"The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0, codenamed etch, after 21 months of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of eleven processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME and Xfce desktop environments. It also features cryptographic software and compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.1 of the LSB. Using a now fully integrated installation process, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 comes with out-of-the-box support for encrypted partitions. This release introduces a newly developed graphical frontend to the installation system supporting scripts using composed characters and complex languages; the installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to 58 languages." Update: Debian 3.1r6 has also been released. Update II: Screenshots, and how to upgrade to it.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-14
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-01-23
"""
You do know that Ubuntu is based on Debian? So Debian being updated will also benefit Ubuntu and other debain based distros.
"""
Truth is that Debian is always being updated in the unstable branch and in testing. Ubuntu would benefit regardless of whether the stable branch were updated or not.
Member since:2006-07-15
Member since:2005-08-11
Member since:2006-01-23
RE[2]: Ec;ipsed by Unubuntu
.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2006-02-11
Member since:2007-03-20
Member since:2005-07-08
Debian has been eclipsed by the Ubuntu project
No, it's just that the low watermark of technology and functionality available across Debian's vast array of architectures and target audiences has been eclipsed by the high watermark of technology and functionality available for desktop users on Intel platforms.
It's a simple matter of the FOSS community working towards the goals that matter the most. So long as we have apache running on MIPS, that's pretty much sufficient. But the challenge for FOSS right now is leveraging mindshare to grow marketshare, and that means that the bar is set really high for the commodity desktop experience and for the mainstream datacenter applications. These are priorities 1 and 2 (in whatever order) right now, and there's just not enough people interested in many of the niches to keep up with the blistering pace of mainstream development.
But what kills me about Debian is that they let these niches hold up the show. Some of their architectures don't support the 2.6 kernel, ergo no NPTL, ergo no glibc-2.4+ in the stable branch. I'm sorry, but this doesn't make sense to me. First, it seems that there should be a stable branch for each architecture. And second, if an architecture is stuck on the 2.4 kernel, then it needs its own project to support it, because the differences here are like comparing Win9x to NT.
Ubuntu was created in part because Debian was holding up the show for most of us. I'm glad that Etch was released, but for most of us it's bittersweet. Debian won't deliver the most recent collection of software that they can stabilize for our platforms or our intended applications. They'll instead give us the most recent collection of software that they can stabilize for every platform and every conceivable application. And this is an unfortunate compromise.
Member since:2006-01-28
You do realize that many bugs in existing software are found thanks to debian's policy of having software work on all platforms. Even if the x86 makes up the majority of home and SMB computers, there are many other platforms out there and people like me are very thankful for Debian.
It is the only Linux distribution that works across all these platforms, which means that your skills carry over for all of them.
I just upgraded a live server that is in a different continent from sarge to etch without a single problem. I would never dare such a stunt on any other distribution. Debian provides incredible quality assurance and incredible robustness in its package management.
My only question was why after doing a dist-upgrade I had to change my sources.list from:
#deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ stable main
#deb-src http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ stable main
#deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main
To:
deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ etch main
deb-src http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ etch main
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main
Isn't etch the new stable release and thus the above lines shouldn't have had to change?
If anybody can comment on what their etch sources.list looks like, I'd be thankful.
Thank you, Debian developers.
Member since:
2006-01-23
This would ordinarily be extraordinary news; but now, Debian has been eclipsed by the Ubuntu project so this doesn't quite have the impact it used to.
Good for them though--and only 4 months delayed this time. They're improving.
Edited 2007-04-08 14:33