Debian 3.0 (Woody) May 1?

dex@ruunat noted that this morning, in a message to the debian-devel-announce mailing list, Anthony Towns, Debian's Release Manager, wrote: "I'm becoming increasingly confident in woody's release readiness. So, to go out on a limb: Debian 3.0 (codenamed woody) will release on May 1st, 2002." Congrats to all the debheads putting this thing together. I have a blank CDR waiting ;)

Re:Blank CD-R?

[Malc]

Yes: 1 blank CD-R to boot from.

Why bother downloading 8 images when most of the stuff isn't going to be used? Well, I speak for myself there... I need a portion of the distro. Use 1 disk to boot from, and then apt-get what I need. Which reminds, I need to clean out some 530MB from /var/cache/apt/archives of packages that I've apt-getted in the past.

Re:The only complaint I have about Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont use it then. Ive been using Debian for about a year now on two systems (woody and sid) and have only seen that program once, and even then, it was just a matter of "wtf? ctrl+c". No need for it.

Re:I have the way out!

[Chicane-UK]

Funny.. in 5 years of Linux use, I have yet to see a kernel segfault.

Oh, and you missed a step :

3.5 - Go to local PC shop, and buy a copy of Windows XP Professional for the princely sum of $296.99 (not the upgrade).

Alternatively you could spend the same money on Blank CD-R's (going by Amazons prices, I estimate you could get about 740) and burn many many copies of Linux for you and your friends :)

If you were REALLY against free software, you could even sell them at $1/CD and you would make a tidy profit.

Re:Blank CD-R?

[mjh]

Heck, there are also netinst cd's availabe. These are CD's that have only enough stuff to get the disk partitioned, the base os, and network drivers installed. The rest you get from apt-get. The netinst cd's are usually less than 50MB to download, compared to 650MB for a full cd iso image.

The first netinst cd for debian that I ever saw was here [debian.org]. Now, we also have this one [debian.org] and this one [sourceforge.net].

Use a Netinst Image!

[WD]

Please, just try a netinst [debian.org] image.
It's about 30MB, and only retrieves the necessary packages off of the internet / other sources.

Re:Hurry!

[Daniel Stone]

Thom has the debs available, along with vhost-base, at pandora.d.o [debian.org], and they're stable, and good, and stuff, but they will NOT go into woody.

What you won't get in woody...

[m0i]

Not planned:
-KDE 3.0
-Apache 2.0
-XFree 4.2

Not good, eh?

Re:What you won't get in woody...

[Daniel Stone]

Why the *hell* is this not good?

KDE3 is not yet tested enough for a Debian stable release, trust me. Neither are the debs, packaging issues can play a significant part in some problems. I'm personally waiting for 3.0.1 or 3.0.2 before I start deploying it throughout work, although I tracked KDE3 CVS for some time at home (I can deal with segfaults, and it makes it easier to package if you only have to make slight changes every time, instead of being hit with one big lot in the tarballs).

apache2 is NOT NOT NOT ready for prime time. I would not deploy this in a Debian stable release; luckily, neither would Thom. When I maintained it, I always said it would wait until after woody, and luckily it will. The GA was only announced today, and so Thom would have to upload it as NEW, which means it wouldn't make it into woody, even if it could. Even offering it side-by-side with Apache 1.3.x in a stable series is irresponsible.

As for XFree86 4.2, Branden's been too busy with fixing up 4.1.x to do 4.2.x well. XFree86 is one of those dead core packages that need to just WORK every single time, and cannot screw up. There was never enough time to give it the thrashing it needs; I think that having XF4.1.x in a stable series is a pretty sweet effort; Branden deserves a pat on the back. He has a reputation for quality, well-tested packages, and I somehow doubt he'd shatter that this close to a release. Plus, we'd all rip his arms off and beat him to death with the limp end if he did.

Thanks for listing the good points of Woody.

Re:Does anybody know what happened to the pine src

[staili]

From [debian.org]
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/nano .h tml
"GNU nano is a free replacement for Pico, the default Pine editor. Pine is copyrighted under a slightly restrictive license, that makes it unsuitable for Debian's main section. GNU nano is an effort to provide a Pico-like editor, but also includes some features that were missing in the original, such as 'search and replace', 'goto line' or internationalization support. As it's written from scratch, it's smaller and faster.
"

Re:Hurry!

