There is an update for the next Debian release plan. According to Marc Brockschmidt Etch will carry 4.0 as version number and should be released on December 4th, 2006. “Please note that as of now, RC bugs and problematic transitions are our main concern. There has been progress, but we still need to lower the number of release critical bugs further.”
I guess its good to see the project coming along so quickly, though my experience with Etch has been less than inspiring. I hope it is just me, perhaps I’ll give it a try in a bit.
As long as Etch is still the Debian’s “testing” branch it’s in a constant state of flux and may temporarily miss some important packages or dependencies. “man 5 apt_preferences” explains how to set testing as the target release in /etc/apt/apt.conf and the same man page also gives an /etc/apt/preferences example for tracking testing & unstable.
I’ve followed these instructions and while I now mainly track testing, aptitude also lists the packages that are available in unstable, so I can install any package I want. With these settings, aptitude defaults to install packages from testing whenever possible but when there are missing depends, aptitude offers to install them from unstable. This has solved all the problems I previously had when I tried to track Etch/testing only.
Debian testing is a development branch, just like unstable, but it looks like Etch will become an excellent stable release. Also the installer has been improved. I wonder if they’ll make the GTK2+ interface the default for Etch?
My main problem is with USB key drives; namely, it won’t auto mount. I’ve posted this problem on several sites, but it seems that I am alone in this problem. I understand that Etch is in beta, so I am not writing it off as “unusable”. I’ll reinstall it at a later date, but for now it’s Kanotix.
The main problem with your problem is that it’s not even supposed to automount.
People sort of expect USB drives to auto-mount on modern OSes.
I look forward to this release.
I wonder if 3D support on ATI 9250 (and similar cards) is fixed so that Debian doesn’t end up like Ubuntu 6.06 which doesn’t even boot probably because X jams on those ATI cards.
Yup, it is included: the r300 driver in libgl-mesa-dri. I run Debian unstable on an iBook and I also need the R300 driver. I’ve seen the driver gradually improve over the last year. Now, the driver works just fine with things like Chromium and Crack-attack. I don’t know how good it is with heavier applications.
Yeah Xorg 7.0 open source driver with full 3D glory for ATI 9250
can play bzflag on it no problems!
Debian has always been my “stable” fall-back option…sarge “just works” even though a lot of stuff in there is old now. My “etch” experience has been “OK” with some display issues with X, but other than that, with the care that Debian puts into the final release, I can’t imagine anything but a really nice stable system. They seem to be very careful, something I can’t say for some of the more “cutting edge” distributions (some of which I use on the desktop due to the freshness of them).
Go Debian!!!
Try Debian Unstable/Sid. I’ve been using this distro for five years and never had any major problem. However you can run into problems when you upgrade your packages, so be sure you install “apt-listbugs”. This program checks for grave bugs in every packages that are going to be upgraded. So you can always cancel an upgrade if unsure. With Sid you are always up to date
.
The package “apt-listbugs” was orphaned last month.
Thanks for the info, I did not know about that. Anyway I’ve just asked on debian irc channel, actually a new maintainer has taken back the project. apt-listbugs is still in debian unstable and should remain in unstable for the foreseeable future. However, apt-listbugs might not be ready for the freeze before the release of debian etch.
apt-listbugs might not be ready for the freeze before the release of debian etch
Hey, you don’t need apt-listbugs if you’re using Debian stable. 😀
Debian is what serious people run. I don’t want something that changes every month or every year on my server.
I want to set up a server and have it serve mail, web pages or files for years on end and this is where Debian shines.
My hope is that they will continue to support Sarge for years to come as they currently do with Woody. Sarge is too new and has only recently been widely deployed.
My servers are happy with Debian and I sleep well at night. I hope they maintain the wonderful level of quality that they have had with every release up to now.
I could not care whether they have the latest bells and whistles. That’s not Debian’s target group. Debian is made for people who appreciate a distribution that works well, updates cleanly every time and runs well as a server even with very old hardware.
