Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" Released 386
Alexander "Tolimar" Reichle-Schmehl writes "The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed Lenny) after 22 months of constant development. With 12 supported computer architectures, more than 23,000 packages built from over 12,000 source packages and 63 languages for the new graphical installer, this release sets new records, once again. Software available in 5.0 includes Linux 2.6.26, KDE 3.5.10, Gnome 2.22.2, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6, Apache 2.2.9, Xen 3.2.1 and GCC 4.3.2. Other notable features are X autoconfiguring itself, full read-write support for NTFS, Java programs in the main repository and a single Blu-Ray disc installation media. You can get the ISOs via bittorrent. The Debian Project also wishes to announce that this release is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian Developer who died on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident. As a valuable member of the Debian Project, he will be sorely missed."
Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Funny)
Hi. I'm the infamous Anonymous Coward, and it's time we had a talk.
For years now, I've been enhancing the discussion on Slashdot through interesting interjections and humorous anecdotes (often about homosexual African Americans), but I feel things just aren't working out.
It takes me an awful lot of time, researching composing and spell chekcing the many hundreds of valuable posts I make a day, and although I don't request anything in return all I ever see is abuse. You moderate my comments down for absolutely no good reason.
I've had enough.
From this point on I'm just not going to bother. It's over.
I've been feeling this way for a while, slowly I've put less and less effort in my posts, repeating the same ideas over and over and, now, even started repeating whole posts verbatim.
It's been fun, Slashdot, but I'm disillusioned. You broke my heart, and I am never doing to give you the benefit of my insight again.
Be happy.
Love and regrets,
Anon.
Re: (Score:2)
That made me chuckle.
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the timing has worked out perfectly.
I run Debian testing, so I've been on 3.5 for a long time, and very happily I might add.
Now when sid starts moving again, KDE 4.2 will go in - completely avoiding the earlier, less complete releases that everybody was ranting about.
Couldn't have worked out better, and is a reminder that you don't always need to be on the bleeding edge anyway.
Debian has a very good KDE packaging team, btw.
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The Debian KDE team would love any help people can give, perhaps from Kubuntu guys!
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The Debian KDE team would love any help people can give, perhaps from Kubuntu guys!
I hope not. I'm have used kubuntu since 0606 and been happy about it and recommended it to everybody. But I stayed on 0804 with still has kde 3.5, and now I'm looking for an alternative distro.
It's not the KDE4. I think it at least will be great now with 4.2, but (almost) all the extras that kubuntu put in are gone. No GUI to adjust the clock, no GUI to set up your screens etc.
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm using Lenny right now (though Gnome), and I see both 3.5 and 4 available in Synaptic.
We shouldn't forget the Debian Live project [debian.net] which has live CDs for Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE.
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Insightful)
A linux without apt-get? No way! Not once again!
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Informative)
Now when sid starts moving again, KDE 4.2 will go in - completely avoiding the earlier, less complete releases that everybody was ranting about.
Hopefully they will freeze KDE 4.3 with Qt 4.5. Freezing kde at 4.2 would seem like a mistake, when you consider that KDE people mostly focus on fixing bugs for 4.3. Also, Qt 4.5 should bring big performance improvements.
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a freeze is quite a ways away, we just had a hard freeze and now is long merge time.
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KDE releases every six months, so Squeeze should get 4.3 at very least, and 4.4 is likely. 4.5 is even a slight possibility, I would guess.
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As a Debian/KDE user I've watched the discussions about KDE 4 on /. with mild bemusement. I'm sure I'll find out in a couple of years whether it adds anything useful (IMAO) to KDE 3.5. For now I'm happy that I can go back to being a Deb stable user, having being forced to use testing for the past year in order to get support for my graphics card.
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Funny)
Slackware users use a gui?
Only to multiplex xterm, and xeyes to point to the mouse.
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Funny)
On slackware? Fess up - you're piping your pr0n through aalib or libcaca as ASCII-art [liquidweather.net]. Otherwise, you're not really hard-core.
