ocatal for dec 10, hex 0x0a and bin b1010 would be o12. for my next trick I will use the entire alphabet and number system to show that the base sixty [0-9][A-Z][a-x] representation would end as 'A', but I don't know what the prefix would be.
Please not: The Debian Testing birthday cake will have 10 candles, the Debian Unstable birthday cake will have 9, and the Debian Stable birthday cake will have 7 -- and will only be upgraded to 10 candles when the concept of 10 candle cakes has proved itself sufficiently robust.
Scheduled for sometime around Debian's 15 birthday.
However, the recipe for the cake will be freely available and modifiable for all, as will instructions for the manufacture of the candles, and the party hats.
Debian is one of my favorite distributions, it's earned a well-deserved accolade for 10 years of reasonably stable operation without all the hype of other operating systems. Stable, fast, easy to use once you're comfortable with its way of doing things... can't love it more than that!
I mean, same kind of system is now all over the place, in about every distro. But did Debian "invent" it, or were they first to make the concept work in practice?
Then again, they are also responsible for dselect...
No. Debian's greatest achievement is creating a 100% free ( as in beer and free speech ), community supported GNU/Linux operating system.
It's only after switching to debian, and then trying out some other distros, that I've really come to appreciate just how impressive that community support is. I like having the newest and shiniest versions of most programs, and I'd be willing to pay a small fee for an easy way to keep everything on my system current. But surprisingly, I havn't seen any commercial distros that update the packages I'm interested in as quickly and neatly as happens with Debian Unstable. Given that it's community supported that's darn impressive!
You're obviously not interested in stuff like KDE & Gnome; there have been long periods where Debian lagged behind most other distros in its versions of those packages.
That said, Debian has worked very well for me on the two linux boxes I have at home and apt-get is a wonderful tool.
If you REALLY need bleeding edge, run Unstable. It isn't as unstable as it sounds heh. It is good for a box to play around with. Testing would be more suited for a reliable desktop. Stable is rock solid. Stable is what you run on the server. My dual-PII has been up almost two months now and two months ago was the last extended power outage.
Er, that was on unstable; we went months without the newest versions of KDE, Gnome and XFree. Stable was even further behind, but I agree, it has a reputation for being rock solid stability, if only because it doesn't change much (only for bugfixes & security updates).
I tend to run unstable (albeit without many updates) and it's been reliable with very few crashes (of any kind) on the system.
My dual-PII has been up almost two months now and two months ago was the last extended power outage.
Everyone go take down this guys machine... according to my inbox the last kernel update on the security list was 5 days ago... so it should really have 5 days of uptime like my server does.
There's nothing stopping you from using KDE/Gnome from CVS in Debian, but why would you want to? The reason unstable lags behind the bleeding edge by a teensie weensie bit is that the package maintainers are obsessively testing it. I run unstable on the desktop (with apache in the background) and can tell you, it's pretty damned stable (as compared to ANY windows, yes, even XP which I support at work). You can install anything you want in Debian (there's even rpm support for simple enough packages throug
People complaining that Debian is out of date always bug me just because all they have to do is change a bunch of instances of the word "stable" to "unstable" and then run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. *boom* bestest upgrade process EVAR.
Important note to naive passers by: its not this easy. Take me for example. I had been running testing on a desktop for a few months. I did my usual update;dist-upgrade to get all the latest stuff. Some bozo had committed an incompatible version of lib
I "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" nightly, and run quite a bit from testing/unstable; I have been for quite a long time now.
I do not recall this error; I suspect either it only came up with "dist-upgrade" or it was the result of a package which I do not run.
I agree; I don't know that there is any advantage to using "dist-upgrade". Most of the packages held back by default with "upgrade" are ones that you probably want to keep in stable.
Well, I have to eat some humiliation pie at this point, because there was a misconfiguration that's not entirely not my fault.
There was a copy of gcc 3 sitting in (nfs-mounted)/usr/local. Debian does the path backwards (/usr/local/bin before/usr/bin), and so it was finding an incompatibile libstdc++ and running amok. Don't ask me why this isn't a problem when I run plain woody.
