Debian's Testing Branch Nears Completion 216
DeviceGuru writes "With Debian Lenny (aka 'testing') poised to displace Etch as the popular Linux distribution's 'stable' branch possibly as soon as next month, blogger Rick Lehrbaum loaded the latest preview (beta 2) of Lenny's KDE CD image onto an available Thinkpad, and took it for a spin. How's it coming along? After detailing a handful of issues — and offering solutions for each (except Bluetooth support) — he concludes: 'Other than the need for a few hacks and fixes, my main complaint with it is its inclusion of way too many of KDE's rich set of applications, such as games, tools, etc.' From the looks of it, looks like Lenny might be the new 'Debian stable' soon!"
Dependencies are annoying. (Score:1, Insightful)
Like KDE games, I don't want them. If I try to remove them, then this:
# apt-get remove kdegames
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
knetwalk kpat ksokoban kolf blinken krdc krec libdb4.6++ krfb kscd kppp kshisen kmoon kmahjongg ksig
ksim libkscan1 kwifimanager kcharselect kjumpingcube kdeartwork-style kregexpeditor kcoloredit
artsbuilder kdessh kanagram ktip kdeprint kmrml katomic ksvg kscreensaver kruler ktux klettres
kgoldrunner kbackgammon kpoker libkiten1 ksnapshot kpackage kooka kenolaba kblackbox kdebase
atlantikdesigner klatin kfloppy kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kstars ksame konqueror-nsplugins kbruch kpager
libkdegames1 kde-core kcalc keduca klipper kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kweather
kmplot kalzium ksirc ksysguard klickety kpovmodeler ksayit kmouth noatun-plugins kworldclock mpeglib
kdewebdev kmenuedit kicker-applets amor kdict ktouch khexedit ksplash kdeaccessibility kedit kbounce
kvoctrain kdetoys kdenetwork-kfile-plugins kimagemapeditor atlantik kbstate kwordquiz kcron kview ktron
kdenetwork kttsd dcoprss ksysv kwin4 kuser kdeaddons kreversi kdf kspaceduel kig kpf juk noatun kdnssd
klines kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins fifteenapplet kdemultimedia kfaxview lskat libarts1-mpeglib
kaddressbook-plugins kviewshell kgamma kdeutils khelpcenter kdegraphics khangman knetworkconf
kdeartwork-theme-window ksmiletris konq-plugins kbattleship libpoppler-qt2 kiconedit kdeadmin kasteroids
kfouleggs libkdeedu3 kwalletmanager kopete ksnake kdelibs kiten kappfinder eyesapplet kdat kate kdeedu
kdelirc kpercentage superkaramba kjots kfax ksirtet kmines kdvi kget kuickshow kgpg konquest
kate-plugins kolourpaint kmousetool kdeaddons-kfile-plugins libarts1-xine kmag kmilo ktuberling kturtle
kaudiocreator ktimer kmid kteatime kverbos kdepasswd kmix kdeartwork kodo
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
kde kdegames
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 90.1kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Why is it removing KDE?
Same for Pilot:
# apt-get remove kpilot
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
knetwalk kpat ksokoban kolf blinken krdc krec korn libdb4.6++ krfb kscd kppp kshisen kmoon kmahjongg
ksig ksim libkscan1 kwifimanager kcharselect kjumpingcube kdeartwork-style kregexpeditor kcoloredit
artsbuilder kdessh kanagram ktip kdeprint kmrml katomic kleopatra ksvg kscreensaver kruler ktux klettres
kgoldrunner kbackgammon kpoker kdepim-kfile-plugins libkiten1 ksnapshot kpackage kooka kenolaba
kblackbox kdebase atlantikdesigner konsolekalendar klatin kfloppy kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kstars ksame
konqueror-nsplugins kbruch kpager kdepim-kio-plugins libkdegames1 kde-core kcalc keduca klipper kandy
kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kontact kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kweather kmplot kalzium ksirc ksysguard
klickety kpovmodeler ksayit kmouth kalarm noatun-plugins kworldclock mpeglib kdewebdev kmenuedit
kdegames kicker-applets amor kdict ktouch ktnef khexedit ksplash kdeaccessibility kedit kbounce
kvoctrain korganizer kdetoys kdenetwork-kfile-plugins kimagemapeditor atlantik kbstate akregator
kwordquiz kcron kview ktron kdenetwork kttsd dcoprss ksysv kwin4 libksieve0 kuser kdeaddons krever
Does what it says on the box (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so the gentleman downloaded and installed the *KDE* version of Debian Lenny, and then says his main complaint "is its inclusion of way too many of KDE's rich set of applications, such as games, tools, etc."
