Debian Sarge Coming Soon

daria42 writes "The long awaited 3.1 release of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution - codenamed Sarge - is due out next week on the 6th of June, according to the project's release team. Around 50 release-critical bugs remain to be fixed. One more update to Debian 3.0 will also be released prior to that date. And it's about time - the last formal release was back in July 2002. Debian 3.0 will probably be supported with security patches for another 12 months."

Follow the RC-bug count!

[jhdevos]

here: http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php [turmzimmer.net]

The June 6 date still depends on how fast the level will drop -- at the time of writing, it is at 17 RC bugs, it will have to be at 0 on June 3, so they have some work to do.

Security support is already in place, though, so there is not really a reason to hold off upgrading :)

Jan

etch is next

[cyber_rigger]

http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/index [debian.org]

Fedora Core 4

[mukund]

Fedora Core 4 is also scheduled for June 6 [redhat.com].

Re:Starting the book now...

[KiloByte]

No, Sarge should have been 4.0, but fixing that now would require too much last-minute effort. Bumping up the version number was simply forgotten, according to the relevant thread [debian.org].

number of RC bugs to fix

[jdowland]

Hmm 50 is an over-estimate (maybe it wasn't when the story was submitted); according to http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ [debian.org] there are only 28.

Preventing some Debian trolling

[rhymesmith]

To prevent some Debian trolling I want to clarify some facts about the release model used by the Debian project.

Debian always provides a stable distribution. This distribution is guaranteed to, yes you guessed it, be stable. That is if you install Debian stable on a server you know that you won't have to update configuration files because the application has changed its internal format and suchlike.

This does not mean that the stable distribution is never updated, in fact Debian has a security team that fixes security bugs and backports security fixes from newer versions of a package.

The stable distribution has a quite slow release cycle, but there is no reason for a desktop user to run the stable distribution. You can run either the unstable distribution, that regardless of its name is quite stable, or you can run the testing distribution.

The unstable and testing distributions have really large collections of packages and are updated each day, updating your distribution is as simple as typing:

#apt-get update
#apt-get dist-upgrade

A desktop user can also opt to run a Debian-derivative like Ubuntu.

Re:This has taken much too long.

[KiloByte]

Three years between point releases, 3.0 -> 3.1, is just much too long to wait.

There were 5 point releases since Woody.
The step between Woody and Sarge is similar to those between Win95 and Win98 -- and just like products of the Evil Empire, the gap is three years.

Having a release every a couple of months is good for a desktop-only release with all the newest bells and whistles -- but for a server, I expect something that can be installed and largely forgotten.

Re:Only 12 months security support of old releases

[Sinus0idal]

Yes, but I've paid for Windows 2000. I can move to sarge for free with a simple dist-upgrade.

Finally

[petteri_666]

After Sarges release there will be nice new things coming to unstable:
KDE 3.4
GNOME 2.10
gcc 4.0
xorg 6.8.2
python 2.4

Long live Debian ;)

Re:And the point is?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It guarantees a clean upgrade path for people still running 3.0.

One of the nice things about Debian is you don't need to reinstall. Most of the problems you experience upgrading testing/unstable every day have been ironed out for anyone attempting the mammoth 3.0->3.1 upgrade.

2) It will continue to do this.

Third party distros come and go. Progeny? Corel? Ubuntu is developing at lightning pace right now, but as it diverges from Debian and acquires legacy maintenance baggage of its own development will slow. Sometimes users are abandoned. I believe this happens frequently to RedHat users.

3) It's really really stable and it's really really big.

Other distros shotgun packages as well as architectures. They're also not necessarily as anal about bugs.

4) It's a concrete base and point of reference for third party distros.

Debian Testing has basically been a slow moving Debian Stable (without Security support) for the whole last year. With the release out the way Testing will become more unstable again for a while and third party distros will likely base their efforts on stable again for a while. It's important for Debian's future that this is made possible.

Re:The new installer

[bgat]

It does now.

Re:Starting the book now...

[Lord of Ironhand]

I've followed the thread on the mailinglist as it progressed, and don't think it's right to say it "should have been" 4.0 . Opinions differ on the matter, and many sources already use 3.1 (including a book, the "Debian 3.1 bible", about to be printed). Also, this page [debian.org], which has been there for ages and is the first google hit for "debian sarge", lists 3.1 as the most likely release number.

The debate seems a bit similar to the discussion whether the new kernel should be 2.6 or 3.0 . Personally, bumping major version numbers too regularly reminds me of commercial software that has to go from 1.0 to 10.0 in a few years just to keep customers upgrading (and buying). Sarge has some important changes over Woody, but I don't think they're big enough to warrant going to 4.0; maybe Etch (the successor to Sarge) might, with the introduction of SELinux, X.org, etc. .

Re:good stuff...

[snorklewacker]

> ubuntu is focused on desktops, for which bleeding edge is OK

Only Debian could call six months of feature freeze from Debian's unstable repository to be "bleeding edge". It's the same release cycle as fedora, except nothing ever gets upgraded but for security patches. Firefox is still at 1.02 even though every security patch has been backported (which makes it exactly 1.04) because of the phobia of changing version numbers lest something break.

Now on the pro- side: I was going to switch to Fedora myself, but these folks can't even be bothered to support my very common network hardware in their installer or port the ATI drivers to the current and only kernel version they support. Debian might move as slow as the tides, but they do lift all ships.

The actual notice

[Mr_Person]

For those of you that are curious, the actual email that Andi Barth sent out is here [debian.org].

Re:good stuff...

[anethema]

You do realize that ubuntu freezes debian unstable every 6 months, works the bugs out, then releases it right? Its just like debain unstable, but stable and more of a 'it just works' type philosophy. Amazing hardware detection upon install thats for sure.

Re:This has taken much too long.

[calc]

There is also the problem that even Debian Sid doesn't get updated once the freeze starts. In Sarge's case the initial "freeze" started late in 2003. So while some packages have been updated since then you end up still not having any version of Xorg in Sarge. Also there are no Gnome 2.10, or KDE 3.4 packages in unstable either since it has to be stablized in unstable so that it can go into testing for eventual release.

MOD PARENT DOWN - plagarism

[Anonymous Coward]

stolen from the comments here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/134531/ [lwn.net]