Debian is what serious people run. I don’t want something that changes every month or every year on my server.
Also FreeBSD, Gentoo, RHEL.
My servers are happy with Debian and I sleep well at night. I hope they maintain the wonderful level of quality that they have had with every release up to now.
Well, running an OS from a project who’s server has been compromised twice. No, no, no, I will not sleep well at night running them.
While Debian provide longer support than probably most free binary non-rolling distributions, I think that at the server level they lack some security steps taken by other open source projects like SELinux (or RBAC), stack protection in kernel, stack overflow protected binaries. The day Debian includes those as default, then I will consider them for a server.
Also I found and not only in Debian, but on most distributions is that they take too long to update a kernel. Sometimes 4-6 days after the patch released at kernel.org.
That’s why I have a Gentoo box with hardened (stack protection and other stuff) in all binaries, and my custom Exec Shield kernel, which infact, I update the same day a new security patch comes out.
Also FreeBSD, Gentoo, RHEL.
I don’t know. I have a stable/hardened Gentoo server… So far, I have to reconfigure something (Apache comes to mind) about four times per year because there is a major underlying change (like a change of file format) or something like that.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a fine OS, but tend to be in constant evolution… which goes directly against “not wanting something that changes every month or every year”.
Well, running an OS from a project who’s server has been compromised twice. No, no, no, I will not sleep well at night running them.
Then you must have a sleeping problem with your unsigned ebuilds…
While Debian provide longer support than probably most free binary non-rolling distributions, I think that at the server level they lack some security steps taken by other open source projects like SELinux (or RBAC), stack protection in kernel, stack overflow protected binaries.
True… I guess the Debian project is too large for their own good, e.g. it’s harder to make such moves without breaking compatibility. At least SELinux is one of their release goals.
// Also FreeBSD, Gentoo, RHEL.
I look after a few RHEL 4 Advanced Server boxes here at work, and I can say from personal experience that updating RHEL can be a bit nasty at times, with random breakage, config file mangling, etc. Also, up2date is total garbage. I hope they include something like yum with RHEL 5.
I’d love to be able to chuck Debian Stable on those servers.
As an (almost!) former Windows user who finds himself living in KDE 3.5.2 more and more, I’m enjoying Etch. I ws using Kubuntu, however Raki seems to be broken (the crashing problem in Dapper is mentioned in the Ubuntu forums + Google quite a lot) With Etch I had Raki working in about 20 seconds and was shortly listening to music stored on my PDA’s MMC card) Migrating from Ubuntu means that I’ve adapted reasonably well and am honestly enjoying my time with Debian.
You mean that after lots of years, the current version of debian gets only a .1 increase in its version (3.0 to 3.1) and Etch, which hardly makes changes, gets the full 4.0 version?
Seems that debian has gone the marketing way…
Hardly makes any changes? What?
GCC 3 => GCC 4
XFree 86 => XOrg
Kernel 2.4 => Kernel 2.6
I am sure there are other major changes as well. I think the 4.0 moniker is merited.
VLC will get back in Debian Etch, it has been removed due to this bug : http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=324978
Use pmount and hal , it works for me on KDE in Debian.
I use Gnome, and I have pmount and hal already installed, yet nothing happens. Etch does not even “see” the usb key drive (does not show up in Computer, /mnt, or /media). I am at a loss as to what to do.
Make sure you’ve got gnome-volume-manager installed. Then type in terminal “gnome-volume-properties”. That should pop up a GUI where you can set your mount preferences. The mounted files will become accessible somewhere under /media.
Debian maintains mailing lists where users can get help in their Debian-related problems directly from the developers.
http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/
Gnome Volume Manager is installed, and it is set to auto mount removeable media. I have no idea what is going on. I signed up for the debian-user mailing list, and I hope to find a solution. Thanks for the input.