Updates From Debian 204
A couple of people noted that
"Linuxlookup.com is reporting the third update of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (codename `woody') which mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update." Another reader writes "Looks like the Debian project just released
their old stable distribution (woody) with a huge numbers of security
updates, some removals and some less critical bugfixes. It's been a long
time that we had to wait for it, the last update was in November last year,
together with the break-in." And finally: pkarlos_76 writes "What's holding up Debian Sarge from release to stable? It's those lazy maintainers..... no actually it's just a few issues with security and bugs being quashed, and maybe you can help speed things up, especially if you are a maintainer, as your package will be left out if release candidate bugs are not fixed. Sarge Release Status Update available on Debianhelp . Even if you aren't a maintainer, any help with bug quashing, picking up orphaned packages or what not is always a Good Thing.
Re:What Debian good for... (Score:4, Informative)
On the other Hand, Debian integrates security fixes without using the new upstream version from the original package maintainer, giving software developers a solid plattform to base the applications upon.
Re:Debian Improvement (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What Debian good for... (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't call it conservative: Debian comes with over 8000 precompiled packages, many of which are fairly recent (see distrowatch or others for version info).
Debian is a user-supported (noncommercial) distro that appeals to people with some experience with Linux or which believe in the GNU philosophy. The package manager (apt) is quite good. It is a well thought out distro & (arguably) has had the most succesful branches: Knoppix, Ubuntu, etc.
Re:What Debian good for... (Score:3, Informative)
You can install a server using Debian, and you know that it will last for years. The security update try to never change the version of a program but only correct the bug, in order to avoid possible break. I'm never scared before I run an update on a Debian stable.
The problem is that the packages can be a little old if you're running the stable version. That's probably not Debian stable that you want for a Desktop computer
Re:Sarge... (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone else considering the same route... If you want a Stable server OS, install Debian Stable. Regardless of when Sarge is finally released, Woody will be supported for an additional year or so. In fact, if you have a Debian stable box and don't want to get pulled into Sarge before you're ready, change your
Re:Oh Debian, I don't know what to think (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, if you want a modern flashy desktop based on Debian, look no further than here [ubuntulinux.org].
Stable, easy to maintain, fast to install (Score:4, Informative)
It's also very stable and you can get by with a minimal of packages. The approach is to patch exisiting versions rather than force 'upgrades' to newer versions which may or may not change behavior (see PHP for examples of behavior changes even between point versions).
And it runs on quite a variety of hardware [debian.org] besides lame old x86. I've run classes for semesters off of old junker Macintoshes -- 100% availability, no downtime from course start until the hardware was retired for good the next year.
It's also very fast to install once you get used to it. (Don't use dselect) I've installed Debian for use as a web/cgi/database server on Pentium machines in under 15 minutes. Including some tweaking, however that needs a fast network connection.
It's easy to choose linux 2.2, 2.4, 2.6 or a custom variant Linux kernel. I've also read that you can drop in other kernels besides Linux, like BSD. Though I myself have not tried, but would like to read more about it.
Debian can be thought of as 3 parts... (Score:4, Informative)
At regular intervals, you may "apt-get update" to update your machine's list of software known to debian. "apt-get upgrade" can then be used to upgrade to known newer versions, or apply security updates in debian/stable.
For software updates/installations that have configuration options, often you will get a curses-based interface which steps you through basic configuration.
Debian/stable: As most have mentioned, very stable, well tested, and generally out-of-date as far as new features etc etc (but with security fixes etc being backported). Automatic download/configuration of most new security updates via apt-get. Very nice for servers or other systems that you want to be reliable, but don't need a bleeding edge environment. Packages are generally well-tested against each other, so you have a good assurance that apt-get installing package B will not break package A.
Debian/unstable: No security patches for unstable packages. Instead, regularly updating will get you newer versions of software. Sometimes you get conflicts but ususally it is fairly stable. I've been using a debian/unstable desktop for quite sometime now... the worst problems I've had thus far is needed to manually select a different "automake" version for Anjuta to work, and having a package that wasn't from debian being broken by a gtk update (mainly because some quirky coding in said package didn't like the new GTK version).
Debian/testing: I haven't used it, but basically I believe it's supposed to be slightly more bleeding edge than debian/stable. Packages haven't been fully tested against each other, package updates/changes are more common.
Really, you could think of the above as something akin to freshmeat.net's software grading system, where 'stable' is often for "mature" software packages, 'unstable' includes "beta" or less mature, and 'testing' is very new or "alpha."
The only thing that confuses me at current is why my Firefox is only avaiable up to version 0.9.3, even in 'testing'...
In summary though, the concept that debian is for old/crufty software is bogus. This may apply to debian/stable, but unstable will keep you very up-to-date for most users.
Re:What Debian good for... (Score:5, Informative)
alpha
arm
hppa
i386
i64
m68k
mi
mipsel
powerpc
s390
sparc
and soon AMD64
On top of just being really cool in in of itself, this allows you to have a unified computing platform across mutliple legacy, bigiron, and modern consumer x86 hardware installations.
Re:Being out of date. (Score:1, Informative)
To upgrade to the latest software, replace "stable" with "testing" in your sources.list file. If you need further direction, look here [debian.org].
