Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (r0a) Quick Tour

linuxbeta writes "At OSDir there's a tour of the fixed Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (r0a) release. After 3 years we finally get to have a look at the new Debian, including their new installer. Release notes. Only occasionally does this new release differ from Ubuntu."

ubuntu...

[guyfromindia]

Only occasionally does this new release differ from Ubuntu.
As a casual linux user, I see that Ubuntu is much more 'non-geek' friendly than Debian. That is probably the biggest difference.
Also, take a look at the Unofficial starter guide.. http://ubuntuguide.org/ [ubuntuguide.org]. This is exactly why users like me are flocking to Ubuntu.
If there is a comparable guide to Debian, I am not aware of it... or havent found it yet.

Re:ubuntu...

[Anonymous Sniper]

Have you read anything here?

http://www.debian.org/doc/ [debian.org]

Covers most things, I find

But... honestly... do real geeks need a seperate section on installing each and every app they might need? Apt-get "just works" for me...

Re:Not exactly new

[Professor_UNIX]

Ah, these installer screenshots bring back memories... of RedHat's installer... from 8 years ago.

Spoken like someone who hasn't installed Red Hat in 8 years. Red Hat's Anaconda installer looks a lot like that even today in text mode. Unlike Debian, Red Hat doesn't care if their distribution runs on anything other than x86 so they can target making an X11 install that looks pretty. Debian on the other hand has to get the most bang-for-the-buck on all their supported platforms so they felt a text installer would work best. After installing 5 systems with sarge on them from scratch I haven't had any issues. All my hardware was auto-detected and it grabbed an address via DHCP automatically. I installed Debian doing nothing but hitting the enter key on each screen to accept the defaults to show someone how easy it was. The only one I think I had to move the arrow key over was the partitioning part of it. All in all, the Debian text installer is as easy, if not easier, than installing Windows 2000/XP/2003 or Red Hat.

My only qualm with it is I would've liked to have the option of assigning the install a static address rather than having it grab one automatically from my DHCP server, but that was easily remedied after the install was finished. It's probably even a configurable option but Debian Sarge was so easy to install I didn't see much point in even looking at the release notes unless I had a problem.

Re:Graphical Interface looks horrible

[donscarletti]

I use Gentoo. Compared to Gentoo, Debian greets the user with open arms, champagne in an ice bucket and complimentary mints on the pillow. You'd be supprised to find out how many users are willing to forget about twenty minutes of ugliness as long as it doesn't come back after installation. Back when I was in highschool, I installed Mandrake on my PC with an installer half as elegant as what debian has, I hardly think the installer would be a problem for new users' intuition. Anyone less superficial than a cheerleader (or an OSNews reviewer) should be able to get over the looks.

I hope feeding trolls is a little like feeding wild birds, they'll starve in the wild as soon as I stop doing it.

Gnome?

[twitter]

I wonder why they stopped with the Gnome desktop. The installer used to throw both Gnome and KDE at the user. Both are free, excellent and deserve a show. For older hardware, and the speed hungry, there's also XFCE4, AfterStep, Window Maker, Fluxbox and Enlightenment. The diversity of packages and the ease of apt-get installing them are one of the best things about Debian and free software in general. Leaving those things out does Debian a disservice.

Re:Debian should have died long ago

[labratuk]

What exactly does this new release of Debian offer besides retro-linux creds?

A coherent package repository which means an upgrade path that's more than "gee, you're really better off reinstalling the new version from scratch, distro upgrades can be sort of unreliable".

Re:ubuntu...

[Deeze]

Ubuntu *is* Debian, with a few packages changed to the extent that they break Debian compatability (not to mention stability.. take xorg.. please), and scripts to do just a *teeny tiny* bit more configuring at install. This is it. No more, no less. It is NO easier to *use* than Debian. It is *slighty* easier to install to a preconfigured desktop at first, but by default you end up in sudo jail. That is all. I eagerly tried both Warty and Hoary, only to find that there was much more hype than substance. There really is only trivial difference between them and Debian, and most of the differences were offputting. I'll take the real deal over them any day.

Re:Gnome?

[Carlito]

Gnome and KDE are installed by default. You can select either of them from gdm.

Re:Not exactly new

[EvanED]

My only qualm with it is I would've liked to have the option of assigning the install a static address rather than having it grab one automatically from my DHCP server, but that was easily remedied after the install was finished. It's probably even a configurable option but Debian Sarge was so easy to install I didn't see much point in even looking at the release notes unless I had a problem.

If you do any other installations, or for other people, there's a boot parameter you can pass in so that it will turn this off. Section 5.2.1 in the installation manual:

netcfg/disable_dhcp

By default, the debian-installer automatically probes for network
configuration via DHCP. If the probe succeeds, you won't have a chance to
review and change the obtained settings. You can get to the manual network
setup only in case the DHCP probe fails.

If you have a DHCP server on your local network, but want to avoid it
because e.g. it gives wrong answers, you can use the parameter netcfg/
disable_dhcp=true to prevent configuring the network with DHCP and to enter
the information manually.

Good and not so...

[Anonymous Coward]

good. Having used Sarge for about a year on both desktop and server, and having a few years prior experience on the desktop with other distros (mostly Suse, some earlier Mandrake, a bit of bonzai, Mepis, Knoppix) I still consider myself a newbie. Not a programmer, not a guru.