[Daniel Stone]

alien does this.

Re:I can say one thing for them

[Accipiter]

I am seriously switching from slackware to something else, for the lack of tgz nowadays.

Try here [linuxpackages.net]. They have a good repository of recent stuff bundled as Slackware .tgz packages.

Re:vs Mandrake ?

[tacocat]

Debian is different in that:

• It is supported by Volunteers and therefore holds no Capitalistic motives (I do not mean to sound like a Marxist) in their software development cycles.
• They are extremely conservative in the quality of their distribution. Generally, they have fewer bugs than the rest. This also means that they avoid the bleeding edge technology until there is a little less bleading to do.
• They have a lot of packages. Possibly more.
• They run on more Hardware Platforms than Mandrake.
• apt-get is superior to RPM in conflict management and versioning control.

I started with RedHat and Mandrake back four years ago. Went to Slackware so I could get things configured the way I wanted them. And ended up at Debian because it was the best of both worlds.

Generally, if Debian-Stable is too slow for you, run Testing or Unstable. That will get you the very best of the bleeding edge software, along with all the bloodshed that goes along with it.

I have been running with Testing for about a year plus. Last month I was really disgusted with Debian. After looking at the other Distros out there. Debian still rocks!!!

Re:The only complaint I have about Debian

[macshit]

Check out the aptitude program (you'll have to install the package of the same name) -- it's really good and getting even better fast; the author really seems to be on the ball (it used to be pretty bad, so if you tried it before and dismissed it, try it again). Not only does it provide a great full-screen apt interface, but it also has a command-line mode that improves on apt-get!

This is the package management interface that debian's been waiting for, IMHO.

[another alternative is `deity' (ne `console-apt'), but though it's rather colorful, the UI basically sucks; aptitude is much better.]

Re:vs Mandrake ?

[Glanz]

They are both excellent. It's like comparing apples and hamburgers. I have both on the drive (no win$low os in sight)... Mandrake can be made to install .debs and Debian can handle rpms, so I have the best ot both worlds. The APT labyrinth in debian is not easy to learn. You hit the wrong button and you're in for a 500MB download. I have used Debian since the very beginning of debian. Mandrake, however, is the only rpm based distro I like, the community is strong, and they are truly open. The PreZ of Mandrake, LeMarois, is a fine person, and devoted to Open Source.
The ideal is to have both Debian and Mandrake. That way you can take your time learning Debian.

Re:Version numbering?

[Ramsed]

Updates to the user interfaces; Gnome and KDE; many packages, OpenOffice, ssh, and others; OpenOffice isn't in Debian (yet).

Re:The only complaint I have about Debian

[macshit]

Since I really do think aptitude rocks, I'm going to reply to myself to point out a few of the cool features it has, beyond the nice user interface:

• It tracks which packages were installed `automatically' (e.g., to satisfy a dependency). If such `auto' packages later become unnecessary because nothing depends on them anymore, they will be uninstalled automatically.
• It has a powerful and useful search system -- you can search not only for package names, but for descriptions (and other package fields), various special attributes, and boolean combinations of these things. For instance, the search string `(lib)~i!~M!-dev' will find packages who's name matches the string `lib', and are installed, and were not automatically installed (see above), and who's name doesn't match the string `-dev'.
• These search expressions can be used not only in interactive searches (which, incidentally, are incremental, like Emacs's isearch), but also to limit the set of packages displayed, or to perform various operations in command-line mode. I could use the command `aptitude remove "(lib)~i!~M!-dev"' to remove all packages matching that expression (but I won't, since that it happens to match libc6).

As you can see, although aptitude is great for the non-expert user, because of the simple and intuitive interface, it's not just for them. Even when I want to install something from the shell, I now always use aptitude's command-line interface instead of apt-get, because of the above features.

Non-X86 ports are the major holdup

[The_Dougster]

Right now, the non-x86 developers are furiously trying to compile/patch a few pesky yet important packages on whatever platform they work with. I have been using 3.0 "testing" for over six months, and have Linux and Hurd working on X86, and Linux on a HP 9000 715/80 PA-RISC box, and a StrongARM SA110 Netwinder machine. In each case it works great! "Unstable" is a misnomer in that the OS itself is not unstable (doesn't crash), what is unstable is that the packages are constantly being updated so an apt-get upgrade might list 1000 new updated packages every week! With something like 9500 packages in Woody there is a lot going on all the time.

