Oh glorious day! After two years of development, one of the prime Linux distributions has pushed out a new release – Debian 6.0 ‘Squeeze’ has been released. The most fascinating aspect fo this new release is that it includes Debian/kFreeBSD s a technology preview, which fascinates me to no end. Of course, there’s a whole lot more, including a brand new website for the project – the first major redesign in 13 years.
I won’t bore you with the details of the package versions included in Squeeze, since I’m assuming that if you run vanilla Debian, you’ll be smart enough to figure that out for yourself. The most interesting aspect of this new release is that it is the first to include support for FreeBSD – a project known as Debian/kFreeBSD, in both 32bit and 64bit. This means the Debian userland running on top of FreeBSD.
“These ports are the first ones ever to be included in a Debian release which are not based on the Linux kernel,” the press release states, “The support of common server software is strong and combines the existing features of Linux-based Debian versions with the unique features known from the BSD world. However, for this release these new ports are limited; for example, some advanced desktop features are not yet supported.”
Another very important aspect is that of the removal of problematic firmware blobs – which were non-Free code. These have all been removed, restoring the purity of the Debian distribution. You can re-enable them from the non-free repository – where they belong for a distribution such as Debian.
“Another first is the completely free Linux kernel, which no longer contains problematic firmware files,” they explain, “These were split out into separate packages and moved out of the Debian main archive into the non-free area of our archive, which is not enabled by default. In this way Debian users have the possibility of running a completely free operating system, but may still choose to use non-free firmware files if necessary.”
Debian runs on anything (Intel IA-32 (i386), Intel EM64T/x86-64 (amd64), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Sun/Oracle SPARC (sparc), MIPS (mips (big-endian) and mipsel (little-endian)), Intel Itanium (ia64), IBM S/390 (s390), and ARM EABI (armel)), and you can obviously upgrade your existing installation painlessly.
Looking good!
I just wish that Sid wouldn’t freeze for so long when they are finalizing a release. It’s hard to run current packages when it’s like that. Any progress with the efforts to make a sort of “semi-stable rolling release” repository that they were talking about on the mailing lists?
I installed Squeeze yesterday (from one of the RC2-images) after having left for Archlinux some months ago for that very reason (Arch is fine, but Debian feels like home), and switched to the mostly identical Sid immediately. After pulling down a new kernel + Mesa from Experimental and upgrading KDE from http://qt-kde.debian.net (still 4.5.x), it doesn’t really feel all that outdated.
Oh, and I love the childish Spacefun theme. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/SpaceFun
My main interest for debian is kFreebsd. I wish sometime we could see Debian/Darwin. I am really looking forward.
Why would you want to use Darwin outside of OS X? The kernel brings nothing interesting to the table, and the userspace sucks. Besides, Fink already brings dpkg and apt to OS X.
Indeed… What I’d rather like to see once is a variant of user-mode Linux that would run on OS X.
What I’d rather like to see once is a variant of user-mode OS X that would run on Linux.
What I would rather like to see is Apple die already
Just another kernel to experiment and evolve. Moreover it comes with generic drivers and open source drivers contributed by users. Not everybody has a Macintosh but some of us would like to take advantage of software (X software)/drivers released for Mac. Darwin lacks some parts but they can be filled in. Moreover a debian/darwin can also help the Mac community by providing more packages. If Apple continued its LiveCD effort there would not exist so many Hackintoshes.
Hardware like the Broadcom wireless chips are supported by closed source drivers and not part of Darwin. Graphics drivers are not part of Darwin. In short, Darwin’s driver situation isn’t enviable at all. It doesn’t even support the dmg image format, so it gets nothing in the way of Mac compatibility.
I can’t really see what Darwin has to offer Debian. The other way around, sure, but why go through all that extra work for no gain? The developers try making things useful for themselves. Doing it entirely for a different software community is just one of those things that won’t happen.
I agree with you about the state of hardware drivers, but I don’t think its a problem restricted to Debian (although the situation may be worse for them I haven’t checked in a while)
In my experience Broadcom has never been anything but a nightmare on any distro. Even the last time I ran Ubuntu it was still a case of fighting with ndiswrapper and countless .INI files
I have broadcom wireless on my laptop which is 6 months old. I didn’t even have to leave official Debian repos to set it up.
firmware-b43-installer
I also haven’t had to use ndiswrapper since flash was x86 only (2007/8?) and you had to do that on Ubuntu?
http://www.osnews.com/story/23786/BREAKING_BROADCOM_OPEN_SOURCES_WI…
I’ve been using this driver since several months. It works much better than b43.
i remember that but never bothered. i can’t clone that link any more so where are they now?
