Guest post by What a lovely holiday to release the latest and greatest creation brought to us by yours truly, Debian. February 14th marks Debian GNU/Linux 5.0’s supposed release into the wilds of the world, nearly two years after ‘etch,’ lenny’s predecessor. The date is set nearly in stone unless something very serious goes wrong in the final days of development or if one of the needed servers for download kicks the bucket at the wrong moment. Read on for the scoop on the most prominent of features.
Security has been strengthened in this upcoming release, introducing features that forestall possible vulnerabilities. The Debian installer, for example, applies security updates before booting, several critical security packages have been built with GCC to toughen them up, and the overall system contains less open ports and less setuid root binaries.
Lenny will sport KDE 3.5.9 over the still not so popular KDE 4.2, and will have “OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Inkscape 0.46, Emacs 22 and both Iceweasel and Icedove” in the arsenal of default programs.
For those interested in the server end of things, the new release will contain “PostgreSQL 8.3.5, MySQL 5.1.30 and 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl 5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Nagios 3.06 and the Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1.”
The system has gotten more mobile-friendly with better support for notebooks in the form of a CPU frequency scaling feature that allows a user to alter the processing power based on what applications are running, among other things.
According to a German report, lenny will be welcomed with open arms by the community, but you’ll just have to hold your horses until this Saturday, February 14th (hopefully), to show your love for Debian.
Lennny being released on February the 14th is a good thing for all Debian lovers like I am
It would be even better if I had a real Valentine but whatever
…
I also love Debian.
At least on Debian “apt-get dist-upgrade” always works! Even on release day!
Here! Here!
Hear? Hear?
Maybe he/she meant it’s almost here ! 😉
then I have to edit sources.list on monday to use the new testing release
That also means that Sid (Unstable) is “free” again. I mean, even if Sid is never gonna be released, every manpower is busy working on making Lenny as stable as possible.
So Sid does not get big changes when a distro which is in testing gets frozen. Hence I suppose Sid does not differ very much from Lenny at the moment.
But very soon it will get KDE 4.2 which is in Experimental and works very well (I’m already using it), and other packages.
And I have to do the opposite.. edit sources.list to change Testing to Lenny so I don’t get the new one. Not sure I’m ready for my KDE3 to go away yet
At least I should have a year+ to stick with it in stable.
Conversely, anyone who wants to go to 4 will have to move to Testing. I remember being a little intimidated doing that from Woody, but Sarge took so long it was a necessity. Woody was a software museum by the end.
So now I’m pretty cool with testing. I like getting the new stuff. Testing turning into the new Stable has been a fun time since then, as new stuff starts rolling into testing again as freezes end. And now I’m seeing the other side of the coin, why stable could be nice for a little longer.
I guess that’s the path to take. Stick with Lenny for a while longer until I can’t stand it, or until I’m comfortable with KDE4 on my main desktop (reason of the week I am not yet: a couple hours into a dd hard drive clone, plasma crashes and restarts itself and greets me with crash dialogs for every app that was running, like konsole with my dd. My bad of course, should have done it from a tty, but if I can’t do important stuff in KDE4, why am I doing anything?) And so I’ll be that conservative guy that uses Stable for a while. This is what it’s for
Guys, this is why you always, always reference your release by *name*. When lenny rolls in I will have to do nothing because my etch boxes point to etch, not stable. Doing anything else is madness.
Unless you want to use a “rolling updates” system. Then you set the dist to “stable” or “testing” and you’ll always have the latest release of “stable” or “testing”.
If you don’t want things to change, of course, then you use the release names (sarge, etch, lenny, etc).
Depends on how you want the system to update. My desktop uses testing, but our servers use etch, for example.
Edited 2009-02-13 19:55 UTC
Exactly. I’ve always been happy with moving to the new testing, except in this instance, because of what it will bring with it. It’s pretty easy to change it.
Rolling updates mostly don’t happen in the real world. I certainly would not want that for any server of mine. On my workstation I do rolling updates by tracking testing and sid. I also update every few days, something I would not recommend for any production box.
A production box tracking stable would not be likely to benefit from a sudden etch->lenny move. Only in rare exceptions, such as mine above, would I consider it a good idea not to use a release name. (My case is somewhat bogus as I do use the name and I simply change it now and then.)
You don’t need to switch to a tty. You can use screen instead of course.
I think I am going to have a Debian Unstable Unfreeze Party
Ditto. Best wishes, Lenny! Now get the hell out of the nest!
What are they doing about these 86 bugs? Ignore them? Throw the packages away?
BTW: I’ve had big problems with kernel 2.6.26 – 2.6.24 is ok for me. But 2.6.26 did (does?) not work for me. I think it has something to do with the USB stack. Anyone having a similar problem?
