Debian Decides To Adopt Time-Based Release Freezes 79
frenchbedroom writes "The ongoing Debconf 9 meeting in Cáceres, Spain has brought a significant change to Debian's project management. The Debian project will now freeze development in December of every odd year, which means we can expect a new Debian release in the spring of every even year, starting with 'Squeeze' in 2010. Until now, development freezing was decided by the Debian release team. From the announcement: 'The project chose December as a suitable freeze date since spring releases proved successful for the releases of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed "Etch") and Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny"). Time-based freezes will allow the Debian Project to blend the predictability of time based releases with its well established policy of feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and also allow Debian developers to do better long-term planning. A two-year release cycle will give more time for disruptive changes, reducing inconveniences caused for users. Having predictable freezes should also reduce overall freeze time.' We previously discussed talks between Canonical and the Debian release team about fixed freeze dates."
Linux: Debian (Score:3, Insightful)
Two things to note.
First, the small font used for the non-mainpage stories makes me read the story title as "Lesbian decides to adopt time-based release freezes".
Second, limiting an OSS project to a time-based release cycle puts an artificial constraint on the development process. While it might be useful to encourage faster development in some cases, it is just as likely to force a new feature to be dropped at the last minute if it can't make it through the door in time.
I'd rather they stick with feature-based releases which focus on the quality of features rather than trying to force feature development into a specific duration.
Re:Linux: Debian (Score:5, Interesting)
And refering to Spring/Winter is too imprecise. It's currently (July) Winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
Try refering to Quarter 1, Quatert 4, etc for times of the year.
However nit picking aside, at least we shall now get some certainty in the releases of (probably) the worlds best distro.
8-)
Re:Linux: Debian (Score:5, Funny)
a.) It says December, I'm pretty sure December is always in December no matter what hemisphere you're in, which makes it pretty obvious what they mean by Spring.
b.) No one cares about the Southern Hemisphere.
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Have you seen the spiders in Australia? I think you guys need the extra 6 months...
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However nit picking aside, at least we shall now get some certainty in the releases of (probably) the worlds best distro.
We already do: OpenBSD comes out in May and November. Not that it's a "distro" but...
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I'd rather they stick with feature-based releases which focus on the quality of features rather than trying to force feature development into a specific duration.
You should try Slackware - Pat only releases when ready.
Apt broke on me again this morning (this time during an upgrade). Find myself thinking "Guh, I wish this was Slack" every time that happens.
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You can always tar/configure/make in Debian just like you can in Slackware.
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You can always tar/configure/make in Debian just like you can in Slackware.
I don't generally build from source...
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Re:Linux: Debian (Score:5, Insightful)
No schedule, feature based or time based, will have all upstream developers in sync. Someone will always be developing new stuff and want to squeeze it in.
At least this way, there's a known target that developers can be (made) aware of.
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Second, limiting an OSS project to a time-based release cycle puts an artificial constraint on the development process. While it might be useful to encourage faster development in some cases, it is just as likely to force a new feature to be dropped at the last minute if it can't make it through the door in time.
At the same time a release can be delayed for the opposite reason and you end up delaying the entire project due to some packages.
The trick to avoiding your scenario and my scenario is by carefully picking the most appropriate intervals. Not too long between as this will drag out development leaving already stable and wanted features on hold for a longer time than necessary, and not too short leaving unstable features dropped or hurried out. The best way to do this would be to categorize your packages in
Re:Linux: Debian (Score:4, Interesting)
I definitely agree, however I expect this decision was driven by concerns that Debian's popularity with businesses [debian.org] might be threatened by Ubuntu. Pointy-haired types like to see "regular" release schedules, rather than "we'll release it when it's done".
You might want to revisit your browser's font configuration then. I certainly would never depend on the font choices of web designers. :)
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Me too! My first thought was, "I guess the lesbians from the porn industry get used up so fast that they want updated versions every couple of weeks or so." Yeah, I could see where that would get annoying to the lesbian developers.
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"limiting an OSS project to a time-based release cycle puts an artificial constraint on the development process.Agreed
Debian is noted as producing extremely stable packages on a stable distribution. They're outdated by Ubuntu or Fedora standards, but they also don't crash the system frequently with buggy applications.
