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Debian Aims For September Release Date

Posted by michael on Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:49 PM
from the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race dept.
Debian
An anonymous submitter writes "Debian Planet has a good discussion of the most recent release update from the new Debian release managers. The most interesting point is the current hard freeze of base+standard and an optimistic but doable release date in September."
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  • is this the one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:50PM (#9870050)
    ...that features the new 2.0 kernel?

  • Debian... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dhakbar (783117) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:52PM (#9870078)
    As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing. Debian is a very fine distro for even desktop use.

    • Re:Debian... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Television Set (801157) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:55PM (#9870110) Homepage Journal
      Debian and Gentoo are similar in that they have a packaging/software installation system that is top notch (apt, portage), making it easiest to maintain, but a wickedly difficult installation method (dselect/tasksel) - however it is my understanding that the newer Debian will have a much easier installation setup. I look forward to trying it out.
      • Its about as easy and painless as Slackware now. Which means they've got a user in me.
                • Almost but not quite.
                  Stable = Stale, unless you seek stability... or somthing. [correct]
                  Unstable - Latest packages. NOT unstable but high quality releases. They HAVE been tested.[inncorrect - this is testing]
                  Testing - this is the latest really unstable stuff. Installing from here will screw up your system eventually.[incorrect - this is unstable]

                  To recap its stable then testing and finally unstable.

                  • The name fix (Score:5, Funny)

                    by Phillup (317168) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @02:39PM (#9871042)
                    To recap its stable then testing and finally unstable.

                    I think they could solve their name problems if they would rename everything like this:

                    Stable => Debian Server
                    Testing => Debian Desktop
                    Unstable => Debian Windows

                    Each name clearly denoting the level of stability for that branch.

                    (Let the flame wars begin ;-))
                    • I've managed to screw my system up with Stable too, but I don't think you can infer anything from that.

                      Well, you can, but I ignore it.
                • Euhms, since when did testing and unstable switch ?!

                  Stable = Stable = Woody
                  Testing = Stuff not in stable yet, but in the queue = Sarge
                  Unstable = Living on the edge = sid (and will always be sid)

                  http://www.debian.org/releases/ [debian.org]

      • Re:Debian... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Malc (1751) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:24PM (#9870395)
        Dselect and tasksel? I bypass that step of the installer and just apt-get things as I find I need them. Obviously I realize that this doesn't work for everybody ;)

          • Re:Debian... (Score:5, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2004, @03:11PM (#9871443)
            I do the same thing, except I "apt-get install aptitude" and then do the rest in aptitude.

            Aptitude is the default apt frontend in Sarge - dselect is deprecated, although it's still available as an option in the new debian-installer for those who've got used to it.

            I can honestly say that if it wasn't for aptitude, I wouldn't be using Debian. I tried to try Debian a number of times in years gone by, and always failed to get through dselect without accidentally finalising on a set of broken packages - this despite years of Linux experience. But when the debian-installer betas came out, I tried again, and aptitude was usable enough to get me through. And I like it enough that my old SuSE skills are gathering dust.

            In short, Debian is no longer impossible to install. Let's hope more people who were previously put off by the bad old installation process feel inspired to try again come September.

    • Re:Debian... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ron_ivi (607351) <.moc.secivedxelpmocpaehc. .ta. .ontods.> on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:02PM (#9870178)
      End just as importantly, Debian Stable has been the one distro I could count on to have all the security patches and _only_ the security patches so I didn't have to mess with any incompatable changes in any libraries affecting my stuff. IMHO, Debian Stable has been the lowest maintanence OS I've ever encountered.

        • Agreed, far to many people critisize the outdatedness of stable. It is outdated because it is STABLE, that may seem obvious but most people just don't get it. I have NEVER had stable break itself with bad dependancies etc.

          Just because some software is _stable_ does not imply it's _outdated_, and vica versa, of course. It might not be _bleeding_ egde, but it's still fairly current.

          A couple of years ago, I bought the offical Debian 3.0 DVD. On the cover they says there are 8710 packages included. With

    • eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theantix (466036) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:08PM (#9870246) Journal
      I think Debian is a fine project, but to be fair you have to admit that the unstable and testing distributions break far too often to use on a production machine. Of course, I've heard that Lindows^H^H^H^Hare and Xandros do a fine job of producing a quality stable release from those packages, but that's not really the same as pure Debian. Using pure Debian is great if you like to tinker and don't mind when things stop working all of a sudden. But for a primary desktop machine it is too unstable and just doesn't cut it for me anymore since I fully ditched mswindows and rely on my linux installation for everyday work.

