“The Debian project has updated the stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0. This update adds security updates to the stable release, together with a few corrections to serious problems. As always, the first point release also corrects a few issues that have been noticed too late in the release process to stop the release, but still should be fixed.”
diktia:~$ uptime
00:15:19 up 89 days, 4:11, 1 user, load average: 0.05, 0.03, 0.00
Debian is an AWESOME distro!
Yup, it is :-)))))
It is THE most reliable Linux distribution. Nuff said.
Definitely agree! But your systen does not seem to have been used much during that time 😉
Granted, this is just a small home server but has been running for ages without a single hitch – and it has some bursts of high activity at some times. The previous record for it was 218 days (A prolonged power failure caused it to go down).
For me, Debian is THE Linux server. And etch is excellent in this respect too.
My “record” was 289 days. Then I upgraded to Debian Etch (from Sarge) and had to reboot. The server was a Pentium III 450 MHz system with 256 MB of RAM and a total of 190 GB of hard drive space, divided amongst three drives.
I used to suffer from those “prolonged” power outages too, which seem to last just long enough to drain the UPS and cause the system to shut down. Now we have a 16,000 Watt whole-house generator with a 250 gallon propane tank to keep it fed, as well as three UPS’s. 🙂
On another note, I just replaced that server this month, with one of the Dell Linux PC’s. It came with Ubuntu 7.04 desktop, but I repartitioned the 160 GB SATA drive, added a second 250 GB SATA drive and installed Ubuntu 7.04 server on it. Let’s see how well it stacks up against the venerable Debian.
from “man uptime”:
Hehe, oops, you got me there. Still, I seem to have made fairly accurate assumptions and analysed that little data snippet correctly, Bayesian style 😉
> diktia:~$ uptime
> 00:15:19 up 89 days, 4:11, 1 user, load average: 0.05, 0.03, 0.00
No security update since 89 days !
Too bad.
No, it means no kernel change (possibly not necessary) for 89 days. This isn’t a Windows box where you have to reboot just because you clicked the start button.
Maybe you are thinking too much in terms of Windows… You will not reboot a Linux box to apply security updates. Only when changing the kernel. I run apt-get update & upgrade every day, every single update is installed. I am also running a custom kernel, compiled from the sources at kernel.org:
Linux diktia 2.6.21.1 #1 Mon May 21 18:52:00 EEST 2007 i686 GNU/Linux
“No security update since 89 days !”
Not all of them require a reboot, very few probably does, also if he got no local users he probably don’t need much anyway.
lets do the uptime compo!
alwin@linux2:~ uptime
10:49:43 up 422 days, 17:12, 2 users, load average: 0.16, 0.11, 0.09
ok. i did not update for a long time, so no reboots were needed since the install
Another thumbs up from a very satisfied Debian user. It keeps my servers right on ticking and allows me to sleep at night well.
Get some Debian merchandise or sponsor a packager/developer if you can.
Take care.
I tried Ubuntu and a few other distros for short periods, but I keep coming back to to the mothership. Debian is the best Linux distro out there, bar none.
I have to admit that if I wanted a Linux distro that would give me anything I needed for a desktop with minimal effort, I’d go with some flavor of Ubuntu. It’s what I recommend when people use Linux for the first time.
But for me it’s Debian. It’s flexible, it’s the best middle between ease of use and do-it-by-hand. I’m experienced enough to not need the Ubuntu level of hand-holding, not miss the polish and actually enjoy doing some stuff by hand, the way I want it, and learn something in the process.
My first encounter with Linux was Kanotix, and I was very much impressed. It did everything I wanted, and I was using a laptop no less (I read one too many horror stories about linux and laptops in 2005). I was not connected to the internet (living in France) so I never had to worry about an apt-get update that would bork my system. When Etch came out, I really wanted to give it a try. I value stability, package selection, and a long support cycle. However, Etch does not like my wireless card. With no official forum, I tried to get some help online, but nothing has resolved the issue. I’ve never had a problem with this card with Fedora and Mandriva. I am not trying to bash Etch, but it has everything I want except for wireless. AARRGGHH!!
Fill a bug report? Seek for help at #[email protected]? Debian is not the most friendly distribution when it comes to devices support but Linux is Linux …if it works with Fedora/Mandriva, it sure can work with Debian!
