Debian Freeze Process Begins 80
EmilEifrem writes: "Everyone and their mom will have submitted this, but woody aka testing aka Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 is entering frozen stage. Check out the announcement at DebianPlanet." The freeze process is different from previous freezes; read the announcement for details.
Testing != Frozen (Score:1)
During a freeze, all four branches will exist at once: stable, testing, unstable, and frozen.
Is the Freeze Process still Useful? (Score:1)
As the debian people themselves say:
Even if that were the only risk (and it's not), why bother with freezes anymore?Today, everybody I know has a fast connection to the internet and can download the relevant packages as often as is necessary. And everybody has a fast computer on which to recompile the software they use nightly, if necessary.
I think we really need to take a serious look at revamping Open Source development methodoligies, in order to get the most bang for the buck out of Open Source. We are never going to surpass Microsoft if we continue to ape that company's outdated development processes.
New version will go into development during freeze (Score:1)
stable
frozen
testing
unstable
Re:Freezes Still Useful? (Score:1)
Re:Thank you. (Score:1)
The only reason I ever reboot my machine is to upgrade kernels. No need to do it to simply upgrade your whole distribution. 8)
Re:Damnit! (Score:1)
Score 1, Too Much Information, maybe.
Re:Is the Freeze Process still Useful? (Score:1)
You can have that with debian: just use unstable (sid). Do it for a while and then come back and tell me you want that for a production machine.
You need a freeze to set a date from which on only bugfixes go into the system and everything else stays untouched, while new features go into unstable. Otherwise life expectancy for sysadmins would quickly drop below 40
Re:Is the Freeze Process still Useful? (Score:1)
And then there was the not working login a few days ago. I see how one can decide to go with sid and take the consequences, even on production machines. But only when there is a really stable system available one deliberately chooses not to use. If sid represented the stability level of debian, people would be pissed no end. You wouldn't say everything has worked reasonably well about a regular, stable system that randomly breaks essential system services every few weeks.
Re:Learning Debian (Score:1)
So the question is: is there an easy way to pick up on this and other debianisms that I'm going to run into?
As a Red Hat-turned-Debian user, I can tell you the process is quite simple.
First, dpkg is simply the program that installs and removes packages, a la rpm. You can install locally-downloaded software with a simple "dpkg -i <filename>". You can also use dpkg to get a list of the installed packages, and set the status of certain packages as well (you can tell it to "hold" a package to prevent it from being updated, "purge" a package to remove its configuration files when removing, and more).
The apt tool is the Debian method of tracking file sources and dependancies. It uses a plaintext file,
To install a program without having to know the exact location of the file, you simply use "apt-get install <packagename>"-- apt checks the locally-stored index and prompts you to insert the proper CD, downloads it from a remote site, etc. Upgrades are handled in the same fashion.
Most all of this can be found in the respective manpages. Hope this gets you started.
Jay (=
Re:Is the Freeze Process still Useful? (Score:1)
Number one, you don't recompile the software (generally) on a Debian system. apt-get provides precompiled binaries, seamlessly downloaded, installed, and configured for your system.
Number two, I don't want to have to update my OS nightly. Maybe an occasional bug fix, but if you track the activity associated with the unstable (read currently woody) version of Debian, you'll see that's too much heartache for your typical user to deal with.
The freeze leads to a release, and the release provides a sane collection of libraries and applications that play well together. "Stable" is just that...
Plus, I don't want to drop a 20 spot on CDs that will be obsolete tomorrow.
Re:Debian code names (Score:1)
The next version is named Sid.
Re:The announcement (Score:1)
> stable/frozen/testing branches all at the same
> time and apply the minimum required versions of
> any prerequisite package unless a higher version
> is explicitly requested.
How about "man apt_preferences"? It is in both woody and sid.