No, the system is F.U.B.A.R. Its pretty hard to rescue a system when 75% of things don't work. Thinking about reading the doc on dpkg? Think again:
shadow:~# man dpkg Reformatting dpkg(8), please wait... /usr/bin/tbl:/usr/local/lib/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.3' not found (required by/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5) groff:/usr/local/lib/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.3' not found (required by/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5) shadow:~#
Did you mean to link to apt-get.org [apt-get.org]? Apt-get.com seems like a completely useless site (all links point to index.html, which it says doesn't exist).
I must admit I don't have the first clue how 'dselect' works
This presupposes that 'dselect' works. It doesn't. It is an entirely unusable monstrous piece of shit. I like Debian too, but only came to like it when someone told me to use 'apt' exclusively for package management.
Personally I've never had major problems with dselect, although it could be better in places. You could try aptitude. It will require a little time to master, but it's very configurable, which is something lacking in dselect.
Seriously. It took me a few iterations of installs to figure out that there are only stable installs, and you can convert apt-sources to start using testing or unstable. Also, I found that the installs were only installing about 50% of the stuff I needed on the box (come on, who *really* runs a box without make). I used dselect to bring the box up to a minimum configuration that would support compiling tarballs and then used apt to trim out the extra crap that dselect brought in. I would probably still be o
apt-get is great, but it's not really the best part. Other distros have similar systems these days. What makes Debian (and apt-get) great is the care and attention that goes in to it. apt-get works because the packages it retrieves work. That's down to the individuals who contribute to Debian.
No, it's not. The greatest thing about Debian is Policy [debian.org]. It demands that packages meet the highest standards of quality. It makes sure that packages work together. It brings us things like the Debian Menu system, where every X-based package register's with EVERY window manager's app menu. It means that packages will upgrade smoothly, and (via the DFSG) that EVERYTHING is freely modifiable and re-distributable. Linkage: about Policy [iwethey.org], why it rocks [iwethey.org], more Debian policies [debian.org].
Shouldn't that be debian reaches 1.0? It sure feels like it sometimes...;)
On a serious note, 10 years and only up to version 3. This is what makes debian so great. The software is tested and retested to death, so that you know the software in stable is truely stable. I love it. I've used heaps of different distros, but I always come back to debian. I left winddoze back in 1999 due to stability and debian delivers it!
What makes Debian greater than SuSe, RedHat and others is mostly the point it is *not* commercial. I mean : we're not even sure RedHat will still be there in a few years but we know that if in 10 years, we perform an:
apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade our system will be updated... This might however be the case with other systems but I doubt that satisfied Debian pioneers actually switched. I guess the Gentoo-ers are mostly former SuSe-ists or RedHat-ters
This might however be the case with other systems but I doubt that satisfied Debian pioneers actually switched.
I guess the Gentoo-ers are mostly former SuSe-ists or RedHat-ters[sic]
Or, believe it or not, Slackware users. I switched a server at work from Slack to Debian because it was a fairly slow machine, and building Slackware packages on it was a pain, and I wanted something easier to maintain. Surprisingly, moving to Debian wasn't that big of a deal, and I couldn't be happier about the system, for a s
I guess the Gentoo-ers are mostly former SuSe-ists or RedHat-ters
Uh, not really. Sure, there are former SuSE, RH, Slackware, LFS etc. etc. users, but large part are ex-Debianists. Case in point: link [debian.org]. You can "meet" some nice arrogant Debianists in that discussion.
Didn't know this, but I actually never tried Gentoo, mostly because all my colleagues had to wait 48hours to get their distro compiled...
Well, you obviously haven't been using Gentoo. You can install it from different stages. Stage 1 means that EVERYTHING is compiled and optimized for you system. Glibc, GCC etc. Stage 3 means that the base system is not compiled/optimized but the apps are. Stage 2 is between those two. And with 1.4 you get GRP (Gentoo Reference Platform) where you can install precompiled
but we know that if in 10 years, we perform an :
apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade
our system will be updated...
Actually, in ten years you will want to perform an apt-get dist-upgrade. This will allow removal of obselete packages to meet the dependency requirements of new packages.
Not exactly, according to this poll [gentoo.org] and that one [gentoo.org].
Personally, I used Slackware, Redhat and Debian almost equal time (2 years each) before I found Gentoo a year ago. With Portage in my hands there is no way I'll return back to any of those three my previous distros. And I am not a zealot - I am a software developer often responsible for deployment, I need a fine-graine package management tool (something like Portage) for living, not just for personal installation.
