On the Heels of Wheezy, Aptosid Releases 2013-01 79
An anonymous reader writes "Right on the heels of Debian's 7.0 ('Wheezy') release, the Aptosid team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the 2013-01 release. Aptosid is a rolling release built on top of Debian's most modern branch Sid, providing the most up-to-date kernel available with patches and stabilization not yet seen in mainline, along with many patched Debian packages, all while maintaining 100% compatibility with upstream Debian (unlike other distros based on Debian). If you think Debian Stable is too old to be useful, give Atposid a spin!"
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not even any reference to hosts files.... pathetic
A great distro. (Score:1)
Probably be switching back to this distro after three years on Arch.
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XFCE 4.10 and I'm running sid with the siduction repo's and I couldn't be happier. It's a shame they couldn't get the XFCE 4.6 -> 4.10 upgrade path working by freeze.
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I run Gentoo you clod and get plenty of work done. It's all in how you configure your system. What I dislike about debian is they make it so damn difficult to get exactly the options I want instead of the everything and the kitchen sink approach they have. As an example, I can run older software that's extremely stable simply because most times, a vulnerability is found in a feature/library my system isn't built against unlike debian. From what I've seen, if there are 30 different libs to do the same thing,
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if you build your own system, secure boot is a non issue
if you buy an oem box with windows on it and then wonder why linux won't install, you're holding it wrong
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...have pretty much always sucked.
They are filled with hardware that is difficult or impossible to use in non-windows OSs, for that matter, they are often even difficult to get working with a Windows OS that isn't the same version the laptop shipped with.
They have poor life expectancy and are prone to overheating.
Their #1 advantage, portability goes out the window after a year when the battery stops holding a decent charge.
Give me a good desktop any day. If I want to be portable that's ok, VNC will run on
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Oh.. i meant to include in that list...
They have pretty much zero upgradeability.
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i only buy toshiba laptops with win7 (i won't be buying a laptop with win8). i've never had a problem getting linux on. maybe you're holding them wrong too.
if you're stupid enough to buy a laptop with win8 with the intention of putting linux on, you're also holding it wrong.
when all laptops have uefi and lock linux out, then maybe i'll bitch. at the moment there is no sign of that though, and given microsoft's foray into surface, i imagine their traditional oems may be looking to diversify to reduce their r
Neat, a new updated Aptosid! (Score:2)
I used Kanotix, Sidux, and Aptosid (related debian-derived distros)for a long, long time.
It's nice to see a new Aptosid version, I may have to give this a spin, after updating all my server machines to Wheezy.
Keep on Truckin' guys!
jaz
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I used Kanotix, Sidux, and Aptosid (related debian-derived distros)for a long, long time.
Maybe you can answer this since the website doesn't. What is the difference between aptosid and just running sid?
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Just running sid is asking for your desktop to implode when a new thing drops and it breaks everything else (trust me, I used sid for my desktop right up until the x11/xorg transition). Sid is where all the package rearchitecture begins, sometimes those new packages are even available on the archives before the conflicts begin, the rest of the time, you apt-get at the wrong time and everything uninstalls. FTBFS is a showstopper on stable and testing, on sid it's an excuse to force all the other package ma
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aptitude and sid, ouch, your asking for a sysyem meltdown
Kanatix, sidux, aptosid, siduction, all based on sid, all of them don't recommend aptitude, and for good reason
Re:Neat, a new updated Aptosid! (Score:4, Informative)
It has a script to update (Deliberately made to be as unreadable as possible.)
This is not true of aptosid. The update procedure is simply to stop X, run "apt-get dist-upgrade" and make sure what it wants to do seems sane before accepting it.
They don't use aptitude though or support it.
This is absolutely true and for similar reasons to why Debian has recommended using apt-get to perform the dist-upgrades between their stable releases. With sid you want to dist-upgrade and the predictable and consistent nature of apt-get is far better suited for this then aptitude which can often be too smart for it's own good.
Re:Neat, a new updated Aptosid! (Score:5, Informative)
The summary includes one of the major differences, the kernel. Wheezy (and sid as of now) has 3.2, this aptosid release has 3.9. The aptosid kernel stays very close to vanilla mainline with the latest stable/important/security patches and suitably tuned for most desktop users.
