Developers of the popular Debian Linux distribution are ramping up coding efforts as they plan to release the next version of their operating system in December this year. The schedule was today outlined in an e-mail to the Debian community from developer Andreas Barth, a member of the team which coordinates the process by which Debian is formally handed over to the public. “We expect to release Etch as planned in the beginning of December 2006,” Barth wrote.
Sweet! Thanks Debian, Etch will rock!
Thanks for the quicker release pace and still keeping things stable!
So, it looks like the release plans for Etch haven’t changed much since they were originally announced:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/10/msg00004.html
Unlike some other operating system’s release dates, which will probably ship together with duke nukem forever
Considering the time it took Debian 3.1 to get out the door, I don’t think your comment carries much weight, but thanks for playing
best of luck making the release date
is a rough estimate of time based releases – like a goal of every 18 months or so
This post is from etch.
Although it looks like Debian tries to shorten the release cycle, Debian ‘stable’ is still too much old-fashioned for a desktop system in my opinion. Even the software in the ‘testing’ branch, which will become ‘stable’ in December, look pretty outdated to me.
It seems to me that Debian has no clear target audience. If I wanted to install a secure and stable server, I think OpenBSD would be a much better choice. Nobody needs 10000+ packets to choose from for a server installation!
I hope the Ubuntu project will have a significant positive influence to the Debian project in order to keep it more up to date, because I like the Debian packet management system.
those who like enterprise linuxen with decent packaging systems.
You have to remember, Debian is and always will be made as a Server. They just give to the rest of the pakets to turn it into a Workstation or a Desktop.
Now tell me really, How often do you change the OS on a Server? By the time you need to make changes to your software (upgrading), its about that time when a new Debian comes out.
You can not always compare Ubuntu to Debian. Debian is the Server part and Ubuntu is the Desktop/Workstation part. Servers do not have to keep up with the hardware as much as the Desktop do. How long did Windows Server take from Win Server 4.0 to Win 2k to Win 2k3 to Win Vista Server? I don’t see 1yr to 18months there, more like 3yrs to me.
Just my 2cents
That distinction isn’t always true.
If you have to manage 1000 desktop machines, you’d probably want a distro that didn’t change too often since reverifying your standard operating environment and upgrading all systems every 6 months is a pain. For those desktop systems, Debian is perfect.
If you have a single server with non-critical data that uses bleeding edge technology, you’ll want a distro that updates frequently. For those servers, Ubuntu server distribution is perfect.
… Debian ‘stable’ is still too much old-fashioned for a desktop system in my opinion. … It seems to me that Debian has no clear target audience. If I wanted to install a secure and stable server, I think OpenBSD would be a much better choice. … I hope the Ubuntu project will have a significant positive influence to the Debian project …
In some regards, Debian is like a trade warehouse full of beautifully constructed parts which all work together and where others come for the parts from which they will assemble their own distributions. In this regard, Debian has a huge target audience since hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of desktops are Debian-based on exactly these lines. And Debian stable is extremely popular for webhosting, as recent Netcraft figures showed, and in some institutions (plenty of Debian servers in the Unis where I live).
Ubuntu is deliberately designed to be a simplifed subset of Debian aimed at the desktop user. So in some regards (only) Ubuntu is “Debian for the desktop”. However, Ubuntu is also branching out into more things and it remains to be seen where this leads and how closely the two distros continue to reflect each other.
As a Debian Unstable user I wish the project all the very best with Etch. Nothing lasts forever, so, yes, there may well come a time when the present arrangement of Unstable, Testing and Stable ceases to make sense. I understand what you mean about “no clear target audience” and feel this a bit myself but them I need to remember that I am a target audience of just one.
Debian Stable is designed to be just that in both senses (doesn’t crash and packages don’t change). There is no merit in releasing it too often, either. Each new release has to be carefully maintained and supported for a long time and the last thing a server admin wants is constant changes. However you cut it, though, there is something magical about going “apt-get dist-upgrade” and watching, say, 350 packages download and install themselves without a single error, each one already set up and ready to roll. That says real quality to me.
