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Debian

Debian 2.2r4 (Potato) Released 143

Posted by Hemos from the not-potatoe dept.
codazzo writes "Debian 2.2r4 is out. As their website states, "The fourth revision of Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (codename `potato') has been released. This point release, revision 2.2r4, mostly includes security updates, along with a few corrections of serious bugs in the stable distribution." " You can see the press release - or get it from the FTP list.
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Debian 2.2r4 (Potato) Released More

Debian 2.2r4 (Potato) Released

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  • Where's 3.0 (Score:2, Informative)

    by The 14 year old ( 208473 )
    3.0 (Woody) was frozen around July, and they said it would be ready around November. I guess that was just wishful thinking.
    • 3.0 (Woody) was frozen around July

      Ouch, a frozen woody...and even in July...must be very cold where you are.

      Seeing as Debian comes on a dvd, do you suppose someone is trying to dremel a disk down and install it on a game cube?

      • Re:Ouch (Score:1, Troll)

        by Glytch ( 4881 )
        I don't know about Linux, but I'll bet those NetBSD nuts are eager to try to make a Gamecube port. :)

    • Where's the stable kernel? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kenneth Stephen ( 1950 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @09:31AM (#2521978) Journal

      The last I heard, Debian was waiting for a stable kernel to appear. And please dont tell me that the 2.4 kernels were announced a while back by Linus - I have any number of machines (of varying hardware) on which 2.2 kernels run fine but the 2.4 kernels are unstable. Granted, 2.4.13 is billed as the stable kernel we've all been waiting for. However, given that it made its appearance only last week, I think we should excercise some patience. It will take a while to test all the OS packages with the new kernel.

      • It's not just the kernel. To get a reasonably up to date debian based desktop environment you have no other option then to install unstable packages of software that has had stable releases for over a year in some cases.

        And yes unstable actually means unstable. I've played around with debian on several occasions. The apt-get system is brilliant. Unfortunately its usefulness is totally countered by the complete lack of stable packages to install. I've actually managed to get KDE 2.0 up and running once. I just pointed the sources file to some vague http site of some guy who had bothered to create some packages. On several other occasions though I was less fortunate with installing e.g. xfree 4.0, gnome and several other mainstream stuff. I'm sure it is possible to fix if you know what you are doing but the whole point of apt-get is that it is supposed to take care of that instead.
        • I'm sure it is possible to fix if you know what you are doing but the whole point of apt-get is that it is supposed to take care of that instead.

          Actually, it's not supposed to take care of *everything* for you -- it just takes care of most dependency issues, so you can concentrate on which software you want to run. You still have to understand what the software you're installing is going to do.

          If there's a major problem with an often-used package (or set of packages such as KDE, Gnome, etc...) there's generally some press about it over on Debianplanet - as well as on the mailing list. If you're going to run "unstable", then you generally should check those places before you do any major installing, just to be safe.

          As far as installing KDE2 -- Here's my install process (which has worked with "unstable" every time I've tried) from a 'clean' system:
          • Install base system (stable)
          • Upgrade base system (stable)
          • Check Debianplanet for any caveats with the current packages
          • Change /etc/apt/sources.list to point at unstable
          • dist-upgrade to unstable (gives the "unstable" base system)
          • install/configure xfree86 (should give you Xfree4.xx at this point)
          • install kde
          • install kdebase-crypto (to give konq SSL support)

          Thusfar, that's worked for me on quite a few new boxes -- I don't play around with Gnome too often, so I can't help out there.

          I guess the real bottom line is that just because an "easy-to-use" tool exists, doesn't mean that you can just be lazy about the stuff you install - you still have to keep up on what's broken at any given point. That's the drawback of "unstable" - if you want everything to "just work", then "stable" is the answer, although you'll get a lot of outdated stuff, it's been tested quite extensively. If you want newer stuff, but don't want the bleeding edge, then "testing" is where you should be, although I've found it tended to break a lot more than "unstable" when I tried it (this was a while back - maybe things have changed since then). "unstable" is for us bleeding edge freaks who want to run the latest versions of everything -- at any given time something could bust - but it's generally fixed within a day or so.
          • Well on the few occasions I tried this, it barfed out halfway with some unresolved dependencies. This kind of stuff shouldn't happen with stable packages but that's just the thing you have to use unstable packages or even testing packages and you may be confronted with this kind of stuff.