I know I switched a machine over to gentoo. Within two months I am back to debian and could not be happier. Gentoo is all hype. I have a machine that has run debian since 1996, and I have NEVER had an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade fail. NOT ONCE. Gentoo was a major pain in the ass, compile for an hour only to find out that the app doesn't work, then google, then find out that one other person somewhere says the app can't compile with "-Os" or some other optimization your using, rince change repeat. in
Debian is a well though out and stable distribution. People might complain that the packages are old and yes that might be true but they work. IF you want a machine to keep running then its great. Apt-get package and sit back. Also for security its great for admins. apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and thats it. No dependancy problems. Even the unstable is pretty stable
Until you go and upgrade proftpd and it kindly forgets to mention that the new version uses a new config format, so you're left with no ftpd until someone notices.
You shouldn't use proftpd anyway -- it's insecure. Use publicfile, or if you really need upload, pureftpd.
Or is that just the length of time since the last stable release?
The last stable release was on July 19, 2002 (Woody). The one before that was released on August 14th, 2000 (Potato). Slink was released in March 1999. Hamm on July 24, 1998. Bo on June 2, 1997. Rex in December 1996. Buzz in June 1996.
So as you can see, Debian releases are actually fairly regular, except for the little hiccup with potato.
Hey, wait, saturday the 16th... The very same day Blaster is expected to lead a DDoS attack against MS update servers. Sweet gift for Debian's birthday.
After "Woody" comes "Puberty". After that, I suggest "A shave and a real job".;-)
Just kidding. Though I have never used Debian myself (I went from Mandrake to Red Hat and now Gentoo), I can acknowledge and recognize the amount of work their community has done/is doing and the innovations which have spilled over into other distros. Good job!
This isn't meant as flamebait, can anyone list an objective list of pros and cons between debian and gentoo? So far debian seems to be the powerhouse but the more I read of gentoo and the more people I talk to that use it, it seems like a better way to do linux.
Parent is 100% right. I've used both, although I now run Debian.
Debian is - by design - meticulously assembled for reliable use/administration. Debian just works.
Gentoo is - by design - for the builder who wants to tweak their system for every drop of performance or every neat feature.
Which you use depends on your wants and needs. If you are someone who enjoys squeezing a little more out of your system, if you want to develop kernel code, if you are running a production server that needs a lot of T
You've nailed it on the head, much better than I did. Exactly right.
I have a friend who's running gentoo on his laptop because, with debian and redhat, things like mozilla, natulus, etc were very slow. With the compiler optimizations in gentoo, he's got a very much improved system, plus a later version of gnome (2.2.1).
The laptop is a 700 mhz, but it's 500 mhz when not plugged in (speed step), so it's pretty important to have, for him, more optimization. This, you accomplish with gentoo by compiling fo
One thing I've noticed that SuSE seems to do better than any other distro is hardware detection (and initial setup for that matter.)
With debian, I've got a k6-2 450 box I was trying to setup and kept getting EIP errors when I tried using their 2.4 kernel that's on the downloadable ISO.
And then I'm not sure how to setup my network card because SuSE always did it for me and made me lazy.
How is Gentoo compared to Debian for initial setup and hardware detection?
See, the thing here is gentoo will detect everything when you use the bootable CD. Network, hard drives, etc. But, then, you have to do the install. It's not graphical. It's actually kind of hard.
On the other hand, have you seen the install documentation? It's about 35 pages. So, you have to do everything yourself, but it walks you through it step by step, with boxes that show you *exactly* what to type. You have to partition your hard drive manually, then use mke2fs to create the file system (or mk
There are several man pages (i.e. pod2man, libnetcfg, etc) included in the perl debian package that aren't included in the perl-doc package, so I don't think it's correct to say that perl-doc is the "complete documentation" of perl.
The complete documentation of perl is $PERL/pod/*.pod.
I still consider myself somewhat of a linux newbie, but I've learned as much as I need to manage a few small servers.
My day job is selling medical equipment on the internet but I'm also the "computer guy" for the company I work at. Which btw has the added benefit of some extra job security, because no one else knows how to fix the network when it breaks.