Another major difference is the installer (and it's live system) which brings a coherent set of packages to start with and some initial configuration which helps make it more suitable for use as a sid system such as disabling the installation of recommended packages by default. The initial aptosid system is a clean sid system, such as you can get from debootstrapping, without the pain of bootstrapping or the baggage accumulated by starting from a stable system and upgrading it to sid.
As a result of not being tied to the Debian kernel and debian-installer it can also often adopt features ahead of Debian itself without breaking compatibility with sid. Examples have included ath5k support for a fully Free wifi experience, insserv support for parrallel starting of initscripts and support for installing on EFI systems. Of course it doesn't support everything d-i does nor all the architectures of the Debian kernel.
The aptosid manual is great and covers an awful lot of material from setting things up to maintaining your system, guiding you to keep a supportable system in the unstable environment. It's available in 14 languages at the moment.
The artwork of course is also aptosid's own, changing with each release. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and of course you can pick other art from the Debian packages or your own images for wallpapers ... though I never bother.
Finally there is a community which wants to support those running sid and a "fix.main" section of the aptosid repo which often includes some "hot-fixes" for issues which have cropped up in sid, helping to protect it's users, sometimes briefly just waiting for the next debian mirror push and sometimes for issues which end up staying in sid for a long time.
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How about Mate? I've not even looked at it yet, but if Mate is available, my testing will be considerably more enjoyable.
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1. The recommended software update process for bug fixes and security updates is to kill X, install the update, and start X. Their directions for this are excellent and very easy to follow, but it's still a hassle to lose access to your web browser (aside from Lynx) while your updates are installed.
2. This is clearly a team of brilliant software engineers but no
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Nice to see you here bfree . :)
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sid is a very naughty boy
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Maybe you can answer this since the website doesn't. What is the difference between aptosid and just running sid?
Many things were listed before, but the biggest ones were not:
1. You can't install Debian Sid, since there is no installer for it. You need to install normall Debian, and then add the sid repos and dist-upgrade. Can be painful and very error-prone (see #2).
2. As much as people like to say that Aptosid (formerly Sidux) is pure Sid, it is not. The Aptosid maintainers/Debian developers try to hold off known to be broken version of packages.
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Assuming by "normal" debian, you mean stable, that is incorrect. You can install testing and update to sid. That is a much easier path than stable to sid.
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You get a fully usable live CD/DVD that can be booted into a complete desktop for testing, emergency/recovery or standard desktop use. And if you like it and want to use it as your main OS, you can install it. It's basically the KNOPPIX of Sid, but featuring a live system installer. And it's primarily focused on KDE (with Xfce and LXDE editions available), which is good for people who can't stand GNOME 3.
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As the uncle of an autistic adult who has been called a gimp by various ignorant and vicious people, and seen his face when it happened, I literally think of the people who insist in clinging to that name as the equivalent of the KKK or the Manson family. I will not use the GIMP, and remove it from all installs I do. Large distros are turning off tens of thousands of potential users by insisting it's just a play on words, It's hateful, bigoted, and harms all the other developers of bundled Linux software th
Re:Neat, a new updated Aptosid! (Score:4, Insightful)
As the uncle of an autistic adult who has been called a gimp by various ignorant and vicious people, and seen his face when it happened, I literally think of the people who insist in clinging to that name as the equivalent of the KKK or the Manson family. I will not use the GIMP, and remove it from all installs I do.
Really? KKK or the Manson family? I agree with most of what you said in your comment, but I feel dirty for agreeing with you after reading that idiocy. Your comment is incredibly insulting in its insensitivity to people who have been killed for being different, rather than merely insulted — and more meaningfully, to their survivors.
Anyone who defends the name of The GIMP is being lame. The GIMP is the poster child for why developers shouldn't name their own projects. But a cross-burning (or a lynching) it ain't.
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I don't think the name is one bit of a problem on the other side of the pond; the only place I consistently hear complaints about its name seems to be Slashdot.
It's more of a storm in a teacup, which might give some people a stick to beat the GIMP with. As you say, it appears to be a Slashdot-only sort of thing.