            I want software that is known to be in a working state for over a year to install without much trouble. Apt-get can technically deliver this experience provided that there are stable packages. And there are none available.
        • First: debian unstable has KDE 2.2 right now. It works. (haven't had it do anything funny on me yet anyway)

          Secondly: sid breaks now and then. Known fact. But that really isn't the only option.
          You have:

          stable -> potato
          testing -> woody
          unstable -> sid

          Woody is the 'best of both worlds' choice: reasonable recent stuff without major instabilities or installation issues.

          Finally: If you run into trouble, fire up your irc client and go to irc.debian.org (irc.openprojects.net) channel #debian. If the people in that channel can't help I'd be very surprised. Some of them plain ROCK.
          Besides, most big issues get posted there pretty much instantly, either in the subject or by means of the bot called 'apt'. That one is also a big repository of good / fun / interesting / useless factoids and oddball enhancements.

          Floris
          • Using debian in a production environment requires that you use something stable. So consequently since there is no stable debian desktop environment with reasonably modern packages, debian is no option for somebody who wants to use a linux desktop in a production environment.

            I tried installing a debian desktop a few weeks ago (I've maintained a debian server in the past so I'm not exactly ignorant). I installed the potato base system, did an upgrade, pointed the sources file to testing, did a dist-upgrade and then launched tasksel and just selected the X environment (nothing else). Then hit enter and tada some conflict and it didn't install. So far I had done nothing special so you can't blame me for doing anything wrong.

            Surely it is possible to fix it. An option would be to skip potato entirely and go with the woody boot floppies or something but I didn't bother (too lazy, I know). If I had really wanted I would have probably gotten it in a working condition at some point. The point however is that apt-get rarely works as advertised due to the fact that the packages are untested and immature. For stable it is great, maintaining a potato server is a piece of cake (been there done that).

            However on each of the occasions I tried testing or even unstable I ran into stuff that was non trivial to fix. I keep reading about how painless a dist-upgrade to woody is but I have so far been unable to verify this claim on any of my systems. Each time I try I run into issues with some of the packages which either prevent me from completing the dist-upgrade or leave me with an unusable system.

            I'm sure support is great on the mailinglists. But unless you have a serious amount of time to waste, mailing lists are no option if you just want to get a system running. Just scanning through archives for your particular problem easily takes up hours. And waiting for a sensible reply generally also takes some time (even though some people are really quick in replying).

            The whole point of using debian is apt-get as long as it works it is great as soon as it doesn't work you are on your own.
            • Debian is no option for somebody who wants to use a linux desktop in a production environment.

              I actually believe the exact opposite. Debian is the best environment for workstations. The default listings in /etc/apt/sources.list are just defaults. Because of this, you can change them to point to an internal server. Then an admin updates packages on the single internal server (once tested) and they get pushed out to the workstations. Individual workstations can be rolled back if need be.

              Note that I am talking more along the lines of where there are 100+ workstations or where security is a real concern.
              • So basically that requires an administrator that composes his own distribution (I'd like the debian people to do that sort of thing). In the real world administrators don't have time for that sort of hobbyism. They will just deploy a red hat/suse/whatever image that may or may not be tweaked a bit prior to distribution. Doing so they deploy reasonably well tested software that contains recent, stable versions of all packages.

                Debian would be ideal for workstation environments if they'd bother to keep their distribution up to date. What's currently in testing will be obsolete by the time it is finally marked stable (i.e. irrelevant for most users). I consider this a fatal flaw in the way the debian project works. It just takes too long to get stable, production quality software integrated into debian.

                Testing/unstable is nice to play with if you have the time to kill to fix the inevitable problems that will pop up. Patching together a usable stable system however is way too difficult for any real life usage of debian. Besides, using unstable packages sort of counters any security policy you might have.

                If the debian project wants to matter on the desktop front they will have to address these issues. I'm sure there are a lot of people like me who would like to use a debian desktop but can't be bothered too much with testing or unstable stuff. If a system administrator can compose a stable, up to date desktop environment (which is what you claim), surely the debian project can do a better job and release it to their users.
                • So basically that requires an administrator that composes his own distribution (I'd like the debian people to do that sort of thing). In the real world administrators don't have time for that sort of hobbyism.

