Debian 6.0 Released In GNU/Linux, FreeBSD Flavors 250
itwbennett writes "After two years of work, the Debian Project has announced the release of Debian 6.0. 'There are many goodies in Debian 6.0 GNU/Linux, not the least of which is the new completely free-as-in-freedom Linux kernel, which no longer contains firmware modules that Debian developers found troublesome,' says blogger Brian Proffitt. And in addition to Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is introduced as a technology preview. 'Debian GNU/kFreeBSD will port both a 32- and 64-bit PC version of the FreeBSD kernel into the Debian userspace, making them the first Debian release without a Linux kernel,' says Proffitt. 'The Debian Project is serious about the technology preview label, though: these FreeBSD-based versions will have limited advanced desktop features.' The release notes and installation manual have been posted, and installation images may be downloaded right now via bittorrent, jigdo, or HTTP."
to put it bluntly.... (Score:2, Interesting)
FUCK YEAH!
With apologies to Trey Parker and Debian... (Score:2)
Deb-i-aaaaaaaan...
Deb-i-aaaaaaaan...
Debian, FUCK YEAH
Releasin' again to save the motherfuckin' day yeah
Debian, FUCK YEAH
Freedom is the only way yeah
Pity those who use Ubuntu
Their purple desktops look like poo, yeah
Debian, FUCK YEAH
So lick my ports, and Squeeze my mouse ball,
Debian, FUCK YEAH
What you gonna do when we package you now,
it's the dream that we all share
it's the hope for tomorrow
FUCK YEAH
apt-get! FUCK YEAH!
Free kernel! FUCK YEAH!
Lackin' firmware! FUCK YEAH!
New Site! FUCK YEAH!
Space Fun! FUCK YEAH!
NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to run NetBSD on an old PP Mac booted from a zip drive in the nineties. It was running great but since then I haven't looked at it again. I know that the 3 free BSDs (open-, free- and net-) are security audited and support old hardware very well. But I wonder what advantages the kernel itself brings. So my potentially stupid questionis:
What's the advantage of running Debian with a BSD kernel instead of linux?
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A well, FreeBSD kernel is what I've meant, of course...sorry!
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ZFS and DTrace come to mind, but those are only the easy examples.
FTFY (Score:2)
ZFS and DTrace come to mind, but those are the only easy examples.
Re:NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:4, Informative)
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I have no problems with ALSA.
From time to time I try PulseAudio but it always gives me stuttering sound.
Re:NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:5, Informative)
You can find some of the reasons here [debian.org]. Among them are ZFS, jails, and pf. I've used Debian GNU/kFreeBSD in the past and found pf significantly easier to use than iptables and tc.
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definitely jailed, and a real killer :-)
Re:NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:4, Informative)
Are they using glibc or the freebsd one? Because one of the developer advantages of the BSDs are that kernel and libc are more in sync. Ie. there's no system calls in libc that are not in the kernel, and vice versa.
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I like those advantages. What I really want to know is what the disadvantages are. Is all my software likely to work on Debian FreeBSD?
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to answer that, we have to be like the audience on The Tonight Show, and yell "Which Software Is It!!??"
so, what do you run?
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Dunno about tc, but shorewall makes iptables nicer (but still not as good as pf, IMO)
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Considering that companies seem to have difficulty of dealing with the code publication surrounding the Linux they use in their products, it has always befuddled me as to why they didn't 'just use' BSD instead.
Re:NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:5, Insightful)
... it has always befuddled me as to why they didn't 'just use' BSD instead.
To be honest, believing exactly the argument you gave companies mostly they did until the last few years. However, you never knew about out because they didn't publish the code. The reason for this is that there is no need to and if they do release their code, their competitors can use it, so their lawyers advise them against. After a few years they either get so wildly successful (JunOS / OSX / Microsoft TCP/IP stack) that they keep their own completely proprietary branch and never help anyone else or they get abandoned (IPSO / AlchemOS / BSDi / SunOS / etc. etc.)