Edited 2006-05-03 18:03
OK I have been a long time linux user and even went through several years of using nothing but linux on my home machine. Having gone through most major distribution I can tell you that Debian is by far the best one. Yes there are things you have to get used to but once you start thinking the Debian way ( and it really doesn’t take long ) you see that all the restrictions put in place are in order to gain greater usability/stability/etc. As far as Ubunty being Debian for the desktop goes I highly disagree. Ubuntu is a debian bastard child and I can’t express how disappointed I am from Ubuntu and their constant bragging and undermining of Debian. For crying out loud Debian had almost everything that Ubuntu has 2 years ago. Yes they used to move really really slow but apparently all that has changed now. I wish them luck with the deadline for Debian 3.0.
The way, I see it:
Debian stable:
servers, only security updates
Debian testing:
desktop, fairly recent software and still very stable
Debian unstable:
desktop, more recent software and sometimes breakage during major upgrades of important software packages (e.g. Xorg 6.9 to modular Xorg 7.0)
Just as is the case in other distributions, it really depends on the maintainer how recent a particular software package is in Debian unstable. You’re out of luck if the maintainer of your favorite piece of software does not update it that frequently.
i LIKE stable’s slow releases (woody to sarge was just ridiculous though) – 12-18 months is what the enterprise linuxes/linuxen use, and that’s not a bad idea for debian either.
I assume you mean “package” management system?
Perhaps we will get the 2.6 kernel in this update.
Oh oh oh and I hear they are upgrading from ipchains to iptables.
I’m just kidding Debian, I still love you.
I just love Ubuntu more.
This is great news. Debian is essentially as close as you get to the “official Linux OS”, though some enterprises may argue Red Hat.
Debian is a great base for other distros because you have a strong foundation to work with: thousands of packages tested to work together in many different configurations. There’s not another OS in the world with this amount of integration testing.
And as long as derived distros keep sending patches upstream (good work, Ubuntu), more derivatives just make Debian stronger, and a strong Debian means a lower barrier-to-entry for newer distros, with their own niches and innovative twists.
Edited 2006-05-03 18:06
Oh, joy, you just started a flamewar! In a naive attempt to forestall one, I’ll try and summarize the objections to that statement 😉 :
1. AFAIK, the FSF stopped sponsoring Debian at least 6 years ago.
1a. (Because i couldn’t be bothered to renumber all the others!) The one currently favoured by RMS is, I believe, utoto-e (because it uses no non-free software).
2. (As you said in your post) Debian patches its packages, whereas a lot of people would say that an “official Linux OS” would consist of unpatched software. Not only that, but an “official Linux OS” should not imo use a distro-specific package format, no-matter how widespread in reality that format is (bar being universal, which apt isn’t)
3. The requirements in 2. would seem to indicate Slackware, which I’m sure would get a lot of votes in an “official Linux OS poll,” perhaps even from people who don’t use it.
4. Due to its vendor-independent nature, an “official Linux distro” should be as customizable and as configuration-tool-agnostic as possible. (I think I hear the word “Gentoo” marching with well-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation.)
5. Perhaps the closest anyone will ever get to an “official Linux distro” is “the one Linus endorses”. I’ve never heard of him publicly endorsing one personally, though iirc at one point he was using SuSE. Question is, is he a distro-switcher?!
As I said, no intention of starting a flame-war, so: have a good day!
I think you basically proved why the Linux OS (or GNU/Linux OS (or GNU/X/Gnome/KDE/MIT/Something/Linux OS, for the extra-pedantic)*) is more of an abstraction than a reality.
There’s the big commercial distro (Red Hat)
There’s the big non-commercial distro (Debian)
And if you want to debate how Linux is packaged…
There’s the universal package distro (Slackware)
There’s the from-source-code distro (Gentoo, or more appropriately LFS)
And if you want to include all those, you’d have to admit that other Linux distributions are no less “Linux” than any of the others…
* I seem to recall Ciaran McCreesh, ex-Gentoo-developer, claiming he ran a system based on Busybox and the Intel C Compiler, thus a completely non-GNU Linux. But that doesn’t prove anything new. Heck, there’s probably BSD/Linux… Linux is about as amorphous as an operating system can get.
