Linux: launch your package manager, select the package, hit install, watch it all happen. Windows:download/find the file, run it, answer questions (even if it's just click install rather than cancel), watch it all happen. Things are just different, not really easier or harder unless you are already preconditioned to think one way or the other.
The more who use it -> the more there are to help others use it -> the easier it is to use -> windows is easier to use than linux. At this stage there isn't really much more to it than that.
On Linux what one file do you have to download? Every piece of software is a bit different, most should just be installed from your distribution (automatically taking care of all dependencies), and when they aren't whoever produces it should be aware of this and make it realtively simple to install it on any distribution, if they don't whose fault is it? If you look for a few minutes though you will find plenty of examples of software with installation routines just as simple as the standard windows installer, the fact that lots of software doesn't come like this is no more valid than complaining that windows software can come in a zip. Finally what is windows solution to upgrading all the software on your system automatically to the latest version, or even just tracking security issues, oh I forgot, there isn't one (except for corporate types) except for the OS itself, with most linux systems all the software would be tracked by the packaging system so upgrading software is even easier than windows. If you want to just go around and randomly install any piece of software you discover online, you can expect things to get complicated somewhere along the way no matter what OS you are using.
Is it sane to think of basing any sort of client on apple's metadata, surely they will mess with any clients trying to do it. So while this software works, now, will it work for long? Maybe if someone builds a second compatible database of the metadata...
And if you go for something a bit snazzier printer wise like the Epson Color Proofer 7600 you get:
2880 dpi is 2880x2880 dots per sqaure inch You have 8.5 x 11 square inches (or pi * 2^2 for a cd sized area) You have 7 individual colors so lets count a dot for each, and lets go with no error correction (just to get a maximum conceivable). You end up with 14M / square inch, a big improvement over 9k! That would give you 1.3G / double sided page, or 182M / double sided cd size.
So Sony's tech here is nearly as big a leap up again as from 300x300dpi@1bit to 2880x2880dpi@7bit! It's a long way from printing quality (forget the fact that you would need to be incredibly redundant to make it any use, forget 10 bit bytes, i'd be thinking 64 bit bytes if it's meant to be lossless storage on the scheme I outlined). Might be fun to try and print out and scan back in say a knoppix cd in as few pages as possible, "what you mean you don't have a cd drive... you have a scanner?"
If XFree86 had been doing an exemplary job everyone would be using 4.4 with the new license and still be talking to XFree86 about it, trying to come up with a solution. Instead XFree86 had annoyed lots of developers who were working on XFree86 but outside the organisation, for example cygwin who could not get XFree86 to incorporate cygwin specific patches in any sort of reasonable manner as they would generally sit around for months before anything happened if anything did. The XFree86 development structure just doesn't seem right anymore, hence when they tried to ram a change down everyones throats without any meaningful discussion people quickly lost interest in them started building a new development model. I think it was more the prinicple of telling XFree86 finally that they can't just do whatever the hell they like and expect everyone to put up with it, that's a fact of FOSS code, your only a good fork away from death so you don't f about and encourage people to try and take your users.
You say the forks haven't been around long enough to prove their stability? How about Debian's for of XFree86? They port it to many architectures and then maintain a stable release for a few years while working on its replacement. I think they are proven.
This fork (X.org) is simply XFree86 4.4RC2 (before the liscense change) and I would suspect they are monitoring XFree86 for updates which aren't tainted by the new license, and they are working on it themselves. It's not a worrying fork at this stage, it's just what would have happened if XFree86 (or another FOSS project) and all it's internal developers were blown up yesterday. These people have all been working with XFree86 from the outside for quite a while and it includes Cygwin's Mr Hunt who had withdrawn cygwin from XFree86 (well stopped sending patches) because it was more work to liase with XFree86 than not to! I see good things ahead (but first we have a nice stable XFree86 4.4 replacement so there are no hiccups).
I don't think anyone has been duped at all. I do think that people have been considering for quite a while how to escape XFree86. It's development structure had become a farce, cygwin had stopped submitting patches because it was too much work trying to figure out when and if they were ever applied, ati it seems were annoyed that their patches spent months sitting in XFree86 with no reply, and then out came a new major update with no sign of them! Because even XFree86 could see this coming, they made a few changes but they didn't address the issues. Finally they decided they wanted more credit and everyone shouted back that this was too much, they continued and now there's a fork.