                  No, in the real world, this is a job requirement. Real corporate environments don't let users install whatever they want. Admins purchase software and then install it on machines. This is the same model that is used now, only there is more automation to it (I won't say it's completely automated. That is a pipe dream).

                  What do you call it when you have a network of windows machines with all the same versions of Internet Explorer, all the same versions of Office, all the same ftp software, all the same database apps: it's a windows distribution, maintained by the administrator. I fail to see the difference, and I certainly fail to see how you think that having the computers sync to an outside source is appropriate. Yes, the admin will have to keep on top of the security patches that are put out, just like a windows admin needs to put service packs in place. Yes, the admin will have to download the new versions of the software used on the network, just like a windows admin. These procedures are in place for security, however, not because "it's the way it is".
                  • "Real corporate environments don't let users install whatever they want. Admins purchase software and then install it on machines."

                    Yes, they don' go and assemble their own linux distributions from a zillion apt sources. Instead they'll get something that is known to work reliably (i.e. definately not debian unstable)
          • actually, if you visit #debian make sure you read the little description thing for that channel, the gurus there can be quite nasty if you're asking the same question that the last 40 people asked. But other than that yes they are quite helpful.

      • IIRC, there was a message on debian-devel stating that the default kernel for Woody would be 2.2.

        There are already 2.4 kernels available in the archives, and (of course) the official release will include them as well.

    • Uhh, no it wasn't. The base system was frozen, not the entire release. Have you been reading slashdot again?

    • Re:Where's 3.0 (Score:5, Informative)

      by HoserHead ( 599 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @09:42AM (#2522009)
      Firstly, Debian 3.0 will be released when it's ready - which means sometime in 2002.

      Woody wasn't frozen in July, Policy was. The base base system was frozen later, in August. Everything else remains unfrozen, though those packages in 'standard' and many tasks (such as GNOME and KDE) should be on the block to be frozen pretty soon.

      We're going about it in a different way this time; different parts of Debian are being frozen at different times. Because base and standard packages are more important than Priority: extra packages, they're being frozen first so all bugs can be shaken out and fixed.

      For more information, search the debian-devel-announce archives [debian.org] or see the most recent mail [debian.org] from one of the release coordinators, Anthony Towns.

      Basically, be patient. The reason that Anthony whipped together Debian 2.2r4 is simply because 3.0 won't be ready for a while.

      • this is debian's fatal problem:

        They -never- have an up to date stable release! I can't even compile half of the software out there today on potato without recompiling all of the necessary libraries as well because its own libraries are so old.

        At that point i might as well just use a do it your self "distro" like slackware or roll my own.

        Make a release, bugs included, and your users will be much happier.
        • Oh for gods sake

          for a workstation for myself I'll take mandrake

          but for a production server doing mail or web or database work?

          give me deb every time,

          it just sits there and works, and when packages have security issues (as they always will) the update is hassle free.

          And you can't say that about anyone else.

          on a fast pipe I can have a debian server up and going inside of an hour. And once its up I can forget about it (aside from #apt-get update #apt-get dist-upgrade once a week).

          Once every six months they get rebooted to take the new kernel, always without any hassle.

          The bosses actually find it reassuring when I tell them the mailserver is coming down for 30 seconds for a reboot to take a new kernel.

          So long as they only hear it once every six months.

          Debian leaves me free to do my real work.

          And putting the 2.4 kernel on is no problem if you really need that functionality.

          If you want "vendor confidence & relationships" instead of understanding your system then debian will never be for you.

          Personally I trust the debian team a lot more than the board of directors of any other distribution.
    • Where do you get your supposedly up-moderation-worthy information from?

      Debian do _not_ specify release dates in advance. It's ready when its ready, and not before. It annoys some, but it ensures the quality of the release.

      Hmmm, actually, here's what Debian say:
      "
      As usual, no specific release goals are being set, nor will a release date be specified in advance. To put it simply, "Debian releases when it is time".
      "

      THL
      • Correct, but there has been lots of speculation that it would be ready sometime around November or December. I'm running sid (unstable) anyway, so i am not very worried about future woody releases.