For Debian to put their distro on a fixed release schedule could limit the effectiveness of their product. I think they should just stick with what has worked for them so far. Maybe just produ
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I was one of those unfortunate users of Debian 3.0 stable (woody). It was released in July 2002. The next release was (two week shy of) three years after that. Way, way too long. You think a *two year* cycle is too short? Your philosophy leads down the Duke Nukem Forever, Gnu Hurd path. Yes, there is plenty of crap that gets rushed out too fast due to deadlines that make no sense, but on the other end of
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They did and do deliver a product: a rock-solid stable Linux distribution.
Some people care more about a stable environment (for servers or workstations) than the latest bells and whistles. That, together with the necessary security fixes, makes Debian the best distribution for me hands-down. And if you run Ubuntu or any derivative, you're still running Debian under the hood. Even if you don't need a ro
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Python is a bit of a special case, though. It's a great progr
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Some Python programmers are like that. Personally, I use Debian as a gauge for which version of Python I program to for the simple reason that it's a great guide to what a stable but not antiquated system will be using. A good thing about Python is that the interpreter itself DOES offer ways to transition smoothly even if some programmers fail to take the hint. Importing from future can be your friend.
Some portion of programmers in ANY language tend to be too bleeding edge. Since they can't express their b
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it is just as likely to force a new feature to be dropped at the last minute if it can't make it through the door in time.
The problem is with a project as huge as debian is that there is always some feature that can't make it through the door on time. Sooner or later you have to say enough is enough and it is time to polish up what you have and get a release out the door.
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...a time-based release cycle puts an artificial constraint on the development process
This I would agree with. Sometimes I install the cooker version of Mandriva (most up to date versions of the next version of Mandriva) to test the packages, testing the install as some Windows users would do (update instead of total wipe). Reporting certain bugs naturally get higher importance to fix, but depending on how many coders work on a particular part of the OS, the fix could take an age to materialise, and sometimes misses the release schedule date.
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"The better way to look at it is to look at what a distro gives to the upstream: bug reports and feedback. If different distros featurefreeze on different versions, then upstream is getting said feedback from multiple distros regarding multiple old versions. Obviously, the more different old versions that people are using, the more confusing and less useful this feedback will be."
I'd say that's because most upstreamers don't give proper engineering a damn. Since they usually only deal with their own little
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Any release of an active project will tend to be somewhat arbitrary anyway. There's always something that will be ready in "just a few days". Just a few delays for "just a few days" has a tendency to turn in to never.
One positive aspect of the time based freeze is that it will surprise nobody. If you're a Debian maintainer working on a big new feature, you know right now how long you have before the freeze and can scale appropriately.
So They're Not Relasing Every Tuesday? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Oh, wait, it is *that* company.
Nevermind.
Seriously, I wonder why the ridgid schedule. Wouldn't it be better just to release when things are "ready"?
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Wouldn't it be better just to release when things are "ready"?
Would you want to delay an entire OS due to the newest associated IM not being ready? In other words if you're hungry now, would you care for the larger part of the cookie now or would you rather stay hungry and wait for the whole cookie?
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I wouldn't delay the OS. I was referring to more the other direction. You would want to release when it is ready, even if that is prior to the scheduled date.
I - in a way - use Debian since I've switched from openSUSE to Ubuntu, so I'd be curious if Ubuntu would be affected.
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You would want to release when it is ready, even if that is prior to the scheduled date.
Within most FOSS projects "ready" is a very relative term. Most of us have probably used a lot of good functioning software before it was ready. Take Firefox 3.5 BETA for example. It worked close to as good as 3.0 in terms of stability. The problem with your reasoning is that you treat the project as a whole, which is fine, but never forget that these packages often have independent devs whom don't really care about your cycle at all times. So even if application X will be ready in time, the devs for applic
Previous way (Score:3, Interesting)
I like this (Score:3, Interesting)
Still thank you to the debian team for we depend on their hard work.
Re:I like this (Score:5, Informative)
Debian Stable is the closest Debian has to an equivalent of Ubuntu's LTS release. Debian Testing's about a Ubuntu 'normal'.
