Debian 3.0r2 Released

FrankoBoy writes "As announced on DistroWatch, Debian 3.0r2 has been released this weekend, with some security issues fixed... and Rock 'n Diamonds dropped because of license problems. Here's the official announcement. This release had been slowed by an attack on Debian boxes discussed Friday."

debian is a truly great distribution...

[jms258]

debian rocks. i can't think of any other linux distro that has been around so long and consistently delivered a great base install and the ability to easily update the entire system. i know a lot of people like to complain about how behind the times debian always is, but this is only done to ensure that each release is as stable and bug-free as possible. the debian developers should be commended for all of their hard work that they've put in over the years, especially in the face of adversity such as the recent security breach.

Re:New Debian!

[Rufus211]

One thing that sticks out: watch your passwords! I think I read that the debian hacks were due to compromised passwords and the kernel hack was due to a compormised password. I guess it's both a good thing (software's secure so you have to social engineer) and a bad thing (social engineering will always work).

installing software

[trans_err]

I hadn't realized how incredibly limiting some distros were until I decided to install Fedora on a friend's box. Comfortable with Debian, and knowing about Fedora's apt wannabe yum, I figured installing packages would be sinch. wrong.

Let me clearify installing a package in Fedora via yum is identical to apt-get, but the range of packages is very different. Quickly I realized everyone using the large commercial Linux's are stuck with a very small repository of software.

I really took for granted how great apt-get(ing) all my software really is. Before a few days ago I never would have imagined that to install something has common as Mozilla-Firebird I'd have to go and find some website that offered an rpm, which made me incredibly nervous (one thing about rpm's I did remember was mixing them can cause a lot of dependency issues).

Say what you must about Debian, but you can't ignore that it has one of the slickist methods of installing software and updating the system, furthermore, as all the software comes from a trusted repository I know it's most likely going to work perfectly with all my other packages.

aspell removed for "license problems"?

[Rex Code]

Aspell is GNU software, available from ftp.gnu.org, and licensed under the LGPL. Is LGPL no longer free enough? Or is this about the use of the GFDL for some of the documentation?

In any case, removing important GNU software seems a bit over the top.

Be careful.

[Tim]

I thought the same thing that you did -- Redhat terminating support for RHL meant that I should get to know another Linux distribution, and Debian seemed popular, so I tried Debian Woody on my new desktop box...for about two days.

The problem is, by all objective standards, Woody is significantly behind Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake and Yellow Dog (all distributions that I've used extensively) in terms of usability. As others will attest, it's often a nightmare to get Woody installed and configured on a machine where Redhat or Mandrake will Just Work (tm). In many ways, using Debian felt like I was using Slackware circa 1998. Too much reinvention of the same old wheels. And don't even get me started on the documentation or community support -- I'm a very technically adept guy (I've been using Linux since 1995), and I find the technical support attitude that surrounds Debian to be...well, elitist, to say the least.

That said, this is a new release, so maybe things have changed completely. But if you're like me, and you have to get work done that doesn't involve futzing with config files and kernel modules, be very wary of Debian. (Not incidentally, Fedora is a very nice distribution, and it supports apt too....)

Re:casual desktop users may want to try Knoppix

[Dwonis]

Yeah. Rather than doing a knx-hdinstall, I usually run debootstrap (also on the CD) to do a network install of the distro.

Of course, my last install was using the new debian-installer CD, which I have to say was really quite painless.

Re:debian is a truly great distribution...

[Joe Tie.]

i know a lot of people like to complain about how behind the times debian always is

I think a lot of people just don't appreciate how stable Debian Unstable is, and only consider the less up to date stable and testing to be a viable option for every day use. The name scared me off for a long time, but I really havn't found it any more unstable than any other bleeding edge distro. Heck, while this is only my own experience of course, I've actually found it more stable than Mandrake.

Re:debian is a truly great distribution...

[geirt]

jms258 wrote:
>i know a lot of people like to complain about how behind the times debian always is, but
> this is only done to ensure that each release is as stable and bug-free as possible.

I don't understand why the software have to be old to be stable. Wine usualy gets better when aging, but I don't understand why this should apply to software, since the bug fixing usually is done by the developers, and they do it in the latest (or development) version.

Is Win95 stable enough for you, or do you prefer the more unstable Win2K ?

Re:aspell removed for "license problems"?

[mbanck]

the GFDL-issues are not regarded as critical for woody. Current consensus seems to be that the GFDL should also be ignored for the sarge release, as far as package removals are concerned.