  • Test woody (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RavenDuck ( 22763 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @09:28AM (#2521968)
    For those who don't need the rock-stable, but somewhat out-of-date reliability of Potato, but want to give Debian a bash, try the testing (AKA woody) release. It's generally pretty stable (although there was a doosie with X not long ago that many people had problems with), and contains a lot of the latest and greatest software. Plus it comes with the quality and apt goodness that Debian is famous for.

    I probably wouldn't run testing on a production server (although I certainly do run Potato on them), but if you're knowledgeable enough to cope with the odd dependency conflist or other problem, it makes a great desktop. Only problem is that security fixes might take a few weeks to make it into testing.

    Of course, if you really want to live on the edge, Sid (unstable) is even more fun. Certainly not for beginners, however (Sid, that is, Debian generally isn't as difficult to install as its reputation suggests).
    • Potato = boring, everything works, but very out of date
      Woody = less boring, everything works, some cool toys
      Sid = not boring, everything broken, all the latest toys, but damn, why the hell package A won't work when C is installed!! ALL i did was dist-upgrade to sid!!
      • I find that Woody is quite stable - not perfect but only slight glitches from time to time.

        It is possible to stay with Woody and only upgrade some packages from Sid. apt-get -t unstable works if you want to upgrade just a few packages. For more substantial upgrade (such as KDE), I find that aptitude works nicely.
    • When I first started using Debian, I installed Potato. All the software was badly out of date, so I moved to Woody. A lot of the software was still out of date. So I moved to Sid. Everything worked. I'm happy.

      Yes, from time to time something bad happens (the broken PAM package of last February of March being the worst incident -- it broke login!), but those usually get fixed up within a day. The more lengthy problems are usually caused by a package being reorganized or renamed such that everything dependent on it has to be rebuilt. This is currently occurring with the Python packages. So I have all the core Python packages marked "hold" until everything I need that's dependent on them is updated. It's a minor annoyance, but no big deal really.

      So by and large, I'm very happy with Sid and I think its breakage problems are severely overrated, mostly by people who are afraid of living on the edge.

    • Debian needs to find another way. Even the packages on woody are starting to get old. Anymore you have no choice but to run unstable and sometimes that can bite you in the ass.

      What is needed is better isolation of the apps so that one bad app does not break the whole system. The idea that the entire system must be sealed off in order to achieve stability is plain wrong.

      Either that or apt.preferences ought to be better implemented so that you can specify that you want to run stable except for apache,php,mysql and postgres for example.

  • (un)accepted packages (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chocky2 ( 99588 ) <c@llum.org> on Monday November 05, 2001 @09:31AM (#2521979)
    There's a list of which packages did/didn't make it in available at http://people.debian.org/~joey/2.2r4/full.html
  • when the woody comes out to replace potato as stable.
  • Or those administering an office of 'sid' machines behind a 56K Modem. ;-)

    Boss, boss, the pain, the pain!

  • Austria [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Australia [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Bulgaria [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Brazil [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Czech Republic [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Germany [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Estonia [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Spain [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Finland [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    France [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Croatia [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Hungary [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Italy [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Japan [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Korea [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Netherlands [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Norway [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    New Zealand [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Poland [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Russia [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Sweden [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Slovenia [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    Turkey [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    United Kingdom [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

    United States [debian.org] (FTP [debian.org])

  • Debian vs. Redhat (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timbck2 ( 233967 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <2kcbmit>> on Monday November 05, 2001 @09:42AM (#2522013) Homepage
    I don't intend to start a "my distribution can beat up your distribution" thread here.... That said, I had a very negative experience with Debian recently. While trying to choose a Linux distro, I narrowed down my choices to Debian and Redhat. I didn't want to run a beta release of anything, but it sounded like Debian (Potato) would suit my needs. So I installed it. The installation itself wasn't painful (though I don't understand why it required two floppies to do a network install), but I soon discovered it didn't support my usb mouse & keyboard or my Matrox G450 dualhead video card. I futzed around for a day or two trying to get XFree 4.1.0 running, without much success. So I bagged it and installed RedHat 7.2 with no hitches whatsoever.

