Two Major Debian Releases In One Day 189
AndyCater writes "If all goes according to plan, Debian should release both an update to Debian Sarge (3.1r6, henceforth to be oldstable) and a new stable release (Debian 4.0, which was codenamed Etch) — and announce the results of the election for Debian Project Leader — all within 12 hours. Sarge was updated late on April 7th UTC, Sam Hocevar was announced as DPL at about 00:30 UTC, and preparations for the release of Debian Etch are ongoing and look good for later on the 8th."
Great News (Score:5, Informative)
This means we can finally start buying new Dell Servers again, instead of relying on ebay to obtain servers that had hard disks compatible with the stable release of debian. For the past two years, Dell had been phasing in new Sata drivers that sarge just refused to work with, but that etch has had no problems with. Hurray! Any chance of an upgrade path so we don't have to support both sarge AND etch?
Sam Hocevar won DPL elections (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sam Hocevar won DPL elections (Score:1, Informative)
more info here
Re:Sources please? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great News (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great News (Score:5, Informative)
It depends on your /etc/apt/sources.list.
Each line will either end with the word "Etch" or "Testing".
If it ends with Etch, then you will stay with Etch (Stable).
If it ends with Testing, then you will start getting the new Testing packages.
Probably the best thing to do is to stay with Etch for a couple of months while the new Testing settles down, then dist-upgrade back to Testing.
Re:TWO! in one day? (Score:5, Informative)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/200
Re:Great News (Score:5, Informative)
The reason I suggested staying with Etch for a little while is that there is likely to be some breakage in Testing as the backlog of Unstable updates move into Testing. For newbies (like the GP), this can be disconcerting.
If it's only a couple of months, the dist-upgrade back to testing isn't likely to be too big of a deal. I think Testing is the sweet-spot for the desktop, so it makes sense to be there, but Testing can be a little unstable immediately after a release.
Where's the actual source for this posting? (Score:5, Informative)
The ISOs for Etch are already out there... (Score:5, Informative)
Use the "bt-cd" or "bt-dvd" sub-directories for the torrents. The torrents are well seeded, I'm getting 3MB/sec (24mbps) download speeds right now.
A few useful torrent links:
i386:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/
AMD 64:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/4.0_r0/
Sean
Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm... I can still see bugs in their tracker (Score:5, Informative)
The official release-critical bug tracker[1] is still not updated to handle "versioned bug-reports". Meaning it counts _all_ open bug reports, while in reality the bug might be "closed" in the _version_ of the package in Etch but the entire bug in not closed (because it still effects Sarge and older?). So the official sources are a bit misleading.
A debian developer called "Sesse" has an updated tracker[2]. This one gives a bit better indication about the truth. Hopefully his code will be moved over to become the official version.
As also previously mentioned, Andreas "aba" Barth has his own bug tracking tool[3]. This gives a bit more information about each release-critical bug and has filtering capabilities.
All sources indicate that there are many "RC" bugs left, but using aba's tool[3] you can see that most open bug reports are security issues. Security issues will come up all the time. There is already infrastructure in place to provide security updates for the stable distribution, so there's no need to hold back the release because of these issues as they can be fixed at any time.
The few remaining issues are new bugs that has just recently surfaces and hasn't yet been analyzed. They might have a too high severity set, noone knows until they have been analyzed. This also doesn't give much reason to hold back the released, there will always be a few really new bugs that there hasn't been time to analyze yet.
All in all, having all bugs fixed looks promising, even if noone can promise that the CD-images are 100% bug-free.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ [debian.org]
[2] http://people.debian.org/~sesse/bugscan/ [debian.org]
[3] http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php?bydist=etch [turmzimmer.net]
Regards,
fatal
Re:Great News (Score:3, Informative)
These pages will probably continue to be useful once Etch's default kernel gets out of date; although they may not be necessary as I have heard rumours of plans to push out updated Linux kernel image packages from time to time, with point releases of Debian 4.0 (etch).
release-critical bug is not what you think it is. (Score:4, Informative)
They are bugs that threaten the package's inclusion in Etch.
Re:Great News (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't want to remove most of the packages, you should get by OK as long as you do remove any that ship any files in
Of course, the ususal upgrade procedure still applies--read the release notes before upgrading, pay attention to the steps that aptitude says that it's going to take, don't hit enter blindly, etc.
Re:finally, sid and testing can get moving again (Score:5, Informative)
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 released (Score:4, Informative)
The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of
Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0, codenamed "etch", after 21 months of
constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system
which supports a total of eleven processor architectures and includes
the KDE, GNOME and Xfce desktop environments. It also features
cryptographic software and compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and
software developed for version 3.1 of the LSB.