The thing is, that the because of the effects of copyleft, the Linux people cooperate and release code and so, even though the resources put into Linux are much less, there is less duplication and so more is achieved. This has become much more visible recently with Android and other successes and means that corporate types have begun to see copyleft as a platform which makes limited cooperation with potential competitors possible and safe.
If you are choosing a system for your own platform, this becomes a good reason to choose an AGPLv3 base as much as possible and, if you have any proprietry code, layer that separately on top. Your work on the commodity underlying components can be safely released and will move forward with the rest of the community. Whatever investment you put in will be preserved instead of becoming obsolete.
Compelled by FSF diff than by church or gov't? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the advantage of running Debian with a BSD kernel instead of linux?
If you want to make money, and don't want to contribute back to the free software economy, its easier with a BSD license than a GPL license. Other than that...
That's a somewhat FUD'ish response. There are plenty of BSD users who contribute back. I'd say that one advantage is that you don't have a 3rd party (FSF) dictating terms to you, in particular a 3rd party that is on a quasi-religious campaign. I know the FSF claims otherwise, but they are not the free'er license. Restriction are restrictions, whether or not those restrictions have a socially beneficial goal and are altruistic. As GPL v3 introduced some controversy and drama, what will GPL v4 introduce. Some
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I think the short summary is that I can't change OS X any more than I can change Windows, no matter how much BSD code is in it. There's no "open source" freedoms to BSD-derivatives.
Either you can say that those freedoms aren't important and that open source exists to produce such great derivatives and bring all software forward, open and closed source. BSD code is more of a toolbox for other developers than something normal users have access to.
Or you can say that those features are important, and that runn
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I think the short summary is that I can't change OS X any more than I can change Windows, no matter how much BSD code is in it.
To be fair, there is still Darwin. Apple only releases source now, and could do more, but that is still infinitely more than MS does with their source code.
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That's a somewhat FUD'ish response. There are plenty of BSD users who contribute back.
He was not arguing that the number of users who contribute is too small. If you want to use/improve code and *not* contribute back, it is easier to use code that is under a BSD license. Juniper and Apple are the two big examples of what he means. I'll grant you all of the contributions that these companies may have made over the years; to argue over what they have or have not contributed would be missing the point. The point is that the opportunity exists to take someone else's code, modify it, sell it, and
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The point is that the opportunity exists to take someone else's code, modify it, sell it, and never contribute back or tell your users what has changed, because this is permitted by the BSD-family licenses.
It seems GPL enthusiasts have committed similar offenses and have taken from a community without giving back to that community. "Leeching" as you might say. One key BSD developer writes:
"GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope -- the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have
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Careful, you are dangerously close to demagoguery with a comparison to murder. A manipulative appeal to emotions not logic.
The analogy illustrated the problem with argument you gave; it was not comparing non-free software development with murder...
The first poster said that if you want to make money without contributing to the project, it is easier with a BSD license.
You said, rightly, that many BSD users do contribute back.
In my first two paragraphs, I stated that regardless of how many people or companies decide to contribute code back to the project, the potential for user exploitation exists within BSD licensed code.
The sam
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That's a somewhat FUD'ish response. There are plenty of BSD users who contribute back. I'd say that one advantage is that you don't have a 3rd party (FSF) dictating terms to you, in particular a 3rd party that is on a quasi-religious campaign. I know the FSF claims otherwise, but they are not the free'er license.
The FSF does not control or even sponsor the Linux kernel. And the Linux kernel is the only component that is replaced in Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. As the name would imply, the FSF-controlled GNU software is still there.
Re:Compelled by FSF diff than by church or gov't? (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets say your company adopts a BSD project and a GPL project..... The difference is that on the GPL you can only keep the code in house if you do not want to give out improvements. BSD? Rip, sell, earn money, do not contribute back. Or... at the least you can do that. Which does not help the community.