The Debian Wiki is a good place to get started: see wiki.debian.org
The problem is likely that you’ve got an Intel wireless card, which means you have to manually download an install the (proprietary) drivers. E.g. I’ve the IPW3945 card, so I had to do the following
http://wiki.debian.org/Installing_Debian_On/PageFragment_Intel_ipw3…
Once you’ve got that (or the apporpriate driver) installed, install knetworkmanager (or gnome-networkmanager) to manage your wireless networks.
Actually, it is a Intersil Prism 2.5 Wavelan. I’ve never had to install proprietary drivers, which is why I’m so shocked. I’ll give the wiki a try.
Regards.
I can’t wait to run Etch with KDE 4
I don’t know why, but during my research and playing around with different distros while trying to get the feel for Linux, Slackware’s the distro that kept my interest, as well as some of its duratives. Funny too, because the one thing I really don’t like at all is lack of dependency checking, and Slackware’s definitely got a lack in that area. Slackware with something like apt-get and a repository as large as Debian’s would be awesome.
Unfortunately, I tried Debian Woody, with practically no success. Sarge was slightly better… but its installation was far too daunting. I was kind of reluctant to try Etch based on my past experiences with the distro, but what I heard was too good to not try. I don’t really know what to say, other than Debian–compared to its last release–really blew me away.
The installer was simplified to the point of being as easy to use as any other distro I’ve installed. You’re sent into a nice Gnome desktop by default, without a bunch of useless daemons running by default. Things that I never expected to “just work” in Debian due to its traditionally conservative, server-orientated nature did in fact work as I’m used to in other distros (the auto-configured X.org and auto-mounting of CDs and external drives are two examples). I wonder if the existence of Ubuntu had as much to do with Debian’s jump in ease of use as I think it did.
Overall, I’m very impressed. It’s kind of tempting to just switch from my current distro, Zenwalk, but I don’t think I’m ready for a complete change just yet. The huge repositories and the overall performance make it a tough decision, though. I expect the next major release of Debian to be even better, maybe that’ll finally persuade me? Either way, Etch has a new place on my drive, as a triple-boot system, at least until another new distro comes along and steals my interest.
I ran Xubuntu and it was nice but ((i don’t know why)) it got heavy after so many updates. I wanted to try Slackware but it is getting kind of heavy too, so I decided to install Zenwalk and I don’t regret. If you are old school like me and likes Slackware, pls try Zenwalk. It is fast, simple, super stable and lighter. I have been running Zenwalk for 3 weeks and I have not had any problem so far. In the beginning I only had to install the firmware ((ipw2200)) to go wireless and it just took me about 2 minutes.
I have not tried Debian yet but I understand that it is maybe the best distro out there. I will give a try in a near future.
If you like Slackware, try Zenwalk.
I would definitely consider Debian to be “one of the best distros out there”, especially if it’s true what they say about imitation being the most sincere form of flattery. The list of distros which happen to be direct descendants of Debian is quite a long one; when I noticed a this couple of years ago I immediately switched from Ubuntu and I haven’t looked back since.
Edited 2007-08-19 01:44
> Slackware with something like apt-get and a repository
> as large as Debian’s would be awesome.
Try slapt-get: http://directory.fsf.org/slapt-get.html
22:31:25 up 534 days, 3:29, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
An internal server used for file storage and access. No one in the office right now, so no load
Another happy Debian user.
You do know most *nix’s can stay up for a long time, doesn’t matter if it is Debian or Red Hat or Solaris or AIX. They stay up unless you have to reboot it for any reason.
I have a CentOS server at home, the only time I bounce it is because of power outages, I can always tell when the last time a long power outage happened
It is internal only so I don’t have to work about bouncing because of a security vulnerability in the kernel. So I just install the latest and next time there is a power outage it will take effect.
Cheers to the updated Debian release. I also run a mixed lenny/sid box.
You are, of course, right. I just used the uptime thing to get the conversation started
Debian is THE linux distro.
Period.
Nothing else can touch it, not by a long shot.
It was here at the beginning, and it will be here at the end.
Rock solid, stable, mature and dependable.
Thanks for all the hard work!
don’t know how easy they have it. I run Gentoo on my dev PC at work and my MythTV system at home. I have come to think of a gentoo stage3 install as being a cakewalk (usually takes a couple hours).
In some cases, I would rather have the latest, bleeding-edge versions of my packages than have them be old and Debian Stable (we all know Debian’s version of “stable” actually means something because it takes so long for things to be marked as such). For these situations, Gentoo fits the bill for me- I found that if you use Debian in situations like this you will end up using weird repositories or downloading and compiling the original tarballs from source at which point the nice Debian package management system is worthless anyway.
