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Interview with Debian Project Leader on “Sarge” Release

  Submitted by Rahul Sundaram Debian 20 Comments

Newsforge has a interesting interview with the Debian project leaders on the new debian release planned to be released in a short while

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20 Comments

  1. 2005-01-05 1:56 am
    Anonymous

    I think that thx to distro’s like ubuntu debian development is going mutch faster these days ;)

    but I still find making debian packages more difficult then rpm packages ;) maybe just me ;)

  2. 2005-01-05 2:11 am
    Anonymous

    Sarge has KDE 3.3.1 now in the nick of time. Freeze it and serve it cold ;)

    The interview is rather disappointing. The usual questions and the usual answers. Would be nice to hear more behind the scenes stories.

  3. 2005-01-05 2:12 am
    Anonymous

    You’re the first person I’ve seen who says RPM’s are better than DEB’s.

    Could you care to elaborate?

    Personally, I find that updating a system is much much easier using apt-get. I like not needing to pop in CD’s whenever there’s a version update. e.g. to upgrade from Fedora Core 2 to Fedora Core 3, you need the Core 3 CD’s.

  4. 2005-01-05 2:29 am
    Anonymous

    Personally, I find that updating a system is much much easier using apt-get. I like not needing to pop in CD’s whenever there’s a version update. e.g. to upgrade from Fedora Core 2 to Fedora Core 3, you need the Core 3 CD’s.

    —-

    not the same old thing. apt-get is not comparable to rpm

    dpkg is. rpm the command is different from rpm the format.

    apt-get is comparable to apt4rpm, yum, update, yast, urpmi and so on

    yes. its possible to upgrade from fedora core 2 to fedora core 3 using yum

  5. 2005-01-05 2:46 am
    Anonymous

    Yes, and apt-get is better than yum. Not because dpkg is much better than rpm (it is better, but not much, IMO), but because debian packages are written according to Debian Policy. Policy allows smoother upgrade, better co-ordination, etc.

  6. 2005-01-05 2:46 am
    Anonymous

    >You’re the first person I’ve seen who says RPM’s are better than DEB’s.

    Actually he is talking about MAKING DEB’s.. if your a developer its much easier to make RPM’s than it is to make DEB’s.

    This is a pretty common complaint from developers.

    RPM’s require little more than a tar.gz file and a post install script.

    Making DEB’s is more involved. See here: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-debpkg.html?c…

  7. 2005-01-05 2:50 am
    Anonymous

    lupusBE is talking about *writing* DEB or RPM yourself: that is, writing *.spec and debian/{control,rules}. And I think you will agree with lupusBE if you have written both DEB and RPM package yourself.

    On the other hand, I think Debian works better precisely because it is harder to write DEB package — you need to keep more rules, take care of more details.

  8. 2005-01-05 3:28 am
    Anonymous

    “Yes, and apt-get is better than yum”

    ya. keep mumbling. apt4rpm is virtually the same. so whats the point?

    ”

    On the other hand, I think Debian works better precisely because it is harder to write DEB package — you need to keep more rules, take care of more details.”

    thats a pure excuse. making it harder is unnecessary. policy and maintainer controls quality not the specification. the rpm spec provides as much details to create quality packages in an easier way.

  9. 2005-01-05 4:39 am
    Anonymous

    I have to agree. Due to the enforced guidelines that surround making a DEB things tend to be put together more tightly.

    What I mean is, regardless or your skill level, if you manage to make a DEB following the guidelines you’re pretty much assured that the package will work, and work well. If you can’t figure out what is what, then chances are the newest of the new comers will not be able to produce a low quality package.

    Of course its not perfect and people get lazy, espeically with third party (unoffical) repositories.

    As for RPM’s, they may be easier to produce but since their really isn’t a per distro guide to producing the package, I find that there is a larger chance of producing faulty products. (not too sure if I made sense here… or if this is even the point I’m trying to make.)

    Then again I’m no expert so I’m the last person that should comment on this kind of thing.

  10. 2005-01-05 5:27 am
    Anonymous

    Making DEB’s is more involved. See here:

  • 2005-01-05 10:08 am
    Anonymous

    i been playing with Sarge in an extra disk partition for a while now in my spare time, i can say it is looking good, i sure like the installer much better than the old one in Woody, and am looking forward to Sarge going stable :^)

    Kudos to the Debian developers…

  • 2005-01-05 10:20 am
    Anonymous

    I updated my testing debian last night, to benefit from the last r4 release (>aptitude dist-upgrade)

    It updated my kernel-image from 2.6.7-k7 to 2.6.7.1-k7.

    But it seems that there was a problem : i lost /initrd.img, then lilo refused to upgrade. And aptitude resume…

    At the end, i had a /initrd directory, but no more /initrd.img.

    And I was forced to map it by hand to /boot/initrd.img.2.6.7.1-k7 !

    What happened to me, camarads ?

    Olive

    P.S. : the .fr mirror seems to have a lot of errors too ;)

  • 2005-01-05 1:07 pm
    Anonymous

    Great interview, and great news that the stable release is coming out soon.

    However is the interviewee being a little bit too careful in saying that he wouldn’t recommand Debian as Desktop for people that are new to Linux? While it’s true that people would have to do more than installing the OS and click here and there when it comes to Debian, I hope newbies won’t be scared away thinking that Linus is only for seasoned hackers.