Having said all that, I will be very interested to see what complaints will arrise about X.org over the next few months, if they really are a commercial orientated body making decisions for the companies then perhaps another fork won't be too far away! Having a FSF member of the interim board suggests though that the people coming in here have learnt from mistakes of the past and simply want to provide some financial backing to make sure this new co-operative gets of and running smoothly.
I have also read extensively about this problem for quite a while (the problems with XFree86 have been around quite a while, look back at Cygwin's problems and the similar problems that afflicted ati, basically patches were rotting). Whether or not David Dawes was a part of why it wasn't so open is hard to say, you have to remember he is the voice of the XFree86 board, and as such he speaks for them, not himself. XFree86 was the de facto default and remained in that position for a long time even while it was clear that it's development model no longer fitted in with everything else. The fact that they weren't dropped until they then decided to change some licenses to give themselves more credit is a sign of the reluctance to fork, but I presonally believe (and said from the outset) a fork was the right thing here unless XFree86 backed down, the key is just making sure you have enough bodies along with you (I'd have liked to see Branden from Debian on the interim board, this is a time when licenses are important and there's a man who knows them and X very well, I'd have liked to see more non-commercial people full stop actually). The question now is when and if the two trees will be incompatible vis-a-vis binary drivers, and then which versions Nvidia and Ati will support?
You don't have to download it straight! Thats part of why bittorrent is nice here (though resuming ftps are good, but sometimes a bad disconnect can stop resumption it seemed). 30-40 hours can easily be downloaded over the course of a week, if you can schedule your machine to disconnect at say 7am you could start at midnight and 5 days should about do it. Do you really mind tying up your phone line while your asleep that much? I have the luxury of a second phone line so in fact when I had a machine downloading all night all I was really doing was stopping the off-peak junk faxers from getting through:-)
As for always downloading full cd sets, your spoiled:-) And seriously your wasting bandwidth getting a load of crap you don't need. If it's so quick then you shouldn't care about downloading extra stuff during the install. Maybe I'm just too apt-get centred but unless I plan on installing something on multiple machines I just like to get small isos and net install the rest. Surely all the other distros work like that by now?
Over here it isn't just Linux magazines that have Distros as cover disks, more general computer magazines have them every now and again. I'd hazard to say that even without including PC-Plus which has lots of Linux stuff (especially on the DVD edition) you would still probably find half a dozen other distro cover disks throughout the course of the year.
You shouldn't ever have to download 3 cd iso images! If you do something is wrong! Downloading one image gets you a system, then you download whatever else you want to finish it off. If you are planning on downloading a distribution, then 30 to 40 hours even on a 56k isn't too unreasonable (if you have flat rate or free access), the advantage of bittorrent being its a more stable source (less likely to dissappear if the distributor releases an update while you are downloading) and it is should keep your connection flying away and give you a correct image at the end. It's stability for interuptions mid download is also great in your on 56k.
That being said I'm on dsl, and left 56k before bittorrent came around. I downloaded lots of full cds when I had the 56k but I think bittorrent would have made me happier!
I'll agree on the comment aout Linux speak, but if it was rewritten as follows...
I bought a $20 Belkin PC-card at surpluscomputers.com. I got the driver from Amtel's site, followed their instructions (installed my systems wireless-tools and installed the driver into the system) and everything just worked perfectly! Very easy, no blind alleys. This stuff used to be hard. Either I'm getting better or Linux is getting easier.
then it would certainly not support your conclusion the Linux is not ready for the desktop. If someone wrote the following would you say Windows isn't ready for the desktop?
I bought the $20 Belkin PC-card at surpluscomputers.com. It uses the Ateml wireless Ethernet chip, and there's a well-formed Windows driver on Belkin's site. I got the wireless support installed for my windows and the Belkin driver dll in System32, and I have Wi-Fi! Very easy, no blind allets. This stuff used to be hard. Either I'm getting better or Windows is getting easier.
Well in one place I was involved with we needed an extra machine so a 3rd person could have somewhere to "work" (it mainly involved surfing for porn) so I slapped debian woody on a P133 with 32M (or was it 16...) with mozilla and openoffice. He just quietly sat there and did whatever he had to, the machine was slow, but usable. The hardware isn't what's done it, it's the amount of time we have now had with hardware thats good enough and the fact that installation/hardware setup just keeps getting easier and easier.
As for broadband and sneaker net, many magazines (at least in Ireland/UK) have had Linux distros on cover disks for a long time so you could spend 5-10 on a magazine to give it a go if you didn't fancy downloading it. With bittorrent I suspect even 56k modem downloads just became a lot more tolerable!