The "testing" repositories usually contain the latest releases of software, and sometimes packages compiled from CVS.
Re:Being out of date. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What Debian good for... (Score:2, Informative)
For example, to set up a Java/C#.net web server: First, install the minimal stuff from any of the many different debian installers [linuxmafia.com].
Then, from the minimal debian-stable system
and you'll end up with a pretty current web-server - since tomcat & mono will depend on pretty current stuff.All the other packages you'd need (apache, java, mono (the recent one from unstable), etc) will be automatically handled thanks to its dependancy checker.
Re:What Debian good for... (Score:2, Informative)
That said, I have used the new installer several times recently, and it works fine, but:
- I always have at least one unrecoverable error during manual partitioning which has to be recovered from after installation; and
- The download of update packages invariably breaks in the middle, dumping me out to a shell or aptitude to finish it all off, again manually.
I hope these issues get worked out of the installer before it gets released.Re:Oh Debian, I don't know what to think (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Debian can be thought of as 3 parts... (Score:2, Informative)
Also important to not is that you can mix & match packages from stable and unstable as you need.
Our servers are running "stable" with Mono/ASP.NET from "Unstable". Debian's dependency checker happily identifies which additional packages are needed from "unstable" to make mono run while leaving the rest of the system as "stable".
Re:Crazy what stops the new release (Score:5, Informative)
While it's true that packages such as Abuse have release critical bugs, the release of Sarge will not be held up by them. Sarge cannot release while RC bugs are present--if it's simpler to remove Abuse from Sarge than it is to fix the RC bug, then Abuse will be removed.
Re:Installer (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Debian is NOT that out-of-date (Score:2, Informative)
Testing is sarge; unstable is sid.
cant install sarge? install woody then upgrade (Score:1, Informative)
Then change your
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
then, now that you're upgraded to unstable/sarge use aptitude to install all the other stuff you want from sarge respositories
Re:Debian can be thought of as 3 parts... (Score:2, Informative)
stable ("gold")
testing ("RC")
unstable ("beta")
That's why "testing" generally gets put under a freeze and then bumped down to the new "stable". "Unstable" is always "unstable" and packages are generally floated down to "testing" after a predetermined grace period - just to be sure they didn't break anything. If you run "unstable", you're running the bleeding edge.
From what I've heard, there's also experimental branches as well, but I know nothing about it.
Ja ne, eh?
Re:Debian can be thought of as 3 parts... (Score:4, Informative)
"Stable" is correct; it's the tried-and-true system that is designed to just work.
"Testing" means "This will be the next stable, please test it so we can squash out the bugs."
"Unstable" is the bleeding edge.
Currently, Stable is Woody, Testing is Sarge, and Unstable is (always) Sid. These names are from Toy Story apparently, Sid is named because he's the kid who likes to torture and destroy toys... pretty apt name for an unstable distribution, eh?
And I've remembered some fun times in unstable. On average, it can be pretty stable, but if there's a major change (such as the time that X11 was being repackaged in a different way a few years ago; it was three days before my X server would even start up), it will be VERY difficult to manage until the changes are complete.
Re:Being out of date. (Score:4, Informative)
"Exim 3 and previous versions are now considered obsolete. Exim 3 is not being developed any further, nor is it being actively maintained"
And therefore in order to use up to date secure packages, I end up using backports, and thus might as well be using testing anyway due to the package dependancies etc.
If I want to run an up to date version of horde, I need newer versions of php/pear etc than woody offers, and thus have to backport again... and it goes on...
Re:Being out of date. (Score:4, Informative)
As for horde I agree you either have to use a very old version of use a backport that will install updates that could make the system less stable also programs link clamav are stuck with really old version and make the program usless in stable that is why I do use the backport for it. Area like AV and spam filters are the bigest problem in my option and need a better way to handle in debian.
Re:What Debian good for... (Score:2, Informative)
That would be tasksel [debian.org]'s job.
Re:Debian can be thought of as 3 parts... (Score:3, Informative)
The latest version is in Debian Experimental. It is possible to install it. I don't know what is holding it up from releasing into Unstable, but there are two things I can think of: Debian takes great care to do the right thing with cross-platform and international versions, and Debian takes great care with the packaging. If 0.10 made changes that affected the localisation, or if 0.10 made changes that affected the Firefox plugins, that could cause problems that would keep the package in Experimental. (Debian actually packages the plugins for Firefox! If Firefox breaks the plugin spec, and old plugins won't work, Debian won't update Firefox until they get new versions of all the plugins; when you do finally get an update to Firefox, all your plugins will automatically update, which is nice.)
There is some black magic you can invoke to get Experimental packages; it is explained here [debian.net]. (That page is about GNOME 2.8, which is in Experimental right now, but the same trick would work for Firefox.) Or you could go here [debian.org] and download the package, and use "dpkg -i" to manually install just that package.
Note that if you just use x86 or PowerPC, you can install Ubuntu Linux [ubuntu-linux.org], and Ubuntu has packaged 0.10 so you will get it. It also has GNOME 2.8, Evolution 2.0, and just generally cutting-edge software. Ubuntu is planning a 6-month upgrade cycle, so they should be on top of new software as it comes out. Ubuntu is built on top of Debian, so all the basic Debian goodness is there. I'm using Ubuntu and I love it.
steveha