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Debian's Testing Branch Nears Completion
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:10 PM
from the apt-remains-a-fantastic-argument dept.
from the apt-remains-a-fantastic-argument dept.
DeviceGuru writes "With Debian Lenny (aka 'testing') poised to displace Etch as the popular Linux distribution's 'stable' branch possibly as soon as next month, blogger Rick Lehrbaum loaded the latest preview (beta 2) of Lenny's KDE CD image onto an available Thinkpad, and took it for a spin. How's it coming along? After detailing a handful of issues — and offering solutions for each (except Bluetooth support) — he concludes: 'Other than the need for a few hacks and fixes, my main complaint with it is its inclusion of way too many of KDE's rich set of applications, such as games, tools, etc.' From the looks of it, looks like Lenny might be the new 'Debian stable' soon!"
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Debian Lenny Installer RC1 Arrives 81 comments
nerdyH writes "It appears that Debian 5.0 (aka "Lenny") will soon take its big binocular eyes out into the wider world. Only two months later than expected, the Debian project has completed the first release candidate of Lenny's installer. Featuring much faster installation from "live" CDs, and expanded support for ARM-based devices such as NAS servers, Lenny has gestated for 19 months, compared to 21 months for the previous "Etch" release. Lookout, world, Debian releases are picking up speed! The download is here."
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How can this be? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
advice for upgrading a server? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a little leery of this, since I've rendered ubuntu desktop systems unbootable by doing 2 and 3 -- and was told that it was because I should have done 1.
Re:advice for upgrading a server? (Score:4, Informative)
I am by no means an expert, however I have upgraded a couple of servers that I don't have physical access to.
I've normally tried to upgrade a server that I do have physical access to before upgrading the offsite server(s). So long as the server comes back up and ssh is still running pretty much everything else can be sorted out after a little time, the logs and google.
Ideally similar hardware.
Oh and googling around to see if anyone has hit problems doing the upgrade.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1. Release notes will be here [debian.org] (right now they contain the etch release notes).
2. You probably will have to type apt-get dist-upgrade a couple of times (I usually average two). Reason is first couple of times, some packages will be stuck because of conflicting versioning, but it usually fixes itself once you get a couple of packages upgraded (usually once you get past libc and the kernel)
Generally speaking, Debian upgrade is much more painless than Ubuntu upgrades, IMO, possibly because of the longer releas
Re:advice for upgrading a server? (Score:5, Informative)
At least do a simulated dist-upgrade by using the -s switch before doing the "real" one!
apt-get -s dist-upgrade
Sometimes, just sometimes, it'll catch things which might go wrong before they actually happen.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every new stable is really well tested, I would expect it to work just fine.
Having said that, if you don't want it to happen then just change your sources.list from 'stable' to your release name.
If you don't have remote KVM I would be tempted to wait a week or so after release before upgrading - just to see if others have hit snags.
Good Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone becomes conservative with upgrades after the first time that a box 3000 miles away fails to come back up. Seriously, waiting for a remote reboot after a kernel update is always the longest two minutes of my life.
Even the headless boxes at my apartment wait for me to set aside time to haul out a monitor and keyboard if anything goes wrong during an update. It's better to assume that something will go wrong and be pleasantly surprised and ahead of schedule than to sit staring at pings that have been timing out for the last five minutes (while you think, maybe it's just taking a long time to init... yeah, right!).
And, regardless of what anyone says, a virtual machine test environment doesn't have anywhere near the complications that you get with heavy metal. A successful virtual machine test just means that nothing is assured to go wrong, nothing more.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
than to sit staring at pings that have been timing out for the last five minutes (while you think, maybe it's just taking a long time to init... yeah, right!).
Often when a linux box hasn't been rebooted for a while it can take a long time to reboot because the boot scripts decide that the filesystems need checking. On a big filesystem this can take quite some time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a tip: if you have a very large filesystem that is NOT your root filesystem, e.g. something only used for SMB or NFS sharing, kill the processes that need to access it, unmount it, and run fsck before you reboot the box. Those services will be offline for awhile, but they would have been anyway while fsck was running at boot time. This way, you get to see the progress (and any errors that come up), and the rest of the box doesn't have to remain offline for an hour or two after reboot.
It's not a ba
Re:advice for upgrading a server? (Score:5, Informative)
Leave it alone and only apply the security updates. I have a server happily running sarge that I have no plans to change.
Ummm.. you know that sarge no longer gets security updates, right? :S (announcement [debian.org])
Parent
Does what it says on the box (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so the gentleman downloaded and installed the *KDE* version of Debian Lenny, and then says his main complaint "is its inclusion of way too many of KDE's rich set of applications, such as games, tools, etc."
