Debian Aims For September Release Date

An anonymous submitter writes "Debian Planet has a good discussion of the most recent release update from the new Debian release managers. The most interesting point is the current hard freeze of base+standard and an optimistic but doable release date in September."

Debian Noobie

[rokzy]

I know of Debian's aim of a safe, stable distribution as opposed to cutting edge, but don't know how they go about it.

to achieve their aims do they bug fix other peoples' code? do they inform the original authors of a problem? if so, what effects on code ownership does this have - does the Debian team become co-author?

anyone got any interesting stories about the Debian process along these lines?

Re:Debian...

[ron_ivi]

End just as importantly, Debian Stable has been the one distro I could count on to have all the security patches and _only_ the security patches so I didn't have to mess with any incompatable changes in any libraries affecting my stuff. IMHO, Debian Stable has been the lowest maintanence OS I've ever encountered.

Re:eh?

[Peaker]

Huh? Debian unstable doesn't break often at all. In fact it hasn't broken anything for me in more than 6 months, and I do it at least weekly. Lower frequency updates obviously break things even less frequently. I have other Operating Systems break far more often when tinkering with installed packages or upgrading stuff.

Re:eh?

[robochan]

It's just not a "fine desktop" for people who just want to get work or play done without applications suddenly failing on them.

I have to ask - have you actually even used the current Unstable release?
I'm not trying to insulting you, it's just that I've talked to many who've "heard that it's that way" without actually trying it. Can you provide some examples? I'm sure there are plenty, but as far as my own experience goes, I've used it for the last couple of years without hesitation. I'm not a developer, maintainer, nor a coder for that matter. I personally use Unstable on 3 machines for desktop systems, and install it for others, and have very rarely had anything break. I'm curious to hear some "real word" examples versus those who've "heard it's not for a dekstop".

Re:eh?

[theantix]

I used unstable for about a year, and in that time disabled X11, and another time it disabled Gnome. And one more than one occasion it broke FirePhoeFox. Those kind of problems can be worked around if you are willing to put in the time, but it's a hassle. I prefer the Fedora Core model of having a new stable platform every six months and doing a major upgrade at that time, so I can schedule and dedicate time to work out upgrading errors instead of having it happen when I need to get work done or just want to play a game or chat with my girlfriend or whatever.

Again, everyone is different and I'm sure there are a lot of people that don't mind the occasional failure and enjoy tinkering to get it all working. I just don't think that describes the average user though.

Re:Debian Noobie

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the author of an open source program that was added to Debian a few months ago.

to achieve their aims do they bug fix other peoples' code? do they inform the original authors of a problem?

The guy who maintains the debian package of my program informed me of bugs. When debian users reported bugs in my program he let me know and gave me the URL for the package in the debian bug tracking system. From there I worked directly with bug submitters if needed and fixed the bug in the next release.

if so, what effects on code ownership does this have - does the Debian team become co-author?

Well it would be up to the author... but no in my case. I didn't add anyone to the AUTHORS file just for reporting bugs. But I'm certainly not implying I don't appreciate the reports. Quite the contrary. Bug submitters were helpful and responsive and willing to test patches, which I much appreciate. I always thank such people in the ChangeLog and anywhere else appropriate.

New Installer yet?

[nurb432]

Will they be including the new installer, or even perhaps a graphical one finally? ( the debian port of anaconda works pretty well )

The installer is what keeps many away from using Debian.. that and the *perceived* slowness in releases and having to stick with 'old' versions of items...

Reason i say perceived, is that you dont have to stick with the released version forever, you can upgrade fairily easily to something a bit more current. ( or even bleeding edge if you are brave ) .. Its not as easy as with *BSD, but its still pretty painless..

Debian sarge

[asackett]

I've been using sarge for quite a while now, and on production machines, too. I keep a local workstation as the crash test dummy, upgrading it first just in case there's a problem that I don't want to add to the production machines -- I haven't encountered any show stoppers in almost a year now. I don't even have any woody boxes any more.

Yes, the security updates are a mite slower to get into testing, but usually only by a few hours or a day.

It works fine. I like it. I'm just sitting up here on my mountain being happy.

Re:ode to 503

[red floyd]

Slashdot Haiku:

Five Oh Three Error
Service Unavailable
Slashdot Slashdotted

Re:Debian...

[killjoe]

I agree. At a minimum they should break each architecture into it's own project. IMHO they should also pare down the package list to core and contrib. Keep the core down to a few thousand packages and then you can use the contrib like a ports collection. In other words you are guaranteed to be stable is you use only core and take your chances if you use contrib.

Re:Yes and No....The Labels are Wrong

[Dopefish_1]

If it's just the word choice you have a problem with (which, admittedly, is quite confusing for those not familiar with Debian's release philosophy), you could always just call it "sid" instead.

Just to throw in a personal anecdote, since everybody else in this thread seems to be doing so: I run sid on a couple of desktop machines, and woody+backports on several servers. I've never had a problem with the woody boxes, and the worst problem I've had with the sid boxes is apt getting really confused and refusing to install or upgrade certain packages for a while (usually fixed within a day or two). Which can be a pretty annoying problem, but it doesn't (at least in my experience) leave the system in a "not stable" condition. YMMV, but Debian works quite well for my needs.