I started tinkering with RedHat and Mandrake about 3 years ago, and have recently installed Debian on a little backup server we have here at work. What
Those of you who had to scroll through all that blather just to partition a hard drive in Debian should appreciate this:
"Before humans had a way of keeping time, no one paid much attention to the anniversary of important events, such as birthdays. Only when ancient peoples began taking notice of the moon's cycles, did they pay attention to the changing seasons and the pattern that repeated itself over and over. Eventually, the first calendars were formulated in order to mark time changes and other specia
Bay Area Debian [debian.net] is having a shotgun meeting in Berkeley tonight. I'll be bringing Debian-swirl-iced sugar cookies, and hopefully some folks from the Sacramento area.;^)
I don't understand why it takes Debian so long to release!
As I've understood it (and I'm probably misinformed) Debian needs all packages in a release to be stable before issuing a new stable release. With thousands of packages that's a lot of work.
Some people advocate splitting the distro into a more modular approach were groups of packages (like file server packages, wes server packages, desktop packages) could be deemed stable and released independently.
The thing with Debian is that it doesn't *have* the pressing need to release, because of apt, which allows you to update any packages to new versions on a regular basis.
Some people advocate splitting the distro into a more modular approach were groups of packages (like file server packages, wes server packages, desktop packages) could be deemed stable and released independently.
Yep, and some advocate that there should only be a stable "core" debian, with the rest having the life of their own. I don't see why everyone else must wait for some my3117widget to stabilize. It should be possible to "lock down" the core, and ensure that most packages could be upgraded without di
One thing I forgot - don't demand that all archs are released at the same time. Oddball archs can get by with fewer releases, focus on Intel/AMD/IBM technology and release versions for other archs when they are ready. Let the people who care about them take their time to ensure that everything works ok. Debian doesn't need to be the NetBSD of linux distros, however appealing that seems on paper...
Obviously debian doesn't "need" to be popular, being noncommercial and all. But it would be shame to see such a
I don't see why everyone else must wait for some my3117widget to stabilize.
Well, that's how it works already. If packages aren't ready during the hard freeze, they WILL be dropped from Testing, and thus not hold up (or make it into) the release.
As I've understood it (and I'm probably misinformed) Debian needs all packages in a release to be stable before issuing a new stable release. With thousands of packages that's a lot of work.
As far as I know, a package must also properly compile and work on all the supported architechtures. There are currently 11 supported architechtures in the latest stable release. I wouldn't be surprised if the support for so many platforms would cause its own share of delays.
As I've understood it (and I'm probably misinformed) Debian needs all packages in a release to be stable before issuing a new stable release. With thousands of packages that's a lot of work.
No, it isn't that bad:) Only the core system needs to be stable (stable means "no release critical bugs" here). If other packages have serieus bugs, they just get dropped from the release. So all those packages don't cause serieus delays.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:47AM (#6684345)
Really, I don't understand why people always complain about Debian not releasing often. Why is it so important to install a new cd for you?
Just move to testing or unstable, run dselect everyday and you will see new packages are added and updated every day.
I think people got used to upgrade distro to new releases often with Red Hat, Mandrake,... But why is it that important? With Debian, you can have a system very up to date (testing or unstable) without needing to install a new distro version every month. What's the problem with the Debian way of doing things?
Because a) some people don't have broadband so they want a CD of the software they are actually going to run b) only stable releases have timely security updates c) installing security updates on unstable can require downloading 100s of MB due to pulling in other updated packages. d) stable won't even install on some newer hardware without guru knowledge e) unstable is sometimes buggy and can make a system unbootable, or make the user unable to log in. f) some people want to run reasonably recent software but without it changing every day. g) Unstable can be horribly broken during things like a gcc 3 transition
AFAIK, both stable and unstable get rather quick security updates. Testing
has a delay for security updates from unstable, thus, if you run testing,
subscribe to the debian-security mailing list.
If you do want the latest and greatest though, try Mandrake, they seem to
have a nice distribution, especially for the desktop.
The reason why I stick with debian (debian stable on both of my machines,
currently) is that its easy to update, easy to upgrade, and has a wide
selection of packages, often with sev
Really, I don't understand why people always complain about Debian not releasing often. Why is it so important to install a new cd for you?
Just move to testing or unstable, run dselect everyday and you will see new packages are added and updated every day.