Re:Freezes Still Useful? (Score:1)
Re:hello?! (Score:1)
Re:WTF? (Score:1)
It was yet another one of those "did the
Re:Is the Freeze Process still Useful? (Score:1)
The primary reason to use sid is to get the up-to-date software. Among other things, I got 3d accelerated video with DRI well before it was available in stable. The primary burden with using sid (other than the obvious---things break sometimes) is the fact that you have to keep updating it. Of course, even if you're running stable you should add the security patch source to your apt-get and upgrade your system periodically, but with stable you don't see enhancements coming at the fast and furious pace of sid.
On the other hand, it's difficult to distribute a meaningful distribution from a collection that's continuously changing without occasional freezes. If you're not willing to keep up with the bleeding edge, you want a single version number to work from to let you know where you are in relation to what's available. Having a collection revision makes it easier to know where you stand. That's why most of my systems are running stable. Also, I prefer to install from CD-ROM, which is another thing that is difficult to do without freezes.
Re:The announcement (Score:1)
Actually, that's bugged me forever...
\.: BackSlashDot
/.: FrontSlashDot
"You said you wanted some space. Well, is this enough for you...?" - Pulp
Hooray! (Score:1)
Ten minutes later, everyone will be back on the unstable track again, because the stable version of Debian is obsolete.
Interested in weather forecasting?
No kidding... (Score:1)
Oh, that's right. Debian is the king of all Linux distros. They are too good to be part of humor. Their distro is SERIOUS.
Buncha commie bastards.
Interested in weather forecasting?
Moderators: (Score:1)
Thank you, Lumpish Scholar, I wouldn't have been able to read the announcement otherwise.
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Re:Thank you. (Score:1)
Maybe someone could direct you to some good introduction books for managing a linux machine.
Frozen Woody.... (Score:1)
Re:Don't run testing on production machines! (Score:1)
Lucky for me there are:
* rescue disc
* on another computer cp
* move floppy to this
* reverse.
Re:Thank you. (Score:1)
RH 7.1 seems pretty stable. Any fixes are easy to grab with up2date (as they were with 7.0).
Yes, it is. (Score:1)
Debian unstable will continue development as usual. If you want cutting-edge software, go for it.
Keep in mind that virtually all free software programmers release software in this fashion: people work on a development branch and a stable branch, and users can decide which is more important to them. For example, look at the Linux kernel.
In my case this is extremely welcome news, since we decided to use Debian 2.2 on production machines a long time ago. They have always been stable and secure, but the distribution is getting dated (no XFree 4.x, Linux 2.4.x, etc.) and I am catching pressure from above since Red Hat now has all these features in its "production quality" distribution.
(I've got no religious issues with Red Hat, I just do not want to administer it on production systems. I do still suggest it to beginners, for example. And to hard-core programmers, I often find myself suggesting BSD; but Deb is my favorite *nix.)
I know this thread is a troll, but I still want to express how relieved I am that a new Debian stable will be coming down the pipe soon. I administer Debian among a sea of Red Hat-leaning managers, and I've recently been hard pressed to explain to the PHBs why we should stay with the older Debian software. It's been difficult to suggest my favorite distribution to anybody but Linux hackers or people who know about security. And Debian is more than just a distribution for Linux hackers. In my opinion, if people put their faith in a Free Software operating system, and an open source development model, they should put equal faith in the same development process on the distribution level. It's just as powerful, but one level of abstraction higher. As they say, Linux done the Linux way.
Re:The announcement (Score:1)
would that be back-slashdot?
(go ahead, mod me down for an OT post, I couldn't resist... I'm in a goofy mood tonight)
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Re:The announcement (Score:1)
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Busy Debian Hackers (Score:1)
Re:It's your own problem if you don't have bandwid (Score:1)
Sure...just as long as you can get cable TV, and Telstra has decided to install ADSL in your local exchange. I live right next to the University of Sydney (only 2-3km from the centre of Sydney), and I can't get either Optus or Telstra cable to my apartment building. Telstra ADSL only became available in December 2000, and as you mention, this is now limited to 3GB a month.