Another nightmare is the habit of some manufacturers to release completely different (technically) products with very similar names. Sometimes there are version numbers, sometimes there's a load of very similar names with patterns in the naming that have zero reflection on what it is. I'd agree though, buying a wireless card for Linux is fun, having one already and trying to get it working I haven't had to bear!
No, a sysadmin has his IP balcklisted because of spam, discovers it was sent from a laptop and when. Then he finds out that there was someone in with a laptop at the right time and they had visitors while they were there (which is not rare or suspicious of itself in a net cafe, but it attracts attention and can look suspicious depending on what they are doing). The guys description was male, black, 30 and a half london, half african accent. The sysadmin had the MAC address of the laptop and asked the staff to watch out for the same man. When the same guy appeared the sysadmin raced in and after the guy had waited to get a particularly private booth the sysadmin saw the mac address appear and hence had his confirmation. But the police wanted someone caught in the act of doing something illegal so he had to keep watching until the spam went again. Not quite as you described it eh?
In the last few months klik came into being. klik is a point and click software store for Knoppix which uses AppDir (quoting from the architecture description):
Mainly a philosophy about making each app package "self contained" (at least relative to some defined base system, Knoppix in our case).
If you have a recent (say from last November or so) version of Knoppix fire it up and give it a go! You can even install software while running from the liveCD and retain it in a persistent home.
Simple, all you have to do (assuming all the original stuff is GPL) is only distribute the derived work under the GPL and hence make the source available to people you distribute binaries to.
If you don't want to do that but you do want to use GPL code, you have to be very careful about keeping things seperate and not contaminating anything (simply putting them on a cd together doesn't contaminate anything though).
Does anyone know about the hardware in this device? For example it mentions free to air and pay tv, is that analog or digital, terrestrial/satellite/cable? What sort of pay tv systems, is their one card standard in Aus (or just one pay tv supplier)?
And to go further off topic, how does it play DVDs? What is the legal status of libdvdcss or the like in Aus? What about licensing fees for Dolby Digital or DTS (or mp3)?
When Microsoft stops using it's monopoly position to protect and extend it's monopoly and instead focuses on simply producing a better product, then I will stop "bashing" Microsoft. As of right now, Microsoft have been convicted both at home and abroad of being an anti-competitive monopoly (that means that MS does hinder open source production, ask the samba team, or OpenOffice.org) so while their products may have advantages for certain niches, I for one am very wary of funding their war chest. I don't want MS destroyed, I just want them to not act illegally, preferably because they are no longer a monopoly (most of what they have done would be ok if they weren't a monopoly but they are)!
Guess Public Enemy (Fuck The Police and Burn Hollywood Burn) and Eminem will be out the window too. I was going to joke that they were just trying to ensure you don't have to listen to my fellow Irish men like Bono, but it's probably more to ensure you don't have to listen to other marginal sections of US society (I wonder how "profanity" levels vary by race and social class...) hey maybe it does include the Irish.
So let's make our own movies like Spike Lee
Cause the roles being offered don't strike me
There's nothing that the Black man could use to earn
Burn Hollywood burn
Just hope they didn't people to see their work! At least not to influencable minds! Never discount the more sinister possibilities. Here in Ireland TV is slowly catching up to society as far as swearing is concerned (more and more every day), the complete lack of any swearing in US TV is actually a barrier to suspension of disbelief for me!
Debian will release the next STABLE version when it's ready, always their answer. You can think of debian stable as having always done the sort of stuff RedHat, Mandrake and Suse are all looking to do now, build long term releases not "forcing" full system upgrades every few months. That all being said even Debian are hoping to speed up the release process, the next release will be the first release to come out of testing and is ironing out the kinks in that system. Also, it is moving rapidly towards a release. Debian-installer is now usable (for certain values of usable) on 6 platforms and the release critical bugs are dropping down to where a release should be quickly achievable (once all the main pieces are in place). I would be surprised if debian doesn't release before the Autumn (I'd guess June/July).
As the other reply to your post pointed out though, if stable doesn't do you testing (or even unstable) should do it!
Right, so the original post should have read something like "There's a free version licensed under the GPL and also a commercial version for when that isn't appropriate" not that there is a GPL version for non-commercial use.
A copyright holder can license it however they please, but if they license it under the GPL that's that. They could license it under a modified GPL which doesn't allow commercial distribution but I didn't think that was the case here! GTK on the other hand is under a modifed LGPL which allows derived binary only releases.