    I'm fairly new to Linux (I prefer BSD, however), but not at all new to Unix on PC hardware -- I've been working with that in various forms for 12 years.

    What's my point? Well, I guess it's that if hardware continues to change so rapidly, then for any given Linux distribution to stay relevant and useable it needs to keep up.

    • Re:Debian vs. Redhat (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      sorry? and BSD autodetects all your hardware?
      i don't get it. if you know how to setup a bsd box, surely digging around a little to get debian working (and it will support all you asked for - i've done it) isn't so much of a chore.
      you trollin'?

      • sorry? and BSD autodetects all your hardware?

        Yes it does. FreeBSD managed to autodetect my ethernet card for me while for Debian first I had ask on a mailing list which module I needed to load.

    • Re:Debian vs. Redhat (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Nelson ( 1275 )
      Again not in the distribution war vein but I've been kicking around the idea of CatB and wondering if Linux distributions are an area where the idea breaks down. The slick, up-to-date ones are all made by companies. Community efforts don't seem to work nearly as fast.


      For the record I do have a machine that runs debian, I'm not bashing it but Mandrake 8.1 compared to the newest debian is night and day and I've had the mandrake for a while now. It's kind of a large scale organizational problem and perhaps it requires a really strong centralized leadership and workforce to create a good linux dist. fast. I don't know, just an idea.

      • Debian seems to aim at making their releases as stable and secure as possible, while commercial companies who need to grab as many customers as possible tend to release stuff which are new and flashy to attract more customers.

        A great thing about linux is that you get choice, and to some people who need stability and scurity having the newest software included is not always the best, since it takes time for the software to be tested and proved to be good enough for production uses.

      • Re:Debian vs. Redhat (Score:4, Insightful)

        by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday November 05, 2001 @10:23AM (#2522121) Journal

        The slick, up-to-date ones are all made by companies. Community efforts don't seem to work nearly as fast.

        For the record I do have a machine that runs debian, I'm not bashing it but Mandrake 8.1 compared to the newest debian is night and day

        Which Debian version are you talking about, Potato, Woody or Sid? In my experience, Debian testing (currently Woody) is just as solid as RH-based distributions, and it's very up-to-date.

        And if you want to stay on the leading edge, I don't think there's anything out there that moves as fast as Debian unstable (currently Sid). And don't let the "unstable" name fool you... it very rarely breaks and as long as you update fairly frequently, it's quite easy to back out the rare upates that do cause problems. I run Sid on three different desktop machines and Potato + selected bits of Woody on my server (if you want to do this, the first thing to upgrade is apt, because the new version of apt allows you to specify which distribution you pull from when you apt-get).

        Debian gives you a range of choices between stability and newness. I think the only thing lacking is one more stage. I'd like to see an additional version between stable and testing that lags testing by maybe a month and gets security patches quickly. Running stable + bits of Woody is a reasonable compromise, though.

        Finally, I always found that my RH-based installs were more out of date than I have been since I switched to Debian. Why? Because upgrading them required a reinstall that I was always reluctant to do. Maybe things have gotten better now, but I started with Mandrake 5.0 and stayed with the Mandrake distros until 7.2 and every upgrade had to be a reinstall/reconfigure.

        With apt-get, debfoster and cruft, I don't expect I'll ever have to reinstall any of my Debian boxes until my HDDs die.

        • Yeah, that's why I'll never install Mandrake again - the install totally blew away all sorts of customizations that I'd done, essentially doing a reinstall except that it didn't recreate /home. KDE menus, etc. - all gone, and since I happened to be at that installfest by chance, I of course hadn't made adequate backups. So that machine only gets hand-upgraded from source or carefully-selected RPMs now, and any future machines will be Debian.

      • Re:Debian vs. Redhat (Score:3, Interesting)

        by blang ( 450736 )
        Debain has 3 release paths, and if you did not get as far as recognizing that, your attention span is too short. At any given time,debian has production, test, and unstable.
        Consider it 3 different distros.
        Potato, the most rock solid distro there ever was, with lightning fast security updates.
        Woody - more solid than most other linux distro's, at least the red hat kind.
        Sid - bleeding edge.