The first page or two of Google results for gimp [google.com] all point to sites for the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Also, the entry in wiktionary for gimp [wiktionary.org] suggests GIMP [wiktionary.org] as an alternative, then lists some arcane meanings for the term, before noting its use in US slang from 1925, and then listing more arcane definitions. Despite living more than a decade in the US
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Probably because very few people actually use GIMP (everyone else just pirates Photoshop if they can't or won't pay for it), so the sample size of users and people who've even heard of the GIMP is vanishingly small compared to Photoshop. Slashdotters tend to be fans of open source stuff though so it makes sense they'd at least be aware of the GIMP mo
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Probably because very few people actually use GIMP (everyone else just pirates Photoshop if they can't or won't pay for it), so the sample size of users and people who've even heard of the GIMP is vanishingly small compared to Photoshop.
I downloaded that Adobe CS2 that Adobe accidentally gave away and I still use GIMP and didn't even bother to jump through the hoops to install Photoshop, which is nontrivial. I'm afraid I'll require a citation before I'll believe that more people are using pirated photoshop on linux than are using The GIMP, which is really fairly usable these days.
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Well if I go by what you said, no-one is using pirated Photoshop on Linux anyway because it doesn't exist. :) Unless you mean Wine, which I don't.
Put it this way - GIMP has no mindshare. When people talk about Photoshopping they have one product in mind. When people discuss artistic design with computers, they're not talking about GIMP. When people present stuff they've made, I've yet to see anyone of any measurable level of quality use anything other than Photoshop. It's the industry standard for a reason.
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Tried suggesting it in a UK, NHS hospital to a manager (M) as a . The hospital runs a *gait analysis* lab, various imaging labs and has a school for long-term stay kids.
As soon as they heard the name it was off the table. The fear of someone seeing the name and making a compaint was enough.
It doesn't matter that GIMP could have saved the taxpayer-funded NHS money and it doesn't matter how competent a tool it is. It's associated with a word that still has widely recognised derogatory connotations. I've shown
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Sorry for the lack of edit, I can't seem to find the option to modify my post...
Tried suggesting it in a UK, NHS hospital to a manager as an alternative to the widely used Photoshop.
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Using "lame" in that manner is not much different.
Why did it take an AC to see what I did there? This place has gone to the cowards.
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gimp does have a purpose... it serves as a handy code base for adobe programmers to plagiarize from
gimp = by experts, for experts
photoshop = by dummies, for dummies
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So, I should stop using "git" because "git" is an insult in my culture (UK)? No, I keep on using it because it does a fantastic job. What about firefox -- how do you think foxes feel about that? Yes, you have the right to be offended by a random acronym. Please carry on being offended -- thankfully no-one loses except you.
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It's nice to see a new Aptosid version
Why? It's rolling release.
Are you serious? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you think Debian Stable is too old to be useful, give Atposid a spin!
Debian 7 is less than 24 hours into being the stable version, and went into release freeze status less than a year ago (2012-06-30). I'm endlessly amused by what people consider "old" these days.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:5, Funny)
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If you think Debian Stable is too old to be useful, give Atposid a spin!
Debian 7 is less than 24 hours into being the stable version, and went into release freeze status less than a year ago (2012-06-30). I'm endlessly amused by what people consider "old" these days.
It is possible they had a pre-release leading up to this with patches based on the RC candidates of Debian 7. I do not know as I do not run that distro.
The Ubuntu guys who don't get it (Score:2)
Is it the Ubuntu guys who don't get it, or is it me?
Canonical taps Debian every six months and then add their own extras like brown colors and Unity. Then comes Mint and flavors both Debian and Ubuntu with mint.
But, in the meantime Debian changes, too. So, when Canonical or the Mint girls come back to the mothership there has been a number of changes, being more up-to-date than either of the children.
Is it the Ubuntu guys who don't get it, or is it just me?
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or is it me?
It's you.
"Up To Date" != stability.
I'm running 12.04, the equivalent of Wheezy, with PPAs for certain bleeding edge stuff I can tolerate crashing. I don't want a rolling release for bloody everything, thanks.
Your post reeks of "stop liking what I don't like."
--
BMO
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You should read the GP again. He wasn't disagreeing with your position or advocating use of a rolling release.