When I just want a stable server system right away, it’s Debian all the way. Plus (like Gentoo), you only have to install it once and everything after that is just package management (Reinstalling your entire OS is so 90’s)
That mostly summarizes my usage for the Debian as well. I find it an excellent and easily upgradeable server. For my desktop I prefer more fast moving distros like Fedora or Ubuntu. And I do happen to have a soft spot for FreeBSD too
That mostly summarizes my usage for the Debian as well. I find it an excellent and easily upgradeable server. For my desktop I prefer more fast moving distros like Fedora or Ubuntu. And I do happen to have a soft spot for FreeBSD too
Me too, but Debian Unstable is fast-moving and even Testing is pretty fast-moving. The idea that Debian is slow-moving in terms of the software offered is true only of Stable, and that’s for a very good reason. I use Debian Unstable as a daily desktop and really don’t feel I’m missing out in some way by not using Ubuntu or, say, OpenSuSE (which doesn’t offer a comparable range of software anyway). With Debian Unstable I have access to the latest software and 99 per cent of the time (not always but Unstable is pretty darn reliable considering it is “unstable”) it “just works”. New versions of Ubuntu have just as many bugs, ime.
Not that I knew it where just released, but because I wanted to read my Solaris UFS-disks and write them to my OS X HFSX+ filesystem.
And well, the lame ass graphical live cd / installer of Ubuntu 7.04 couldn’t bring up it’s GUI magic on my machine.. So Debian it was.
Of course everything went smooth as always with Debian, to bad with the old versions of apps thought =P (But that is why it actually WORKS!)
Great news to hear that Debian is still pushing ahead! I’ve been using Debian for two years, both on home and work servers, and have never had a problem. I’ve tried a number of distros, but none with the sheer amount of packages that Debian has. Anything I want is just an apt-get away.
The two main things it has going for it is that it’s a free distro and that it doesn’t have a corporation behind it.
Those two features make up for any faults it might have.
Nice to see people calling it THE distro and BEST distro.
I found it’s far from that.
It realy has very little going for it.
For servers Slackware is easier to manage (for those that know it) and Red Hat or Centos are better supported.
When building a small server last year, although I wanted to give Debian (stable) a chance, it would not touch the new hardware. In the end Slackware was chosen.
The long periods between releases are definitely turning people away from Debian.
And although one can argue that servers are not supposed to be upgraded very often. Well, maybe so, once you already have a server set up.
But what about the new server on new hardware?
Organizations are adding servers all the time and I can’t see someone buying an old server just to acommodate Debian (I know I wouldn’t).
Release “when it’s ready” is just not acceptable.
One needs to be able to plan ahead a bit.
And for the desktop it’s simmilar, Ubuntu has more frequent and predictable releases.
And has releases specifically aimed at destktop or server so it’s easier to set up and manage.
And no, unstable or testing are NOT good enough for the desktop. And no, they are not as, or more stable than Ubuntu. Anybody that says that is spreading horseshit.
Let’s see if Debian manages another stable release sometime in spring next year. If so, then great.
If not, well, they’ll lose another half of its users to Ubuntu or some other distro.
I don’t know… I totally agree with you that Debian’s release schedule is far too long, but on the other hand… when’s the last time Microsoft released a “real” update to Windows? It was XP SP2, which I believe was released in late 2004. Having come from Windows myself, I should be used to such slow upgrade cycles, but Linux kind of has me spoiled by so many distros featuring the latest and greatest software.
I actually prefer to have somewhere between the bleeding edge and stable for the most part, but for some programs I want the latest and greatest (usually if there’s an awesome new feature I want to try out, or a new version of a Web browser). The first “proper” news on a WinXP SP3 didn’t even appear until Microsoft realized that people really aren’t just going to hop on board and just switch to Vista because they told them to. Before that, Microsoft didn’t even want anyone to know that it existed.
So in that context, Debian’s release gaps don’t seem *that* bad… although something much shorter and more predictable would be nice–and, in fact, would likely grab me as a user.
how is 18 months too long? it’s what (other) enterprise distros do. it’s fine.
Well, enterprise distros like Red Hat, Centos, SuseES are mainly for servers.
Server hardware doesn’t get updated as often as desktop hardware. And for new server hardware it’s often supported by the vendor, even by preinstallation of the OS.
But Debian, although certainly enterprise worthy, also caters to general desktop users.
Let’s see if next year people will be able to install Debian onto new hardware.
If the installer doesn’t recognize onboard disk controllers and/or other hardware then it’s a problem.