Well for a limited definition of "helping the community". GPL'd projects have directly benefitted by incorporating BSD code and indirectly benefitted from the knowledge and experience of UC Berkeley's pioneering work in developing a *truly* free and open UNIX implementation. Apple, Sun, SGI and other have advanced the world of computing using BSD based code *and* they have also given back in various ways *including* giving code to the community. For example Apple HFS, which I believe has been incorporated into FreeBSD. And some have argued that some GPL folks take without giving back. One key BSD developer writes:
"GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope -- the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time. But once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back. Ironic."
http://kerneltrap.org/OpenBSD/Stealing_Versus_Sharing_Code [kerneltrap.org]
Basically I'm saying that the meme that GPL gives back and BSD does not is false. Things are far more complicated than that.
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What's the advantage of running Debian with a BSD kernel instead of linux?
If you want to make money, and don't want to contribute back to the free software economy, its easier with a BSD license than a GPL license. Other than that...
Quite an oversimplification.
Yet, not bad for just 27 words. If you can do better given that constraint... A laundry list of unique features, license differences, and the (very few) device drivers that work better under BSD than linux, would probably be too long and complicated to be a "summary".
I would go further and state its within the set of questions where if you are able to successfully implement the answer, you are capable enough not to need to ask us the question, or alternately its within the set of questions where if you ac
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So why is ZFS the only feature ever mentioned? I don't care about ZFS, only servers want that. What does BSD have that normal people want?
Re:NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the things I appreciate most about it is the proper OSS sound support, with mixing that actually works out of the box without having to deal with shit like PulseAudio or the clusterfuck that is Alsa.
Re:NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:4, Interesting)
So why is ZFS the only feature ever mentioned? I don't care about ZFS, only servers want that
Indeed. There are absolutely no use cases for ZFS that aren't on the server. For example, no average user would want easy-to-use snapshots - being able to easily revert a file from an earlier version is a server-only feature. They definitely wouldn't want to be able to do simple incremental backups just by streaming the disk changes with something like zfs send / receive - only server users care about that. Data integrity is probably an enterprise feature too - no one on a desktop wants checksums in their data, because data loss only matters to enterprise users.
Re:NetBsd kernel...what's the advantage? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you really want snapshots, LVM is probably easier
A comment like that implies that you have never worked with ZFS. Snapshots are simple, are constant time, and don't have a performance overhead, and don't require any preconfiguration. A fairly typical ZFS setup has a cron job that takes snapshots every hour and preserves hourly ones for a while, daily ones for a bit longer, and then monthly ones, so you can always go back and find the file that you deleted by mistake.
and works on all filesystems
So does ZFS, if you decide to run another filesystem in a ZVOL (but why would you? We're talking about end users.
The trouble is to come up with a good usecases for snapshots on the desktop, especially since a good backup solution is still needed in case of hardware failure
zfs send / receive makes backups trivial to a NAS. Just take a snapshot, and you can then send all of the deltas between that snapshot and the previous one to a remote drive, over SSH (for example). Then, on the NAS, you also have the snapshots, as well as the latest version, so you can revert to earlier versions easily.
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Ever hear of TimeMachine on MacOS? Well, ZFS provides a similar feature to roll back changes, without the hassle of actually backing up your system. There is even a pretty Gnome UI [sun.com]. Of course, ZFS simplifies performing the backups, too.
Oh, did I forget to mention that despite the complexity of ZFS, the performance is stellar [storagemojo.com]? Yes, it vastly out-performs traditional filesystems. Of course, that is compared to UFS on Solaris, but then again, that filesystem is on par with or faster than EXT3 [google.com] (faster with log
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I want ZFS on my desktop. Mainly because I understand what ZFS is. You might want to read up on it.
Well done! (Score:2)
Thanks to all the involved people, we have another cornerstone of the Free Software.
Good job Debian team (Score:5, Informative)
This looks like a solid release. I only use stable for as long as it takes for the new queue to start start dumping back in Sid but I appreciate the hard work that has gone into this.