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:5, Insightful)
Each time I try out some other distro, I eventually come back to Debian. And Debian will always forgive me and welcome me like a good, old friend. Debian, I love you.
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Unlike everyone who is bitching and moaning, I read the notes about how KDE 4.0 was just a preview, do not use, do not install on production machines, etc ... so I continued to use KDE 3.5 until 4.2 came out. Now I switch back and forth - my work machine has 4.2 and runs like a charm, complete with rotating desk cube and all the other neat features.
My laptop runs both - in dual monitor mode (17" 1400x900 laptop + 26" 1920x1200 primary screens) - with no issues.
My home server - who cares, right?
Gnome?
Re:Best KDE 3.5 distro? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike everyone who is bitching and moaning, I read the notes about how KDE 4.0 was just a preview, do not use, do not install on production machines, etc ... so I continued to use KDE 3.5 until 4.2 came out.
Oh you mean these http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.0/ [kde.org] release notes? Where it says nothing about 4.0 being a preview or not installing on production machines?
Nice try, but it's not easy to rewrite history that soon. I'm sure the KDE devs appreciate your efforts though. IMO KDE4.2 still isn't ready for use on production machines anyway.
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It was right there in bold when I installed openSUSE.
But more importantly, even your link says it's a test release, so they can get feedback ...:
No rewrite of history necessary. Everyone knew this was alpha-quality software. The distros made it clear during the install process that this was just for getting a first look at KDE
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Strike the word "barely". It was just plain unusable. I blame KDE4 for that editing error.
I agree that that press release did not convey what the developers and people reading the mailing lists understood: That KDE 4.0 was released to allow wider testing, but especially to allow kdelibs based applications to start porting to KDE 4.0. And really should only be installed alongside 3.5.
Still, the past is past. KDE 4.2 is definitely for nearly everyone, though a few rough areas exists (e.g. 2-screen setup is not completely possible with GUI alone, though at least it acts decently instead of doing w
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this shows the problem with Slashdiots who try to push Linux.
What is PR?
Public. Relations.
So apparently, we're supposed to ignore the message the group puts out to the public regarding its own product, and instead read Slashdot/Planet KDE/digg for news morsels instead. Because that's what a REAL nerd does, and by golly, if you don't know the difference between a .0 and a stable release, you have no business trying to use our beloved software!
And this isn't even a case of an obscure technical issue b
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Some of us have indecent hardware, you insensitive clod!
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A Debian release! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A Debian release! (Score:5, Informative)
Huh?
While it's easy to pile on with the melodrama, the last stable release, Etch, was in the middle of '07. A year and a half is an entirely reasonable amount of time to wait for an operating system release.
I, for one, congratulate them on and thank them for their timely release!
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Re:A Debian release! (Score:4, Informative)
Etch took one month less than lenny. [debian.org]
Re:A Debian release! (Score:5, Informative)
note: theese lengths only take account of the month not the time in the month so they may be a little off but they are good enough for the purpose
buzz->rex 6 months
rex->bo 6 months
bo->hamm 13 months
hamm->slink 8 months
slink->potato 17 months
potato->woody 23 months
woody->sarge 35 months
sarge->etch 22 months
etch->lenny 22 months
Re:A Debian release! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sarge really was the source of these endless jokes. Almost three years, on a Linux that was considerably less mature than it is today was forever. Remember that all releases are tested and mature by the time they are included in stable, so they were at the worst more like four years behind the bleeding edge. Obviously you don't want a server anywhere near the bleeding edge, but damn do I understand all the application developers that said "You're running THAT?! We stopped development on that branch years ago, nobody backports anything not even security fixes anymore". A distro has to be a team effort with the people developing it - you can't expect Debian people to fix 20000 old packages alone. The current situation is just fine for a server OS, though I wouldn't run my desktop on it. I used to run testing until early 2007 but for all the faults Ubuntu has, having semi-annual "packs" is better than the constantly changing flow that testing is.