Been waiting & waiting & waiting for Sarge to go stable, my poor excuse for not implementing Sarge more widespread. I think the biggest suprise after updating/upgrading nearly every day is that as soon as stable was announced and my installs turned into stable from Sarge all on their own, the biggest surprise is there is nothing to upgrade. What a relief! It's been a bit of a task to keep after each install to make sure they stay updated to ensure the latest security patches are installed. And taking a look at the portscans and hits on port 22 I'm seeing on the servers, it's been a little worrying to stay after everything. Now that stable is here, maybe I can relax just a bit and start thinking about trying to get a mail server up and running.

The problems? Had to have someone walk me through creating my own "devices" when they weren't created on their own, don't know why. Lost my mouse on several different machines at just about the same time. Now making coasters on CD-R's while CD-RW's appear to burn ok, both burning knoppix isos. Are the CD & CDRW SCSI with 2.6.x or are they ATAPI? If ATAPI, why am I getting error messages when attempting to enable dma? If SCSI, why does the docs and warning messages in k3b talk about ATAPI instead, with SCSI being broken in 2.6.x? Googled and looked around all I could, still can't figure out how to get my CD burner working correctly. Can't get smartmontools or whatever it is called to work, so don't know temp/fan speed. Can't get raidtools working with my raid card. So don't know if/when a drive dies on me, or when hot spare dies on me, until it is too late or until the next time I boot in a few months from now.

Other problems? Sarge installed a generic 386 kernel I think, instead of one for my AMD cpu. Now I have to figure out how to upgrade a kernel even though I planned to stick with the stable one Sarge gave me, 2.6.8-2-386.

Wishes? Yast on Debian. So I can more easily configure OpenLDAP. Tried without Yast, didn't work. I had someone point out that there is an effort to port Yast to Debian. Hope it happens soon. Would also help with controlling which services startup after a reboot. Right now trying to figure out how to get snmptrapd to start after a reboot instead of snpmd. Pgadmin3 backported to Sarge. Other backports made available asap. Postgres 8.x.x maybe? NX maybe?

Good things? Lots. Too many to mention. Not too many to thank, so thanks Debian developers and package maintainers. Thanks to your work to make the latest and greatest even better. A lot of credit should go to the work behind the installer. I tried my installations some 3 months and more past. It is far better than earlier versions. The only real issue is having to create devices. Which is really a non-trivial thing until you know how to do it. Definitely not for a newbie.

Keep up the good work Debian developers. And let's all hope the crew can stick to the 1 year deadline for Etch.

debian has somewhat caught up... for now

[scottied]

I mean, it wont be long before the new release of Ubuntu, Breezy, is out officially. I'm already using it with little trouble. It is going to have TONS of new improvements, most notably the new Gnome. I can't see how Debian is going to keep up the rapid pace of Ubuntu releases at this rate.

Re:Gnome?

[Deaths Hand]

Or indeed from kdm :-)

Re:Why 3.1

[dondelelcaro]

The version was supposed to be 4

No, the version number was planned for quite a long time to be 3.1. The only time using 4 was even brought up was a few months before release by people who aren't on the release team, and therefore don't make the decision on what arbitrary dotted set of integers that is strictly greater than the previous arbitrary set is used.

Who cares what the release is numbered anyway? Call it pi if it makes you happy.

Re:No KDE?

[Arker]

Funny, my Debian box has KDE.

Back under your bridge now, silly troll.

Re:No KDE?

[BlueStrat]

"One gets used to the Gnome wm in Ubuntu, but I would like KDE. Sorry to see Debian going without KDE."

Debian is not going without KDE. I repeat, it is NOT going without KDE.

During install, you are asked which wm(s)/desktop(s) you want to install and have available to use.

There is a good selection of desktops (including KDE) that you may install during or any time after installation. You may choose which desktop to boot into at the login screen.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:not using X.org

[spauldo]

The X strike force [deadbeast.net] (the guys who do X for debian) made the decision to stick with xfree for sarge back when the license schism happened. Debian release planning is a long, well-planned process, and changing something as fundamental as the graphical subsystem wasn't something they were willing to do in the middle of a release cycle. The plan was to wait until after sarge to switch over.

X.org is going through major changes in the way it's packaged. Basically, it's one big chunk of program - just like xfree, more or less - and they're moving it over to a more modular system. Because of this, the debian maintainers had decided to wait until the modular tree was released before switching to X.org. It seems that this is taking longer than expected, so according to the FAQ on their site they will be moving over to it soon and modularizing along the way. That's a big relief to me, since I run unstable on my workstation and have been looking forward to X.org for quite some time.

So yeah, the next release should be X.org, but with the changes in supported architectures, hopefully it won't be three years before etch is released.

Re:Graphical Interface looks horrible

[Netsnipe]

No. We are not "desupporting" all but a core set.

"Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting"
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005 /03/msg00012.html [debian.org]

The proposal currently being discussed is that we shall continue to support architectures apart from x86, x86_64, ia64 and ppc, but at release time, problems regarding second class citizen architecture support will no longer be allowed to hold back releasing a stable distribution for the core four.