Last September, some of the Debian Linux distribution's leadership wanted to make sure that Etch, the next version of Debian, arrived on its December 4th due date. Almost two months later, though, according to the February 17th Release Critical Bug Report memo to the Debian Developers Announcement list, there are still 541 release critical bugs.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-09-19
Etch uses currently the 2.6.18 kernel (I believe it still had 2.6.17 late last year). Now, the product in the *buntu family that's comparable with Debian Etch (a stable Debian release) would be Ubuntu Dapper Drake (with "Long Term Support"), which uses the 2.6.15 kernel. So, Ubuntu's LTS release doesn't really support your latest hardware any better than Debian Etch.
Well, I was mainly talking about 6.10 (Edgy).
But interestingly, when trying Ubuntu Dapper on this same Asus P5B board that Etch wouldn't even touch, it recognized correctly the sata drives. So they must have used a patched or somehow different sata driver in Ubuntu.
I'm aware that there is a lot of info on how to get Debian installed on this same hardware.
But my point is that it's a lot of effort and requires a lot of Linux skill (major stumbling block for new Linux users) to accomplish as opposed to just running the install disk and be done in about half hour.
That's why I think it's important that Debian has more frequent releases or at least update the old ones with new kernels (probably not possible but can't see why not).
If one has to go through near nervous breakdown just to install Debian on a new computer then sooner or later one will look for an easier alternative.
And very few new computer users will be willing to spend a few weekends reading through the Debian docs just to get the thing installed.
Member since:2006-01-01
Well, Debian Etch should work all right with most of the hardware that is available today. But, as Mark Shuttleworth has pointed out, even Debian can't be everything to everyone -- and neither can Ubuntu.
I find it a good thing that there are plenty of Debian-derived distros, which offer alternatives when Debian doesn't meet your needs. I'd suggest that you should try Sidux, a new distro that is based on Debian Sid. The latest Sidux release comes with the 2.6.20 kernel and it has a live-cd with hd-installer, so you can test it before installing.
Here's a short but informative review of Sidux:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2691
Member since:
2006-01-01
Etch uses currently the 2.6.18 kernel (I believe it still had 2.6.17 late last year). Now, the product in the *buntu family that's comparable with Debian Etch (a stable Debian release) would be Ubuntu Dapper Drake (with "Long Term Support"), which uses the 2.6.15 kernel. So, Ubuntu's LTS release doesn't really support your latest hardware any better than Debian Etch.