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Sure, the release time from Woody to Sarge was funny until you realized that even with the umpteen thousands of packages included with Sarge, the Debian team still beat release times between Microsoft's bare-bones desktop OSes Windows XP [cnet.com] and Vista [pcpro.co.uk].
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I don't want to give Microsoft free defense or anything, but that's because Windows XP was getting better over that time and still ran all the new software. Debian Sarge stayed trapped in antiquity for eons and was helplessly behind the times. I think that was the time when the community decided that Debian was a server OS, and that someone else would have to provide a desktop Debian.
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There are three reasons why 3 years for debian was far worse than 5 years for windows.
The first is that linux was pretty immature at that time. IIRC woody didn't even have X autoconfiguration and asked you scary questions about your monitor rather than just defaulting to safe settings and letting you crank it up later.
The second is software authors have different attitudes towards windows and linux.
Windows developers tend to assume you will be running a stable release of windows that was current sometime in
Meanwhile in Redmond.... (Score:3, Interesting)
To put things into scale :
WinME->WinXP home 13 months (but at least it got home users rid of WinME)
Win2k->WinXP pro 20 months
WinXP->Vista 61 months (yup) (+2 if you count when it hit the shelfs)
Vista->Win7 announced for 2010, so that would put it at least 37 months
(that it before, delay get inevitably announced)
Re:A Debian release! (Score:4, Insightful)
Etch just looked longer because *a lot* of improvements to the GNU/Linux was being made during that time in terms of the kernel hardware support and the desktop stuff, and whoever was using Debian stable during that time couldn't take advantage of those developments.
They always had the option to go "testing", which is surprisingly stable, compared to other GNU/Linux distros or, God forbid, Windows. The only downside is that the security patches usually come first to the stable release.
unstable is pretty stable too, really (Score:4, Insightful)
Unstable is unstable in the sense of changes happening semi-frequently, which you may not want on your production servers. But if your primary problem with Debian stable is that it doesn't get new software often enough, then presumably changes happening semi-frequently is precisely what you do want. And it gets bugfixes and security fixes first.
Despite the name, it's not where totally crazy experimental stuff that is more-likely-broken-than-not happens. There's a separate area, aptly named "experimental", for those packages. For example, the xf86->xorg change was staged in experimental for several months before being pushed to unstable after getting put into pretty good shape. OpenOffice 3 is undergoing a similar process currently, and will presumably be in good shape by the time it gets into unstable.
There is admittedly sometimes breakage in unstable, usually of specific packages, just because it's the newest widely used distribution: something'll never get to testing if it breaks in unstable. You can avoid even that, unless you really are the first person ever to encounter a particular bug, by using apt-listbugs to warn you of packages with major bugs filed against them, and delay upgrading those.
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Experimental is also where KDE 4 has been living all this time. It'll be good to have experimental back to be something I rarely get a package from, rather than half my GUI systems :)
I should add my favorite part of unstable (Score:3, Informative)
You get world-class support for bugfixes, reasonable enhancement requests, package-interaction issues, and so on, often with new versions available within days of filing a good bug report. You get some of that in stable, but with a less satisfying lag until the next point release (or with more minor issues until the next major release).
That was really what blew me away when I switched in 2002 from running Windows 2000 full-time to running Debian sid/unstable full time. Complex issues like some program depen
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Or am I just talking out my arse again?
Yes. Arrange every software producer by the quality of their releases, and Debian is very likely at or near the top.
"Unstable" is not a release. Don't you think that somebody who specifically installs something called "unstable" is expecting to do a bit of testing? These are people for whom the latest & greatest is worth it.
If you install Debian Stable, it is rock solid. The testing has been done. All the features and polish have already been added; only security updates will be made.
Re:A Debian release! (Score:5, Funny)
I run Vista, you insensitive clod!
Re:A Debian release! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry - I hear that the stable release of Vista is coming Real Soon Now ;-)
Re:A Debian release! (Score:4, Insightful)
> > sometimes go twice that long between service packs.