And the new artwork really rocks. I was shocked to see plymouth working out of the box with my nvidia card. The consistency from grub to kde launch is really stunning and makes the whole bootup feel seamless.
I love it! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a Ubuntu user, but I know where it comes from. Debian has been the dream operating system of mine for ages. Easy to install thousands of packages, stable, safe, etc. The only trouble is, when I first tried to install it in 2007, I couldn't get it to work with my wireless card. Ubuntu just worked. I'm going to guess that it wouldn't work now either; my wireless card is one of those Intel ones with the locked up firmware so that I don't start spamming the airwaves... (If I recall correctly the software is ipw2200 [debian.org], or similar.)
Anyway, one thing I note from the press release, is that it is still including OpenOffice.org 3.2.1. I wonder when they'll get LibreOffice (Ubuntu will get it in the 11.4 release).
Great job Debian!
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I'm going to guess that it wouldn't work now either... (If I recall correctly the software is ipw2200 [debian.org], or similar.)
So, you bothered to link to a page explaining in extreme detail both that it works, and exactly how to do it line by line, but you're guessing it wouldn't work?
I think you're trying to write in a very complicated manner that you're not sure if your laptop has a ipw2200? I have second hand knowledge that the instructions on the wiki do work quite well if you're unfortunate enough to own a ipw2200 card.
Re:I love it! (Score:5, Insightful)
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In other words (from personal experience):
Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, etc - are especially great if you're a young geek who has plenty of time to enjoy debugging and playing with everything to get the simplest functionality out of your system (like sound or the right resolution to display properly on your screen).
Ubuntu is especially great if you're an older geek and you need to be doing actual work rather than spending two entire weeks figuring out why an obvious LineMode configuration isn't working and you
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In other words (from personal experience):
Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, etc - are especially great if you're a young geek who has plenty of time to enjoy debugging and playing with everything to get the simplest functionality out of your system (like sound or the right resolution to display properly on your screen).
I installed Squeeze a few weeks back, and I didn't have to touch a thing to get sound and graphics to work properly. Same with Lenny before that, actually.
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I'm a Debian user of around 15 years. I think you'll find that Debian has changed somewhat. Or maybe it's just the xorg system. It's much better than XFree was, at just working automatically from scratch. I haven't had to fiddle around with an X config file for years now. Sound also just works.
While Ubuntu is definitely the more polished desktop experience, Debian has become very good at getting things to work automatically, and dare I say, it's much better at being able to customise a system to how yo
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That's the whole reason Ubuntu exists though
Afaict the main reason ubuntu exists is because shuttleworth had his ideas on where he wanted to take linux and unlike most people he had the resources to seriously take it in his own direction rather than just fiddling arround at the edges. Further at the time Debian was in a crisis of ever increasing release cycle length with some people seriously wondering if the sarge cycle would ever end so there were a lot of debian "refugees" to give him an initial userbase.
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Wow, how original.
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I'm not sure what card I have, it just works at install time in Ubuntu.
pop open a terminal, "lsmod | grep ipw2100" if you see something you have a 2100. "lsmod | grep ipw2200" if you see something you have a 2200.
Take a look at the output of dmesg, it'll probably have a lot of verbal sorta-english commentary on your wireless card.
If I knew more Ubuntu, I could probably tell you how to figure out which firmware files it has installed and loaded.
Does it count as a "google hack" to flip the laptop over, find the model number, and google for that and the words "debian install" or
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I'm pretty sure modern versions of the debian installer do work with the intel wireless cards. Plus, if you download the full install disk, rather than the net install, you actually don't need network until after the install is done.
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Debian's OpenOffice uses patches from Go-OO (now merging with LibreOffice) anyway, so in some ways it is already more similar to LibreOffice than to stock OpenOffice.org. It opens .docx documents very well, for example.
This is also true of Ubuntu's, and generally other distros' OpenOffice packages.
