Bugs Delay Release of Debian Lenny

A. B. VerHausen writes to tell us that over 200 release-critical bugs continue to push back Debian Lenny's release date. Originally slated for a September release, there is still a long road to be traveled before Lenny sees the light of day. Project leader Steve McIntyre says they may consider dropping some packages for the release if they continue to cause problems, and while an end of October release is the goal, only time will tell.

What else is new?

Shocking!!!

Seriously, this doesn't seem unusual. I'm happy that the team is waiting until all the bugs are squashed.

Re:What else is new?

Queue Orson Welles' deep voice stating "We will ship no Linux before it's time". Seriously, I always thought this was one of the major advantages contributing to Linux quality: not having to meet arbitrary release deadlines imposed by marketing and sales. Unlike one of Debian's Operating System competitors that will go unmentioned except to say that they're based in Redmond where the Vista is always cloudy. This isn't news because it is exactly what I would expect Open Source developers to do.

I just have one stupid question: when will Debian run out of Toy Story Characters [wikipedia.org] to name releases after? (Methinks the Hand-in-the-box [wikipedia.org] release will not be well received...)

Re:What else is new?

Ubuntu Hardy is easier for search engines to find than Ubuntu 8.04

Which makes it easier to find references to what you're looking for.

Re:What else is new?

settle down there, 623900.

Re:What else is new?

settle down there, 623900.

Get off my lawn, 697238!
Damn kids...

Re:What else is new?

Kill yourself.

bash: kill: yourself: arguments must be process or job IDs

Good!

This is good news. There are many distributions that just take the latest and greatest of every package without doing proper quality control (Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora, etc). The price they pay is regressions and stuff that doesn't work. There needs to be distros like Debian which, while always delayed, has all the important bugs ironed out.

Re:Good!

Obviously you have never worked in software QA. There are always bugs that make it into released project. The art of good project management is deciding which bugs can be allowed into the final project (ie which will actually impact users).

Also I am pretty sure that Ubuntu is based on Debian.

Re:Good!

Obviously you suck at reading comprehension.

There needs to be distros like Debian which, while always delayed, has all the important bugs ironed out.

Re:Good!

There needs to be distros like Debian which, while always delayed, has all the important bugs ironed out.

..cough..OpenSSL vulnerability [slashdot.org]..cough

Re:Good!

There needs to be distros like Debian which, while always delayed, has all the important bugs ironed out.

Debian is like Debian. Seriously, how many Debian distros do we really need? 1 is fine with me.

Also I am pretty sure that Ubuntu is based on Debian.

Ubuntu is based on Debian Unstable. Their release processes are entirely different. Ubuntu includes buggy packages that Debian would reject in a stable release.

Re:Good!

Depends. "Linux" in general usage = Linux kernel + critical userspace stuff (glibc, etc.) + apps / services.

Stable kernel versions are generally very, very stable. Ditto the critical, foundation userspace stuff.

As on most other platforms, the apps vary. Because we're talking open source here, unstable test versions are usually available, and often the bleeding-edge stuff the developers are still editing is available, too. Different distributions choose what to ship, depending on what their target audience is.

Also, regardless of the stability of individual components, there are often issues that arise from the interactions between the components. That's actually where Linux distros are a huge win over other OSs: the developers test, patch, and integrate a huge swathe of free software alongside the core OS, in a way that commercial OSs don't (they may do the testing bit, but that's all.)

Ubuntu, AIUI, made a deliberate decision to be slightly less anal about rock solid stability and nailing every last bug, in order to be able to ship more up-to-date versions of the applications that most people use day to day. Crashes are undesirable, but having features missing that you want to use is also undesirable. And having said that, Ubuntu is usually pretty bomb-proof too.

"Linux" is a complex ecosystem, but it offers choice, and switching between different flavours once you've found your personal "sweet spot" is still much less painful than migrating between other OSs.

Release When Ready

For production quality operating systems there is *nothing* better than release when ready. Given the sheer number of packages and diversity of platforms, all the Debian volunteers do a great job.

It remains the corner-case user who needs the latest and greatest release of any given package.

As an fyi, I've been running Lenny for at least 6 months as a clean-install desktop with no issues. Upgrading from stable to Lenny had issues for me. I've got two servers running Lenny without show-stopper bugs right now.

Lenny's got a really nice KDE4 in an unofficial repo at deb http://kde4.debian.net/ [debian.net] . I encourage users to check it out. Don't enter bugs against these packages in Debian though.

Re:Good!

Exactly. And if you're too impatient to wait for them to get all the bugs out, that's what Sid is for. I've been using debian unstable since it was lenny, and it's always been very good. It's very rare that there's actually a bug in a package I use, so it's plenty stable for my purposes.

Re:Good!

If you think Ubuntu has the latest and greatest packages, maybe you should try it once. Most of the packages are outdated and I don't rely on the package manager if I want the latest version anymore.

To be fair, Debian does do quite a bit more testing than Ubuntu. OTOH, Ubuntu does a lot more spit-and-polish integration than Debian and is unafraid to take controversial stances on things like binary drivers or distributing Firefox with Firefox branding (as opposed to Ice Weasel or whatever) or distributing some codecs that may be violating patents or using code from other distros (like system-config-printer).