Broadband is by no means widespread, and certainly not in Australia (at least while companies like Telstra hold the reigns). Thank god for places like Everything Linux and Linux System Labs for making cheap CD-Rs available of new release distros.
Why is this a TROLL??? (Score:1)
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Check out crippl3.net [crippl3.net].
Booyah
Re:It's your own problem if you don't have bandwid (Score:1)
Re:The LSB (Score:1)
That's
LOAD "LINUX",8,1
Please feed troll. Else troll die.
Re:MIPS (Score:1)
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Re:No kidding... (Score:1)
Just because one person incorrectly moderated that post doesn't automatically mean that every Debian user would agree with the moderation.
I would like to think that that fact is so obvious I wouldn't have to point it out.
Except... (Score:1)
... the people who run servers and want something more stable than "unstable" and most other Linux distros.
You'd be surprised how many people are still running _Potato_. (I sure as hell was. :) ) I wouldn't want to be one of them (*hugs his shiny new excitingly beta quality software*) but they do exist, and they will be pleased when they can upgrade to newer software while retaining the stability they depend on.
What about LSB? (Score:1)
Re:What about LSB? (Score:1)
There are a lot of rants against lsb-1.0 on debian-devel right now. I am not talking about rpm/deb flames here, but things like runlevels uid-assignments and init.d-scriptnames.
No chance lsb will be supported by Woody. However, I think chances are good that it will be somehow supported by the next release (or unstable, some weeks from now) Michael
Thank you. (Score:1)
Too late (Score:1)
In some ways, it would be nice if stories contained mirrors, so we wouldn't have to go through this exercise in the first place.
Beyond the first post trash comes 'first read.'
Sigh...
Re:MIPS (Score:1)
Please see http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/sgimips/ [netbsd.org] for more information.
Re:Thank you. (Score:1)
WTF? (Score:1)
Wroot
[OT] BSD ports system (Score:1)
The purpose of having the ports system (at least one of them) is that you can regularly cvsup your ports tree and get the latest version of a certain application. You don't have to compile everything, that's what packages are for, precompiled ports that you can install either from your release CD or via remote ftp. If you use ports you can fine tune them for your system (e.g. -march=pentiumpro for gcc) and customize them to your needs.
I compiled KDE 2.1.0 from ports, don't remember how long it took but it wasn't that much time anyway.
Re:Don't run testing on production machines! (Score:1)
But I do agree, you shouldn't be using sid for reliable servers. Example being- the latest libpam-modules (-26) was released with a typo in a debian patch for it... which rendered it unusable (no user could login). If you *just happened* to dist-upgrade at this time, say on a colo'd server out of town, you wouldn't be very happy with yourself
Nathaniel Hewitt
Re:The announcement (Score:1)
looks like \. froze the webserver aswell
Re:So we all run stable? (Score:1)
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Re:Is the Freeze Process still Useful? (Score:1)
the fact that debian's frozen releases are among the most stable (only computers that are powered down beat debian's stability, afaik,) is very appreciated when i'm playing with the system. i'm a fairly new user of linux, so it's kind of a comfort to know that if something's not working, it's probably something i did and not a system screwup.
i've heard that debian isn't a real new-user-friendly distro, but it's certainly a learning experience.
-d.
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Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Re:I've got your "fond memories" right here (Score:2)
Spurious assumption of uniformity (Score:2)
Today, everybody I know has a fast connection to the internet and can download the relevant packages as often as is necessary. And everybody has a fast computer on which to recompile the software they use nightly, if necessary.
The trouble with comments like these are that they're simply untrue at best and cravenly elitist at worst. They smack of "I got mine, the rest of you are just SOL I guess."
When I worked ISP tech support, I reserved my foulest curses for Rockwell and USR, who used a totally invalid test (making an interstate call to a toll-free number) to try to tell people whether or not their phone lines were capable of 56K. I had to field literally hundreds of calls from people that went just like this:
"But the modem test said I was OK!"