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Linux: launch your package manager, select the package, hit install, watch it all happen. Windows:download/find the file, run it, answer questions (even if it's just click install rather than cancel), watch it all happen. Things are just different, not really easier or harder unless you are already preconditioned to think one way or the other.
The more who use it -> the more there are to help others use it -> the easier it is to use -> windows is easier to use than linux. At this stage there isn't really much more to it than that.
On Linux what one file do you have to download? Every piece of software is a bit different, most should just be installed from your distribution (automatically taking care of all dependencies), and when they aren't whoever produces it should be aware of this and make it realtively simple to install it on any distribution, if they don't whose fault is it? If you look for a few minutes though you will find plenty of examples of software with installation routines just as simple as the standard windows installer, the fact that lots of software doesn't come like this is no more valid than complaining that windows software can come in a zip. Finally what is windows solution to upgrading all the software on your system automatically to the latest version, or even just tracking security issues, oh I forgot, there isn't one (except for corporate types) except for the OS itself, with most linux systems all the software would be tracked by the packaging system so upgrading software is even easier than windows. If you want to just go around and randomly install any piece of software you discover online, you can expect things to get complicated somewhere along the way no matter what OS you are using.
Is it sane to think of basing any sort of client on apple's metadata, surely they will mess with any clients trying to do it. So while this software works, now, will it work for long? Maybe if someone builds a second compatible database of the metadata ...
And if you go for something a bit snazzier printer wise like the Epson Color Proofer 7600 you get:
... you have a scanner?"
2880 dpi is 2880x2880 dots per sqaure inch
You have 8.5 x 11 square inches (or pi * 2^2 for a cd sized area)
You have 7 individual colors so lets count a dot for each, and lets go with no error correction (just to get a maximum conceivable).
You end up with 14M / square inch, a big improvement over 9k!
That would give you 1.3G / double sided page, or 182M / double sided cd size.
So Sony's tech here is nearly as big a leap up again as from 300x300dpi@1bit to 2880x2880dpi@7bit! It's a long way from printing quality (forget the fact that you would need to be incredibly redundant to make it any use, forget 10 bit bytes, i'd be thinking 64 bit bytes if it's meant to be lossless storage on the scheme I outlined). Might be fun to try and print out and scan back in say a knoppix cd in as few pages as possible, "what you mean you don't have a cd drive
If XFree86 had been doing an exemplary job everyone would be using 4.4 with the new license and still be talking to XFree86 about it, trying to come up with a solution. Instead XFree86 had annoyed lots of developers who were working on XFree86 but outside the organisation, for example cygwin who could not get XFree86 to incorporate cygwin specific patches in any sort of reasonable manner as they would generally sit around for months before anything happened if anything did. The XFree86 development structure just doesn't seem right anymore, hence when they tried to ram a change down everyones throats without any meaningful discussion people quickly lost interest in them started building a new development model. I think it was more the prinicple of telling XFree86 finally that they can't just do whatever the hell they like and expect everyone to put up with it, that's a fact of FOSS code, your only a good fork away from death so you don't f about and encourage people to try and take your users.
You say the forks haven't been around long enough to prove their stability? How about Debian's for of XFree86? They port it to many architectures and then maintain a stable release for a few years while working on its replacement. I think they are proven.
This fork (X.org) is simply XFree86 4.4RC2 (before the liscense change) and I would suspect they are monitoring XFree86 for updates which aren't tainted by the new license, and they are working on it themselves. It's not a worrying fork at this stage, it's just what would have happened if XFree86 (or another FOSS project) and all it's internal developers were blown up yesterday. These people have all been working with XFree86 from the outside for quite a while and it includes Cygwin's Mr Hunt who had withdrawn cygwin from XFree86 (well stopped sending patches) because it was more work to liase with XFree86 than not to! I see good things ahead (but first we have a nice stable XFree86 4.4 replacement so there are no hiccups).
I don't think anyone has been duped at all. I do think that people have been considering for quite a while how to escape XFree86. It's development structure had become a farce, cygwin had stopped submitting patches because it was too much work trying to figure out when and if they were ever applied, ati it seems were annoyed that their patches spent months sitting in XFree86 with no reply, and then out came a new major update with no sign of them! Because even XFree86 could see this coming, they made a few changes but they didn't address the issues. Finally they decided they wanted more credit and everyone shouted back that this was too much, they continued and now there's a fork.