        Redhat on the other hand has no such consept. They'll slap together something and call it release 6,6.1,7.0 or something. But these releases won't even be properly tested. Red Hat out of the box used to be so full of root-exploits. A typical honey pot redhat system only lasted a few minutes before they were 0wn3d.
        That's bad if their market is the linux newbie: a linux newbie is not expected to know how to lock down a system before plugging in the cable modem.

        There is no possible compromise between stability, reliability and bleeding edge. You see the same thing elsewhere. Windows NT was available only for limited hardware choices, while 95 and 98 was supposed to support everything. NT was supposed to be reliable, and 95/98 was expected to crash.

        To achieve good reliability, features have to be introduced with care, and regression testing must be extensive. If you can come up with a method that provides the highest reliability without sacrificing new features, you'll be a very wealthy man one day.

        Debian is doing the right thing by maintaining these branches. In fact, that's the way the best commercial software shops do things, except they allow the end user to see only the stable version.

        The moral: Don't buy any new and fancy HW for a production system. The HW is not production proven yet, and you won't be able to find a stable OS for it.

        If you want the latest and greatest HW and SW, make do with less than optimal reliability, but don't go whining like a baby if something breaks or crashes.
    • Actually Redhat 7.2 quality sometimes is more "beta" than Woody
      • > Actually Redhat 7.2 quality sometimes is more "beta" than Woody.

        I believe you. Had I known that at the time, I would have pursued Woody more vigorously. But as it is now, I really don't want to invest any more time into getting this machine running -- it's been very stable so far (it *was* running Windows 2000!)

        And yes, FreeBSD would have detected my hardware and worked right from the start; it was first choice over Linux, except I have to have Windows 2000 for a few things, so I'm running VMWare.

    • Re:Debian vs. Redhat (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What do you mean "it" didn't support? Are you referring to Debian or your obvious inability to search the Internet for answers, RTFM and edit configuration files?

      If you've been working for UNIX with 12 years I'm suprised you would expect this to be automatically snapped in place.

      Redhat has made a lot of lame decisions -- and you call "Debian" in one of it's forms beta? Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Redhat at 7x switched to cutting edge C libraries and compiler. Totally unproven and breaking compatibility with existing applications (unless, of course, you like the idea of having two separate sets of libraries around to run anything that isn't in the latest RPM.) Oh, speaking of RPM, I assume you like the idea of downloading individual RPMs and running extremely reptitious commands to update your system or install some third party software to do this for you -- when you could have it built into the base installation system?

      Debian does an incredible service to the community with their bandwidth provided for automatic package updating, and to denounce it because you are too lazy to configure X yourself is stupid.
    • Ok I do realize that you're relatively new to linux. However you did say you're not new to UNIX and in fact you use BSD.

      If you even gave it half an effort you would have found your usb support easier to install than you think. All you had to do was look in the kernel config screen and then setup the usb is the misc section I believe.

      Next time it would help if you read the docs
      • Why should I have to build a new kernel just to support my mouse? I don't expect the base install kernel to support for example a newly-released RAID controller, but USB has been on every motherboard shipped at least since 1998!

        And before someone calls me an idiot for running my system on the install kernel, I'm not -- I understand the value of a tuned custom kernel; I just expected the USB support to be there, as USB input devices have been commonplace for a while.
        • Last time I checked (and it's been a while) potato had kernel 2.2 which didn't have sophisticated USB support.

          Like many have said before me: install stable and apt-get dist-upgrade to testing on your desktop boxes. Then you get X 4.1 and kernel 2.4.13 (with USB support).

          APT makes it definitely worth the (IMHO nonexisting) extra effort to use Debian.
        • I'm not calling you an idiot, and don't think that you are. But you don't have to build a new kernel, it's part of the initial kernel setup when you do the initial system setup.

    • I would have had the same problems had I not had the kickass help in #debian at irc.openprojects.org(net?). Debian is very straighforward, it's just the tools that set it apart take learning. Believe me though, as someone who has used Redhat, Debian is far superior, and can beat up any other distrobution out there. In fact, I'm just waiting for an excuse to replace Slackware on my desktop. If only that distro weren't so damn stable and easy to maintain. God damn quality, now I have to do real work! Wait, no, I have /., nevermind. :)

      • I can't agree more with you. For a customer, we have three Debian Potato boxen running Apache, PHP, JBoss/Tomcat and Postgresql. The system is _stable_, no problems what so ever. I also use Debian for my laptop, file server and work station at home.