"The test is wrong."
"But how can it be wrong? They make the modem. I think you don't know what you're talking about. I just spent $200 on this modem and I want 56K!!!"
Even people getting better than 33.6 wanted that last few K and demanded that we satisfy them. Particularly galling were the people who canceled their service in disgust, then went to a competitor, where because of different PSTN vagaries they were able to successfully get a 56K connection, and then called us to gloat about how they were smarter than us geeks who didn't really understand how things worked.
The point of that rambling little tale is, at the time 56K was hitting the scene, fewer than 5% of American residential phone lines were even capable of 33.6 -- 56K was a pipe dream for everybody else. If the figures I see in the PAC ads on TV are to be believed, fewer than 8% of American homes now have "broadband" Internet service. I submit that at least as restrictive as the political maneuverings is the technical limitation of an aging, patched-up telecomm infrastructure. Just taking DSL as an example, it traditionally does well in places with brand-new infrastructure, or places with older infrastructure that hasn't been stressed by population growth. In Charlottesville, VA, there's almost noplace in the city that you can't get DSL from one of a handful of competitors, but a hundred miles north in Northern VA, it's touch and go. If you can't get traditional xDSL you can usually get IDSL, but up here even that's iffy if you live in an apartment complex (and they are legion) that was put up cheaply when the population exploded. They don't have niceties like conduits from the phone closet to the apartment; the lines are just run wherever and if you don't have a free pair already you can forget about getting a new one.
Not everyone enjoys access to broadband; in fact, because of a variety of reasons, the majority can't get it yet. Don't assume that what's true for you and your friends is true for everyone in the country or on the planet.
As to the issue of compiling everything because the computers are fast, a) Not everyone has a fast computer (my fastest one is a Celeron 433), b) Not everybody wants to be constantly compiling from source. It's frankly a pain in the ass and I speculate it's one reason the BSDs haven't caught on in the desktop market even to the extent Linux has. Linux's great strength and one of the main reasons it became the force it did was that it made older "obsolete" machines usable for real work again. Let's not unnecessarily dump that over the side for some vaguely-perceived efficiency that will likely as not evaporate like a puff of smoke on close inspection.
Re:Ok Debian, go ahead and steal Slackware's thund (Score:2)
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Re:As a Debian user, I agree. (Score:2)
i'd hate to try installing kde or gnome on a *bsd box. it would take a bleeding eternity.
ymmv, i've only used openbsd. and i know that openbsd is trying to get a binary package system set up, but when i tried it (shortly after the 2.9 release) there were no binary packages for it.
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What does this do for Progeny, then? (Score:2)
Are they just going to be quietly rev their version when Debian 3.0 comes out, or will we get a new box out of the deal?
Jay (=
The announcement (Score:2)
As previously proposed, the freeze will proceed in four phases: first policy will be frozen, followed by the base system, followed by standard installs, and concluding with the remainder of Debian. The aim of this first part of the freeze is to finalise our expectations of the release (what we want packages to look like, what architectures we're going to release) and to prepare ourselves for the freezing the base system by ensuring that the base system is releasable.
Note that this does not involve a freeze on package development yet: bugfixes, and new features are still welcome, and will continue being added to woody in the usual way. What it does mean is that your packages will be frozen in the near future, so now is probably a good time to limit yourself to only introducing new features that have already been heavily tested upstream, and fixing bugs.
In detail, the goals for this phase are:
Finalise debian-policy: accept any further proposals that woody packages should concern themselves with; and ensure -policy is a useful document for people working on quality assurance.
Deadline: final version of debian-policy for woody needs to be uploaded to the archive by July 21st.