I agree. I use all three; unstable for my workstation (so I can see all the newest loot), testing for most of my servers, and stable for my ultra-paranoid box. I keep a 40GB mirror of the distro which rsync's updates everyday so I can install new machi
Though I don't have a problem with people using Open Source to make money, the commercial aspects of other distros are disquieting to me - in the sense that I believe they will result in restrictions somewhere down the line
A good example is the Smoothwall project. The leader of the project wanted to make more money, so now there's two versions, an Open Source version and a version with Closed Source add-ons.
Of course, some people didn't like this, so the code forked into the IPCop project. Same will pr
Debian doesn't go for the "every half year" release..
However, it's just the last release (Woody) that took so long... That was for a number of reasons: - XFree had to be ported to 11 archs (up from 6), 3 or 4 of which X hadn't been ported to before. - 'Testing' was created, as to have a smoother transition beween 'unstable' and 'stable'. - KDE (2.2) was added to main, a first for a stable debian release. That produced some quirks of it's own.
However, with the upcoming release (sarge, now testing) there were 2 main hurdles: - The GCC 3.2 migration (ABI change) (KDE brakeage hell was spared by waiting with 3.x) - GTK(+) 2.x -> Gnome 2.x There is however 1 more hurdle: The new installer, which is coming along. Knoppix also made clear that 'automagic' was posible with debian.
Title is wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Required joke.. (Score:2)
=)
Re:Title is wrong (Score:2)
Re:Title is wrong (Score:2)
Maybe a Chinese character or something like that?
I'm older than you (Score:5, Funny)
And don't try bringing your Parents into it, my Dad is bigger than your Dad, because Debian could be your Dad anyway !
Re:I'm older than you (Score:2, Funny)
and anyway, i'm old enough to be debian's graddad, you insensitive...
(not allowing myself to use too many
Re:I'm older than you (Score:2)
Re:I'm older than you (Score:2)
HEH-Re:I'm older than you (Score:2)
Debian Design (Score:5, Funny)
Scheduled for sometime around Debian's 15 birthday.
However, the recipe for the cake will be freely available and modifiable for all, as will instructions for the manufacture of the candles, and the party hats.
Re:Debian Design (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Debian Design (Score:5, Funny)
Though it does work in a way. I simply figured you meant that unstable had more candles than testing, but only nine were currently working.
Re:Debian Design (Score:2)
Happy Birthday! (Score:3, Informative)
Chris
I pimp this product [studentplatinum.com]
Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, same kind of system is now all over the place, in about every distro.
But did Debian "invent" it, or were they first to make the concept work in practice?
Then again, they are also responsible for dselect...
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's only after switching to debian, and then trying out some other distros, that I've really come to appreciate just how impressive that community support is. I like having the newest and shiniest versions of most programs, and I'd be willing to pay a small fee for an easy way to keep everything on my system current. But surprisingly, I havn't seen any commercial distros that update the packages I'm interested in as quickly and neatly as happens with Debian Unstable. Given that it's community supported that's darn impressive!
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:3, Flamebait)
That said, Debian has worked very well for me on the two linux boxes I have at home and apt-get is a wonderful tool.
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
I tend to run unstable (albeit without many updates) and it's been reliable with very few crashes (of any kind) on the system.
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Everyone go take down this guys machine... according to my inbox the last kernel update on the security list was 5 days ago... so it should really have 5 days of uptime like my server does.
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:3, Informative)
Important note to naive passers by: its not this easy. Take me for example. I had been running testing on a desktop for a few months. I did my usual update;dist-upgrade to get all the latest stuff. Some bozo had committed an incompatible version of lib
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
I "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" nightly, and run quite a bit from testing/unstable; I have been for quite a long time now.
I do not recall this error; I suspect either it only came up with "dist-upgrade" or it was the result of a package which I do not run.
I agree; I don't know that there is any advantage to using "dist-upgrade". Most of the packages held back by default with "upgrade" are ones that you probably want to keep in stable.
Be sure to run "apt-get" with the
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
There was a copy of gcc 3 sitting in (nfs-mounted)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Interesting)
From a user's point of view, Debian's greatest achievement is having an "unstable" branch that is as stable as some other dist's releases.
From a CS student's point of view, Debian's great achievement may be the package creation and management tools.
For socioligists, it may be the democratic nature [debian.org] of the project.
From a project managers point of view, it may be the fine example of how to establish a development policy [debian.org].