> But they aren't tied to the software they run so tightly.
Debian isn't that way because of anything Debian does wrong. It's that way because when application developers put out a new version of anything for Linux, they typically make it *require* the absolute latest version of every library it uses, which effectively means it won't run on an operating system that's more than a couple of months old.
It isn't just that there aren't ready-to-install packages. You can't install the latest Firefox on Debian etch even if you're willing to go to the trouble to compile it yourself, because it requires a newer version of GTK than the one in Debian. Bear in mind, GTK is the main widget set, the thing used to draw windows and scrollbars and checkboxes and so on in the graphical operating environment (Gnome). That's NOT something you're ever going to upgrade independently of the operating system (and even if you wanted to, you generally can't because the new version of GTK probably requires the absolute latest versions of twelve other things, and so on; when you get to the end of the chain, you probably find out that libc or something requires a more recent kernel than your system is based on). New versions of applications *SHOULD* support three-year-old versions of GTK. But they almost never do.
And if it's not GTK it's libc or glibc or some other basic part of the platform API. Again, new versions of applications *SHOULD* support three-year-old versions of these libraries, but the almost never do. I don't happen to know which library is (or which libraries are) the holdup for Subversion, but if it were possible to just compile it for etch, somebody would have done so, and the package would be available -- probably not from the official Debian etch repositories, but from backports or somewhere. If it's not available at all for Debian stable, it's almost certainly because it won't compile, because it requires a hyper-recent version of some library or another. And that's NOT the platform or distribution's fault. That's the application developer's fault.
Now, when the curmudgeonly sysadmin insists on running oldstable for months and months after the new stable release comes out, that's arguably a different matter. In that case, you don't necessarily expect new versions of application software to work. Although, on other platforms (e.g., Windows, or Mac OS X for that matter), you still would.
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If you mean total solar eclipses, maybe. Partials are a dime-a-dozen.
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I'd savor the moment more if I didn't just install the last 4.0 release two days ago. At least it was just a minimal install for a server. Off to download the new netinst...
Screenshots + DPL interview (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Screenshots of Debian? I can't think of anything more useless. You might as well try taking photos of life-forms there's such a huge range. No-one but me has a computer that looks+works the way mine does. (Albeit I've changed the feel more than the look, so any non-Gnome Crux screenshot will be reasonably close.)
Thiemo (Score:5, Interesting)
He was a great hacker [lwn.net], it's nice to know that more people will remember him.
Re:Thiemo (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, it is a shame he died in a tragic car accident, instead of one of those non-tragic fatal accidents.
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Well, if you're like 99 and dying of pancreatic cancer, pass out and hit a phone pole, it's not all that tragic, though it is a bit sad. Of course, that's a matter of perspective, I guess. But if you did think that was a tragedy, you'd probably fucking explode if you realized what kind of shit really was going on in the world.
On the flip side, people die all the time and we don't know if it's a tragedy for them or not. (Well, some people claim to know...)
Re:Thiemo (Score:4, Informative)
The word "tragic" has an actual meaning, you know. If the accident were the ineluctable consequence of a character flaw -- and I do not suggest that this be the case -- then the usage would be correct and informative.
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They have called me stupid, ugly, sad, etc
I can't stand those annoying adjectives.
Blu-Ray? (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe I'm just overlooking the obvious, but where IS the Blu-Ray ISO image? I can see it mentioned in the SHA1SUMS file [debian.org], for instance, but it doesn't appear to be on the cdimages server, neither as an ISO nor as a .torrent.
Re:Blu-Ray? (Score:4, Informative)
It is not going to be in the archives because it would waste a huge amount of space. You may build it yourself using jigdo.
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It is not going to be in the archives because it would waste a huge amount of space. You may build it yourself using jigdo.
So what you're saying is that they are doing their best to prevent it?
(Maybe the thing has changed substantially, but last time I tried to use jigdo I actually ended up using a different Linux in protest.)
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it is indeed unfortunate that afaict there is STILL no decent client for jigdo.