Having said all that, I will be very interested to see what complaints will arrise about X.org over the next few months, if they really are a commercial orientated body making decisions for the companies then perhaps another fork won't be too far away! Having a FSF member of the interim board suggests though that the people coming in here have learnt from mistakes of the past and simply want to provide some financial backing to make sure this new co-operative gets of and running smoothly.
I have also read extensively about this problem for quite a while (the problems with XFree86 have been around quite a while, look back at Cygwin's problems and the similar problems that afflicted ati, basically patches were rotting). Whether or not David Dawes was a part of why it wasn't so open is hard to say, you have to remember he is the voice of the XFree86 board, and as such he speaks for them, not himself. XFree86 was the de facto default and remained in that position for a long time even while it was clear that it's development model no longer fitted in with everything else. The fact that they weren't dropped until they then decided to change some licenses to give themselves more credit is a sign of the reluctance to fork, but I presonally believe (and said from the outset) a fork was the right thing here unless XFree86 backed down, the key is just making sure you have enough bodies along with you (I'd have liked to see Branden from Debian on the interim board, this is a time when licenses are important and there's a man who knows them and X very well, I'd have liked to see more non-commercial people full stop actually). The question now is when and if the two trees will be incompatible vis-a-vis binary drivers, and then which versions Nvidia and Ati will support?
You don't have to download it straight! Thats part of why bittorrent is nice here (though resuming ftps are good, but sometimes a bad disconnect can stop resumption it seemed). 30-40 hours can easily be downloaded over the course of a week, if you can schedule your machine to disconnect at say 7am you could start at midnight and 5 days should about do it. Do you really mind tying up your phone line while your asleep that much? I have the luxury of a second phone line so in fact when I had a machine downloading all night all I was really doing was stopping the off-peak junk faxers from getting through :-)
As for always downloading full cd sets, your spoiled :-) And seriously your wasting bandwidth getting a load of crap you don't need. If it's so quick then you shouldn't care about downloading extra stuff during the install. Maybe I'm just too apt-get centred but unless I plan on installing something on multiple machines I just like to get small isos and net install the rest. Surely all the other distros work like that by now?
Over here it isn't just Linux magazines that have Distros as cover disks, more general computer magazines have them every now and again. I'd hazard to say that even without including PC-Plus which has lots of Linux stuff (especially on the DVD edition) you would still probably find half a dozen other distro cover disks throughout the course of the year.
You shouldn't ever have to download 3 cd iso images! If you do something is wrong! Downloading one image gets you a system, then you download whatever else you want to finish it off. If you are planning on downloading a distribution, then 30 to 40 hours even on a 56k isn't too unreasonable (if you have flat rate or free access), the advantage of bittorrent being its a more stable source (less likely to dissappear if the distributor releases an update while you are downloading) and it is should keep your connection flying away and give you a correct image at the end. It's stability for interuptions mid download is also great in your on 56k.
That being said I'm on dsl, and left 56k before bittorrent came around. I downloaded lots of full cds when I had the 56k but I think bittorrent would have made me happier!
I'll agree on the comment aout Linux speak, but if it was rewritten as follows ...
I bought a $20 Belkin PC-card at surpluscomputers.com. I got the driver from Amtel's site, followed their instructions (installed my systems wireless-tools and installed the driver into the system) and everything just worked perfectly! Very easy, no blind alleys. This stuff used to be hard. Either I'm getting better or Linux is getting easier.
then it would certainly not support your conclusion the Linux is not ready for the desktop. If someone wrote the following would you say Windows isn't ready for the desktop?I bought the $20 Belkin PC-card at surpluscomputers.com. It uses the Ateml wireless Ethernet chip, and there's a well-formed Windows driver on Belkin's site. I got the wireless support installed for my windows and the Belkin driver dll in System32, and I have Wi-Fi! Very easy, no blind allets. This stuff used to be hard. Either I'm getting better or Windows is getting easier.
Well in one place I was involved with we needed an extra machine so a 3rd person could have somewhere to "work" (it mainly involved surfing for porn) so I slapped debian woody on a P133 with 32M (or was it 16 ...) with mozilla and openoffice. He just quietly sat there and did whatever he had to, the machine was slow, but usable. The hardware isn't what's done it, it's the amount of time we have now had with hardware thats good enough and the fact that installation/hardware setup just keeps getting easier and easier.
