Submitted by After almost 24 months of constant development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 8 (code name Jessie), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and of the Debian Long Term Support team.
Jessie ships with a new default init system, systemd. The systemd suite provides many exciting features such as faster boot times, cgroups for services, and the possibility of isolating part of the services. The sysvinit init system is still available in Jessie.
Screenshots and a screencast are available.
Congratulations to the Debian team and all Debian users!
Well, I probably always say this as far as Debian goes, but, it is the best release yet. Whether for a server, or a desktop system, it just works.
I never like having to download a 3+GB DVD for installation, so I downloaded the 1GB Live version, which offers installation too. Happy to see it offers LUKS+LVM options in the installer.
But after installation, no repo’s were included except security. I couldn’t install anything, and there was no clear/easy way to add them. No problem for a veteran of course, we know which file to edit, what to put in. (Except… it didn’t work, still couldn’t install the simplest program) I was not impressed. I felt I needed to try this release, but I’m afraid Debian is becoming increasingly irrelevant. It’s repos have been long surpassed by Ubuntu, so it’s more the support for obscure architectures that’s an advantage – to a limited number.
Edited 2015-04-27 05:56 UTC
It’s not irrelevant, it just has its target audience. In a server environment you don’t need any other repositories besides security ones.
The rest is included in the manual. Fact that few people read the manual is one the reasons why youtube is so popular right now.
It’s probably a bug, but I can’t install anything, so I couldn’t make it function as a server.
Eh, anyone except the seasoned admin needs to be able to install packages. Normally, you’d be asked to add repositories during install (if installed from CD, your repository can be your CDs), but it’s possible to avoid it if you insist. If the latest Debian installer makes it easy to ignore, then it just isn’t a noob-friendly distribution anymore. (Despite its reputation, it used to be fairly easy for the beginner.)
And of course, no one in their right mind ever used Youtube for Linux tutorials.
I work in a data center, and I’ve rarely seen anyone using Debian on a server. A lot of customers are using Ubuntu though.
I know, it doesn’t really make sense to use what is essentially a desktop version of Debian as a server OS, but it is what I see a lot of.
Actual Debian installs though… yeah it has been a while since I’ve seen anyone select that, but I’m sure there are a few out there.
I’ll have to say that Debian has become pretty much irrelevant. If they hadn’t moved to systemd, I could see it as a distro a lot of people flock to in order to avoid that, but with it being yet another systemd distro, there is really no point.
Psstt.. There’s an unwritten rule here: Don’t say anything that doesn’t glorify Debian. Just suck their dongs, and you’ll be fine.
Since my first debian install (that is, since Debian Potato) my fresh installs always began by the smallest possible base install followed by installing everything else I needed by hand one by one. Never failed, and never needed to change this habit – but thankfully I very rarely need to make fresh installs.
Using Jessie here. When I saw the news here I went
apt-get update
and
apt-get dist-upgrade
I love Debian
fossil,
As do I, it’s always been one of my favorite linux distros. But can anyone tell me what’s happened to the extlinux-update scripts? It continues to work with old installs that are updated, but it appears that syslinux is broken on all my new debian installs and I’m forced to update everything manually which is both tedious and error prone. I haven’t been able to find any references to why these scripts were dropped from debian. Any other syslinux users here hit this issue?
Edited 2015-04-27 02:21 UTC
Well, good for you, I’ve just spent about 2 hours upgrading a server from wheezy. In the end, everything works OK, just had a few WTF moments with udev, systemd, apache and php. Anyway, my debian server ‘experience’ has been the same for the last 13 years: you’d need to at least break one of my legs to force me to use something else.
Now that systemd is the default init, I wonder how long it will take Debian package maintainers to actually write proper support files for it. My systemd Debian growing pains have been … less than fun.
The unit files are deliberately simple, to be submitted upstream and merged. Given that other distributions have 5 year headstart on integrating with systemd, I would say majority of unit writing was already done.
nice flamebait we have here with “The systemd suite provides many exciting features”
that the majority of Linux users seem to think that Ubuntu (or its stablemates) is LINUX and the only Linux Distro.
The Linux mags seem to focus on the distro at the expense of all others. Debian, SUSE and RH distros seem to have been relegated to ‘lip service’ roles.
It also seems to me that Canonical is deliberatly removing its dependency on Debian. How that will work out in the long run I don’t know,
Well done to the Debian team for this release. I have a couple of servers running Debian that I upgraded over the weekend.(My main servers run CentOS)
Debian is my favorite distro because of its consistency. That consistency is worth more than ‘flashy’ stuff once you live to see the flashy stuff exploding in your face. Good software is boring
Consider this: With the official Wheezy and Jessie Live images, I don’t have any kind of network connectivity at all on my laptop because the necessary packages (firmware-realtek for Ethernet and firmware-iwlwifi for WLAN) are not included. I know how to modify the squashfs to add them, but I don’t have to do anything with the official Ubuntu images to get proper network connectivity (both Ethernet and WLAN).
I can’t comment on the other distros simply because I haven’t touched them in years.
Edited 2015-04-27 11:57 UTC
For those who need non-free drivers the easiest way to install Jessie is to use a Live CD with non-free firmware (here the link for AMD64):
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-…
There you can also choose, e.g., the XFCE flavor so that you don’t need to uninstall Gnome
The iso-hybrid ISOs are ready to be put on USB stick:
dd if=debian-live-8.0.0-amd64-xfce-desktop+nonfree.iso of=/dev/DEVICEOFUSBSTICK bs=4M; sync
Do you have any actual data to demonstrate this is true or are you just plucking nonsense out of the air as an excuse to drone on like a bore?
Pick up any Linux Mag from the newsstands and most of the articles use Ubuntu. This months Linux Voice has it on the fron cover.
Most (if not all) the hits and tips are for Ubuntu
From my time at Computer Fairs handing out Linux Advice pretty well everyone who came up to us and said, ‘I use Ubuntu’…
Canonical has done a good job with their work and their old programme of dishing out freebie CD’s.
Ubuntu was used by most of the members of my local Linux Users group. Those of us who used Debian, CentOS etc were regarded as a bit odd.
That’s why in the eyes of most users Ubuntu === Linux.
That good enough for you?
1) You claim there is a majority
2) You claim they think it is Linux itself
3) You claim they don’t know of other Linux distros.
NONE of what you said supported your SPECIFIC claim.
What your “evidence” amounted to was: “Ubuntu was very popular, maybe too popular in my opinion, for a while”. That’s a far cry from what you claimed. And anecdotal evidence is not good enough either.
Not even remotely. Either provide evidence in support of the claim that a majority of Linux users regard Ubuntu as synonymous with Linux, or admit that you were talking through your hat.
And remember, we want evidence not anecdotes.
I’ve been running a Debian testing derivative called SparkyLinux for a while, it updated to the version 8 stream without so much as hiccup. Thanks Debian/Sparky!
The syntax has changed on half of my common commands. FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU Looks like I’ll be waiting for devuan to upgrade any of my servers.