        On my laptop and workstation I run unstable, but on the servers I run potato. I heartily recommend it. Although you have to invest some time investigating the debian tools, it pays back tenfold, IMHO.

        (Of course, I'm pondering on getting Mac OS X for my new workstation, but that's another story. :-)

    • Re:Debian vs. Redhat (Score:3, Informative)

      by shaka ( 13165 )
      You don't need two floppies to do a network install.
      One is almost always fine if you have fairly standard hardware and chooses the compact disc, which is only one disc and contains many many nic-drivers.
      That said, people who expect a cutting edge dist for desktop use should not run Debian Potato. They shoud run Woody, which poses few problems, or Sid, which probably is the most cutting edge dist out there - I run it and only once have I ran into serious problems; actually only half-serious, it took a couple of hours to fix the problem and I didn't loose data or anything like that.
      Debian rocks. That's all there is to it.
    • If you don't want to run a "beta distribution" then stick with Red Hat's X.2 releases, the .0 and .1 releases are worse than Debian unstable.

  • Great - I updated from 2.2r3 to woody last night . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Crspe ( 307319 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @09:48AM (#2522025)
    There I was, having a problem with ssh that I just couldnt fix, so I thought I would upgrade to woody. The ssh version went from 1.2.x to 2.9.x (or something like that) and the problem disappeared! I mean 1.2 to 2.9 is a big jump - I am not surprised that it made a difference.

    Are there any other linux distros which still have the 2.2 kernel as their current release version? Personally I would prefer to see woody released earlier instead of doing small patches to an out-of-date distro. I mean dont get me wrong, debian is great, I love it as a distro, its just that right now it seems a bit behind the times.

  • Careful (Score:2, Funny)

    by Erasei ( 315737 )
    This is not to be confused with Dan Quail's new release of Debian, which is potatoe.
  • Why would you need FTP, when you have APT ? ;-)
  • I knew that one or two days after I finished downloading the 2.2_rev3 iso (on a 56Kbs dialup!)that rev4 would come out... I'm gonna download the latest KDE now, so expect 3.0 to be released next week...

  • What testing is (Score:3, Informative)

    by PhracturedBlue ( 224393 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @10:56AM (#2522252)
    Anyone who wants to know what testing is for should probably read (from Anthony Towns): this [debian.org]

    The doc is somewhat out of date, and testing hasn't worked nearly as well as they had hoped for it's primary task (shortening the release cycle), but it certainly fills the need of having reasonably stable packages that are still up-to-date.

    Basically the important parts are:
    > * New "testing" distribution
    > This is a (mostly finished) project that will allow us
    > to test out distribution by making it "sludgey" rather
    > than frozen: that is, a new distribution is added between
    > stable and unstable, that is regularly and automatically
    > updated with new packages from unstable when they've
    > had a little testing and now new RC bugs.
    ...
    > * Testing updates to frozen is suboptimal: updates go into
    > incoming, wait there for a while, get added to frozen,
    > we discover they introduce as many release critical bugs
    > as they solve, rinse, repeat. The "wait for a while" part
    > is particularly suboptimal, but without it, it's not really
    > a freeze.

    The current way we do things is basically to build a new package, hope it
    works as advertised, and let people test it. If it doesn't work, we repeat
    as many times as necessary, or eventually just throw the package out.

    A better way to handle this, which I suspect everyone's just spontaneoulsy
    reinvented as the read the above, is to try to keep around a previous
    version of the package that was usable. That way if the new packages don't
    work, we can just keep the old one rather than having to throw it out
    entirely.

    That, essentially, is the point of the "testing" distribution: to contain
    a consistent set of the most recent "believed-to-be-reliable" packages.

    So the main point of this is to create a distribution that, essentially,
    doesn't have any release critical bugs [5] and can be kept that way
    with much less effort on the part of the release manager. That should
    have a pretty profound effect with regard to speeding up the freeze,...

    Read the whole thing, though. And remember that it's a year old, and things have changed a lot since then.
  • The "Fix for insecure regexp" and "Important security bugfix" in the "Miscellaneous Bugfixes" from the press release bother me.