Using a now fully integrated installation process, Debian GNU/Linux
4.0 comes with out-of-the-box support for encrypted partitions. This
release introduces a newly developed graphical frontend to the
installation system supporting scripts using composed characters and
complex languages; the installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has
now been translated to 58 languages.
Also beginning with Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, the package management
system has been improved regarding security and efficiency. Secure
APT allows the verification of the integrity of packages downloaded
from a mirror. Updated package indices won't be downloaded in their
entirety, but instead patched with smaller files containing only
differences from earlier versions.
Debian GNU/Linux runs on computers ranging from palmtops and handheld
systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A
total of eleven architectures are supported including: Sun SPARC
(sparc), HP Alpha (alpha), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Intel
IA-32 (i386) and IA-64 (ia64), HP PA-RISC (hppa), MIPS (mips,
mipsel), ARM (arm), IBM S/390 (s390) and -- newly introduced with
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 -- AMD64 and Intel EM64T (amd64).
Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media
such as DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or from the network.
GNOME is the default desktop environment and is contained on the
first CD. The K Desktop Environment (KDE) and the Xfce desktop can be
installed through two new alternative CD images. Also newly available
with Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 are multi-arch CDs and DVDs supporting
installation of multiple architectures from a single disc.
Debian GNU/Linux can be downloaded right now via bittorent (the
recommended way), jigdo or HTTP; see for
further information. It will soon be available on DVD and CD-ROM from
numerous vendors , too.
This release includes a number of updated software packages, such as
the K Desktop Environment 3.5 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME
desktop environment 2.14, the Xfce 4.4 desktop environment, the
GNUstep desktop 5.2, X.Org 7.1, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4a, GIMP 2.2.13,
Iceweasel (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3), Icedove
(an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5), Iceape (an
unbranded version of Mozilla Seamonkey 1.0.Cool, PostgreSQL 8.1.8,
MySQL 5.0.32, GNU Compiler Collection 4.1.1, Linux kernel version
2.6.18, Apache 2.2.3, Samba 3.0.24, Python 2.4.4 and 2.5, Perl 5.8.8,
PHP 4.4.4 and 5.2.0, Asterisk 1.2.13, and more than 18,000 other
ready to use software packages.
Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 from the previous release, Debian
GNU/Linux 3.1 codenamed "sarge", are automatically handled by the
aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a
certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As
always, Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded quite painlessly, in
place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to
read the release notes for possible issues. For detailed instructions
about installing and upgrading Debian GNU/Linux, please see the
release notes .
Please note that the release notes will be further improved and
translated to additional languages in the coming weeks.
ISO download: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r0/i386/i
Re:Where's the actual source for this posting? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:TWO! in one day? (Score:5, Informative)
Debian is one of the great old distros that just keeps getting better and not by adding frills. It is a large distro on many architectures supported by package managers from around the world. It is not hard to install as the reputation was. It is huge with many thousands of packages all smoothly (well, mostly ;-) integrated. I favour it for anyone migrating from that other OS, a new installation or on a large or small system.
One of the neat features of Debian Etch is the smooth set of packages for installing LTSP (See http://ltsp.org/ [ltsp.org] ). One can go into a school on the weekend, set up a server and support all the old equipment as thin clients whether they be iMacs, i386, i486, P-what-evers and manage hundreds of accounts by Monday.
I have been using Testing for a couple of months and there are few bugs. Nothing has prevented me from using it in production.
Congratulations, Debian.org!
Back to normal? (Score:5, Informative)
1.1 - 1.2: 6 months
1.2 - 1.3: 6 months
1.3 - 2.0: 13 months
2.0 - 2.1: 8 months
2.1 - 2.2: 17 months
2.2 - 3.0: 23 months
3.0 - 3.1: 35 months
3.1 - 4.0: 20 months
I think that 18 months is a reasonable amount of time between stable releases. If Debian can stick close to that in the future then I will be happy.
Sam and GNAA (Score:1, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You have got to be fucking kidding me (Score:3, Informative)
which is why admins with a clue don't put stable in thier sources.list (the installer used to do this but i belive it has been changed).
the reality is while the package managers get most stuff right there is nearly always some level of handholding involved in an upgrade from one stable release to the next (e.g. on sarge-etch it is easy to end up with no kernel installed if you are not carefull) and it certainly isn't something you want happening to you without warning.
use release codenames in your sources.list and read the release notes before moving from one stable release to the next especially if you do not know how to repair broken systems.