Debian 3.0r6 Released 297
Polkan Garcia writes "The Debian group has released an update to the 'Woody' distribution of the popular GNU/Linux OS. From the site: 'This is the sixth and final 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.' More good news: r6 is the final update of woody, the new stable release is coming."
Stop being a freaking troll (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Question (Maybe slightly OT).... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Question (Maybe slightly OT).... (Score:4, Informative)
Found this link from the Project Leader's page [debian.org]
Re:Only a moron... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I think it is a good idea not to update quickly (Score:5, Informative)
An additional point about the XP comparison: nobody shipped software requiring Windows XP in 1999, but that's exactly what happens with Debian. When the Linux version of Neverwinter Nights shipped in 2003, I couldn't install it on Woody, (and still can't, AFAIK) because of Woody's ancient version of gcc. I need Sarge to run that on a stable version of Debian. Here we are, two years later, and still it won't run on Debian stable. It will run on nearly any other distro's latest stable release (and on BSD), but not Debian stable.
The Debian release cycle just keeps getting worse, and I see no end in sight for that. An update every three years might well be fine if the updates weren't falling further behind with each one.
Re:I think it is a good idea not to update quickly (Score:3, Informative)
The Debian release cycle just keeps getting worse, and I see no end in sight for that.
I think you haven't been paying attention. The Debian project has planned many changes to the process after Sarge is released, perhaps the largest is that they're going to reduce the number of supported platforms.
It's possible that the changes won't speed up releases, but there's good reason to think they will. If you disagree, fine, but you should explain why you disagree.
Re:Debian support for modern CPUs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:apt-get (Score:5, Informative)
I thought that apt-get had was unable to handle multiple architectures on a single system, which prevented a fully integrated 64 & 32 bit version of Debian. Has that problem with apt-get been solved yet?
Yes and no. The "biarch" system has been working for several years to support both 32 and 64 bit Sparc software. That same technology could be used now to support mixed 32/64-bit code for AMD64 processors, but Debian developers have opted not to do that. Instead, the new multiarch system will support an arbitrary number of architectures, very flexibly. That will not only address the AMD64 issue but it will also make handling of other x86 subarchitectures easier.
Currently, there are some Debian packages that come in multiple flavors because they benefit significantly from processor-specific optimizations. The kernel, for example, comes compiled for 386, 586, 686, K6, K7, amd64-generic, amd64-k8 and em64t, plus SMP versions of most of those. Mplayer also comes in multiple versions, though not as many. This is handled by having a big list of kernel-image and mplayer packages. With multiarch, you'll be able to specify that you have, say, an AMD64 processor, and then apt-get will understand which subarchitectures will and will not run on your system, and which subarchitectures are preferred. Then you can just pick generic packages and the system will install the best version. It will also handle situations like mozilla and flashplayer. If you install mozilla on an AMD64 box, you should probably get a 64-bit version for best performance. However, if you want flash to work, you have to install the Macromedia plugin and it's 32-bit, so you have to install a 32-bit version of mozilla so that it can use the 32-bit plugin. The new multiarch system will handle all of those dependencies for you.
So apt-get is perfectly capable of handling a mixed 32 and 64-bit system now, but only if the package maintainers set things up carefully (which is what most other distros must do). Debian has opted to forego such a "manual" solution and instead wait until the elegant and flexible general solution is done.
Re:Is it just me ... (Score:3, Informative)
The first CD has almost everything you need to setup a basic desktop, including Gnome, KDE and OpenOffice.
The packages on the CDs are organizated by their popularity, meaning that on the first CDs are the most installed packages. They gather this information from actual real-world systems, and you can contribute too, just install the "popularity-contest" package, and the information about the packages you install will be sent automaticaly to the Debian guys.
The CDs are only needed if you don't have a fast internet connection, in case you have broad-band you may just download every package from the archive servers and have always up-to-date software installed. It's even possible to do a full instalation from the internet using the net-install procedure!
Hope I had cleared out things for you, enjoy your Sarge install!!