Some will be ignored (and fixed in the Lenny r1 release), some will be thrown away. See the latest release update for more details:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/02/msg00000.html
Works fine here. You can always get a newer kernel from kernel.org. Or you can start tracking Squeeze or Sid and wait for an updated Debian-packaged kernel. Or you can try the experimental Debian kernel builds:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=12430
I had a lot of trouble with the 2.6.26 kernel at first. Issues with the EEEPC were legion. The most memorable bug was the semi-automatic shutdown, usually just as X was starting, due to a bogus ACPI “event.” It only happened when the battery wasn’t fully charged. Eventually things settled down.
The reason I don’t like the 2.6.24 kernel is that it tends to cause file corruption when coming out of suspend on EEEPCs.
One other correction with the article: KDE is mostly 3.5.10, with some programs still at the earlier version (probably because the programs in question didn’t change).
It’s great news to hear that Debian Lenny is coming on Valentine’s Day! How appropriate considering so many of us are utterly in love with Debian! Personally, I’m awaiting the flood of packages that will hit Sid once Lenny is released and Testing becomes unfrozen. I like to live on the cutting edge for better or for worse. 😉
Is there a DSM-IV designation for this condition, or do we need to add one?
Edited 2009-02-13 14:32 UTC
This is a lovely gift for the Debian lovers Thanks and congrats to every one involved in the development team. Happy Saint Valentine’s Day to all.
Edited 2009-02-13 13:11 UTC
Kind of a 180 turn around from saying it’s released “when it’s ready” … Honestly, who cares if it’s released on Valentines Day, or Xmas, or The moon landing day or wtf… I’d rather it released when it’s stable and useable, not too late up to an extent.
The problem is that Debian has already been VERY late, like more than half a year late. How late do you want it to be?
Did they specify *which* Valentine’s Day they were referring to? Sometimes that sort of scheduling detail is important for Debian releases. 😉
Edited 2009-02-13 19:34 UTC
It’s still less than 2 years after etch.
The first rc (nov) released by the installer team was enough for me to want lenny released as i as having a lot of random install problems but lenny as of now is anything but unstable.
The second rc from about 2 weeks ago apparently fixed even more bugs but i haven’t installed anything this month.
Now the release is imminent maybe we could get 2.6.28 into squeeze so i can go back from sidux on my laptop? I’ve also been wanting GNOME 2.24 solely for the view updates to nautilus.
Go Debian! If i could install you on my microwave i totally would.
Obviously, they think it will be ready tomorrow. It’s not like they are giving advanced notice or anything. I agree with them too, I’ve been on Lenny for 6 months, and I think it’s ready to go.
If they are releasing now it’s ready now. They could probably delay more, but you can *always* delay more.
Any engineering process involves trade-offs and your preposition that Debian are acting in contradiction to their stated beliefs is not something that many people would agree with.
Most would say Debian are re-engineering their software to have fewer defects and that they have been successful in their endeavors. Congratulations to the Debian development team, hear hear!
The prevarication begins.
I would agree with it. Not that I think that is necessarily a bad thing. Just a hypocritical thing.
A lot of people would, yes. They would jump up and down and argue until everyone around them submitted to agreeing, if only to shut them up.
Edited 2009-02-15 03:42 UTC
Mate, this isn’t a lie just because you say it is. Any engineering process involves setting priorities so the best solution can be chosen from the options. “When it is ready” is a judgment call, just because you don’t think it is ready doesn’t make Debian developers hypocrites. And if a person is prepared to compromise their principles just to shut someone up, then they just might be the hypocritical ones. What do you think?
Yay! Now I know why everyone all over the place has been talking so excitedly about this Saturday. But at least now I know, it’s our favorite holiday. Debian Release Day!
So I checked out our Hallmark store, and what the heck, I couldn’t find any cards for it 🙁 For being such a big day, you would think Hallmark of all people would have a card!
…for the distro named after a married couple.
Oh, I see from wikipedia that they’re no longer married. Well. It’s still as close to romance as you’ll get in the Linux distro scene. Happy Valentines.
not 3.5.9 (kde version)
Today was the day, and it’s still not out. Guess it will still be delayed and I should just install KDE4.2 from experimental.
Debian 5.0 “Lenny” will not include KDE 4.2, although it might be available later from the backports repository.
Debian 5.0 should be uploaded to the archive mirrors around 23:00 UTC in 14.2.2009.
http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2009/02/14/lenny-release.html
Wonderful. Lenny can keep the memory of “Crap KDE” alive for years to come. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Lenny includes KDE 3.5.10. Some people appear to like it more than KDE4. Anyway, Debian developers considered including KDE 4.1 in Lenny but decided that it was not stable enough. IMHO, they made the right decision.
Nice to see that we can agree upon something. 😉
It was this WEEKEND not the DAY in the announcement.
“The weekend of February 14th” is in the only official communication.
“The weekend of February 14th is going to be our tentative target for
release.”