The main jigdo gui plain doesn't work. There is a script called jigdo-lite that "works" but provides no progress indication and fills your console with garbage and gives no clear indication of whether it is resuming or starting again from scratch.
anyone here familiar with the source for a linux download manager and fancy adding jigdo support?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC you need to use jigdo to assemble them from the packages. This page hints at that:
http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/debian-installer/ [debian.org]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It was also mentioned on the dev announce list:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/01/msg00002.html [debian.org]
Re:Blu-Ray? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the 'best' install out there: NetInstall [debian.org]. Unless you actually want to download 31 CDs or 5 DVDs worth of stuff. The best part about Debian is the mix and match of installing what I want. I honestly can't fathom trying to download 20Gigs of stuff just to make a desktop unless I plan on installing in middle of nowhere.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I like just having the 10 MB disk and downloading only what I need (12Mb/s no cap). Installs take an hours or two, but I never have an unpatched system.
Newsworthy. Actuall news. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just reading this (Note I am not a Debian User anymore) has me noticing just how much the quality is in the FOSS field compared to MicroSuck, Adobemedia and any other company that's just in it for the money and not the technical perfection. Despite all marketing gibberish to the contrary.
While I've been using Ubuntu for it's ease of use in recent years and see Debian more as a kind of building kit when I need a more customized Linux setup, it is none-the-less a terrific feat to wrap up a product that meets Debians quality standards, as opposed to those of - let's say - Windows Vista.
Even the slashdot post on the new Debian has more content that a MS press release.
That all observed and said, congrats to the Debian crew for yet another release of a great OS and Software kit.
Re:Newsworthy. Actuall news. (Score:4, Funny)
You can't beat the fantastic quality of Debian, especially when it comes to the fantastic work done with Valgrind and Purify to remove some of the bugs in the OpenSSL seeding code used to generate encryption keys. Obviously no closed source code could possibly live up to those marvellous standards. It's just not possible to write high quality closed source code. In fact the mere act of releasing previously closed source code under the GPL makes it high quality.
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Anyway, besides the necessary <sarcasm> tags, you forgot the informative link:
Cryptographic weakness on Debian systems [lwn.net]
I think it was fixed 2 years ago, BTW. But feel free to verify it--you have the source.
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The bug was introduced September 2006 and fixed in May 2008. I think there were many very troubling issues relating to this bug that everyone who is works on and relies on OSS should be concerned about. The main point, in my view, is the lack of process. This is a bug that was introduced by the downstream packagers of OpenSSL. So, the distro supplies something that you think is OpenSSL, but in reality it isn't. It's the downstream packagers' version of OpenSSL. I'm afraid any trust evaporates at that
Re:Newsworthy. Actuall news. (Score:5, Informative)
Oh ffs, the OpenSSL developers were just as responsible for the snafu as Debian was. More so I'd say since the Debian developer asked on the openssl-dev list about his patch and whether anyone had any objections to it. Here's the response he got from a OpenSSL developer:http://marc.info/?l=openssl-dev&m=114652287210110&w=2/ [marc.info]
Got that? He was given the ok by a OpenSSL developer. They're every bit as responsible as Debian.
Re:Newsworthy. Actuall news. (Score:4, Informative)
Got that? He was given the ok by a OpenSSL developer. They're every bit as responsible as Debian.
Not quite. The openssl developer was right that the change didn't cause a significant problem when applied to the lines the Debian dev asked about. The Debian dev then applied the change both there and to another bit of code, and it was that second -- unreviewed -- change that did the damage.
Re:Newsworthy. Actuall news. (Score:4, Insightful)
Openssl developers screwed up by not giving proper guidance, period.
It is not the job of the OpenSSL developers to babysit Debian people that don't know what the fuck they are doing. And its especially not Debian jobs to fiddle in code that they don't have a clue about. If the Debian people think their patch is useful, they should have submitted it upstream for proper review and wait till it got applied to the upstream branch, not casually asking on the mailing list and then just moving ahead with applying a debugging hack to a production software.