The only thing that unites all the Windows systems is that they’re all from Microsoft. The changes between versions have been huge, either from a developer standpoint, or a user standpoint, or both. And there are probably people still running Windows 3.1 in the wild.
As for DOS, same goes. DOS was a lot simpler, ergo a lot simpler to clone.
You could equally well say that “cars are more an abstraction than a reality”; you’d still be right, and the point would still be mostly irrelevant imo, sorry.
Well, more to my point, you can point a finger at all the files on the CD, or all the files on the CD and the Service Pack, and say “That is Windows XP SP2”. You can do that for individual distributions (“This is SuSE 10”) but you can’t really do that for “the Linux OS”.
I also appreciate Slackware and Gentoo, but from a pragmatic, “de-facto” standpoint, the only distros that really matter are Debian, Fedora, and SUSE.
So it seems you argue what is “official” based on “what should be” rather than “what is”. While I agree with your points, I disagree that either Slackware or Gentoo are the big movers and shakers in the Linux world. Gentoo had a brief moment of fame, and Slackware was one of the first really good distros derived from SLS, but their day seems kind of past.
No, my point is really that there really ISN’T a standard distro. Which I don’t see as a problem, anymore than I see it as a problem that there isn’t a standard car.
As for your choice of standards, Fedora comes close to one, but I’d say RHEL is the “standard” amongst Redhat-based distros. SuSE seems to be popular in certain areas, (Europe, on mainframes, etc.) but i don’t know if it’s on many people’s radar. Debian is popular for basing distros off of, but only for apt – a lot of “Debian-based” distros seem to be heavily modded from “official” Debian (indeed, some would say that’s the point.) And even apt, or apt-like tools, are available for RPM-based or other distros.
Am I one of the only ones who likes Debian’s slow releases? Makes my servers happy.
i like to too, makes me desktops stable
I seriously admire Debian’s willingness to not release until they’re ready. I mean, I personally like having the latest and greatest hence my choice of Ubuntu with a couple extra repos, and Gentoo… but I respect Debian’s willingness to make sure everything is perfect on all 11 of their platforms. I know that’s useful to some people.
Put it another way, I think the Linux world needs at least one Debian-like system where they don’t release until everything’s done, so that the option is there for those who really need it.
Now, so I don’t sound like a hypocrite, I DO have far less respect for Microsoft pushing off Vista because I have less faith in Microsoft to deliver a ‘finished’ product, and because they’ve been setting and routinely breaking deadlines. Either set a deadline or stick to it; or go the Debian way and release it when you’re done with the stupid thing.
I say this is a great bit of news. I’am a brokendown windows admin, who has managed to sneek 2 debian server, 10 workstations into the R&D dept. of the company, just becauce i saw niche and a change to use some of the GNU/linux know how i’ved tried to get on my own, and i must say debian is (well slackware is up there to) the best destro’s i’ved tried, it does as it told and nothing more, from a windows view that a nice change.
I just hope they don’t sacrifice quality in the quest for frequency.
if they have to sacrifice quality to manage a release after 18 months, there are some serious problems
That comment might usefully be directed at someone else, too *cough*
While I agree that stability and security are top priorities for servers, there’s no obvious reason to make 10000+ packages work seamlessly together for any server installation. For a server distro, even ~500 packages would be overkill for most purposes. This smaller amount of packages would be a lot easier to coordinate and, therefore, would allow the Debian developers to shorten the release cycle for servers (still without breaking things while retaining simple management for the admin).
It only makes sense (at least to me
to manage this HUGE amount of software for desktop systems. And here we have the problem that ‘stable’ is outdated too much for many (potential) users (I’m aware that this is my personal opinion, but more users would also mean more Debian developers in the long term…). Furthermore, I’ve got the impression that a lot of (most?) Debian desktop users are tracking ‘unstable’ in order to use more current software. According to the Debian website ‘testing’ and ‘unstable’ don’t get the same attention for security updates as ‘stable’, so this isn’t an ideal compromise either.
According to some older mailing list postings, I’m not the first person, who has this idea, but it looks like a good strategy to maintain a stable Debian ‘server’ core (i.e. ~500 packages) and ‘testing’ (+ security updates) & ‘unstable’ for desktop systems with a larger amount of more current software. ‘testing’ would still be a little more conservative than i.e. Ubuntu, but would also feature a much larger number of maintained packages than Ubuntu.
