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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
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.
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!
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 :-)
Packages from unstable are actually very usable, just not well-tested "enough" to be released with confidence. I've been using unstable ever since I got Linux on my box, and it has never failed me. Yes sometimes there was the odd dependency bug or broken install, but when you live on the bleeding edge what can you expect? I guess my point is, "unstable" packages are in fact much more stable than the name implies.
Actually, recently there was a lot of discussion on the Debian mailing lists to implement something that would allow the normal user to upgrade to what is currently "unstable" without taking the risk of a newly uploaded package which might break things. Once implemented, sysadmins who must be 100% sure of the stability of their system will use the "stable" branch, while regular users will use what is now "unstable", which is more up to date (but may not be 100% bulletproof, but that doesn't matter to the regular user), and new untested packages will go into an experimental(?) branch which only people who want to *test* new packages will use (ie. they are prepared for any breakages). Once a package is "stable enough" it gets moved to the regular user branch. This way people can stay up-to-date without fearing nasty breakages.
As for releases... remember that Debian's audience is mainly sysadmins. Some of them cannot afford any breakage in their servers -- so to achieve release-quality, Debian must spend more time to ensure everything is 100% (or close enough) bulletproof. "Unstable" is usually stable enough for non-sysadmins.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
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?
The 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!
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.
Thank you for that tidbit about an "experimental" distro. I must have missed that on debian-devel...
However, your defense of Debian is predicated on your opinion that it is targetted towards the Sysadmin. This, I am not so sure about. For example, a while ago, it was touted that Debian provides a complete SGML solution. The wording of the announcement was such that it gave the idea : if you want SGML - use Debian!
To, my mind, this changes the picture. Debian is no longer targetting sysadmins. It is also targetting ordinary users of systems. Things like GNOME are end-user frills - rarely does a sysadmin need a desktop environment.
Furthermore, it can be argued that sysadmins who are so stringent about stability should be preferring well established and mature OS's like AIX, or OS/400 or VMS or MVS. Why choose a newbie on the software landscape in the first place if stability is that much of a concern?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
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 believe the current release manager's preference is to use names of flavors of ice cream for releases after woody (2.3?).
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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.
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.
There was a growing concensus for THHGTTG names last I checked.
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"
You'll need to create another partition for Debian, and because there's no FIPS-like utility for Macs, you may need to reinstall MacOS to accomodate this.
I took some drive rails and some creativity and hooked another drive to the metal plate just to the left of the power supply. It works but you can't put any Nubus cards in afterwards.
You should know that Slink doesn't support the ethernet controller on the Centris 650's out of the box.
Also keep in mind that you can take 10 years off any mac's apparent age just by painting it glossy black. :)
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.
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.
I know potato closes a lot more ports by default... most udp services are disabled by inetd by default, for example. Also, the r* servers are separate packages now, so those ports won't be open unless you install them, and ssh will disable rsh and pals by default.
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I think you're confusing the definitions of "unstable" here. The unstable distribution is "unstable" because it changes (i.e. is the oppposite of "stable", which is something that doesn't change). That does not mean it is "unstable" as in every program will provide a blue screen of death every third time you try to run it.
Since no distribution but Debian has a continuously-updated (i.e. unstable) pre-release, you can think of unstable as "all the cool neat new stuff those darned Open Source developers can put together"; stable is "all the cool neat stuff that we were sure would play nicely because people have been trying it for months and it's boffo, dude." Or something like that...
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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
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??