All that aside however, the very simple fact that this patch never got a proper review from other Debian people nicely illustrates that security in Debian is something that mostly works by blind luck, not by well thought out procedure.
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There are very few things that the GIMP can't do that Adobe PS. Granted, PS is a more polished product, but non-professionals are unlikely ever to notice a difference in feature set. Furthermore, the GIMP interface has been improving, and I now think that they are equally good, only very different which is why it is relatively difficult to switch from one to the other when you are very familiar with one. Such a scenario favors the incumbent. Hello, Windows vs Linux.
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Photoshop has moved on since 3.0 you know.
Re:Newsworthy. Actuall news. (Score:4, Funny)
Yea, that Debian patch Tuesday is *such* a pain in the ass.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
MicroSuck??!! Grow the fuck up child
Wow. Chill. You're getting a little worked up about that.
A little anecdote: I got a Laptop as a christmas present from my Company last xmas. I came with Windows XP preinstalled and an optional Windows Fister on a disk. I thought I might as well give it XP try, even though I've used Windows back in 2002 the last time for serious work.
After 2.5 hrs. configuring it and installing all the tools I'd like to try out (Netbeans/JavaFX, Firefox, Flash CS3 & Flex SDK, etc.) and
Coming Soon! (Score:4, Funny)
Duke Nukem Forever
Oblig. (Score:3, Funny)
No OpenOffice 3.x (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm obviously very happy about the Lenny release since my employer (part of Environment Canada) makes us use Debian. However, I guess there are "good" technical reasons, but I'm sad OpenOffice 3.x could not make it. One of our tech allowed us to install OO3 on our Etch machines. The result: 003 makes my Etch crash (the full OS, not just the app, to my entire surprise!). I'm not saying it's the same for everybody else, but it's a sad thing for me. (in fact, even 2.4.1 can crash Etch since I installed 3.0... and I'm no way knowledgeful enough to fix that problem :-/)
Why does computers have to be that complicated? ;-)
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I'm obviously very happy about the Lenny release since my employer (part of Environment Canada) makes us use Debian. However, I guess there are "good" technical reasons, but I'm sad OpenOffice 3.x could not make it. One of our tech allowed us to install OO3 on our Etch machines. The result: 003 makes my Etch crash (the full OS, not just the app, to my entire surprise!). I'm not saying it's the same for everybody else, but it's a sad thing for me. (in fact, even 2.4.1 can crash Etch since I installed 3.0... and I'm no way knowledgeful enough to fix that problem :-/)
Why does computers have to be that complicated? ;-)
Sounds more like a hardware issue to me, or perhaps a really badly configured Linux install.
release with 84 RC bugs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I might be missing something here, but aren't there still 84 release-critical bugs [debian.org] open on lenny? I understand a number of them have been deferred to lenny.1, but I had expected this number to drop further before a release was made. Has Debian changed their release policy?
[captcha: prudence]
Re:release with 84 RC bugs? (Score:5, Funny)
I understand a number of them have been deferred to lenny.1, but I had expected this number to drop further before a release was made. Has Debian changed their release policy?
Yes, they actually made a release.
*drumroll*
Re: (Score:2)
Re:release with 84 RC bugs? (Score:5, Informative)
FHS 2.3? (Score:2, Interesting)
The debian press release on http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214 mentions:
It also features compatibility with the FHS v2.3
(The press release for 4.0 did the same.)
However:
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#LIB64 tells me that
The 64-bit architectures PPC64, s390x, sparc64 and AMD64 must place 64-bit libraries in /lib64, and 32-bit (or 31-bit on s390) libraries in /lib.
What insensitive clod does break a lot of older software and claims to be compliant with standards when they aren't?
Single media (Score:2)
OT question ... (Score:3, Insightful)
will there ever be a way to watch blue-ray movies legally on a Linux computer? ... it is simlply a major *effort* for the average user to ignore or work around all these problems.