I can understand that; I once installed Windows XP, but there were far too many Microsoft applications for my liking.
Re:Actually, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
You need to get a (better) girlfriend.
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, that doesn't sound like the future to me. Sounds more like you're living in a solid state version of 1997.
Re:advice for upgrading a server? (Score:3, Insightful)
Every new stable is really well tested, I would expect it to work just fine.
Having said that, if you don't want it to happen then just change your sources.list from 'stable' to your release name.
If you don't have remote KVM I would be tempted to wait a week or so after release before upgrading - just to see if others have hit snags.
More games = more interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one (in addition to welcoming our KDE overlords) think it is great that games are being included by default. More distros need to do this. Every LiveCD should be able to show people that Windows isn't the only OS where you can waste time playing Solitaire. A LiveCD/default install that doesn't have this is probably going to feel like an incomplete system to the average desktop user.
Re:Still not ready (Score:0, Insightful)
Debian isn't ready for the desktop? It's one of the most user friendly distros out there. Installing it is dead simple and once you install kde/gnome/etc. it's no different from anything else.
Good Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone becomes conservative with upgrades after the first time that a box 3000 miles away fails to come back up. Seriously, waiting for a remote reboot after a kernel update is always the longest two minutes of my life.
Even the headless boxes at my apartment wait for me to set aside time to haul out a monitor and keyboard if anything goes wrong during an update. It's better to assume that something will go wrong and be pleasantly surprised and ahead of schedule than to sit staring at pings that have been timing out for the last five minutes (while you think, maybe it's just taking a long time to init... yeah, right!).
And, regardless of what anyone says, a virtual machine test environment doesn't have anywhere near the complications that you get with heavy metal. A successful virtual machine test just means that nothing is assured to go wrong, nothing more.
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good Point (Score:3, Insightful)
than to sit staring at pings that have been timing out for the last five minutes (while you think, maybe it's just taking a long time to init... yeah, right!).
Often when a linux box hasn't been rebooted for a while it can take a long time to reboot because the boot scripts decide that the filesystems need checking. On a big filesystem this can take quite some time.
Re:Still not ready (Score:3, Insightful)
Debian is mainly used as a server OS, it isn't generally held up as a shining example of how Linux is ready for the desktop. It is fairly widely used in production environments, and by developers and other geeky types, and it is considered an excellent stable base for other, more specialised distros. Like, for example, Ubuntu -- which is more than "ready" for the desktop.
Really, Debian is meant to be all things to all people. It makes a wonderful server, and a wonderful desktop. You just have to be willing to configure it as such.
Re:Dependencies are annoying. (Score:2, Insightful)
Run e.g. 'apt-cache show kde' and read the fine description. The same stuff is also available inside aptitude, or at http://packages.debian.org/anypackagename
Re:This article is full of errors and bad advice (Score:3, Insightful)
The Debian browser (or this one, you of course have a choice) is iceweasel. That's its name. The Debian team decided that the branding of Firefox is too restrictive to meet Debian's licence for free software. The solution, iceweasel, is good enough, and that's why no one has added firefox to the non-free repository.
The lazy parties are those few websites that do poor browser sniffing. There are only a few sites that think iceweasel is not the same as firefox. The only one that bothers me is the wsj.com. So most websites either don't care about which browser you use, or correctly treat iceweasel and firefox the same. Somehow, a handful avoid the practices of the many, and make a mistake.
Re:Good Point (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a tip: if you have a very large filesystem that is NOT your root filesystem, e.g. something only used for SMB or NFS sharing, kill the processes that need to access it, unmount it, and run fsck before you reboot the box. Those services will be offline for awhile, but they would have been anyway while fsck was running at boot time. This way, you get to see the progress (and any errors that come up), and the rest of the box doesn't have to remain offline for an hour or two after reboot.
It's not a bad idea to do this at regular intervals anyway. An hour of planned downtime after business hours every three months is significantly less annoying than waiting for fsck to scan your file server after an unplanned reboot (UPS failure, hardware replacement, etc.).