I suppose that both, server and desktop installations, would benefit from such a change in the long term. The “one ‘stable’-branch fits all purposes”-approach just doesn’t match reality in my opinion. This seems to be the reason why there are so many Debian-desktop-“forks” like, i.e., Ubuntu or MEPIS. At the moment Debian ‘stable’ seems to be the best choice for servers simply because of its superior stability and not because of its huge amount of packages.
At the moment Debian ‘stable’ seems to be the best choice for servers simply because of its superior stability and not because of its huge amount of packages.
A LOT of those packages are duplicates/triplicates/quadruplicates, i.e. you can/should only install one or another, not both/all.
I’m only getting used to Sarge, I thought I had a good two or three years to look forward to! I can’t be upgrading already… 😮
Actually this is pretty cool. While Debian may lack the spit and polish of Ubuntu, and while it may not be as cutting edge, it is stable (seriously) and easy to maintain. Staying relatively up-to-date is the icing on the cake.
For people who asked it above, Debian is for servers, and workstations. The latter may seem odd, with Dapper-Drake around the corner, but Debian’s stability and the promise of a stable upgrade path is a big deal in a big organisation. No-one wants to do cross-organisational OS upgrades every six months. Debian has the advantage (to the sysadmin) of slow, plodding certainty.
I suppose it’s my lack of proper English. I’ll try to make it more clear by example:
– there are a lot of (prebuilt) package-based desktop distros with up-to-date packages (including security updates). They all have in common that there are much less overall packages to choose from than in Debian.
– there is Debian with its huge number of pretty outdated prebuilt packages.
– there are some meta-distributions like gentoo with a large number of available software + security updates, but you have to build it yourself (which is time consuming and annoying in my opinion). There’s also a high chance that at least some of these ports will break.
I didn’t find a desktop distro yet which combines my most wanted desktop features: a huge amount of prebuild packages, regular security updates and only minor dependency/stability problems (in Germany we call this “eierlegende Wollmilchsau”
. Debian has a lot of potential for a decent desktop, but the unbearable choice between security updates OR more up-to-date (but still outdated) software of the testing (or even unstable) branch keep me from using it.
Debian has a lot of potential for a decent desktop, but the unbearable choice between security updates OR more up-to-date (but still outdated) software of the testing (or even unstable) branch keep me from using it.
Your information is outdated, please update it. Debian testing gets security updates and it’s also quite up-to-date.
http://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing-security http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian
Edited 2006-05-03 21:28
as i understand debian, it is all about choice. debians community gives its users tbe choice to do what ever they want, thats why they maintain 10000+ packages and i don’t know how many platforms. There efforts makes it easy to be a user/admin and create the system that makes you happy, be it a workstation/desktop or a server. So the audience is everybody, imo.
This isn’t made very clear in the FAQ. Just have a look at this:
Q: How is security handled for testing and unstable?
A: The short answer is: it’s not. Testing and unstable are rapidly moving targets and the security team does not have the resources needed to properly support those. If you want to have a secure (and stable) server you are strongly encouraged to stay with stable. However, work is in progress to change this,…
This statement actually kept me from chosing Debian ‘testing’ as a Linux desktop system. What does it mean? I remember last year (around June) there was a timespan of a couple of weeks with no security updates at all (even for the stable branch). So are there security updates for ‘testing’ or not? How reliable is it?
Yes, there are security updates for testing. Just follow this link to read more: http://secure-testing-master.debian.net/
How reliable is it? It’s just as reliable as the people working for it — no more, no less.
The security.debian.org server going down was due to a hardware failure. However, a lot of work has been done since then to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
http://www.debian.org/News/2005/20051004
Thanks, daChicken.
Perhaps I should give Debian ‘testing’ a try. As security updates are first commited to ‘unstable’, would it be a better choice to try ‘unstable’ instead or is this too much of a dependency hell. I want to try Debian for a desktop system, not for a server; so I could live with occasional problems… as long as it doesn’t break most of the time… how often should I expect problems when using ‘unstable’?