Let’s hope Debian maintains somewhat regular release schedule to keep users interested.
I know I’ll keep using Debian, although Slackware is my favorite, because it’s so fast to set up and maintain on a box and can be configured for light resource use.
I’ll happily disagree with you. Debian is extremely easy to set up, and what sort of server hardware could possibly be too new to of technology for Etch? Hell, even Windows 2000 won’t install on my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard. It’s not even PCI-E capable! Just an old AMD64. Or maybe it was my old P4 board, I can’t recall anymore, but the last time I tried installing Windows 2000 SP4 it didn’t work.
As far as stability and new packages go, I’d say Debian unstable is very stable, with very few and random breakages. Much like Ubuntu, when a final release is done, it does become unstable because a lot of new software is suddenly introduced that had been waiting since feature freeze. The problem with Ubuntu is that they have only about one month from feature freeze to final release. This means that there is only one month worth of straight bug testing. Debian on the other hand usually freezes only after their release critical bugs are squashed (or at least the majority of them. That’s what this r1 is for, the last few bugs that they just couldn’t hold up release for).
Debian is mostly volunteer and some companies pay their employees to work on packaging things for Debian either for internal use or for inclusion within Debian. This in my opinion, works quite well as far as quality packaging goes because it is the reputation and ego of the packager at stake.
Ubuntu’s packaging is not as strict and precise as Debian’s. A good example is the nvidia-glx packages. In Ubuntu they also contain the nvidia-settings and nvidia-xconfig files, which makes it so they should conflict with those packages. But they don’t, so if you tried to install them, you’d just get errors saying that the files also exist in the nvidia-glx package.
I reported this bug back when it was first seen, I think during Dapper’s release cycle, and it’s still not fixed.
Also right now, there is even some software within Debian Sid that is newer than what is in Gutsy Gibbon. And Gutsy Gibbon is downright buggy as Windows 95’s version of Fat32.
There are a few things that are nicer about Ubuntu, like automatic set up of usplash, the restricted manager to make it easier to set up proprietary drivers (when it works), the tweaks for scanning for codecs, the shut down screen, etc.
But remember without Debian, Ubuntu would not exist. Nor would Linspire, Freespire, Xandros (well maybe that would be a good thing 😉 )
It’s been my experience also that Debian based distributions have always been more stable than RPM based distributions. At least (and especially) when it comes to third party repositories. For a new user using Fedora, for example, if you use freshrpms, with atrpms, there are a lot of weird conflicts. Apt is a bit smarter and is faster (though Fedora 7 they finally fixed Yum so that it was about equal to apt. Yay!)
Anyhow, as far as the “Release when it’s ready” I think Debian Sid is in a perpetual state of “It’s almost ready” so you can use it as much as you’d like, just sometimes you have to pay attention when upgrading things. If it removes something you want, then wait for that other package to be updated, which usually is a matter of days. I’ve seen things in Ubuntu Releases that are not even installable because they did a feature freeze before the dependencies were fixed. This of course was in Universe or Multiverse. You know it’s easy to do a release when you only have a small subset of your packages that are considered “supported” and everything else can be broken. Check out the differences between “main” in Debian and Ubuntu and you’ll see why Debian takes so long to make a release!
next release isn’t aimed for until fall of next year. 18 month cycle.
Where is it in Ubuntu? If your sound card(s) are not detected properly, you are screwed.
“Yup, it is :-)))))
It is THE most reliable Linux distribution. Nuff said.”
THE most reliable distro?
Debian is excellent, I use it. Slackware is also very reliable, solid as a rock:-) I love Slack and Debian.
there in fact are no real world examples of a more stable version a) compared to b).
In the real world, you see no ‘stability’ diffs between, say slack, rh(el) opensuse, sles, whatever. It’s one of these hyped things that’s not based on anything real.
One thing I know, for me, it’s not the first thing I am thinking of in an enterprise. Support/certifications missing when it comes to Oracle for instance. You have only a few choices here and debian isn’t one of them due to this kind of things.
Debian has just turned 14 on August 16, 2007. Congrats!
http://www.linuxlookup.com/2007/aug/16/debian_turns_14_today
I am a distro whore, and I like to test out everything new that hits the block…I do a brief encounter here and there with other distros for various reason. But in the end, nothing compares with the speed,quality, and reliability of debian. In the end, I always end up loading debian back up lol. It may not work “as easy” with some things as larger more modified distros, but for anyone looking for a base to build on, its hard to find anything better than debian.