Debian is more about stability and reliability, while Ubuntu is more about the end-user experience.

When you make a Linux distro, you have to make a few tradeoffs. The differences between Ubuntu and Debian are mostly about differences in decision-making regarding these tradeoffs.

Re:Good!

In Ubuntu, the trick I do is to use binary packages of the latest stable version and source packages from the upcoming (yet unreleased) version.
When something is missing you can download the source package of the new version, make the compile, generate a binary package and install it in an automated way.
An extra plus: during the process you can also patch the source.

Why don't they just fork from Ubuntu

Seriously.

Debian has no release date!!!

Debian has no release date. It never had, and doesn't seem to have any plans on adopting release dates. Thus, Debian can't be "late", since being late implies on missing a release date, and Debian doesn't have that. Or, maybe I didn't repeat that enough, so let me tell you: Debian never made a compromisse on releasing any version on any exact day.

What Debian does have is a list of bugs. Everytime testing is frozen, it is created a list with the showstopper bugs, and release happens when that list becomes empty. The list can increase if more bugs are found, or decrease if bugs are solved or some functionality removed.

Debian also do have people betting when it'll be out. Those people give specific (or sometimes not very specific) dates, but that isn't a release date for the team, just a guesstimate.

Re:Debian has no release date!!!

While I don't dispute the claims you make, I would like to point out that

1. Debian does make announcements about prospective release dates. These aren't firm promises and shouldn't be interpreted as such, but it is disappointing when they miss those dates by months.

2. Releases aren't only made when the bug count drops to zero. First of all, there are bugs that aren't considered "release-critical". Secondly, sometimes (I think this happened with etch) releases are made with known issues and a promise to fix those issues Real Soon Now. Thirdly, the way the bug count is brought to zero usually includes simply throwing out packages that have known bugs. If many people want such a package, that isn't very helpful.

3. Bugs that would have been "release-critical" are often discovered after a release is made. The current stable release, etch, had more release-critical bugs pending against it than lenny (the upcoming stable release), last time I checked.

What all this means is that Debian will _not_ generalyl be released at any date that has been mentioned, and will _not_ generally be bug-free when released.

Having said all that, it's still my favorite operating system, as it takes less of my time to use and maintain than anything else I have tried (and that is quite a lot).

Re:Meanwhile, In 'Unstable'...

If this is happening, first check the changelog for the affected package in /usr/share/doc. If it is out of date or missing, you need to file a severity minor [debian.org] (with the following rationale [debian.org]) against the packages missing the updated changelog. This is not a violation of Debian policy (which would warrant a severity of serious), but it's suggested by policy and trivial to add.

Re:Please, we want Debian 4.1, not 5.0

What I would like to have is a 4.1 release

Well, don't project what you want unto the rest of the world.

Debian stable is a server distro. Every time there is an upgrade, a full regression test must be done to the server. This is expensive and time-consuming. The whole idea of Debian stable is that it is stable and doesn't change often. No one running stable wants the latest and greatest. We want stability and security fixes. That's it.

Clearly you already know about the testing and unstable releases, but did you know about backports and volitile? Volitile is great for things like anti-virus and anti-spam software that you really do want and need upgrades. Backports is a little different--it's basically upgrades for popular packages in stable, and you can pick and choose which ones you want.

Stable means stable, and backports and volitile are great tools to help you. If you want the latest and greatest, that's what the testing release is for.

Re:Please, we want Debian 4.1, not 5.0

Red Hat marketing may not acknowledge point releases, but they do indeed exist [redhat.com]. And CentOS tracks 'em. That's why I know. (Too cheap for RHEL, too lazy for Fedora. I use Kubuntu for desktops, but the server has always been in the Red Hat lineage.)

Re:No "haha" tag?

Possibly, but I truly don't think Microsoft could ever do right around here. Short of releasing the OS under either the BSD license or the GPL, they will forever have a reputation as software bloaters, monopolists, and DRM-supporters. And such a reputation is not undeserved.

The truth is, I'm not sure they could ever make a stable release of Windows. Vista was horribly delayed, horribly buggy on release, and had dropped a fair number of planned features in order to prevent further delays. If they'd planned to quash most of the bugs before release, I wonder how long it would have taken to get it all done?

Debian has the benefit of a good reputation and of having free software. People aren't scared to run pre-release versions of Debian in production, and it's relatively simple to fix many bugs yourself while waiting for something official from Debian. This means that Debian gets more testers doing real work with their release candidates.

Compare this to Microsoft, who also publish beta and release candidates for free (though free-as-in-beer.) How many people ran Vista full-time before it was released? Heck, Microsoft can barely get people to run it full-time now that it's been out for a while!

Don't use Sarge

I still use Debian Sarge on my current server.

Bad idea. Support for Sarge ended in April, so you haven't been getting any security updates since then, and there are some known weaknesses.

You should upgrade to Etch, ASAP.

Re:Don't use Sarge

I still use Debian Sarge on my current server.

Bad idea. Support for Sarge ended in April, so you haven't been getting any security updates since then, and there are some known weaknesses.

You should upgrade to Etch, ASAP.

Look, just get his IP address and do it for him.