Finalise our target architectures. As well as alpha, arm, i386, m68k, powerpc and sparc, we have the opportunity to include ia64 (Intel's new 64bit Itanium architecture), hppa (HP's PA-RISC architecture), mips and mipsel (SGI and Decstation machines), too. Requirements for inclusion in woody are fairly simple and have been met, or are close to being met, by all those architectures. For reference, they are: a working, relatively stable toolchain, a usable system (including all of base and standard; and a fair chunk of optional and extra), and a functional install. (Hurd people, see below)
Deadline: someone from each architecture that wants to release needs to mail -release with their current status, and a successful install report by July 24th.
Determine whether cryptographic software can be moved from non-US/main to main. Ben Collins (project leader) is hustling this through the appropriate avenues.
Deadline: legal advice needs to be obtained by July 21st.
Ensure the base system is releasable on all architectures: this means making sure we know what packages, exactly, the base system consists of on all architectures; and fixing any and all release critical bugs (ie, with severities critical, grave or serious) in those packages.
Deadline: base packages need to be free of RC bugs by July 21st.
If all goes well, the next phase will begin on the 1st of August. If all goes incredibly well, we'll release in November. Ha ha ha.
The main risk that may affect moving on to the next phase is the possiblity of finding release critical bugs in the base system that take significant amounts of time to fix.
As you've noticed by a careful analysis of the subject line, the woody release will be numbered Debian 3.0, in recognition of the large number of changes made since potato. This is, to put it mildly, a somewhat controversial decision, but it's one I get to make. Personally, I'm pretty happy with the way woody's progressing, and I think by the time it's released it'll easily live up to that number -- and by that I mean the "3", not the ".0".
On the subject of controversial decisions, one I'm not going to make today is what to call the release after woody. That one will be made when woody is released and a new testing distribution is forked from woody. Besides which, I still haven't gotten around to rewatching Toy Story.
While I may not be too concerned one way or another about the name of the next release, I do have some ideas about how it might be good to handle the next release. My overriding goal for this release was to manage to get a short, controllable freeze; one that we can get over and done with in a few months, rather than letting it drag on for seven months with no end in sight, but this came at a cost of letting the development cycle go on for quite a while: ten and a half months, as it turned out. For the next cycle (assuming this freeze actually turns out to be relatively short and controlled), I think it would be interesting to see if we can do the same thing again, with a short (2 or 3 month) development cycle, for a 5 to 7 month release cycle.
Which would mean you mightn't need to worry too much about not getting the neat new feature you were planning on working on into woody, if that's any consolation.
And on that note, I'm inclined to think Hurd is probably better off targetting the next freeze, (in, say, six to eight months from today) rather than woody. In particular, Hurd is at present both a difficult target to port to (and thus has a quite limited range of software when compared to the Linux ports of Debian) and isn't able to self install.
In short, the freeze, she is begun. Have at it.
Cheers,
aj
The LSB (Score:2)
MIPS (Score:2)
Re:The announcement (Score:2)
So write it.
Re:Is the Freeze Process still Useful? (Score:2)
This is all just wrong! (Score:2)
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Re:So we all run stable? (Score:2)
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Learning Debian (Score:2)
So I've got a machine that I want to wipe clean and install something on, and I'm thinking Debian, Slackware, or Linux From Scratch.
Right now I'm leaning toward debian, as all examples I've seen of apt-get are extremely nice. However, I'd have no clue how to even start /using/ apt-get. I don't know what the sources file is. I don't know how to use dpkg. I have no clue.
So the question is: is there an easy way to pick up on this and other debianisms that I'm going to run into?
Re:Debian code names (Score:2)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Re:So we all run stable? (Score:2)
Half the fun of unstable is fixing it when it breaks
Re:I've got your "fond memories" right here (Score:2)
Unlike Windows,
signature smigmature
Re:It's your own problem if you don't have bandwid (Score:2)
A Black skintight suit, $50
Getting into the university and piping your own data link for warez use? PRICELESS!
hehehe.
Re:Debian code names (Score:2)
No, sid is *always* unstable (if you remember, in Toy Story sid was the kid who used to break things a lot, hence the name :)).