Re:Does anybody know what happened to the pine src

[evil_one]

try this package: http://packages.debian.org/testing/admin/pine-trac ker.html

Re:I want journalled filesystems on Debian!

[Talla]

If you go to the Debian netinst-page (http://people.debian.org/~ieure/netinst/), and read the release notes, you'll see that if you select option 3 when you boot, you'll get the bf2.4 image. I did this myself, and it works. When you format the drive during install, you can select ext3.

As mentioned in the faq, you need a system that supports "ElTorito" to get this menu. Your options are to edit the CD-image so it boots from bf as default, download the floppies, or install 2.2 and upgrade. You don't need to compile the kernel, btw, you can just use dselect, and select one of the many precompiled 2.4 packages.

I have used various Redhat and Mandrake versions for the last 3 years, but recently switched to Debian, and have never looked back.

Re:Version numbering?

[jannic]

The version number of a new debian release is assigned by the Release Manager. In this case, Anthony Towns, the Release Manager for woody, announced that woody would be Debian 3.0 in an email [debian.org] to a mailing list on Jul 1, 2001. In this mail, he wrote:

"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."

So, while the change from 2.2 to 3.0 indeed indicates that this release includes major changes, this is may not be the opinion of a majority of all debian developers.

Personally, I think that many things have been changed since potato, and it's appropriate to call the new version 3.0. And I agree with Anthony in the following sentence: 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".

Re:I want journalled filesystems on Debian!

[GoRK]

You obviously haven't looked in the directory which contains the woody install disk images, because it's plain as day. The instructions for finding this and a description of what it's about are in the "Installing Debian/GNU Linux 3.0 (woody) for i386" guide that IS linked to from the woody webpages, which are linked from an obvious place on www.debian.org. Here is the direct URL since you're so dumb: http://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/install. en.txt [debian.org]

Here is the url to take you directly to the bootable 2.4 disk images.
http://http.us.debian.org/dists/woody/main/disks-i 386/current/bf2.4/ [debian.org]

ISO images for woody aren't provided yet since the package list is currently changing; however, the instructions on the debian CD site and the scripts there will make you an ISO of this unrelased software easily. If that's not enough for you you can try some premade images from a source like http://www.linuxiso.org/debian.html [linuxiso.org] Hell, there's even DVD images floating around. You can buy a preburned one here: http://www.linux-cd.com/store/cgi/store.cgi?client =14491123&action=serve&item=woody.html [linux-cd.com]

Premade ISO's won't be available for woody until it is released. "Official" ISO's are available for previous relases from the official site at http://www.debian.org/CD/ [debian.org]. Minimal images designed to replace a set of boot floppies, "netinst" cd's, are also linked to from that site at http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/ [debian.org]

I find it ironic that you seem to be capable of writing a novella about how inept you are at reading. You seem to know exactly what you want, but since www.debian.org doesn't show it to you in big bold letters on the front of the page, why you didn't click on the search button is entirely beyond my comprehension.

I will give to one of your points: that the default installer can be improved. For the woody release, it was decided "if it ain't broke don't fix it." The next release will contain a better one. If you really can't wait, make a woody netinst cd with the Progeny installer. Or can you not type "apt-get install pgi" successfully? Someone will probably make one of these available with the progeny installer after woody's release.

Think you can put together a better debian website? Why don't you sign up [debian.org]?

Re:but when will we see..

[Daniel Stone]

We're not re-releasing potato; woody has:

Mozilla 0.9.9 (is 1.0.0 even released?)

GNOME 1.4, and also GLib/GTK 2.0

KDE 2.2.2, with KDE3 debs to separately available

Apache 1.3.x, because apache2 isn't close to being production-ready

XFree86 4.1.x

Kernel 2.4.x has been here since the dawn of time
I think you're bark^Wlooking up the wrong tree (har har har). Try seeing what woody actually has, some day.

Re:What you won't get in woody...

[Overfiend]

As for XFree86 4.2, Branden's been too busy with fixing up 4.1.x to do 4.2.x well. XFree86 is one of those dead core packages that need to just WORK every single time, and cannot screw up. There was never enough time to give it the thrashing it needs; I think that having XF4.1.x in a stable series is a pretty sweet effort; Branden deserves a pat on the back.