I have been using Linux on my desktop for years now, but I am getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of drivers for all the things that get more and more "normal" in the Windows world: synchronizing mobile phones, loading maps into a GPS device, playing Blue-ray disks, operating TV-cards, security devices (e.g. chip-card readers) and other special hardware.
So it is not only a lack of game playing software or professional graphics software like Photoshop
And it seems for some of these problems there are major legal or other obstacles which I cannot see getting solved in the future.
Opinions?
Re:OT question ... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no legal way to do many worthwhile things in this world. Don't worry about it. You're here to live your life, not obey laws.
Re: (Score:2)
Thats true but not quite the point. In some cases you can simply ignore the laws. However in cases like this, the consequences will, in my opinion, be quite harmful for the broader acceptance of Linux. Unlike with DVDs I do not see an easy "grey" solution.
That is what worries me, because I know that I will only get more special hardware support for Linux if it will achieve broader acceptance, which will depend on more special hardware support etc.
I am raising this issue here because I do not have an idea ho
Re:OT question ... (Score:4, Informative)
There's nothing "grey" about the DVD solution. Using libdvdcss in the USA is a violation of the DMCA, and consequently is illegal at a federal level.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's nothing "grey" about the DVD solution. Using libdvdcss in the USA is a violation of the DMCA, and consequently is illegal at a federal level.
So why not release Debian with all the nice goodies included, but have the final stage of the installer ask "Are you in the US?" ... and if you answer "Yes", then it removes anything that cannot be distributed there.
Re:OT question ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Buy stuff with Linux support and quit your bitching.
I think I was not bitching but asking a question. The problem is that I would love to buy (yes buy) stuff with Linux support - problem is, that it often simply does not even exist.
My original question was exactly about one of the things I would consider to be of major importance: the ability to play blue-ray movies on the desktop. As far as I can see there is no legal way whatsoever to do this on Linux and there is no legal way in sight either.
I can assure you that I do check for Linux support, but the harsh reality is that, especially in Europe, where the selection of goods is probably a lot smaller than in the US, it is very often simply impossible to get anything decent that also works with Linux. Apart from blue-ray movie playing -- there simply is no decent GPS device that allows me to transfer map data to the device on Linux.
I guess my point is that these are serious problems for making Linux more common for a broader user-base and I would love to see constructive ideas how to deal with them instead of ignoring the problem, routinely putting the blame on hardware companies and disregarding anyone who raises the issue as a troll.
Re:OT question ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I was not bitching but asking a question. The problem is that I would love to buy (yes buy) stuff with Linux support - problem is, that it often simply does not even exist.
Please name a product you have been searching for, where you cannot find something which suits your needs which has Linux support.
My original question was exactly about one of the things I would consider to be of major importance: the ability to play blue-ray movies on the desktop. As far as I can see there is no legal way whatsoever to do this on Linux and there is no legal way in sight either.
My point was that this is a result of the legal manouverings of the people behind Blu-Ray. If you buy Blu-Ray then you are voting with your dollars for standards which make interoperability difficult or even impossible. You have no one but yourself to blame.
At some point you have to decide if you have principles or not. Clearly, you do not believe in the ability to play purchased media on Open Source platforms if you actually spend money on Blu-Ray discs. There's no third way, and I wish people would stop pretending there is.
I guess my point is that these are serious problems for making Linux more common for a broader user-base and I would love to see constructive ideas how to deal with them instead of ignoring the problem, routinely putting the blame on hardware companies and disregarding anyone who raises the issue as a troll.
Obviously you don't understand that the world is capitalistic, and/or don't understand how capitalism works.
The only vote that you have that matters is how you spend your dollars. Whether that's what products you choose to buy (or not) or whether you elect to pay your taxes (or not) or activities you choose to engage in (or not) due to their tax situation... it's all based on money. The entire world (yes, China too) works on the principle that what makes you more money is good. Therefore if you choose to spend money on closed standards, the world will provide you with more closed standards, because obviously there is money in them. If you choose to spend money on a shitty movie or a crappy album just because it's a member of your chosen genre or put out by someone whose other work you like, you are voting for them to make more shit. Do you see how this works? By the same token, if you buy a Blu-Ray disc when it is difficult to play on Linux, you are voting for making it difficult to play media on Linux. And at some point you have to take personal responsibility. You have to make the decision to only support media which is delivered on your terms.