At the bottom of the announcement it does say this about the next name:
On the subject of controversial decisions, one I'm not going to make today is what to call the release after woody. That one will be made when woody is released and a new testing distribution is forked from woody. Besides which, I still haven't gotten around to rewatching Toy Story.
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I've got your "fond memories" right here (Score:2)
I have more than "fond memories" of using Slackware, I'm using it right now. It seems to run just fine, for not being a "modern distribution". But gee, it has the latest Linux kernel 2.4.5, and X 4.1.0, and Gnome 1.4, and KDE 2.1.1, and scores of other things: I run a firewall, a CD burner, a scanner, plus I download and install updates automatically from Slackware.com. My Slackware box can run any software that your Debian box can. How is Slackware not "modern"?
People have different tastes and preferences. Most people like a certain distro because it's easier for them to use. That ease of use may not translate to increased technical merit (or performance), however. Some people like a distro because it fits the model of how they think a distro should be organized. Such models are highly subjective, however, as you can see by the dozens of distros out there to meet the needs of users clamoring for things to be done "their way".
I'm not saying that Slackware is better than Debian. I'm not saying that Debian is better than Slackware. I'm saying that they're mostly the same, but organized differently. At the core, they're both running the same kernel and set of core utilities. Many of the apps are the same, and in fact come from the same source.
When I decided to first install Linux, I had a choice of several different distros. I chose Slackware for three reasons: 1) A Linux guru whose skills I really respect was running it, 2) Ret Hat had a reputation for being easy to install and use but highly insecure by default, while Slackware had a reputation of being harder to install and use at first, but more secure by default, and 3) because Slackware wasn't as dumbed-down as Red Hat, it forced you to actually LEARN more about how Linux works. That last point is probably the most important reason to me. The knowledge that I have gained by being forced to do some things myself has helped me immensely. I'm not dependent on a developer to write a handy tool to do something for me, I just do it, because I know how.
In summary, Debian and Slackware are geared for different target audiences. To say that one is more "modern" than the other is something that I disagree with. They're just different approaches to using the same basic tools. Slackware, in my opinion, is geared more to the "do-it-yourself" total-control type of crowd, and for those people, the tools that Slackware comes with work just fine.
Even a battered old violin in the hands of a skillful player sounds much better than a Stradivarius in the hands of a tone-deaf klutz. So when it comes down to it, each distro is limited only by the skill of the user.
Re:I don't care. Slackware 8.0 is released (Score:2)
Heh. Speaking of "morons"- compare the organizational structure of a Slackware package (and yes, they are packages) to a Debian one. If you would rather have simplicity, that's fine- but questioning the intelligence behind one of the most organized distributions out there is a rather flawed stance.
Calling ~1000 hard working *volunteers* working on Debian "morons", and is just too ignorant to be considered insulting before any Debian user that knows more than what he's read from the back of a CD, or angsty Slashdot posts (you've get the idea).
Slackware, to me, seems more like a wanna-be FreeBSD more than anything else. And it doesn't even have ports... so what's the point? I love FBSD, but realy loathe using Slackware now, with all of the highly more organized and supported alternatives available.
Any halfwit could create his own distro (with lil shell scripts and all) in a day or two. You want to build everything from source?- Debian provides that, and in a much cleaner way than /usr/local/ or SRPM's could ever provide.
Use what you want. Say one way sucks. But trying to insult talented volunteers, just maintaining packages to make life easier for their friends, is pretty harsh. :)
Nathaniel Hewitt
Does anyone have usage estimates? (Score:2)
I mean market penetration. Geez, get your mind out of the gutter.
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Frozen Windows.. (Score:2)
Damnit! (Score:3)
Re:The announcement (Score:3)
What we need is for dpkg/apt to track the stable/frozen/testing branches all at the same time and apply the minimum required versions of any prerequisite package unless a higher version is explicitly requested. That would mean that dpkg/apt would have to also have some awareness of which packages were requested by the administrator and which were added automatically. Fringe benefit-- the ability to remove installed packages that were installed to meet a prerequisite that no longer exists.