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Yeah I mean who wants a desktop that's still being maintained (I'm an XFCE user), or a web browser and email client that aren't EOL before the OS is even released? It's crazy I tell ya.
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You can run an official Google Chrome [google.com] build on Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE. You can also run XFCE on current releases of these distros. What functionality is missing from any of the available mail clients available in their repositories? All these things are supported with current security and bug fix updates as well. It seems you're complaining about nothing.
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Debian 7 is less than 24 hours into being the stable version, and went into release freeze status less than a year ago (2012-06-30). I'm endlessly amused by what people consider "old" these days.
Irrelevant, because the versions of packages that Debian ships may not be current. They're the currently tested versions, which is why people run testing — the fully-tested versions are too old right out of the gate, in their opinion. Or, why people run Ubuntu.
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"I'm endlessly amused by what people consider "old" these days."
At work, if a computer still powers up and posts, it's new enough and good enough to make some drudge use it.
At home - a year old computer/kernel/whatever is just alright. I'm looking for something newer to play with all the time.
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I'm not knocking Debian, the Debian community, Debian's stability, or its security. But Debian stable's packa
Self mortification (Score:1)
It's a real torture. People are switching from one derivative distro to another, adding 3rd repositories, switching to testing repos etc. All this stuff brings more incompatibilities, decentralization and divides community forces.
Ubuntu is Ubuntu and there are LTS and short lifecycle versions of distros. it's not Debian at all.
Is it so hard for Debian to have two main distros like "Debian Stable" and "Debian Mainstream"? Everybody will be happy. I've heard another post-self-mortification words like "you kno
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Debian Testing exists for those who want newer packages, aka "Debian Mainstream". I believe its impossible to make everyone happy, and I agree with the Debian approach to their product.
I think there are at least two kinds of people when it comes to linux, there are people who want to get things done, and people who want everything to be perfect. For those people who want everything to be perfect, they switch DE's, switch distros, and try to find the perfect combination of tools, often giving up on a distr
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Is it so hard for Debian to have two main distros like "Debian Stable" and "Debian Mainstream"? Everybody will be happy.
That's a good idea, but can I suggest a small change? Make three of them and call them stable, unstable and testing [debian.org]. Then you can have one distribution that is well tested and reliable which people can use as a reliable, long lasting platform, one which is more up to date while still being fairly solid, and another which can have the latest features but which may not have all the issues straightened out. The alternative, having two completely different distributions called "Debian Enterprise Linux" and "
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Testing is for accepting into Stable, so, it's the same without major feature changes and some fixes: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-ftparchives#s-frozen [debian.org] Unstable is more like development version, not the "Debian Fedora". If they're paying attention, if everything is fine, then why do we have aptosid in here? According to distrowatch, Debian has already spawned more than 120 derivatives (c) debian.org (!). RHEL/Fedora have 28, and most of them are very specific, like trixbox, clearos, Yello
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At least CentOs is a Fedora derivitive (well, a Red Hat derivative) rather than a Debian derivative. Not sure about Yellow Dog. I think Scientific is also a Red Hat Derivative. And Another, White Box, may still be active.
N.B.: Starting out as the derivative of a distro doesn't guarantee that you will remain such. Mandrake started out as a derivative of Red Hat.
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CentOS is not a Fedora derivative, there's a huge difference. CentOS is just a rebuild of RHEL's src.rpm's. RedHat must provide sources for all the changes, but not binary packages, this is how CentOS is born, same with Scientific. Yellowdog is created for PPC arch use.
Mandrake is/was BASED on RedHat 5 (do not confuse with RHEL 5) and has nothing to do now with RHEL. It's a separate product which has it's own commercial way.
Suse was initially same as Slackware, but now it has nothing to do with Slack, and h
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Why not? The people who have common needs are well served (we hope) by the common distributions. People with specialized needs may refer one of the less common distributions. Nobody needs all of them, but everybody can find some distribution that is satisfactory.
Personally, I've settled on Debian, but I give occasional checks of a few other distributions to see is they're in some way better. So far the answer has been no, but that's no guarantee for the future.
As an example, I don't understand why anyon
Debian stable (Score:2)
There is a reason they call it that.
If you think Debian Stable is too old to be usefu (Score:3)
If you think Debian Stable is too old to be useful, you're a retard.