If upstream developers release a new version of some application that fixes security bugs in that application, then unstable can fix that bug by packaging the new release as fast as possible. Other than that, unstable doesn’t get any security updates and there’s no security team that would audit the security situation in unstable.
The problem with Debian testing used to be that new packages were slow to migrate from unstable to testing, even if the new versions were known to fix security problems. But now there’s a “testing security team” that has the authority to make packages migrate to testing very fast if this fixes some security bugs.
Debian unstable is also called Sid. In Toy Story, Sid is the kid who likes to break toys. A few weeks ago the X11R7 (X.org 7.0) upgrade in unstable left many users without Xserver for a couple of days. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/04/msg00010.html
Some major upgrades may temporarily break stuff and unstable is the proper place to do that. If this bothers you, then testing might be a better choice for you. I have used Debian testing since the Sarge release and I have only experienced two or three minor problems during this time. And as the Etch release date comes closer, Debian testing will become increasingly trouble-free.
Perhaps I should give Debian ‘testing’ a try. As security updates are first commited to ‘unstable’, would it be a better choice to try ‘unstable’ instead or is this too much of a dependency hell. I want to try Debian for a desktop system, not for a server; so I could live with occasional problems… as long as it doesn’t break most of the time… how often should I expect problems when using ‘unstable’?
I think it is suck it and see. I am running Unstable because I found that Testing was a) missing packages, and b) no more stable than Unstable but with generally older stuff. As for security updates, new packages get fed into Unstable pretty quickly these days.
However, both Unstable and Testing can bork up from time to time so you have to be a little prudent. I use apt listbugs and follow the main Debian mailing list. If I see a package with grave bugs still open flagged by apt or warnings on the mailing list, I don’t install/update it (I pin the present working version instead). Merrily going “apt-get upgrade” with Unstable can be risky. That said, the problems I’ve had have been pretty darn rare and are usually associated with major changes like a new iteration of xorg or gcc. Ways to recover the situation are usually posted fairly quickly on the mailing lists. The distro flies speedwise compared to SuSE which I was using before.
Even if I don’t care a lot personnally as I’ve been using sid/unstable since the beginning of my Debian experience. However, even sid may be affected if Debien stable releases are more frequent.
For example, when woody was frozen, i.e. about to become Debian stable, KDE 3.0 packages did not go into Sid, because Debian KDE team was more busy at making a perfect kde 2.2 into Woody.
I personally have found Debian (testing) to be an excellent server operating system and even a half decent desktop one to boot. Debian, whether it be stable or testing would always be my first choice for servers. I feel I’m not an appriopriote unstable user as it just moves _too_ fast for me!
I’ve yet to try out the server version of Ubuntu but being Debian based I’m sure it would also work well, just as the desktop version does.
Suffice to say, keep up the great work Debian developers! 🙂
I seriously admire Debian’s willingness to not release until they’re ready. I mean, I personally like having the latest and greatest hence my choice of Ubuntu with a couple extra repos, and Gentoo… but I respect Debian’s willingness to make sure everything is perfect on all 11 of their platforms. I know that’s useful to some people
You have a good point. But there is an undercurrent in this and many other discussions with Debian. And that is why Debian are so unable or unwilling to release a desktop version that is a lot more up to date than Stable while trading that for a little instability/bugs. A lot of people would like to use Debian, I suspect, but are not able to for just this reason. It strikes me as an extraordinary shot in the foot and it does make me wonder how in touch with real-world users the Debian Project really are. The era in which nix greybeards considered desktop Linux bizarre or a dirty word are surely years past by now. But I wonder how far that has penetrated Debian-land.
thanks, daChicken & moleskine for your hints. I’ve installed ‘testing’ and I’ll give it a try. This is my first Linux installation on a ‘real’ PC (I did some virtualization experiments before, but never really used Linux before…).
Really the main difference between a Ubuntu and debian is the latest window managers and programs that are available in a stable version of ubuntu which are not available in a stable version of debian.
Yes you have sid but it is not the same as Ubuntu which is a fine tuned stable version of sid.
If the debian developers come around to address this problem, then one will see debian linux on many more PCs.