    I am subscribed to the Debian security mailing list, and use the security.debian.org site for apt-get of the latest fixes. However, if the fact that there are fixes that don't appear in any announcements is worrisome!

    Hopefully it isn't as bad as I think it is, and they were just discovered as this release was on the way out the door. Still, a security advisory would be nice on these! :(
  • I plan on installing a Linux distro soon. I'd like to try Debian, however I want XFree86 4.1.0 and a 2.4 kernel. Can I download a Woody distro? Or should I get Potato and upgrade the parts I want?

    • Re:which Debian should I use (Score:4, Informative)

      by mvdwege ( 243851 ) <mvdwege@mail.com> on Monday November 05, 2001 @02:46PM (#2523729) Homepage Journal

      Ok, I hope you get to read this.

      Do remember that upgrading a distribution is non-trivial, even though Debian does its best to make it as painless as possible. If you have the stomach for dealing with some minor niggles the procedure is as follows:

      1. Install the stable distro ('Potato'), but only install enough to get networking going. The base installation with no further package selection should work if you're on a network, otherwise use tasksel to install the dialup utilities.
      2. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to include a line to the testing distro ('Woody') or if you're feeling adventurous, add unstable ('Sid'). Just copy the relevant lines that are already there, changing stable to testing or unstable as you see fit.
      3. Run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. If all goes well, you should end up with your base system upgraded to testing or unstable (I don't know if you can upgrade straight to unstable yet. 3 months ago I had to upgrade to testing first).
      4. Install the rest of your system using either dselect, deity or just plain apt-get install <package-name>.
      5. Have fun!

      If you do run into any problems, check the docs. If they don't help, or if you haven't got a clue which docs to consult, ask the debian-user mailing list, they tend to be friendly folk. If you have more preliminary questions, check my email on my user page.

      Mart
      • Thanks for the advice!

        I don't like Redhat/Mandrake because when I went from RH6.2 to RH7.1, I lost all of my custom configuration setups. I tried building my own Linux box without a distribution...I got everything working but quickly realized that maintaining it is not as fun as building it. I hope Debian's apt package system is what I'm looking for...

        I'm looking forward to trying out Debian.

        -Mike

        • Ok. Glad to be of service. Two more things to look out for if you are going to try Debian though:

          1. Debian does not autodetect your hardware. Make sure you have a list of what's inside your PC. Especially important are the relevant chipsets. Also, if you have gotten X to work on another distro, make a printout of your XF86Config file. You might need it.
          2. If you do try 'unstable' remember that the instability does not refer to the software itself, but usually to the packaging system. 'unstable' is a nice distro, very up to date, but occasionaly things like duplicate files in different packages, or dependency conflicts arise. If you're not afraid of the occasional glitch, I'd recommend 'unstable'. Just be sure to track it by a few days, so you can watch out for the more critical bugs (someone already mentioned a patch in libpam gone awry, disabling login for a full day).
          Mart
  • Since I have decided I like Slashdot a lot better if I don't give a damn about my karma, I'll ask make this stupid observation: the Debian logo looks a lot like a "russet rat tail" in Asheron's Call.

    And that gives me a nostalgia rush--it's been almost 2 years exactly since I started playing AC (and 18 months since I quit and 13 months since I started back, and 6 months since I quit again.) Anybody been to Nanto lately?
    • So are you saying Asheron's Call is like smoking? Its easy to quit, I've done it a dozen times ...

    • Actually the swirl is a heavyly discussed marketing instrument for debian to rule the world, you may look at ... for other market leaders facilidating the swirl to impress buyers.

      Critique [splorp.com]

      I just wonder what exactly will be sold by debian :) Perhaps a good cup of tea to make the waiting more interesting?

      Anyway, I do recommend to read "Debian weekly"

      Debian Weekly [debian.org]

      Greetings
      Bernd
      (Debian Developer, I admit :)

      • So, in Indonesia, the word for 'developer' is, uh, 'developer'? Since I'm reasonably sure there was already a word for 'one who develops', I'm guessing the English word is used to mean specifically a software developer. Must be an interesting bit of etymology there;)

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