But the two distros work in different ways, the comparison's not that cut-and-dried, since LTS releases are just normal releases with long support times.
Debian Stable is unchanging in featureset for its lifetime, Debian Testing is the testing for the next Stable, and Debian Unstable is where the changes to be tested are made.
As I understand it, Ubuntu 'freezes' a mirror of Debian testing, prettifies it, and releases it as Ubuntu. This is grossly under-representing Ubuntu's contribution, but is sort-of accurate in principle
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Debian Testing is the testing for the next Stable
To be clear, many (most?) packages added to testing aren't expected to go into the next stable. They're added to testing automatically from unstable after no (significant?) bugs have been filed in (usually) ten days. Seeing as packages are added to/from unstable, testers would usually be running unstable. It is more accurate to think of testing as what stable would be, if a new stable was released today.
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Well, I likewise don't see why you would go for an ubuntu server over a debian one :)
Ubuntu has a six monthly release cycle with yearly LTS IIRC?
Debian is effectively always LTS, when it's released. When you release every two years and provide patches and updates for the oldstable as well as the stable branch you effectively have a 4 year support cycle anyway.
Also, Ubuntu is *so* x86 and whilst I know this is changing slowly I have three headless ARM based servers running debian right now. Err...
For me, Ubu
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Are they really that different?
I've had poke arounds on Ubuntu servers and they've felt quite familiar, just with some friendlier defaults. But I'm no pro, it's entirely likely that I inadvertently make my Debian boxes similar to Ubuntu ones...
Nothing personal, just a different opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
I run Debian stable on my laptop, and I don't see why I would run Ubuntu instead of Debian. Debian has a larger range of packages and is much more flexible and forgiving if you don't want to run one of the preconfigured subdistros (i.e. Ubuntu/Gnome, Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc.). Plus, having run distributions like Debian/sid or Gentoo, which have continuous updates, I find the reliability you get from a computer which never randomly changes packages is a plus. The six-monthly timetable of Ubuntu is much too short for that; I would've got the bugs ironed out just in time for a new release. There is, as you indicate, the LTS releases: but they're just one of the regular releases and this means you get people pulling in opposite directions (latest and greatest vs good for the whole three/five years). Also, is there some guarantee that you can always upgrade from one LTS release to the next LTS release?
In short, with Debian stable, I know what I'm getting. With Ubuntu, in my mind there's too much uncertainty that I'll have a reliable computer for its lifespan. Even if there isn't any uncertainty, there's no reason to convert. No matter how good Ubuntu is, I can't imagine it being better enough than Debian (on my desktop for my purposes) to warrant converting.
(That said, I would like answers to my questions. Googling "Ubuntu LTS" gives you almost nothing about LTS in general. The one page that's not information about a specific release has almost no content: a paragraph about Ubuntu's normal release schedule, a paragraph about the LTS release schedule, and a paragraph taking you to a list of pages about the beta releases (!) of distributions released a year (!!) or three (!!!) ago. This absence of information, and absence of relevant information, fills me with an absence of confidence, and it's one reason I'm not going to switch my laptop from Debian stable.)
Is this a koan? (Score:2)
...fills me with an absence...
Mind-blowing, man.
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I have no idea what a koan is, but I didn't type that by accident... I think it's a type of rhetoric.
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I run Debian stable on my laptop, and I don't see why I would run Ubuntu instead of Debian.
Lack of Ext4 support for existing partitions is what's keeping me on Ubuntu. I'm waiting for the Testing images to support it, but I don't think that'll happen until it gets 2.6.28 [debian.org]. Unless you know another way?
i know nothing about ext4 (Score:2)
No idea at all I'm afraid; it's not something I've ever wondered about. I guess you could manually compile a kernel, but I expect there'd be a bunch of userspace apps you'll also need to installl like an ext4 version of fsck.
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Not only is what you said false (there have only been two LTS releases, and there have been two non-LTS since the last one), even if it were true, it has less information than what I contained in my question.
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Not only is what you said false (there have only been two LTS releases, and there have been two non-LTS since the last one),
You're correct. Upon checking, it's every 2 years, which is every 4 releases.
even if it were true, it has less information than what I contained in my question.