As for broadband and sneaker net, many magazines (at least in Ireland/UK) have had Linux distros on cover disks for a long time so you could spend 5-10 on a magazine to give it a go if you didn't fancy downloading it. With bittorrent I suspect even 56k modem downloads just became a lot more tolerable!
Are the moderators on crack? The parent post is Insightful not Funny!
Now what do you do with this one ... Insightful, Funny, Troll, Flamebait?
Another nightmare is the habit of some manufacturers to release completely different (technically) products with very similar names. Sometimes there are version numbers, sometimes there's a load of very similar names with patterns in the naming that have zero reflection on what it is. I'd agree though, buying a wireless card for Linux is fun, having one already and trying to get it working I haven't had to bear!
Between this and this are you satisfied this isn't a joke?
No, a sysadmin has his IP balcklisted because of spam, discovers it was sent from a laptop and when. Then he finds out that there was someone in with a laptop at the right time and they had visitors while they were there (which is not rare or suspicious of itself in a net cafe, but it attracts attention and can look suspicious depending on what they are doing). The guys description was male, black, 30 and a half london, half african accent. The sysadmin had the MAC address of the laptop and asked the staff to watch out for the same man. When the same guy appeared the sysadmin raced in and after the guy had waited to get a particularly private booth the sysadmin saw the mac address appear and hence had his confirmation. But the police wanted someone caught in the act of doing something illegal so he had to keep watching until the spam went again. Not quite as you described it eh?
Debian-Junior
Debian-Med
Debian-Edu
DeMuDi
Debian-Desktop
Debian-Lex
Debian-NP
Debian-Accessibility
Simple, all you have to do (assuming all the original stuff is GPL) is only distribute the derived work under the GPL and hence make the source available to people you distribute binaries to.
If you don't want to do that but you do want to use GPL code, you have to be very careful about keeping things seperate and not contaminating anything (simply putting them on a cd together doesn't contaminate anything though).
Does anyone know about the hardware in this device? For example it mentions free to air and pay tv, is that analog or digital, terrestrial/satellite/cable? What sort of pay tv systems, is their one card standard in Aus (or just one pay tv supplier)?
And to go further off topic, how does it play DVDs? What is the legal status of libdvdcss or the like in Aus? What about licensing fees for Dolby Digital or DTS (or mp3)?
When Microsoft stops using it's monopoly position to protect and extend it's monopoly and instead focuses on simply producing a better product, then I will stop "bashing" Microsoft. As of right now, Microsoft have been convicted both at home and abroad of being an anti-competitive monopoly (that means that MS does hinder open source production, ask the samba team, or OpenOffice.org) so while their products may have advantages for certain niches, I for one am very wary of funding their war chest. I don't want MS destroyed, I just want them to not act illegally, preferably because they are no longer a monopoly (most of what they have done would be ok if they weren't a monopoly but they are)!
Guess Public Enemy (Fuck The Police and Burn Hollywood Burn) and Eminem will be out the window too. I was going to joke that they were just trying to ensure you don't have to listen to my fellow Irish men like Bono, but it's probably more to ensure you don't have to listen to other marginal sections of US society (I wonder how "profanity" levels vary by race and social class ...) hey maybe it does include the Irish.
Just hope they didn't people to see their work! At least not to influencable minds! Never discount the more sinister possibilities. Here in Ireland TV is slowly catching up to society as far as swearing is concerned (more and more every day), the complete lack of any swearing in US TV is actually a barrier to suspension of disbelief for me!
Debian will release the next STABLE version when it's ready, always their answer. You can think of debian stable as having always done the sort of stuff RedHat, Mandrake and Suse are all looking to do now, build long term releases not "forcing" full system upgrades every few months. That all being said even Debian are hoping to speed up the release process, the next release will be the first release to come out of testing and is ironing out the kinks in that system. Also, it is moving rapidly towards a release. Debian-installer is now usable (for certain values of usable) on 6 platforms and the release critical bugs are dropping down to where a release should be quickly achievable (once all the main pieces are in place). I would be surprised if debian doesn't release before the Autumn (I'd guess June/July).
As the other reply to your post pointed out though, if stable doesn't do you testing (or even unstable) should do it!
Right, so the original post should have read something like "There's a free version licensed under the GPL and also a commercial version for when that isn't appropriate" not that there is a GPL version for non-commercial use.
A copyright holder can license it however they please, but if they license it under the GPL that's that. They could license it under a modified GPL which doesn't allow commercial distribution but I didn't think that was the case here! GTK on the other hand is under a modifed LGPL which allows derived binary only releases.