LibreOffice itself came into existence too late for an actual LibreOffice version to make it into Debian 6.0.
I expect it will be a
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And if you really want to run LibreOffice there's nothing stopping you from download and install it yourself in /opt. It's a very simple process explained in the accompanying readme file. It's something like "cd into the directory and run dpkg -i *.deb".
simpsons parody of the fishsticks gag (Score:2)
Homer: Look Bart! A Fresh Release of Unprocessed Ubuntu!
(I love Debian for servers, but for desktop Ubuntu is smoother)
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Yeah, you just need to run the "expert" installation routine to get to it.
To others reading this, don't let the "expert" tag fool you. All it does is give you more options to choose from, if you want them. If you don't want/understand the options you can still use the same defaults the "regular" install routine uses within the "expert" install routine.
Works well, but significantly higher requirements (Score:3, Informative)
Squeeze has significantly higher minimal install requirements than Lenny, to the point it wouldn't fit on my Dockstar or my Dt360. So if you are using Debian because it's small and light, don't upgrade.
Re:Works well, but significantly higher requiremen (Score:4, Informative)
Squeeze has significantly higher minimal install requirements than Lenny, to the point it wouldn't fit on my Dockstar or my Dt360.
I'm running squeeze on a dockstar right now by booting from a USB stick. Some smart people made it easy for the rest of us. [doozan.com]
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maybe sshd not installed? that's been the default of debian
try a
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
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oh! now I see, no rs-232c port on that one, and if no usb-serial in kernel can't do that either
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You should be able to install debian from plugbox... My CA-42 cable skills came up short. Still not sure what that is about, maybe the cable I bought was just too lame. Or maybe I am, but I positively identified the ground and after that it's just RX and TX.
Some CPU microarchitectures dropped from Debian... (Score:5, Informative)
Although kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64 have been added, these are not true new CPU microarchitectures in and of themselves, as they are compiled to standard x86 and x86_64 respectively, but obviously with the fairly radical change of not using Linux at all with a different GNU libc requiring all packages to be recompiled. This is the same situation as we have traditionally seen in the never-officially-released hurd-i386 port of Debian (which makes sense to call Debian GNU I suppose, as the Hurd kernel is part of the GNU project already) which seems to be missing so far with Debian 6.0 so far, pending a decision to potentially drop it as well.
All in all, amazing work by all in the Debian project. It remains an incredibly impressive feat that such a project can have no corporate oversight or ownership yet maintain such an impressively influential, relevant, and useful place in the operating system ecosystem. Even with dropping a couple of architectures, Debian still supports more computer types than most people even know exists, and continues to provide package updates that many many other operating systems base their repositories from. Also wonderful to see the website be updated [debian.org]!!
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In Debian's defense, there haven't been any Alphas built for many years, and I'd expect the same to be true of HPPA, which IIRC was replaced by Itanium.
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If you're going to drop Alpha, why not drop m68k?
What are we supposed to do with our old Alphas? Just set them on fire? Not that I have one any more.
Re:Some CPU microarchitectures dropped from Debian (Score:4, Informative)
I'm guessing that there are more developers interested in maintaining the m68k port than the Alpha port. Or at least that's how that typically goes. Unless you've got a strange OS like NetBSD which is obsessed with running on absolutely every possible architecture from mainframes to wrist watches, some platforms tend to not have enough people with the hardware and interest to keep updating the branch.
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m68k was dropped from the official release as of etch
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What are we supposed to do with our old Alphas? Just set them on fire? Not that I have one any more.
I think that's the point. As much as I like diving into old hardware, at some point I started getting rid of it because of space limitations and the simple fact that it's not feasible, even with new distro support, to do anything of consequence on it that can't be done cheaper (read: electric power) and faster on even the wimpiest of several year old cast off (free or nearly) servers and/or laptops.
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If you're going to drop Alpha, why not drop m68k?
They already did.