I don't see what else there is to it. There's nothing inherently different about the LTS releases (they aren't tested any more ahead of time or treated any differently than normal releases in any other way, to my knowledge), except for the fact that Canonical will continue supporting them longer. Your original post posed a question (they don't seem to be that different; what is different about them?), which I answered (what you'
Re:By the Way - this insane versioning bent (Score:5, Informative)
cat /etc/issue /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/lsb_release
cat
cat
Often works. It's by no means ubiquitous, I'm well aware, but it's rarely *that* difficult.
Re:By the Way - this insane versioning bent (Score:4, Informative)
For Debian based systems:
/etc/debian_version
cat
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lsb_release -a
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This is one of the reasons I like Slackware.... tiny things like this ARE considered:
cat /etc/slackware-version :-)
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Debian:
/etc$ cat
5.0.1
Ubuntu:
~$ cat
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=hardy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS"
Redhat/Oracle [I assume Fedora/CentOS too?]:
~]$ cat
Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Server release 5.2 (Carthage)
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For the record, in Debian this can also be found in /etc/debian_version as well.
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Debian Unstable never has a version number. Ever. It also never 'releases' - things trickle into Testing after so much bug-free life in Unstable. It is Testing which eventually becomes a release and has a version number.
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And then they also stick the month and year on as the version number, which I thought was a good idea. 9.04 Jaunty is more recent then 7.04 Feisty because "J" comes after "F" and "April 2009" comes after "April 2007".
And finally you get an "about" page that lists both the name and the num
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Oh for pity's sake.
Debian: cat /etc/debian_version /etc/redhat-release
Fedora: cat
It's not hard. It's easy. It's one command, for crying out loud. If you can't run one command you've no business using a computer.
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jrodman@calufrax:~> cat /etc/debian_version
squeeze/sid
Oh that's obvious.
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user@marvin:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
4.0
Shouldn't be running sid if you don't know what sid is.
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salix:~% cat /etc/debian_version /etc/debian_version
5.0.2
salix:~% ssh tuva cat
4.0
It's telling you you're not running a real release at all, but testing or unstable, or whatever it's called (I almost never run anything but stable). Perhaps that file should be clearer ... but if you need that, you probably shouldn't
be running anything but a stable Debian release.
Re:By the Way - this insane versioning bent (Score:5, Funny)
Seeing as how debian only releases every century or so, that's not really a problem. The current release is the one you hear about. If it's not that it's the one you vaguely remember. The one before your kids were born, you were in high school, or possibly back when MTV played music videos (or insert some other thing waay back). If it's a version you haven't heard of it's so outdated that only the old long bearded unix sages locked up in corporate server farms programing cobol/fortran remember much about.
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You should probably get your centuries looked at, if you're only getting around two years out of them. Mine last a hundred years or so; I gather that's about average.
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Dude, this is a REAL problem not some piece of theory you can stir in your brain and decide if its "true" or not:
Look, there are several major Linux distributions all with weird release names, and
there is categorically no resource on the Internet that lists all the release names, what
OS they correspond with and what release number.
At least with FreeBSD it calls itself "FreeBSD X.Y" so you know -
a) which distribution it is (i.e. you know its not OpenBSD NetBSD BSDi or some Linux-based thing)
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Debian releases also have version numbers.
For example, the current stable is Debian 5.0 (codenamed "lenny")... well, actually it's 5.0.2, but the .2 only matters if you're downloading disc images, as the updates are handled through apt.
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The debian page itself lists releases by number and code name. So does Mac OS X, of course they are all referred to by code name too, leopard, tiger, etc. The Windows world has it easy, Windows 7 comes after windows 95, as per standard numbering schemes. Don't forget that in number based versioning schemes 2.1 is different than 2.10, and that 2.1 is before 2.9, which in turn is before 2.10. In debian of course you could just replace codenames with stable, testing and unstable and be done with it.
end to the phrase (Score:1)
I guess that puts an end to the phrase "when Debian freezes on a regular schedule"
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Damn, we've lost Duke Nukem AND Debian. The only benchmarks left are flying pigs and a freezing Satan.