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 "

Comments

Re:Debian vs. Redhat

[smash]

I used Redhat from versions 4.1 - 5.2, and had a period of time during which i used both quite a bit (Redhat 4.2 and Debian 1.3 I believe). I have switched to Debian exclusively since Hamm (v2.0).

For me, the benefits which made me switch were:

1. The package management system.

.deb packages are much more versatile than rpms. You don't just have dependancies, you can have packages which "suggest" other packages. This tends to lead to packages which REALLY only depend on what they need for core functionality, as opposed to blah.rpm being compiled with every option enabled and requiring 35 different rpms to go with it.

Also, the new apt package management tools just rock. You no longer have to search for packages to satisfy dependancies, or even select what to download and install. Simply do:

apt-get install blah

and apt will work out what packages are required, give you a list, give you the amount of disk space required, both for downloading and after installation, and then ask for confirmation. Once you hit yes, you can happily leave it to download whatever and then come back when it is finished to configure.

2. File system structure

This is hard to put a finger on, and switching from Redhat will take some getting used to, but in my mind, Debian just has a much 'cleaner' file system layout. If you are after docs for package X they will be in /usr/doc/x pretty much without fail. ALL config files are in /etc/blah. The init scripts are easier to understand by your average human.

3. Central location for pretty much all packages.

With the exception of KDE, every single package on my system was downloaded from one of 2 sites. Either ftp.debian.org, or ftp.au.debian.org (the aussie mirror ;)


Also, a point to note is that to upgrade Redhat cleanly, I have had to reinstall for every new release.

I have installed debian ONCE on my machine in the last 18 months or so, and it is current, as of last night :)

Also interesting to note that Corel is based on Debian, which should prove interesting in the coming 12 months or so ;)


smash