    I read a lot of reviews and articles on various distributions before I set my mind on Debian; before this the only OS I’ve had contact with was Windoze. I almost decided to try Fedora or Mandrake because there are so many articles that make statement like “Debian is hard to install” “Debian is not for newbies”…

    Well the geek in me decided to rise up to the challenge and do Debian anyway. What a boost to my ego and self-esteem! If Debian is really as hard as many wants us to believe, then I must be some kind of supertechie…but Nope, I am really just a curious soul eager to learn all there is about the OS that I’ll be working on.

    Anyways what he probably wanted to say is that with Debian it’s more than just click click click. However people who are thinking of trying Debian out shouldn’t be afraid or discouraged, thinking it’s too defficult for newbies…I was a newbie and now use Debian for everything I do on my laptop…

  • 2005-01-05 3:10 pm
    Anonymous

    yeah.. I think many ppl are forgetting to make a distinction between “ppl who are new to linux” and “average joe who wants to try Linux”.

    There’s a big nuance between the two terms… Someone who’s new to Linux might already be a power user and be off on hiw own with Gentoo or Debian or whatnot.. I myself started with Slackware back in 96 and I don’t regret it. In fact I found it easy back then.

  • 2005-01-05 4:03 pm
    Anonymous

    One big plus of the DEB creation process I see is that it allows one to do much more. (Please tell me if I’m wrong). You can for example generate debian/control from within debian/rules. This simplifies the process of building different set of packages from one source. One set can be built with Woody Build-Depends (for backporting), one can include extra plugins or non-free parts and so on. debian/rules can also include targets for different maintaining tasks.

  • 2005-01-05 4:27 pm
    Anonymous

    At this point, the quality of the packaging makes a much bigger difference than your choice of system. My personal experience with Fedora (yum & rpm) has been quite good. My earlier experience with Debian unstable (deb and apt, using Libranet). was not very good by comparison. Obviously this is not a fair comparison since I was using unstable (at the time testing still had Gnome 1.x). I’m sure that stable and testing are much more reliable. The point here is that all of these systems get the job done when proper testing is done.

    On a completely different topic, I’m saddened that Sarge will be released with the 2.4 kernel (on i386). By the time Sarge is out, it will already be somewhat outdated. At this point, Debian is still successful as a pre-distribution, allowing more targeted distributions like Ubuntu to be successful. However, unless they fix their release cycle, the proper Debian distribution will continue to become less relevant.

  • 2005-01-05 6:03 pm
    Anonymous

    “I’m saddened that Sarge will be released with the 2.4 kernel (on i386)”

    You left out two crucial words: “by default”. Anyone wanting a 2.6 kernel can choose the “linux26” flavour at install time.

    Also: “One other point to consider is that a goal of d-i has always been to release updates to the installer in between major debian releases, and these updates would likely include new kernels” (quoting from http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/08/msg00389.html).

  • 2005-01-05 7:09 pm
    Anonymous

    It doesn’t actually sound like they’re going to make it possible to install a “fully” 2.6 system straight off. The interview mentioned that udev wouldn’t be included in particular.

    This seems like a horrible choice to me, as 2.6+hotplug+udev not only provides a very modern and dynamic system, that most desktop users would expect these days, but also takes care of a lot of old debian issues. For example, hardware detection and changing becomes almost a non-issue, you just plug the thing in.

    Oh well, I’m not likely going to be heading back to plain old Debian now there’s ubuntu…

  • 2005-01-06 3:03 am
    Anonymous

    “For example, hardware detection and changing becomes almost a non-issue, you just plug the thing in.”

    It certainly is more convenient than having to re-run a hardware detection script every time. 🙂 However, there are numerous posts (e.g http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/07/msg00899.html) which contain mention of d-i installing hotplug upon detecting hardware for which it could be useful, so there does seem to be at least some limited support for this already.

    Posts such as http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2003/12/msg00914.html also suggest that udev support might make it into a future d-i interim release, albeit post-Sarge. So you might not have to wait until the release of Etch at least!

    Also, I believe that the 2.6 kernel packages have udev support compiled in even though d-i does not make use of it, and that all the other necessary components of Project Utopia likewise appear to have trickled through into Testing (pmount, hal, udev and gnome-volume-manager) so, whilst not enabled by default, it might be possible to get a working setup with some post-installation jiggery-pokery on the part of the user? (I don’t know – I haven’t tried and haven’t looked at the state of the packages that closely).

    “Oh well, I’m not likely going to be heading back to plain old Debian now there’s ubuntu…”

    Fair enough. 🙂 I’d still recommend keeping abreast of what’s going on in Debian proper, though; after all, it’s the foundation upon which all the derivative distros such as Ubuntu are built. The re-think of the release process that’s currently gaining momentum (see http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?ReleaseProposals) might well have a direct impact on the quality of Unstable, whether for better or worse – and on the quality of Ubuntu, since it uses packages from Unstable as its base.

  • 2005-01-06 5:30 am
    Anonymous

    > So, whilst not enabled by default, it might be possible to get a working setup with some post-installation jiggery-pokery on the part of the user? (I don’t know)

    Yes, it is possible and wasn’t hard to do for me. Exact amount of jiggery-pokery seems to vary a lot though.