There comes a point where the slow march of software "bloat" gets too much for older hardware and/or there is no longer sufficiant porters to keep the port in what debian considers a releasable state. It's sad but that is the way things go in a project like debian.
Arm was a special case because they kept support for the majority of arm devices but did so through a new port due to some serious deficiancies in the old arm linux port. It was alw
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the last PA-RISC (aka HP/PA) was built in 2008.
Ah well, people running those can just switch to one of the BSD
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If dropping support for or delaying the release of some obscure and outdated CPU architecture makes releases faster, I'd say that's great. Debian always supported more architectures than other mainstream distributions, but they clearly placed more emphasis on hardware that most people actually use. There is still NetBSD and some other niix-like distributions for people with more outdated hardware.
Are they mad? (Score:2)
Are they mad at Debian? The thing that annoys most on Linux are the gnu-parts in the userland. Why should someone with a nice and well-designed bsd-userland use the gnu-tools instead?
Or is this some kind of âoewe can do itâ?
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Don't use it then. You're not forced to and you have a choice. Personally, I can't stand BSD's userland tools and prefer GNU's.
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I find GNU Make generally superior to legacy Make implementations, especially if I am avoiding the autotools.For example, I can set up completely automated header detection and tracking, not needing "make dep" runs or the equivalent.
The GNU project's 'less' is my preferred pager, despite the fact that I don't use most of it's advanced features.
And then generally I prefer to have the GNU userland because mst of the utilities have extended features, that various scripts may be taking advantage of (the whole r
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To be honest, that puzzles me as well. The big advantage that pretty much everybody else has over Linux is that they consider the kernel and userland to be tied together with only minor patching to the OS between releases. It makes it a lot easier to do performance tweaking and bug fixing if you have control over the entire base install. It also means that if you send into the mailing list with a problem you can concisely tell them what OS version you're running and they'll have a reasonable understanding o
Most RC-free release in a long time (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm amazed that they stuck this release freeze out long enough to get the RC bugs for the testing release down to what looks like the lowest since the graph [debian.org] began tracking testing in 2004 -- I would like to believe that this means squeeze will end up being the most stable/reliable release so far.
Now that the release is done and the freeze is over, an upgrade of the Linux kernel (from 2.6.32 to 2.6.37) in unstable should be soon to follow. Also, Firefox (probably 3.5.9 -> 4) and LibreOffice (OOO 3.2.1 -> LO 3.3).
Lenny (Score:2)
Just finished an upgrade from etch to lenny a few weeks back!
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Yeah, me too. The machine in question is a lowly 700Mhz Celeron with 386Mb and has been humming away happily for the better part of a decade (2002) - the original install was migrated from an older 233Mhz w/ 128Mb (Debian 2 or 3, I think), and it's been upgraded since that point. This, IMO, is one of the biggest strengths debian has: upgrades are literally painless to the point of never really needing to worry about it.
It's amazing how much longevity Debian releases have, even though they're considered 'old
The other way around... (Score:2, Interesting)
For the past few years I've been working on going the other way around from Debian/BSD. My system has a Linux kernel but a whole lot of BSD binaries (I've replaced GNU coreutils, tar, gzip, findutils, init, etc. with BSD versions).
Not everything can be replaced, but a lot of the userland works pretty well with BSD versions: some programs stupidly assume GNU tools and need to be patched, but it's been working fine.
Re:The other way around... (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually see two main things coming out of the freebsd kernel on debian.
1/ having a really good kernel without the stupid port system.
I know that sounds like a troll. But I really elieve linux is a crappy kernel. It is supposed to be monolithic so everything got thrown in the kernel. And now, we realized it is not going to work, so we start using micro kernel types techniques such as network manager, udev, hal... That's not the way to go with a monolithic kernel.