      This isn't to say that Debian sucks -- it really doesn't suck at all and I love using stable for servers. It's just not a "fine desktop" for people who just want to get work or play done without applications suddenly failing on them.

      • (eh?)^2 (Score:3, Informative)

        by gmhowell (26755)
        I think Debian is a fine project, but to be fair you have to admit that the unstable and testing distributions break far too often to use on a production machine

        Maybe the grandparent does, but I don't have to admit any such thing on my testing system. Been running testing since... Geez, I can't even remember. Sometime around when RedHat 7.0 came out. No more or less stable than any other distro.

        I'm sure that unstable is... wait for it... UNSTABLE. But testing? No problems.

        (/me knocks wood)

      • Re:eh? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Peaker (72084) <gnupeaker@yah3.14oo.com minus pi> on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:30PM (#9870453) Homepage
        Huh? Debian unstable doesn't break often at all. In fact it hasn't broken anything for me in more than 6 months, and I do it at least weekly. Lower frequency updates obviously break things even less frequently. I have other Operating Systems break far more often when tinkering with installed packages or upgrading stuff.

          • HOWTO use Debian Sid (Score:5, Insightful)

            by hummassa (157160) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @02:56PM (#9871269) Homepage Journal
            1. don't try to track sid every single day.
            1(a). this means: apt-get upgrade if and only if there is a serious vulnerability; optionally, once a week, preferably once a month.
            2. USE apt-listbugs.
            2(a). this means: READ the fscking bugs. take a special look in those marked by apt-listbugs with , but DO read all of them. in any apt-get dist-upgrade, I get at most 30 bugs.
            3. USE apt-listchanges.
            3(a). yes, you know the drill. READ the changes. SEARCH for changed functionality, especially in packages you tinkered with the config.

            1+2+3 == NEVER breaking the machine.

      • Re:eh? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by robochan (706488) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:38PM (#9870530) Homepage
        It's just not a "fine desktop" for people who just want to get work or play done without applications suddenly failing on them.

        I have to ask - have you actually even used the current Unstable release?
        I'm not trying to insulting you, it's just that I've talked to many who've "heard that it's that way" without actually trying it. Can you provide some examples? I'm sure there are plenty, but as far as my own experience goes, I've used it for the last couple of years without hesitation. I'm not a developer, maintainer, nor a coder for that matter. I personally use Unstable on 3 machines for desktop systems, and install it for others, and have very rarely had anything break. I'm curious to hear some "real word" examples versus those who've "heard it's not for a dekstop".

        • Re:eh? (Score:3, Informative)

          by lspd (566786)
          I personally use Unstable on 3 machines for desktop systems, and install it for others, and have very rarely had anything break.

          Odd.. I maintain 5 packages in Debian and another 4 outside of Debian, and I see things breaking every few weeks on Unstable. Normally such bugs just stop the install process, you wait until the package maintainer fixes the problem and try again, but I've seen many people get bent out of shape over trivial apt-get error messages. These are a fact of life with Unstable but co

      • Re:eh? (Score:3, Informative)

        by CoolHnd30 (89871)
        Have you checked out apt-listbugs ? When using apt-listbugs, you know what issues you may have 99% of the time before actually installing the programs, and can say ,"no, I don't want to take a chance of that bug fsck'ing up my system." You can pin the old version, and go about your merry way until the bug is fixed, and you unpin it and proceed. Using apt-listbugs, I've really only had two issues in the past year when updating programs, and one of those was because I didn't pay attention to the bug notice.

        • Re:eh? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by theantix (466036)
          I used unstable for about a year, and in that time disabled X11, and another time it disabled Gnome. And one more than one occasion it broke FirePhoeFox. Those kind of problems can be worked around if you are willing to put in the time, but it's a hassle. I prefer the Fedora Core model of having a new stable platform every six months and doing a major upgrade at that time, so I can schedule and dedicate time to work out upgrading errors instead of having it happen when I need to get work done or just wa

    • Re:Debian... (Score:5, Informative)

      by robochan (706488) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:12PM (#9870281) Homepage
      As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing. Debian is a very fine distro for even desktop use.