Whatever it was that lead to the removal of aspell, it was *not* the GFDL.

Michael

Re:casual desktop users may want to try Knoppix

[Euan Buchanan]

Granted you're saying it's for casual desktop users, but Knoppix is not a good choice for an installable OS.

If you install Knoppix to the HD you're opening up a rare can of worms when you try to update it or add software that's not included on the Knoppix CD. I believe this is becuase it's a custom mix of testing and unstable; not something your casual user should be messing with (a category I fall in to).

Don't get me wrong, I love Knoppix, it allowed me to still use my laptop while I was building Gentoo which took the best part of three days. Two weeks ago my work machine went south and I used it to recover all my data before handing it to the IT department (with IT's blessing I might add.)

Re:debian is a truly great distribution...

[Bronster]

I don't understand why the software have to be old to be stable. Wine usualy gets better when aging, but I don't understand why this should apply to software, since the bug fixing usually is done by the developers, and they do it in the latest (or development) version.

It's not the age the matters, it's little things like making sure all the versions of dependencies work with each other - that everything has been compiled with exactly the same version of the compiler (including the compiler itself) and that there are no broken dependencies as software gets upgraded to a new version which breaks binary, or even source, compatibility for things which depend on it.

Bleeding edge software is great (I run Debian unstable with KDE from CVS) - but you run into problems with packages from different sources not yet upgraded to the latest and greatest APIs, not built with the latest compiler (sure having source based distros like Gentoo can help here - but only if the code compiles cleanly on the new compiler).

Does that answer your question?

Re:I see now

[Malc]

The thing with Debian though is that once you get use to it, you realise that you have no need for the CDs. Well, I retract: if you don't have a good internet connection, but then you probably aren't downloading the ISO anyway. For people wanting to deploy multiple machines without using a lot of bandwidth - it can be cached locally.

I just found my Debian 2.2 vanilla boot floppies and CD disk set this weekend during a cleanup of my office - I don't think I've touched them since I originally installed the machine 2.5 yrs ago.

Why spend your time downloading packages you don't need? Get the base system and then just apt-get what you need after that. Having the whole thing on CDs is just a feel-good thing for people not used to Debian. I find it offensive that I have about 20 Mandrake CDs that I will probably never need to use again as they're out of date and those versions of Mandrake cannot be updated online the way Debian can.

Re:debian is a truly great distribution...

[Trepalium]

Unstable is usable, but sometimes dealing with the package system gets to be a problem. I've had several cases when I had to uninstall a package I had installed because an update to a related package, and a file from the first package had migrated to the second, and apt/dpkg couldn't handle it automagically.

Re:Now?

[qtp]

I also think when you weigh in ease of use and well designed management and setup tools Debian comes up severly lacking.

How long have you been using Linux? And how many times have you had to reinstall in order to upgrade from one release to another?

It's a reasonable tradeoff. Debian may require a bit more knowledge in the basic computing department than most other dists, and the standard configuration interface may have been a bit unattractive, but I know of know other dist that has allowed users to issue two simple comands in order to upgrade from one major release to another.

I had an install that started as Bo in 1997, that survived upgrades through Hamm, Slink, and Potato on it's way to die as a Woody install. That install outlived processors, power supplies, motherboards, and hard drives (That ping-ping-ping noise tells you when it's time to migrate).

The point is, that you shouldn't have to reinstall in order to upgrade your release. THAT is the basic "ease of use issue" that no other distributions seem to address. Everything else is easy, once the install is complete.

By the time Sarge comes out we will all be on kernel 2.6

And Sarge user who wishes to have kernel 2.6 installed will only need to "apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.x-[386|586|686|k6|k7](-smp)" in order to get the 2.6 kernel, pre-compiled for thier particular processor.

Debian may be good to have around, but other distros have passed it in the areas that matter to most people...

Most people want a box that is stable and reliable that enables them to cruise the web, write emails, do IM, chat, etc, and create documents that can be read on Microsoft platforms. Anything else is not "most people", but chances are that it's available in Debian (Woody consists of 8.900 packages, not counting contrib and non-free).

Debian provides a stable distribution that offers the most choices to the user for any task. For users who desire more recent versions of software than is available in "stable", there is the "testing", which includes all of the recent releases that have proven to not break anything and have demonstrated themselves to be reasonably "bug free" for a period of time before they are included. I'm not sure what it is that these mythical "most users" are asking for that Debian doesn't provide. The only feature I can think of that Debian is missing is an EULA, and I doubt that anyone really wants that.