have a RPM package that is not available in .deb format (and don't want to make the .debs yourself) you CAN INSTALL THE REDHAT PACKAGE MANAGER IN DEBIAN. I have the package manager on my Debian Slink system and have used it twice, once to install a RPM to test the installation of the package manager and once to uninstall the same rpm. There are very few packages available as rpm's that arn't available as deb's but if there is one that is crutial to your task, it doesn't make debian a useless distro'
However, if you install from anything but deb files you will NOT get full benifit of debian's dependency magement abilities. You are more likly to install packages that require packages you don't have or to install packages that conflict with existing packages. But then, you have the same problem, only more so, if you don't use debian at all.
(I started with slack, moved on to redhat, tested OpenLinux, tested FreeBSD then found Debian, I've used Debian on all my systems for over two years.)
Little Brother, watching the watchers
one example, you ask? how bout this: initscripts. redhat initscript have been nothing but a pain from 4.2 to 5.2 (the last version i used). i was always fixing obvious bugs in rh's initscripts. contrast this w/ debian. i have had to fix only one bug (an extra $ in an initscript). also, debian has update-rc.d, which makes life SO much better (i think redhat also has an initscript symlink manager, though). also, 99% of all the debs out there are in the dist, so i can just apt-get install them. there's no central repository for rpms (though las.978.org is a big help).
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The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
It does. It's called chkconfig, and it's better than update-rc.d. With update-rc.d you add the priorities for start up and shutdown on the command line. So if you remove a script on day 1 that you want to reinstall on day 2, you have to remember what priority it was. With chkconfig a special comment line is added to the initscript that contains this information.
This is particularly important if there are certain things you want to run only in certain circumstances. A laptop, for example might not need NFS when it's not docked, so it should be removed. But when it's docked, you need to reinstall the initscript to start it up. With chkconfig, this process is somewhat cleaner IMHO.
Additionally, sndconfig has no equal in the debian world. I also like Xconfigurator from RedHat. But apt really rocks and far outweighs those few things.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
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What is stopping you from compiling 2.2.x kernels on current Debian release? Any linux sysadmin should compile a customized kernel anyways. The current Debian stable release is 100% kernel 2.2.x ready.
apt-get install linuxconf
*whew, that was hard*
There's a Turning-Redhat-Into-Debian HOWTO out there, but it's really a pretty simple process.
/etc, and temporarily shut off as many init scripts as you can. The transition will leave some cruft on the system, which is tolerable, but you sure don't need to be reminded of it every time you boot.
Here's a rough outline:
1. Back up
2. Download the Debian package management tools in a tarball, compile them, and install the base Debian packages, and then any other packages you use.
3. You can download the Cruft package to search your system for files not belonging to any Debian packages, for possible removal.
Many people suggest that Debian needs to make stable releases more often. Others say that its good the way that it is. A point is made often that fearful, unknowning users often would opt for stable over unstable distributions. That's a good point. I think that what Debian needs to do is introduce an intermediary distribution between stable and unstable. What we need is to rename stable to "mission critical" and unstable to "bleeding edge" or "developing" and have something in the middle, like "mainstream" or something like that.
Debian was my first Linux distro (started with release 1.3) but what I'd like to see is the ability to do an FTP install (obviously convinient for quick server installs etc)
I've been using deb almost 2 years now. I swear by it. The package system is pretty nice.
:) So, I suggest going right to the unstable dist and dont even bother worrying about a next release, etc. Releases arent terribly more stable, plus it means that u dont have the opportunity to select from more cutting edge - new - versions of programs in the unstable package tree if yer based in the stable package tree - which doesnt update often. Stable is for mission critical, not home use :)
At first I started with the stable dist, but soon learned that the unstable was almost just as stable and much more bleeding edge.
Tho sometimes I have problems in the unstable dist when some package manager introduces an unresolvable dependancy problem - ie depending on a package that doesnt exist. But I just wait until they fix it, update my package list and then im good.
Stormix's distribution is officially called 'Storm Linux 2000 operating system'. Our distribution is based on Debian GNU/Linux, and it's fairly similar to Corel LINUX OS. The two products are fairly similar, especially in their first releases. Both companies are adding ease of use GUI features to Debian GNU/Linux, both companies are Canadian, both distros even have similarities in package design and both even offer a $10 cash rebate. Stormix and Corel both started working on a Debian GNU/Linux enhanced system around the same time and both worked independantly of each other, but it's a bit weird to notice all of the similarities.
There are a few differences between Storm Linux and Corel Linux. Storm Linux offers an easy way to install and switch between GNOME and KDE. Corel has a file manager. Corel's front end for dselect is called Corel Update, while Storm Linux's front end is called Storm Package Manager. Storm Linux includes the beginnings of an ambitious project to create an administrative GUI that works in either ncurses or X over a network called the Storm Administration System. Corel Linux has a deluxe version already available which includes a cool penguin and an almost complete version of CivCTP.
Off course both distro's are based on Debian GNu/Linux 2.1 (slink) and are fairly compatible with Debian. With Corel, Stormix, and the upcoming Progeny Linux, plus the VA Linux/SGI/O'Reilly Debian GNU/Linux package, it looks like Debian is continuing to gain popularity at a rapid pace. The best part of Debian has to be it's package management system. Typing apt-get install [package] and have the system grab the package via FTP also fetch and dependencies is awesome.
Alien allows you to convert Red Hat, Stampede and Slackware Packages into Debian packages, which can be installed with dpkg.
It can also convert into Slackware, Red Hat, and Stampede packages.
alien will try to include as many of the dependencies it can grok from the RPM, so it will protect you a little better than using "raw" rpm. The maintainer, Joey Hess, did a great job here... it's not often needed, but when it is, it can be a lifesaver.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
I've been using Debian since 1.3 and I recently switched to Slackware 7.0.
:).
While I think Debian is just about the best Linux distro you can get, packages have always been a sticking point for me.
I'm a DIY guy -- I like compiling and installing software myself. Packages are quite annoying, and Debian's packages are no exception. They install software in wacky places (compared to where the software would be installed had you issued "make install") and -- this is particularly evident with Debian -- they are usually out of date. If you aren't running the "unstable" branch of Debian, forget about having recent packages.
Don't get me wrong, I love Debian. I even bought a copy of it when I saw it at the store, despite having burned a CD set (I was quite pissed that it only came with *1* CD when many important packages are on the second CD). It's just that I think it relies too heavily on packages that install software in non-standard places... I prefer more of a "bare-bones" system where you install packages of the bare essentials and compile the rest (yes, I know, you can do this Debian, but bear in mind that by the time you're running the "stable" branch, the packages are severly out of date).
Still, Debian is a great distro and sure as hell is better than Redhat
Did anybody notice this in the email: "Quake is indexed in Germany, not banned. This means it's only allowed to sell it to adults and advertising is prohibited." ... So maybe it isn't a problem to have quake in the archive after all...
#1 Why the heck would quake be banned in Germany?
Is quake really just mental "fertilizer" for terrorists?
#2 What does being indexed mean?
#3 Man, could you imagine the U.S. government trying to get away with this? There would be a public outcry for sure.
#4 Also, why the hell would that stop them from putting quake in potato anyway? You can't please every country out there, and I'm sure there's no way to comply with the laws of all of them. Is the market for debian really that big in Germany? Don't they have their own distro anyway, that SUSE distro??
The upcoming transition of potato to stable gives me a woody.
-russ
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