      And to top off including 13,000+ packages, they've even beaten [debian.org] the release times between Microsoft's barebones desktop OSes Windows XP [com.com] and Longhorn [3drealms.com]

        • Re:Debian... (Score:5, Informative)

          by CoJoNEs (73698) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @02:19PM (#9870871) Homepage
          To be fair, you should also mention that Debian supports 10 architectures

          * Alpha
          * ARM
          * HP PA-RISC
          * Intel x86
          * Intel IA-64
          * Motorola 680x0
          * MIPS
          * MIPS (DEC)
          * PowerPC
          * IBM S/390
          * SPARC
    • As always, those who defend Debian point to the availability of Unstable and Testing. Please get a clue, there is a reason that they are called Unstable and Testing and not Debian-New and Debian-Newer. They are not slightly-less stable versions of Stable. They do not always get security updates on time. They may leave major packages like KDE broken for weeks. When you install Unstable, it depends on your luck at the time what works and what doesn't. Near release time Unstable is often pretty OK, mid-release
      • there is a reason that they are called Unstable and Testing

        Yet "Unstable" continues to work well for me. Sometimes I get bitten, but I love getting new software when it is really new.

        When you install Unstable, it depends on your luck at the time what works and what doesn't.

        I've had few problems. The essential core stuff has never broken on me. One thing you can do to minimize the danger: have multiple computers, and run your update on a spare computer. If it's happy, you can roll that update out t

    • Re:Debian... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Erwos (553607) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:21PM (#9870373)
      "As always, those of you who whine about Debian being out of date have probably never looked at the packages available in unstable and testing."

      And for those of us who've used Debian before, we can tell you that, every so often, unstable just breaks. It's not like it's planned, but the fact is, with so many package maintainers, something's bound to go wrong - and it usually does every few months. At that point, you've got to go and uninstall and reinstall packages to make dpkg not complain about weird circular dependency problems - an irony for a distribution that so many claim is the answer to "dependency hell".

      You can't test to see how reliable Debian Unstable is, either. I mean, "Debian unstable works great for me" is kind of confusing as a statement. Did it work right a month ago? How about 36 days ago? 67 days ago? That is to say, it's impossible to actually be sure that it's working right any particular day because Debian unstable is constantly changing. Debian stable, SuSE, and RedHat simply don't have this problem, and it's why many people are not enamored of running Debian off the unstable packages repository.

      Thus, Debian unstable is simply _not_ what you want for reliable updating and pain-free maintenance. Debian is many great things, but realize that it has big faults once you move out of stable. It pisses me off to no end when people proclaim Debian to be the most stable (in reference to the stable branch) and most up-to-date (in reference to unstable). It's the most stable OR the most up-to-date, not both.

      Just thought I'd get that off my chest. I'm a big Debian proponent, but I'm not going to lie about what's going on with it.

      -Erwos

      • Re:Debian... (Score:4, Informative)

        by robochan (706488) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:43PM (#9870569) Homepage
        They are still debating if XFree 4.2 should be default.

        huh?

        $ cat /etc/issue
        Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 \n \l
        $ dpkg -l xserver-xfree86 |grep ii
        ii xserver-xfree8 4.3.0.dfsg.1-6 the XFree86 X server

      • Re:Yes and No....The Labels are Wrong (Score:4, Informative)

        by dmaxwell (43234) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @03:34PM (#9871684)
        Unstable doesn't mean "will crash if you so much as look at it incorrectly". It means "software dependencies and APIs change on a daily basis". A binary package targeted at Debian Stable can be counted on to install and run properly over it's supported lifetime. Stable releases are about three years apart and are supported for a year after new Stable releases.

        A binary package targetted at Unstable could fail to install and run tomorrow because dependencies have incremented upward in version.

  • WHAT? Sarge might be RELEASED? (Score:5, Funny)

    by JessLeah (625838) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:54PM (#9870090)
    Isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

  • ode to 503 (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub (11606) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:54PM (#9870092) Homepage Journal

    five oh three
    we've seen thee a lot two odd numbers sandwiching naught

    seeing a good olde friend
    such a grand time
    a prime, a zero, another prime

    we hope slashdot
    doesn't fix their site
    so we may enjoy you every night

    grub
    • Slashdot Haiku:

      Five Oh Three Error
      Service Unavailable
      Slashdot Slashdotted

      • Nope (Score:5, Informative)

        by pavon (30274) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:42PM (#9870562)
        I have seen it with IE, Safari, and Firebird, using Windows 2k, OS X, and Slackware. 503 errors have nothing to do with the browser, just the server.

  • Debian Noobie (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rokzy (687636) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:55PM (#9870105)
    I know of Debian's aim of a safe, stable distribution as opposed to cutting edge, but don't know how they go about it.

    to achieve their aims do they bug fix other peoples' code? do they inform the original authors of a problem? if so, what effects on code ownership does this have - does the Debian team become co-author?

    anyone got any interesting stories about the Debian process along these lines?