On the other hand freebsd has an awful packing system in my opinion. I need to install weird packages all the time and I don't want to spend so much time compiling everything. I think debian really rocks at having a lot of packages that are overall well compiled with appropriate dependencies. I expect a lot out of debian/freebsd
2/ using a different kernel is likely to activate different code path. That's a great thing for debugging purpose. As parent said, that will help to find GNU dependent code and probably linux dependent assumption. That's a good thing for make our tools more reliable.
Debian: here is an attaboy from me!
Really excited, then... (Score:4, Interesting)
I got really excited when I read this at first, but then I realized it's probably going to have many of the same bugs that the FreeBSD kernel has surrounding the various subsystems (jails) and drivers (recent Intel ethernet crashing, USB, etc. that still don't work for the better part of a year), as well as crippling limitations as it regards adaptability on filesystems (ext*, NTFS, NFS - all limiting) and the like.
i wonder if they managed to get ZFS to work fully with the userland utilities written? That would be the biggest point that might pull me over to give it a go.
Will this complicate licensing? (Score:3)
In the post scox-scam era, licensing is such a BFD. I have to wonder if there will any complications over conflicts between BSD and GPL licensing.
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With the exception of code under the old 4 clause BSD license, all BSD licensed code is fully compatible with the GPL, so I'm having trouble picturing any problems, especially since even the FSF (who generally interprets the concept of derivative works very widely) agrees that a kernel's licensing in no way affects the userland.
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My understanding is that anything you put in GPL code becomes GPL. And GPL differs from BSD in that, BSD can taken and used in a closed source application.
This is great (Score:3)
Thank you again, Debian team, for providing the most stable (in the no-unexpected-changes sense of the word) distro I know of.
One question though:
Grub 2 as default - for the love of all things good, why?
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Damn! Now I'm flabbergasted too. Of course it's as ugly as the old one, since it's meant to be used even by text-only browsers, but it's still very cool.
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I personally hate website updates just for the sake of updating. The old one worked fine.
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Damn it Jim, they're engineers, not graphic designers.
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To get into a debian release a new port has to go through several stages
1: someone has to create the port, get the basics working etc.
2: the porters must demonstrate it is appropriate for the ftp masters to accept it into unstable (this step often involves flamewars)
3: the port must demonstrate sufficient archive coverage, be sufficiently up to date*, have a usable installer (preferablly a port of the debian installer), have porterboxes and buildds availiable etc to get the release team to accept it into t
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So if you had to run Linux, you wouldn't?
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Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Informative)
Is this not one of the fastest Debian release cycles?
Not really. It's been two years since Lenny, which was two years after Etch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Release_history [wikipedia.org]
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It's always amusing to see Debian fans complaining that the end users are always going for Ubuntu instead of "hey, why not choose Debian, it's the original and it's the best!" when Debian keeps making moves like this. It's already bad enough to think that a new Linux user would want a browser called "IceWeasel" or would understand that it's really just Firefox renamed because of some silly branding/icon tiff with the mozilla folks. Now they'll have the additional enjoyment of having a bunch of useful drivers removed, or even enjoying the wonderfulness of a nonstandard kernel! Listen, it's ok to do stuff like this if you're really into teh sooper 100% free as in freedom rms-approved purity, but don't subsequently go complaining when ordinary end users don't want it because it's unusable to anyone other than a free software hacker.
FreeBSD is building its tree using LLVM/Clang as well as GCC. I look forward to seeing Debian FreeBSD and all those packages giving the option of both LLVM and GCC. There will be plenty of people using them and I assume one LLVM 3.0 is out that Ubuntu will seriously be peaking in on what's going on with it.
Re:yay. two more variants that nobody will want. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you provide an actual example of Debian fans complaining in the way you indicate, or is it all in your imagination?
Debian tends to be the way it is because Debian users (and builders) like it that way. Of course they do end up being rather smug as well, but complaints about those who choose to use lesser distributions are notably absent.
Re:yay. two more variants that nobody will want. (Score:5, Interesting)
What a load of bs.
