Debian Sarge Coming Soon 284
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."
Too late.. welcome Ubuntu... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And the point is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Jan
Only 12 months security support of old releases? (Score:5, Insightful)
only 12 months of security support for the old Debian release, after a new release has come out?
Isn't that a bit short? If Microsoft had stopped supporting Windows 2000 in 2002 (one year after Windows XP came out), everybody would have gone NUTS about it.
Considering that Debian "stable" is targeted at users who are very conservative about upgrades, Woody should be supported for at least a few more years. IMHO.
bye,
Till
What I like Debian for (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem was getting networking going, but that was more to do with colinux and the pain with trying to create TAP devices on Win32. I sure hope that MS ship with TAP-Win32 in their next release. They really, really should.
Re:This has taken much too long. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people would stop moaning about stable! It isn't a desktop distro! It is for those that want to do an 'apt-get install apache' and KNOW it won't fail. That means a lot to admins.
The new installer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Too late.. welcome Ubuntu... (Score:3, Insightful)
Brief mapping debian <-> reality:
Stable - Server
Testing - Desktop
Unstable - Testing
I've been running debian testing now for a long time. The only open service on my box is openssh, and I can pay attention to any security fixes for that one myself. For a desktop, that is really the only concern. Application vunerabilities and local privilidge escalation will be fixed within a few days, which is just fine.
Kjella
Re:Only 12 months security support of old releases (Score:5, Insightful)
Sarge is the new stable, the migration should be transparent on most installations. For those few installations that are so customised, or that had some kind of problem, they're giving a 12 month period to adjust and migrate.
Debian is not like Windows, you don't have to do a full installation to upgrade you system. The upgrades are a natural path if you keep your systems up-to-date with the repositories. That is one reason I love to use Debian.
Re:Only 12 months security support of old releases (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, the difference is that noone pays us Debian Developers to do the work. The security team is pretty small and their work is needed for the new stable release. But I'm sure that if you volunteer to do all the security fixes for 4-5 years, noone would mind too much (well, you'd have to pay for the diskspace too, of course, since this would mean that we'd probably end up with old-old-stable, old-stable, and stable...
Re:Preventing some Debian trolling (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a sad reason to not run testing: the testing distribution is the last one to get security updates; as I have understood this, unsecure packages from unstable can overwrite security fixed packages in testing. And I've seen people at debian-devel rave about how the reason for this is that "testing/unstable is not really meant to be used like this."...
But I wish the debian community would unite behind the picture you have, and with testing as the recommended desktop distribution; becuase then the focus would be on what debian does best of all distributions: to provide a rocking *moving* desktop distribution.
For a broadband user, a moving desktop distribution makes a lot of sense. You don't have to wait for the next release (as with Ubuntu, Fedora) to get the next version of your favourite program -- instead your desktop will be continously updated as new versions becomes available. (With just a small time-lag due to the package dependencies etc. being before being moved to testing). And the thing is: I belive this is how most people currently are using debian! Why not make this the supported way?
If it was my decision (which it clearly isn't), I would work for making the moving Linux distribution provided by testing, unstable, and experimental fully independent from the concept of "releases". Instead, let some kind of specialized "release team" take care of making debian stable releases at whatever rate they feel apropriate simply by freezing the moving distribution and working on it until it is stable enough to be released as a new "debian stable".
It needs to be voiced (Score:3, Insightful)
As a hobbyist - I really enjoy *using* linux to serve webpages for recreational use, mp3s, ssh sessions, downloading torrents and learning about unix.
If I have to keep up with a continual stream of what I feel to be cosmetic and superfluous updates, that leaves me less time to do the things I enjoy. As far as security updates, debian does a great job of notifying users of security updates with their mailing list, debian-security-announce. When ever I get an e-mail from that list - I just run apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade, and all is well.
Then again, I'm the type of person who takes great delight in installing linux on a crusty old (but wireless enabled) laptop with no X and just alt-F[1-4]'ing for my 'window environment'. I don't *need* the latest release of gwingding or kflipflop depending on the latest libraries of whatever, so I am probably in the minority here.
Favour (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Preventing some Debian trolling (Score:3, Insightful)
Rolling distros are perfect for boys living at their parent's basament which think they have a life because they know what the last version of KDE or Gnome or whatever program is.
They're also excellent for working professionals that prefer frequent and non-invasive minor upgrades to less frequent world-moving major upgrades. Rolling upgrades mean never having to reinstall from scratch and they also mean that application and desktop changes come in small, manageable chunks.
Rolling distros also allow the user to obtain the advantages of new productivity-enhancing features sooner rather than later.
They're not appropriate for everyone, certainly, but they're useful for a much larger group than those who have no other life.
Re:Only 12 months security support of old releases (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed on the whole 'too cumbersome to become a debian dev', though. I started the process once but gave up before I got too far. However, I don't see what being called a developer vs. committer has to do with being 'above human'. I think your rant was starting to fall apart about there.
I noticed in a couple of other threads on this article you have some unflattering things to say about debian. Is there something in particular about debian that bothers you, something that you want to get off your chest? Or is this just a case of 'a lot of people seem to like [item a], therefore I do not like [item a]'? I mean, (and this is kind of ironic), as I'm sitting here typing this I am wearing a t-shirt that says "Nothing is any good if other people like it", so I can understand if that's the motivating force. I mean, I know people that would run Windows everywhere if it had the marketshare linux does. I don't know, maybe I'm just getting too old for the internet, but I just don't "get" why someone who doesn't like debian, who obviously has no use for debian, would come onto a story talking about debian just to say, in essence, "debian sucks". Meh, it's probably because I have kids. When you only have a very limited amount of time allotted to 'computer stuff', you tend to focus on just the stuff that is actually productive. On the other hand, I just wasted five minutes typing this reply, so who the hell am I to talk about being productive?!?