For me, it's simply that I get to use an OS that does not suck.
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Perhaps 'unstable' should be renamed 'standard', and 'stable' should be renamed 'conservative'.
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Just trying to share the nightmare.
dselect (Score:3, Funny)
Rich.
Re:dselect (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:dselect (Score:3, Informative)
Re:dselect (Score:3, Informative)
Re:dselect (Score:2)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2, Insightful)
Docs somewhere other than
Config files somewhere other than
The bug tracking system hassles the author to fix the policy violation.
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Neither.
(FreeBSD's ports came before Debian's apt, didn't it? Perhaps I'm wrong)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
You go to the directory of the program you want to install, and type "make install".
The source is downloaded (along with any dependancies), compiled and installed. There are other make targets for uninstallation and other tasks.
It just works, and it's really nice.
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:2)
Turning Version 1.0? (Score:2)
On a serious note, 10 years and only up to version 3. This is what makes debian so great. The software is tested and retested to death, so that you know the software in stable is truely stable. I love it. I've used heaps of different distros, but I always come back to debian. I left winddoze back in 1999 due to stability and debian delivers it!
Debian superiority (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean : we're not even sure RedHat will still be there in a few years but we know that if in 10 years, we perform an
apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade
our system will be updated...
This might however be the case with other systems but I doubt that satisfied Debian pioneers actually switched.
I guess the Gentoo-ers are mostly former SuSe-ists or RedHat-ters
Re:Debian superiority (Score:2)
Or, believe it or not, Slackware users. I switched a server at work from Slack to Debian because it was a fairly slow machine, and building Slackware packages on it was a pain, and I wanted something easier to maintain. Surprisingly, moving to Debian wasn't that big of a deal, and I couldn't be happier about the system, for a s
Re:Debian superiority (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, not really. Sure, there are former SuSE, RH, Slackware, LFS etc. etc. users, but large part are ex-Debianists. Case in point: link [debian.org]. You can "meet" some nice arrogant Debianists in that discussion.
Re:Debian superiority (Score:3, Informative)
Well, you obviously haven't been using Gentoo. You can install it from different stages. Stage 1 means that EVERYTHING is compiled and optimized for you system. Glibc, GCC etc. Stage 3 means that the base system is not compiled/optimized but the apps are. Stage 2 is between those two. And with 1.4 you get GRP (Gentoo Reference Platform) where you can install precompiled
Re:Debian superiority (Score:2)
but we know that if in 10 years, we perform an :
apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade
our system will be updated...
Actually, in ten years you will want to perform an apt-get dist-upgrade. This will allow removal of obselete packages to meet the dependency requirements of new packages.
Re:Debian superiority (Score:2)
Personally, I used Slackware, Redhat and Debian almost equal time (2 years each) before I found Gentoo a year ago. With Portage in my hands there is no way I'll return back to any of those three my previous distros. And I am not a zealot - I am a software developer often responsible for deployment, I need a fine-graine package management tool (something like Portage) for living, not just for personal installation.
Re:Debian superiority (Score:2)
An ex Debian user writes (Score:2)
Portage isn't hugely better than apt, but it's enough of an improvement to be worth switching, and I found Gentoo's installation easier.
I'd certainly be using Debian if Gentoo didn't exist, though.
Well done on Debian (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope it goes on for many more years
Rus
Re:Well done on Debian (Score:4, Insightful)
Strange how people automatically trust debian's updates, but would trust windows auto-update with a barge pole.
Re:Well done on Debian (Score:3, Interesting)
Just my personal expierence
Rus
Re:Well done on Debian (Score:2)
Strange how people automatically trust debian's updates, but would trust windows auto-update with a barge pole.
Debian updates are actually thoroughly tested, unless you're using unstable, in which case you're the one doing the testing.
Re:Well done on Debian (Score:2)
You shouldn't use proftpd anyway -- it's insecure. Use publicfile, or if you really need upload, pureftpd.
Hurd? (Score:2)
Oh Wait,
Dselect (Score:4, Funny)
IRC Party Central (Score:4, Informative)
10 years since.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:10 years since.... (Score:2)
but seriously folks, I'm here all week.
Re:10 years since.... (Score:2)
The last stable release was on July 19, 2002 (Woody).
The one before that was released on August 14th, 2000 (Potato).