I started with Debian as total Linux noob back when Woody was the official release. I've stayed because Debian stable is so stable, and because the APT system is about as good as installers get. I've never had to wonder whether something wasn't working because it was buggy, or because I lacked the requisite knowledge to configure it correctly. That alone made learning Linux much, much easier and far more straightforward. I'd used a couple of other distros before I heard of Debian, but even simple things in the gui didn't work on them because of bugs and I got very frustrated with them. I never knew if any problem I ran across was a bug or because I'd done something stupid. With Debian I could know with a high degree of certainty that the problems I encountered were my own stupidity, not someone elses.
Debian was a breath of fresh air compared to all the bugs in other distros and Windows. I've played with Ubuntu a few times, but always abandoned it because it's not gotten any better over the years. It's always buggy, buggy, buggy. If I wanted a buggy OS I would have stayed with Windows. And, I find fewer bugs and newer software in the vast majority of cases in Debian testing and unstable than I do in Ubuntu.
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It's already bad enough to think that a new Linux user would want a browser called Firefox.
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Debian fans don't really care. They want a nice, predictable, stable server. This goal is antagonistic to having an exciting new dev box, which is what Ubuntu is for.
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Actually, some Debian fans, like me, like to run the testing or unstable distributions of Debian, which gives the exciting new dev box feel. OK, I don't run pure testing; I pin my system to testing, and then pick and choose from unstable as I need. I've even installed the occasional experimental package. Sure, my system is a hodgepodge of packages, but it works and works well. I've had surprisingly few issues out of it, and where I have had issues, it's always been fixed by a package downgrade.
That's wh
Re:yay. two more variants that nobody will want. (Score:5, Informative)
You should be aware that Debian is not allowed to use the trademark "Firefox" and also have the ability to apply patches such as security fixes(1). It's not called "Iceweasel" out of anything but necessity. You think this is a Debian-specific issue? Well, no, it's actually a major problem for all other distributors as well(2).
1 [lwn.net]
2 [fedoraproject.org]
So the links are 5 years old, but the issues surrounding the trademarks haven't changed or gone away. Distributions shipping "Firefox" have abrogated their ability (and responsibility) to be able to apply changes and security updates to the software without the explicit concent of Mozilla Corporation.
Not exactly free software when it comes on those terms, is it?
Regarding the kernel, I assume you're referring to the non-free firmware removal. Maybe you haven't been fully informed that the non-free firmware was actually removed from the upstream kernel sources as well. As a result, the Debian kernels are far from "non-standard", they are standard!
Regards,
Roger
[FFS Slashdot, it's 2011 and you still can't handle UTF-8!]
Re:Firefox Updates (Score:3)
Wait, is this the reason that when I tried to upgrade Firefox "like normal" on ubuntu I couldn't do it without major new package component upgrades? I'm the arctypical nervous newbie, and I went to go get an update, and got back messages that it wouldn't update without other new pieces.
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This is one probable reason. If there's a security problem, then the distributor has the following options:
- wait until Mozilla releases a new version containing the security fix [but this may contain other, unwanted, changes]
- backport the security fix, but then get explicit approval from Mozilla before being allowed to make the release [may take too long]
- backport the security fix immediately, but don't wait for approval from Mozilla [but requires renaming to something other than "Firefox" to be complia
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Wow, in all the years I used Debian, I barely ever used a window manager. To the point that when you sai d"here are some screenshots", I was expecting a page full of screenshots of the command line (which is where I literally spent 99.9% of my twelve years with Debian). Seeing Debian used with a window manager like that almost feels like going to a strip club and seeing your sister come out on the stage!
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It gets worse - Debian has a graphical installer now. I felt dirty using it to give Squeeze a try in a VM earlier.
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Huh? I'm still waiting for 5.0 to finish compiling!
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Correct. The sentance "Debian GNU/kFreeBSD will port both a 32- and 64-bit PC version of the FreeBSD kernel into the Debian userspace" is very poorly worded.
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is the kernel of FreeBSD but the same userspace as in all Debian ports.