Different people have chosen to achieve this goal in different ways. For some, they make the decision to engage in civil disobedience by using a program whose use is actually proscribed by law in their jurisdiction to play the media that they've paid for. I am unaware of anyone actually ever being arrested for playing a DVD or Blu-Ray disc that they actually purchased on an unlicensed device, and do not believe that laws should be followed simply because they exist. I am skeptical that you actually follow every law in effect where you live, and in any case if you have not memorized the code you can't be sure, so I am not clear as to the precise nature of your objection.
Anyway, by the same token, following the DMCA is equivalent to voting for it. Don't obey unless you aim to be a slave. Yes, it is risky to disobey. Yes, you have an obligation to disobey an unjust law. Let me just go ahead and terminate this thread by invoking Godwin here by saying that "just following orders" is not and never has been a valid excuse for supporting tyranny.
Hardware donations (Score:5, Informative)
Spontaneous upgrade for me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Today I just decided to do an upgrade of my Debian server, to have the latest security and bugfixes. Instead I suddenly got hundreds of packages to update... well this explains why. I jsut have my sources pointing at stable, so that is updated now automatically.
A complete new stable release, interesting.
Not sure whether I should be happy with this or not. On one hand great to have a major update of some software, on the other hand I hope I'm not going to break anything.
And the only thing I was actually planning to do was install ldap and authentication over ldap!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Point your sources to oldstable if you want to keep etch :)
Or point them to etch, which will work as well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally speaking, it's a good idea to use the nicknames in your /etc/apt/sources.list, rather than the generic names. So use "lenny," "squeeze," "sid," rather than "stable," "testing," "unstable." That way you won't be surprised by a release.
Though, really, Debian releases are so few and far between, it's a pretty infrequent "surprise."
Check the release notes in advance of upgrading to be aware of potential issues. If you just change your current list from "stable" to "etch," you won't have any of the
Re:remember (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Squeeze? What about Squiggy? I thought "Lenny" was supposed to segue into using Laverne & Shirley names, which would allow further migration into Happy Days, Mork & Mindy and other entertainment favorites of the 1970s.
Re:KDE 4.2 practically already available (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to see that in the time of bleeding edge releases-every-6-months distros there's still a choice that actually allows you to get work done.
Re:KDE 4.2 practically already available (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, if you're the kind of guy who uses Debian stable you certainly will stay with KDE 3.5 until at least 4.5.
Good to see that in the time of bleeding edge releases-every-6-months distros there's still a choice that actually allows you to get work done.
Ubuntu LTS is one such choice as well.
I made the mistake of upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 from 8.04 LTS (and didn't like it), and now I need to go back. With Lenny out, it will feel less like a defeat if I install Lenny instead ;-).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Debian testing is far more stable than Ubuntu and is regularly updated.
Debian testing and Ubuntu are both based on Debian unstable. It takes a while for testing to become "debian stable", and it also takes a while before Ubuntu becomes a "release". Moreover, it takes a while for an Ubuntu LTS release to get better - but if you give Ubuntu LTS some time to mature, it will prove to be extremely solid (this is what happened with Hardy), while still delivering relatively recent packages.
You don't have to download everything (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever heard of doing apt-get after a minimal install? This isn't windoze where you have to take everything or nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
``I wonder what the fetishism is with Debian stable ...''
It's one of the few releases for which a real effort is made to get all show-stopping bugs out one way or another. That's an enormous feat for a distribution that includes not only a complete operating system, but also more application software than any distribution I've compared it to.
Sadly, both etch and lenny have been released with known release critical bugs. These bugs have not affected me, but I am still concerned that Debian is inching away fr