Well, I myself am not exactly thrilled that woody won't have 4.2 in it, but:

• As you said, I've been busy with getting 4.1.x stable. For Debian, this means much more than it does for some vendors. In woody, we support 11 architectures: alpha, arm, hppa, ia64, i386, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, and sparc. For how many of these machine architectures do Slackware, Mandrake, or Red Hat have 4.1.x, let alone 4.2, available? XFree86 themselves don't test or prepare distribution tarballs for several of these architectures. Debian is the de facto portability laboratory for XFree86 on Linux. Sure, I'll grant you that a lot of people, the kinds with the overclocked Pentium 4's and the latest GeForce card, really don't care about portability, or supporting architectures they've never heard of. But portability is important to me and it's important to Debian. I refuse to treat non-i386 users like second-class citizens. Those who want CVS HEAD, are best advised to learn how to check it out and type "make World". I'm sure that Pentium 4 overlocked to 3 GHz will compile the X source tree pretty quickly. :-) The single most amazing thing about all the hate mail I've received for not having 4.2 Debian packages ready -- aside from the fact that I started receiving it about two days after it was tagged upstream -- is that people seem to be laboring under the delusion that I have some kind of secret tools locked away in a vault, and that I am the only person who has the power to create packages. Sure, I'm probably better at doing XFree86 debs than most people, since I've been doing it for so long, but there's no great secret. I'm sure that with half an hour of manpage reading, a reasonably intelligent person can learn everything he needs to produce XFree86 4.2 debs for himself that will work well enough to satisfy his impatient self. Hey, I like to see the latest and greatest of everything, too -- that's why I use apt-listchanges, but I don't go haranguing the Debian developers to package up a new upstream version when I can clearly tell that they're working on other things for the project.
• On a related note, 4.2 just plain won't work on some of Debian's supported machines because we need the PCI Domain support, which is currently a branch in XFree86 CVS and did not make it into the 4.2 release. So for us, releasing 4.2 doesn't just mean releasing 4.2. It means releasing 4.2 plus some very large patches in very critical parts of the server code. You really, really want a good long opportunity to shake that sort of thing out, since Debian's 4.2 may not behave exactly as XFree86's 4.2 does.
• I don't just package the thing tagged xf-4_2_0 and leave it at that. I track hotfixes commited both to the latest release's branch and to HEAD, and incorporate them into Debian's packages if they work and if they make the packages better from a quality standpoint. Ask ATI video card users about 4.2.0 and "composite sync" sometime. (This isn't to dog the XFree86 Project. Software has bugs. Software releases with bugs. But, knowing about the default composite sync issue which affects so many users, it would be irresponsible of me to ignore it.)
• I didn't expect it to take until May for woody to release. Back in January, I felt sure that there was no way Anthony Towns would accept 4.2 into woody; when I sounded him out at the time about it he sounded kind of skeptical. Needless to say, the longer it takes woody to release, the worse a decision this is, but I don't have control over the release process. (Strictly speaking, Anthony doesn't either -- meaning, he can declare a release, sure, but he can't force people at gunpoint to fix the remaining release critical bugs. And Debian's philosophy has been to release when "it's ready", not when some marketroid tells us to, and thus just live with whatever whopper bugs happen to be in the release that day.)

So, that's why XFree86 4.2 isn't in woody.

Re:What you won't get in woody...

[Sentry21]

Debian does changes to the code, applies patches to make it work (including bugfixes/security patches that are sent upstream but not yet included in that release), and ensures that everything follows the Debian packaging guidelines. Debian code is sometimes vastly different from regular code, and it needs to be tested. In the case of XFree, with the most complicated build system and source tree I've seen since... well, ever, fortunately, it takes a long time to make sure everything works.

Slackware, on the other hand, compiles XFree, tars it up, and puts it on the CD. It does not have to be maintained, patched, updated, or tested. This is ok, if that's what you want, but Debian does a lot of work and a lot of changes, and it can require a lot of testing.

This is why Debian is widely regarded as a quality distro. No releasing alpha software in stable releases, no jumping version numbers to look competetive, just code, quality code, quality distro. Slackware lets you worry about that on your own.

--Dan