Slink was released in March 1999.
Hamm on July 24, 1998.
Bo on June 2, 1997.
Rex in December 1996.
Buzz in June 1996.
So as you can see, Debian releases are actually fairly regular, except for the little hiccup with potato.
What a nice coincidence... (Score:2, Interesting)
Next release? (Score:3, Funny)
Just kidding. Though I have never used Debian myself (I went from Mandrake to Red Hat and now Gentoo), I can acknowledge and recognize the amount of work their community has done/is doing and the innovations which have spilled over into other distros. Good job!
If you want to help out with the next release (Score:3, Informative)
Whoa.... (Score:3, Funny)
Cake? Candles? Ooops.
Nevermind.
Soko
(P.S. - Thanks Debian team for leading the way. And for supporting my Alpha when others won't.)
Can anyone list pros of debian vs gentoo (Score:2)
Any thoughts?
Re:Can anyone list pros of debian vs gentoo (Score:2)
Pros for debian: There's a package for everything, and nothing you install from the stable tree will break your machine. Auto-dep resolution.
Cons for debian (and most everything else): the packages are compiled with out optimization for specific platforms.
Pros for gentoo: 100% optimized, compiled system, from the ground up. Easy to use. Good documentation.
Cons for gentoo: Not as easy as some others.
Bascially, I break it down like this: 3 things are the "
Re:Can anyone list pros of debian vs gentoo (Score:2)
Parent is 100% right. I've used both, although I now run Debian.
Debian is - by design - meticulously assembled for reliable use/administration. Debian just works.
Gentoo is - by design - for the builder who wants to tweak their system for every drop of performance or every neat feature.
Which you use depends on your wants and needs. If you are someone who enjoys squeezing a little more out of your system, if you want to develop kernel code, if you are running a production server that needs a lot of T
Re:Can anyone list pros of debian vs gentoo (Score:2)
I have a friend who's running gentoo on his laptop because, with debian and redhat, things like mozilla, natulus, etc were very slow. With the compiler optimizations in gentoo, he's got a very much improved system, plus a later version of gnome (2.2.1).
The laptop is a 700 mhz, but it's 500 mhz when not plugged in (speed step), so it's pretty important to have, for him, more optimization. This, you accomplish with gentoo by compiling fo
What about hardware detection? (Score:2)
With debian, I've got a k6-2 450 box I was trying to setup and kept getting EIP errors when I tried using their 2.4 kernel that's on the downloadable ISO.
And then I'm not sure how to setup my network card because SuSE always did it for me and made me lazy.
How is Gentoo compared to Debian for initial setup and hardware detection?
Your points were very useful, I think they've
Re:What about hardware detection? (Score:2)
On the other hand, have you seen the install documentation? It's about 35 pages. So, you have to do everything yourself, but it walks you through it step by step, with boxes that show you *exactly* what to type. You have to partition your hard drive manually, then use mke2fs to create the file system (or mk
Hooray (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Hooray (Score:2)
Re:Hooray (Score:2)
Re:Hooray (Score:2)
(in my defense, I don't know what perlreftut is, though I'm assuming it's related to perl in some way)
Re:Hooray (Score:2)
That is false. Try again.
Re:Hooray (Score:2)
The complete documentation of perl is $PERL/pod/*.pod.
Re:Hooray (Score:2)
Debian is great (Score:2, Interesting)
My day job is selling medical equipment on the internet but I'm also the "computer guy" for the company I work at. Which btw has the added benefit of some extra job security, because no one else knows how to fix the network when it breaks.
I started tinkering with RedHat and Mandrake about 3 years ago, and have recently installed Debian on a little backup server we have here at work. What
Re:Debian is great (Score:2)
All of a sudden Red Hat is a pleasure to administer, even with Rawhide packages.
You could use Red Hat's up2date, even with an arbitrary command line, but I like apt.
It's a trap!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Birthday (Score:2)
"Before humans had a way of keeping time, no one paid much attention to the anniversary of important events, such as birthdays. Only when ancient peoples began taking notice of the moon's cycles, did they pay attention to the changing seasons and the pattern that repeated itself over and over. Eventually, the first calendars were formulated in order to mark time changes and other specia
BAD meeting in Berkeley tonight! (Score:2)
-bill!