    • Re:Debian Noobie (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nasarius (593729) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:00PM (#9870160)
      to achieve their aims do they bug fix other peoples' code?

      Sometimes. Other times, they simply "backport" bug fixes to older versions.

      do they inform the original authors of a problem?

      Gentoo always sends its fixes upstream when appropriate. I would imagine Debian does the same.

      if so, what effects on code ownership does this have - does the Debian team become co-author?

      Depends on the author of the original code and the patch. Some will require you to assign copyright to them, others don't really care because it's all GPL'd anyway.

    • Re:Debian Noobie (Score:5, Informative)

      by lems1 (163074) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:20PM (#9870364) Homepage
      To really see the debian process at work one would need to be a member of one of the many mailing lists (depending on what your interests are) and/or participate in the IRC meetings or regular IRC chatrooms for many debian-based or debian-specific pieces of software.
      For instance, I usually hang out in the #debian-desktop channel, and i'm subscribe to the debian-gtk-gnome mailing lists. In there I get to help others fix their problems, help developers find bugs and re-do packages, etc.. etc... Usually all bugs reported to the bugs.debian.org bug repository or to the mailing list get sent upstream.
      After years of distro-hopping from various Linux distributions, I find Debian to be the one that gives me the most confidence in all senses: from a security point of view, from a non-vendor "lock-in" point of view, and even more importantly from a stability point of view.
      Surprisingly enough, I run debian "unstable" as my main workstation at work and at home, and I rarely see a piece of software that breaks (this is despite the fact that I have become an apt-get junkie! Which means that I usually update as soon as there is some new piece of code added to the "unstable" branch).

      The future version of Debian stable, code named "Sarge", is a very very solid distro as it is at this moment. I have started to exclusively install this distro on friend's and family's desktops as they move away from other OSes and welcome the Linux beauty into their lives. Out of 20 or so "upgrades" i have done, only one has gone back to the dark side after a month or so using it. Usually after they get to use a very well configured (and stable) desktop based on Debian, they never go back.

      My hope is that Sarge becomes a rock-solid, easy to install, modern OS a la Mandrake or Xandros, but totally royalty free. And so far I believe that very goal has been achieve, with a few things missing here and there that might be addressed in the near future. (Like the need for a GUI to the installer, and a way to manage drivers for hardware from a GUI).

  • Let's try to be orderly (Score:5, Funny)

    by Minwee (522556) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:58PM (#9870132) Homepage
    Okay, this is a Debian thread, you all know the drill. Everybody who wants to make a crack about Debian packages being at least twenty years old by the time they are released form a line to the right.

    Zealotous supporters of other Linux distributions over by the wall. If you have no clue how apt works but still want to say that rpm/emerge/tar is far superior, just raise your hand when we call on you.

    If you think you're being pretty darn rebelious by railing against the use of "GNU/Linux", then stand over by the wading pool. We'll get to you once the grown-ups have had their say.

    BSD supporters can congregate near the exit. We've heard some rumours about you and I want to make sure you have a clear path to the ambulance in case anything happens.

    Everyone who thinks Yggdrasil is the one and only true distribution, there's a special thread for you over in the cafeteria.

  • Netinstall!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Douglas Simmons (628988) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @12:58PM (#9870138) Homepage
    I *highly* recommend doing new installs with the 110meg iso net-installer that you can grab here: debian.org/devel/debian-installer [debian.org]

    It's beta 4 of Sarge but I think it lets you throw on Woody as well. Netinstalls are good obviously because it's a small DL, you end up DLing only what you need, and what you do download is fresh regardless of when you burnt the CD.

    Also, I'm batting a thousand with this installer as far as getting X video working without a hitch... I can't say that for the sound server, but as they say, if you're interested in sound, you shouldn't be running Debian. :)

  • That's really good... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pecisk (688001) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:07PM (#9870232)
    With all that flame war nonsense about communication (which sucks unfortunately in Debian) and AMD64 inclusion in Sarge, it's great that someone has cleared mind and moved forward. No offence to Debian AMD64 guys, thought. But they should at least understand that Sarge release already TOO late.

  • September? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cro Magnon (467622) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:07PM (#9870234) Homepage Journal
    Did they specify the year?

  • Why this obession with release dates? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eddy (18759) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:08PM (#9870245) Homepage Journal

    I've never understod this obsession with debian release dates. Since you can apt-get dist-upgrade every day to keep up to date, "release date" is simply the assigning of a particular date to a set of file versions.

    Utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, if you ask me.

    • Re:Why this obession with release dates? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MBAFK (769131) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:21PM (#9870371) Homepage
      We use Debian on our production kit. I would not like to 'chase' versions with apt daily, weekly or monthly. To us having a stable set of boxes is extremely important, an official release is a big deal to us and the long term plans for our servers are based on these releases.

      I used to do apt-get dist-upgrade all the time on my workstation but it is not acceptable for some computers.

  • One possible reason for slow releases (Score:5, Funny)

    by moberry (756963) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @01:11PM (#9870270)
    There are ony SOO many toy story characters, after this there going to have to start naming them after the etch-a-sketch, piggy bank, etc. on the other hand.. there have been 2 sequals since woody was released.

  • New Installer yet? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nurb432 (527695) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @02:04PM (#9870764) Homepage Journal
    Will they be including the new installer, or even perhaps a graphical one finally? ( the debian port of anaconda works pretty well )

    The installer is what keeps many away from using Debian.. that and the *perceived* slowness in releases and having to stick with 'old' versions of items...

    Reason i say perceived, is that you dont have to stick with the released version forever, you can upgrade fairily easily to something a bit more current. ( or even bleeding edge if you are brave ) .. Its not as easy as with *BSD, but its still pretty painless..
    • Yes they will be including the new installer, but no graphical one yet. Anaconda works fine on x86, but it doesn't run on all of the 10 supported platforms for Debian releases. Makes it a lot harder to write an installer when it has to run on 10 different platforms ;-)

      With that said, the new debian-installer is pretty nice...if you're afraid of anything not GUIfied look elsewhere, but if you have intermediate-expert skill you'll love it.

  • Debian sarge (Score:3, Interesting)

    by asackett (161377) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @02:08PM (#9870797) Homepage
    I've been using sarge for quite a while now, and on production machines, too. I keep a local workstation as the crash test dummy, upgrading it first just in case there's a problem that I don't want to add to the production machines -- I haven't encountered any show stoppers in almost a year now. I don't even have any woody boxes any more.

    Yes, the security updates are a mite slower to get into testing, but usually only by a few hours or a day.

    It works fine. I like it. I'm just sitting up here on my mountain being happy.

  • Ray Debian! Ray Fedora! Ray Gentoo! Ray Freedom! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Progman3K (515744) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @02:10PM (#9870816)
    I don't use Debian, I run Gentoo, but I respect the Debian team because they produce an exceptionally fine version of Linux.

    The aim of open source is freedom, and I think it's great that the Debian team, the Fedora team, and the Gentoo team each try to further the cause in their own way, each with their own focus, giving everyone so much choice.

    Look how at-home Linux is on EVERY computing platform; THAT is beauty. THAT is truth, THAT is freedom!

    I know I'll come off like a Microsoft (or ANY OTHER monopoly) - basher, but the days of closed-source-we-decide-what-is-best-for-you are OVER!

    Thank you very much, development teams, engineers, beta-testers and users!

    Ever onward! Excelsior!

  • A new release system is on the horizon... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stalin (13415) on Tuesday August 03 2004, @02:39PM (#9871054)

    The following excerpt is from an interview at http://www.pctechtalk.com/view.php?id=3230 [pctechtalk.com]. It seems people are not going to be able to bitch about the outdated releases for too much longer.

    technobeast: Why is the latest stable version of Debian outdated? And why is this idea with several releases? Any purpose to announce outdated versions as stable and currently usable as unstable/testing?

    Martin Michlmayr: Debian has traditionally had very slow release cycles. One reason for this is that Debian has often been used for servers. As it is being used increasingly for desktops, our release cycle is not adequate anymore. We know about this and are working on implementing faster release cycles which will meet the needs of server and desktop users. Another reason why Debian is often slow with release is that our system is very large. We have more than 10,000 packages and support 11 architectures. However, we are working on solutions which will allow faster release cycles. In this process, we are moving away from a feature based to a time based release. This will ensure predictable releases.

    • How come I get 503 errors? I've been experiencing this for about 2 weeks now. Didn't seem to be happening before. It'd be one thing if it was all the time, but it's not. Is it slashdot, or my choice of browser (firefox)?

      long and the short of it.. someone at slashdot's end broke something... There isn't anything we can do but complain for now.

      2nd question is: how come sometimes there is text that renders as ^D^D^D^D^D^D sometimes. I think it's when someone tries to use a special character that my brows

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