I can understand that; I once installed Windows XP, but there were far too many Microsoft applications for my liking.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In general the desktop install tasks of debian (at least the default gnome one and the kde based one, not sure about the xfce one) do leave a rather bloated install.
If you are at all concerned about disk space it is usually a much better idea to install the base system and then add what you want on top of that yourself.
More games = more interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one (in addition to welcoming our KDE overlords) think it is great that games are being included by default. More distros need to do this. Every LiveCD should be able to show people that Windows isn't the only OS where you can waste time playing Solitaire. A LiveCD/default install that doesn't have this is probably going to feel like an incomplete system to the average desktop user.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Iceweasel is named that way due to Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)
I read The Fine Article; a few comments on the author's article:
Iceweasel
=-=-=-=-=
One of the complaints is that he wants "real" Firefox rather than the renamed Iceweasel. Well, until the Mozilla Foundation says differently, that isn't possible. Mozilla withdrew their prior permission to ship Firefox with a replaced logo that fit the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the only way to comply with both Mozilla and the DFSG was to rename the application. So if you want to complain about this, write to Mozilla. I think Debian totally made the right choice to rename.
Shorter explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat [wikipedia.org]
Longer explanation:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622 [debian.org]
Playing a DVD
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The author wasn't able to test playing a DVD; normal movie DVDs that use encryption won't play out of the box. This is because Debian cannot ship libdvdcss2 as part of the main distribution for legal reasons, same as other distributions. There are other external repositories (outside of the US) that contain libdvdcss2 -- but it may not be legal to import the package into the US. You might find some choices if you put "Debian" and "multimedia" into Google and see what comes up.
Modem
=-=-=-=
Wow, the author set up the POTS modem. When is the last time you had to use one of those? Gotta give him credit for going through that effort.
- Chris
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, the author set up the POTS modem. When is the last time you had to use one of those?
Plenty of people still live in parts of the world without anything faster. But PPP isn't only for POTS, plenty of DSL services use PPPo[AE].
I think it's well past time to create a ppp-client package (conflicts with pppd) that has pppd configured the way that the 99% of the users who aren't modem pools will use it (for instance, not demanding a password from the other end of the line). Bonus points if the code starts d
This is not good. (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, no. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Actually, no. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Actually, no. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Actually, no. (Score:5, Funny)
It's called GNU/Fellatio in Debian. Fascist.
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Re:Actually, no. (Score:5, Funny)
I tried Gnu/Fellatio once. She was okay, but I'm no longer allowed at the zoo.
Parent
Re:Actually, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
You need to get a (better) girlfriend.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
As a female friend of mine observed after I complained that women suck, "the good ones do!".
This article is full of errors and bad advice (Score:5, Informative)
It's not Beta 2 of Lenny. Only the installation program is Beta 2. So that's a big mistake.
And the mistakes continue.
The advice to remove iceweasel and replace it with Firefox is crazy. Iceweasel is 99.99% Firefox, and the version that comes with Debian is optimised to use libraries and other software in the distribution (like spell check). If you follow the advice and use the mozilla version of firefox, you lose this integration.
Some sites "sniff" for browser type, and iceweasel is not detected as Firefox (wsj.com, google docs). This is easily fixed by going to about:config, searching for useragent, and changing "iceweasel" to "firefox".
All firefox extensions that I know of work with iceweasel.
To install acrobat reader, just add the http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ [debian-multimedia.org] repositories, and add the package acroread with Synaptic or apt-get.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Debian browser (or this one, you of course have a choice) is iceweasel. That's its name. The Debian team decided that the branding of Firefox is too restrictive to meet Debian's licence for free software. The solution, iceweasel, is good enough, and that's why no one has added firefox to the non-free repository.
The lazy parties are those few websites that do poor browser sniffing. There are only a few sites that think iceweasel is not the same as firefox. The only one that bothers me is the wsj.com. So
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's not entirely true, Iceweasel has some important changes that integrate it with Debian shared libraries. Theoretically this makes it smaller and faster, though I'd like to see some numbers comparing it.
But it can't call itself firefox because it isn't firefox. That would break some sort of IP. You can change that however, and the Mozilla foundation probably aren't going to come after you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It is not Debian that prevent the use of the name Mozilla, you're blaming the wrong party.
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:5, Informative)
'kde' is just a metapackage: it depends on the packages in that list (directly or indirectly). There's nothing wrong with leaving those other packages installed. The new apt/dpkg conventions try to help you remove cruft, so they let you remove those packages with `apt-get autoremove`. Instead of that, install a few that you need by hand to remove them from the list. When you don't see any in this list that you want, then run auto-remove.
Parent
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:5, Informative)
The only point of the KDE metapackage is to provide a 1-click install for KDE.
Parent
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:5, Informative)
"The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:"
This does _not_ mean they're going to be removed.
