Debian 4.0 'Etch' Released 245
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier today we discussed the possibility that Debian Etch might be released soon. Well, according to debian.org, it has already happened. Etch has been released: 'The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0, codenamed etch, after 21 months of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of eleven processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME and Xfce desktop environments. It also features cryptographic software and compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.1 of the LSB.'"
Multipath broken in debian etch! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This release begs the question... (Score:5, Informative)
Too late? (Score:3, Informative)
Debian has turned into a political zoo of OSS dinosaurs, who are too big and too ancient. They spend lots of time arguing over political issues and raise barrier too high for hew developers.
During Debian Project Leader (DPL) election campaign candidates were almost in unison looking up to Ubuntu as an example on how to attract new users and developers. With Etch out and new DPL in Debian's goal can be summarized in one phrase: "Let's catch up with Ubuntu"
How Debian's brand new DPL wants to do this [debian.org]:
Re:This release begs the question... (Score:3, Informative)
Next testing is "Lenny" (Score:5, Informative)
Debian's next testing version will be code named "Lenny" (from the movie Toy Story).
http://times.debian.net/1034-Release-update:-Etch
Re:Should I upgrade my new server? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, read the release notes [debian.org] for the answers to those questions. (and much much more! act today!)
Might take some searching: (Score:4, Informative)
In addition to Flash (patent issues) and the Win32 codecs (patents), you'll also need libdvdcss2 (DMCA) if you want to play DVDs, and you might as well get LAME if it's not in there by default (god knows -- probably patents).
Putting
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ [debian-multimedia.org] stable main
into your sources.list ought to work, but I'm not sure how actively that repo is maintained (it still lists sarge as the stable tree). The VideoLAN people likewise just have instructions for Sarge but hopefully that'll change soon.
Re:Multipath broken in debian etch! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Too late? (Score:1, Informative)
kernel same
apache same
gcc same
openoffice same
postgres same
icdeove same
iceweasel newer
php newer
kde newer
mysql newer
gnome older
if you want bleeding edges you know the alternatives
Upgrade (Score:4, Informative)
- squid may break if you use it for transparent proxying. It wants the "transparent" option after the listern directive(s) now to enable transproxying, but never used to.
- the xlibs upgrade does not go well if it can't remove everything in certain directories. In particular, having the jedit package installed screws this up badly. I had to do some manual fixing to get this working.
- Make really, really sure you have enough room in
- You'll probably want to use the maintainer's CUPS config, then re-configure it to your specs. The CUPS config has changed a lot and is not really compatible.
- cyrus delivery socket permissions may need resetting if you use cyrus & postfix.
Overall, though, for a system as complex as my servers, the process was largely fuss free.
Re:Multipath broken in debian etch! (Score:4, Informative)
debian testing release is one of the most popular distribution in its own right.
this isn't exactly some hacked up job released after big push to meet deadline. this went through months of release engineering and countless beta-testers.
debian stable release (the snapshot of etch as of today) do not get updates or bugfixes. etch 4.0 will not see any updates to gnome or kernel or gaim or anything. debian stable only gets security bugfixes. (if the bug is just a bug without security implications, it does not get fixed.)
don't you think this puts on an extra burden of not enabling (once again, known to be nonfunctional) experimental kernel option?
yes, testing before live production is good practice. yes, patience before upgrading is a virtue. but only because debian fucks up sometimes. if debian doesn't fuck up ever, patience is not a virtue. and i'm saying that debian fucked up.
Re:Might take some searching: (Score:5, Informative)
Redistributing the Flash player is less a patent problem than side effects of a restrictive licence [adobe.com]. For example, openSUSE goes out of its way to install browsers compatible with its bundled Flash player; Novell apparently has a deal with Adobe to allow redistribution of acroread and flash-player. Debian seems to circumvent this problem by having the package installer download Flash straight from Adobe. Nice and legal either way (assuming Adobe isn't violating a patent somewhere or something like that, which I doubt).
libdvdcss2 is trickier. Using Finland as an example of an EU country (applicable law [finlex.fi]), the situation seems to be that you are allowed to circumvent CSS to watch a movie, but I'm not lawyer enough to tell whether CSS qualifies for legal protection (that depends on whether it's an effective copy protection mechanism, I think) and whether the law requiring the copyright holder/distributor to provide a circumvention device, if necessary, is applicable. You'd also be very hard pushed to argue substantial non-circumventing use, making redistribution quite risky. In conclusion, I think libdvdcss2 users in Finland are safe, but redistributors may have a harder time. Other EU countries should be similar, as most of this legislation originates with the EU.
The win32 binary codecs are, in part at least, straightforward copyright infringment (unlicensed derivative works), but haven't been subject to any legal action I've heard of. Some of the codecs developed from scratch (e.g. some MPEG variants) seem to need patent licences in some areas; this is the primary cause of problems with MP3 (openSUSE circumvents this by using Real's Helix engine for MP3 decoding, which is licensed).
In conclusion, the situation is a mess and if you want to be safe, stick to what the major corps tell you is OK. If it isn't, they take the heat.
Re:Missing package (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And its not even the 1st... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This release begs the question... (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing I'm happy about is that most of these sites are migrating to using streaming video using a Flash-based player like YouTube does so they just use normal HTTP for the transfer mechanism and are simple to get working through a firewall. In the bad old days I had to worry about shit like RealVideo proxies, Quicktime, RTSP, PNA, Windows MMS, etc. While they're probably more efficient, they require your firewall to have a specialized application proxy and it's just an extra pain in the ass if they break the protocol in a new version. The sites that aren't using a Flash player are just streaming Quicktime/Windows Media over HTTP as well so it has the same effect. The main pain-in-the-ass site I experience is with CNN and FoxNews.
Re:And its not even the 1st... (Score:5, Informative)
(that would have been fun, don't you think so
more important.
Re:Q: can I run it on my machine? (Score:3, Informative)
Any PowerPC based computer should run Debian fine.
Re:Too late? (Score:3, Informative)
And ''unstable'' is even more current than testing, and not unstable in the common sense of the word. The biggest annoyance I have with unstable is that my periodic upgrades are bigger than with testing, but I have a fast network connection, so I don't care that much. I've been using unstable as my primary work/play platform for about four years now, and the only time it's given me trouble was during a bit of XFree86 upgrade weirdness that lasted about a day.
Even better, if you're using unstable, it's really easy to pull packages in from experimental, which pretty much always has the latest and greatest releases of everything, so you almost never have to roll your own package or install from source.
In my experience, I have far less trouble running unstable than I do testing. The downside to unstable is that there is no security team addressing security fixes, but that's rarely an issue for long, since unstable tends to pick up upstream versions very frequently.
Re:Multipath broken in debian etch! (Score:2, Informative)