I would love to work on this idea myself but I lack the time and talent.
Ok Debian, go ahead and steal Slackware's thunder! (Score:3)
Re:As a Debian user, I agree. (Score:4)
Re:Thank you. (Score:4)
I can only vouch for releases since 4.0, but RedHat really does seem to have a sensible numbering system. They move to a .0 release whenever they break binary compatibility and like clockwork put out .1 and .2 releases that mainly seem to be bug fix releases as opposed to containing drastically different features. If debian went to .0 for every release that broke binary compatibility they'd probably do it every release because of the longer release cycles
Re:The announcement (Score:4)
So we all run stable? (Score:5)
Re:Thank you. (Score:5)
RedHat goes to .0 when they break everything.
They go to .1 when they fix some of it, and .2 when they fix most of it, at which point they are prepared to screw everything up again for the next .0 release.
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Don't run testing on production machines! (Score:5)
I run testing/unstable on my workstation, but I do /only/ run stable on my servers. Testing is not good because security patches take much longer to hit it.
Since I'm runing stable on my servers, I can simply put security.debian.org in my /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get upgrade to automagically install all new security updates, which makes keeping my box up to date /very/ easy.
Also, I've had enough problems with unstable (and they occur in testing from time to time as well) that I know better than to apt-get upgrade to anything but stable on a box serving a web site or thousands of mail messages a day.
Re:Freezes Still Useful? (Score:5)
It's very simple, if you want a system like that you can start your own project, use ANY current distribution of Free Software as your base (Debian, OpenBSD, RedHat) and try to find developers to help you make it work (or else impress us all).
Debian however is about creating stable environments which can be used anywhere but because it has an open development process, people can track stable, testing/frozen, unstable. The real interest of this story and why it deserves to be discussed on /. (apart from the managments penchant for it) is that this release of Debian is being handled by a new person with new ideas. The aim (as the link reiterates) is to bring down the release cycle time for Debian (with an ambition of a roughly 6 month cycle). We have seen the arrival of the testing distribution which is basically an automanaged version of Debian containing co-dependant sections which have been through some testing and need to be broken! We are now seeing a detailed breakdown of how this will start being frozen out into a release.
I think that aj deserves all the support in the world (and he'll be getting more and more of mine) as if he suceeds Debian could become a True Power. Debian is continually praised except for package ages and user ease. We have seen a number of Debian based distributions but each of these I feel was probably let down by the need to continually update the entire system as users could not accept an 18 month release cycle. The potential for commercial investment around Debian is huge, what company would not like to be able to base their products on the stablility of a stable Debian. If we have a 6 month Debian stable release cycle, I am certain we would see new-user Debian systems for many purposes (servers, desktops) aswell as embedded Debian and we would also see many of these bodies working actively in Debian itself to improve the base even more in each of those 6 months.
Debian best embodies the ethos of Free Software and it's development model is an example of how impressive open development is. How many people on /. would not move Linux production systems to Debian if it had a 6 month release cycle (without effecting stability)? If we want Linux to take power, we need to support Linux, but that is a hard task at present. When you are asked "which Linux should I try" you make one of the biggest impacts to Linux development you can (unless you actively participate in a project), the answer at present is far from easy. We should be able to say Debian and then you can decide if you need something else simply because Debian is openly developed and stable. Can anyone propose some alternative Linux distro we should support? If the philosophy of Free Software is held widely by it's knowledgable users then we should all be choosing our OS as a sign of support. aj is trying to help the world. How about we help aswell? I know I will!
Re:The announcement (Score:5)
The version of apt in the testing branch has this functionality. I'm currently running testing, with a few packages from unstable installed. I have apt setup to default to using testing, but it will grab packages from unstable if I explicitly tell it to, and correctly resolve all the dependancies.
Debian rocks :>
-- Agthorr