"The following packages will be REMOVED:"
Only that specific convenience meta-package gets removed.
To further illustrate this, check this line:
"After this operation, 41.0kB disk space will be freed."
Somehow I think KDE takes more than 41.0kB, don't you?
If you really wanted to remove the kde meta-package together with all the dependencies that it pulled in (so all the things you didn't explicitly apt-get install yourself), you'd use "apt-get autoremove kde".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
apt-cache show <packagename>. If it's a meta-package, the Debian devs are usually good enough to provide that in the description. In fact, the standard phrase goes something like "This is a meta-package that depends on all other packages to facilitate install. It can be safely removed after install."
Mart
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Learn how to work 'equivs' - then you get your nifty metapackage that "provides" kdegames, which tricks "kde" into staying installed.
Equivs was made specifically to fix this "issue".
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, your OS of choice has 50MB of extra stuff? Oh God, th world is ending! How will you possibly manage if you can't free up that massive portion of your dozens and dozens of GB of storage? It's a travesty! We should lynch the developers!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, that doesn't sound like the future to me. Sounds more like you're living in a solid state version of 1997.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, they are not annoying. This is a very useful new concept in Debian, I believe that once you understand it, you can see how nice it is.
Explaining better:
All those packages are installed as dependencies of the metapackage 'kde'.
You are trying to remove one of it's dependencies (kdegames) and that's why apt-get want to uninstall all other dependencies and the 'kde' itself.
If you want those packages, but not the kdegames, you should install those packages by hand (or at least those starting with kde, that I
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Er, no. Read what apt says--it doesn't uninstall those packages, they're just marked as unnecessary and can be removed.
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:4, Informative)
Also, I hope you will ignore the trolls who give false answers or tell you to RTFM. They are full of crap, and you are to be commended for having the courage to ask such questions. The day you can't get a decent answer to a valid question on
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Please die now.
Just because someone does not know something, and asks a legitimate question, is no reason to give them instructions that will completely fuck over their machine.
Seriously man, how the hell can you act like that to another human being?
Re:Sigh, JPG screenshots (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Sigh, JPG screenshots (Score:5, Funny)
Please can you tell us more about the windows boxes you met. What are they like to talk to? Are they overly trusting? I bet they're the polar opposite of the OpenBSD boxes I met. The conversation went like this:
Me: Hi guys! Enjoying the tofu at this conference?
OpenBSD_box1: Who the fuck are you?
OpenBSD_box2: We don't know you, get lost before we beat you to a pulp.
OpenBSD_box1: He's leaving, but let's beat him anyway!
OpenBSD_box3: Hey! He's still conscious! You guys are such slackers!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
png is far better than jpeg for images with lots of gradients and solid colors like screenshots than. Compare similarly sized screenshots using png and jpg -- jpg will be full of artifacting.
If you were complaining about someone using pngs for photographs you'd have a point.
Re:Sigh, JPG screenshots (Score:4, Informative)
Forgive me I'm a fucking idiot :)
Parent
Re:Still not ready (Score:4, Informative)
Debian is mainly used as a server OS, it isn't generally held up as a shining example of how Linux is ready for the desktop. It is fairly widely used in production environments, and by developers and other geeky types, and it is considered an excellent stable base for other, more specialised distros. Like, for example, Ubuntu -- which is more than "ready" for the desktop.
In order to criticize in a meaningful way, one needs to know the subject at hand. Otherwise, you're just trolling and making inappropriate noise. And really, "freetards"? What kind of "tard" does that make you then? :) [HINT: This is a geek forum.]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Debian is mainly used as a server OS, it isn't generally held up as a shining example of how Linux is ready for the desktop. It is fairly widely used in production environments, and by developers and other geeky types, and it is considered an excellent stable base for other, more specialised distros. Like, for example, Ubuntu -- which is more than "ready" for the desktop.
Really, Debian is meant to be all things to all people. It makes a wonderful server, and a wonderful desktop. You just have to be willi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nowhere did I say that, but since you ask: depends upon whose desktop. I put my Mom on Ubuntu, and wouldn't dream of putting her on Debian. I'm not going to teach her to use synaptic, much less apt. Plus the drivers, default configs, and things like the Ubuntu update manager make all the difference for the non-geek user. Personally, I do use Debian for several of my desktop machines, but I was using it back when we had to install with dselect, so I know the CLI well enoug
Re:freebsd (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:freebsd (Score:5, Funny)
I also hear that some mysterious issues with OpenSSL have been fixed by Debian developers, which could save us from memory leaks and increase performance. Personally, I'm amazed that the OpenSSL devs haven't fixed this issue themselves yet.
Obviously, this distro is where all the exciting new development action happens. I'm very excited to be on the bleeding edge with Debian!
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