Re:New to Debian (Score:4, Informative)
As I've understood it (and I'm probably misinformed) Debian needs all packages in a release to be stable before issuing a new stable release. With thousands of packages that's a lot of work.
Some people advocate splitting the distro into a more modular approach were groups of packages (like file server packages, wes server packages, desktop packages) could be deemed stable and released independently.
Again, I could be misinformed.
Re:New to Debian (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New to Debian (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, and some advocate that there should only be a stable "core" debian, with the rest having the life of their own. I don't see why everyone else must wait for some my3117widget to stabilize. It should be possible to "lock down" the core, and ensure that most packages could be upgraded without di
Re:New to Debian (Score:2)
Obviously debian doesn't "need" to be popular, being noncommercial and all. But it would be shame to see such a
Re:New to Debian (Score:2)
Well, that's how it works already. If packages aren't ready during the hard freeze, they WILL be dropped from Testing, and thus not hold up (or make it into) the release.
Re:New to Debian (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I know, a package must also properly compile and work on all the supported architechtures. There are currently 11 supported architechtures in the latest stable release. I wouldn't be surprised if the support for so many platforms would cause its own share of delays.
Re:New to Debian (Score:2)
As I've understood it (and I'm probably misinformed) Debian needs all packages in a release to be stable before issuing a new stable release. With thousands of packages that's a lot of work.
No, it isn't that bad :) Only the core system needs to be stable (stable means "no release critical bugs" here). If other packages have serieus bugs, they just get dropped from the release. So all those packages don't cause serieus delays.
Re:New to Debian (Score:3, Informative)
See the Release-critical bugs [debian.org] for more reasons why.
Re:New to Debian (Score:5, Insightful)
Just move to testing or unstable, run dselect everyday and you will see new packages are added and updated every day.
I think people got used to upgrade distro to new releases often with Red Hat, Mandrake,
With Debian, you can have a system very up to date (testing or unstable) without needing to install a new distro version every month.
What's the problem with the Debian way of doing things?
Re:New to Debian (Score:5, Insightful)
Because
a) some people don't have broadband so they want a CD of the software they are actually going to run
b) only stable releases have timely security updates
c) installing security updates on unstable can require downloading 100s of MB due to pulling in other updated packages.
d) stable won't even install on some newer hardware without guru knowledge
e) unstable is sometimes buggy and can make a system unbootable, or make the user unable to log in.
f) some people want to run reasonably recent software but without it changing every day.
g) Unstable can be horribly broken during things like a gcc 3 transition
Re:New to Debian (Score:2)
AFAIK, both stable and unstable get rather quick security updates. Testing has a delay for security updates from unstable, thus, if you run testing, subscribe to the debian-security mailing list.
If you do want the latest and greatest though, try Mandrake, they seem to have a nice distribution, especially for the desktop.
The reason why I stick with debian (debian stable on both of my machines, currently) is that its easy to update, easy to upgrade, and has a wide selection of packages, often with sev
Re:New to Debian (Score:2)
Just move to testing or unstable, run dselect everyday and you will see new packages are added and updated every day.
I agree. I use all three; unstable for my workstation (so I can see all the newest loot), testing for most of my servers, and stable for my ultra-paranoid box. I keep a 40GB mirror of the distro which rsync's updates everyday so I can install new machi
Re:New to Debian (Score:2)
A good example is the Smoothwall project. The leader of the project wanted to make more money, so now there's two versions, an Open Source version and a version with Closed Source add-ons.
Of course, some people didn't like this, so the code forked into the IPCop project. Same will pr
Re:New to Debian (Score:5, Informative)
However, it's just the last release (Woody) that took so long...
That was for a number of reasons:
- XFree had to be ported to 11 archs (up from 6), 3 or 4 of which X hadn't been ported to before.
- 'Testing' was created, as to have a smoother transition beween 'unstable' and 'stable'.
- KDE (2.2) was added to main, a first for a stable debian release. That produced some quirks of it's own.
However, with the upcoming release (sarge, now testing) there were 2 main hurdles:
- The GCC 3.2 migration (ABI change) (KDE brakeage hell was spared by waiting with 3.x)
- GTK(+) 2.x -> Gnome 2.x
There is however 1 more hurdle:
The new installer, which is coming along. Knoppix also made clear that 'automagic' was posible with debian.