It’s nice to see the situation has improved, I luckily no longer have to use any broadcom devices, ath9k seems to work well for me on any distro I try these days.
I should have said I wasn’t talking about ubuntu as is, Im sure if I popped in a livecd today it would detect my old setup just fine, this was around Heron I think.
The hardware in question was a horrible belkin PCMCIA card that seemed to have everyone in forums tearing their hair out.
Edited 2011-02-08 17:30 UTC
Darwin uses the Mach kernel just like Debian GNU/Hurd
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/
Xnu, the MacOS X/Darwin kernel, is not Mach. It is based on Mach, but it most certainly is not Mach. Nor is it even a true microkernel.
Well done! The scope of the thing is amazing. Nearly 700 iso images were build and tested. 29000 different packages on so many architectures etc etc.
And before the whiners come out of the wookwork: ISO with firmare can be had here:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-…
This one isn’t very prominently featured on Debian.org and deserves more exposure:
http://live.debian.net/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current-live/i386/iso-cd/
(They aren’t available quite yet as of this post, still being generated.)
Live CDs are supposed to be installable now.
Just in time for my PS3 Linux install.
First of all congratulations to the entire debian team and contributors. Excellent work and thanks you for brining such a stable free OS with such a huge package repository across many architectures.
I was surprised Phoronix didn’t manage to benchmark the freebsd kernel version yet. Finally, a comparison with “everything else being equal”.
My bet is on Linux kernel beating the freebsd one once again…
Usually in benchmarks that don’t matter nor is relevant to the platform.
>My bet is on Linux kernel beating the freebsd one once again…
You should try it in reality first instead of talking nonsense.
I don’t really have time for such escapades, and phoronix will do it soon anyway.
Their benchmarks aren’t appropriate for a server OS which is what FreeBSD is best known for … they don’t do things like database performance or how many web pages it can server under load etc.
It will have some encoding benchmarks like last time and a benchmark of SQLite (WTF).
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=debian_kfreebsd_…
The benchmarks are not relevant for FreeBSD … which is most known for being a very fast server OS (small companies like Yahoo, Sony etc use it for serving their webpages).
Edited 2011-02-07 19:51 UTC
Interesting in this context is the experience when DistroWatch switched from FreeBSD to Debian in September 2007 after a DDoS attack. http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070924#sitenews
Debian was way faster to install and set up which was important to get the site back online, but regenerating the hit rankings every evening with a cron job took 40 minutes on FreeBSD and 130 mins. with Debian 4.0.
I believe the Linux kernel was notably slower than FreeBSD’s at that time, but has caught-up (and surpassed it in areas) at this point.
Missing the point somewhat aren’t we …
It depends what it is faster at doing.
The problem is that phoronix did not have a benchmark for a “proper” database e.g. PostGreSQL or MySQL (I am not sure if Oracle can run on FreeBSD). It does not have a benchmark for filtering network packets, how many pages it can serve etc etc.
???
Did I say anything about phoronix?
I hate phoronix.
I meant no more than what I said. Relaying information.
Missed the whole point didn’t you.
No, I just replied to one particular post, which diverged from the original topic.
You didn’t understand what I was talking about, which is _your_ problem.
Fuck Off, I am glad that the internet divides me from certain people on here.
Ah, it seems I had a browser error, and I can reply here.
Weird.
Anyway, you really need to re-direct your anger elsewhere.
I said nothing insulting to you, I didn’t even contradict you.
I explained a possible reason for what the post to which I replied described.
“Dammit, don’t let them change the subject!” isn’t a reason to be vulgar and rude.
It was pretty straight forward the line of discussion … the discussion thread was about phoronix and then you make a comment … and then it isn’t about phoronix.
You are either too thick to understand the concept of context or you are being an arse. I have little time for either.
I can comment about what I like. You don’t even have to read it.
The comment to which I replied didn’t mention Phoronix, either. It was about real-world use. I looked at the date, remembered some _real_ benchmarks done by some FreeBSD devs at that time, and mentioned the facts.
Changing the subject isn’t reason for _anger_, let alone vitriol.
You need medication, a smoke, or a day off.
Chill
Out.
Phoronix benchmarks are notoriously irrelevant, unscientific, and just plain useless. I read their graphs/charts in the same manner I read a comic strip: for laughs. The fact that someone out there takes them seriously is a bit concerning to tell you the truth.
Edited 2011-02-08 17:45 UTC
Well, it’s the only site that DOES benchmark these interesting setups. I’m sure they take suggestions on how to improve their benchmarks.
Actually, they tend to lash out at criticism, and say “go ahead and take our suite and improve on it if you want!!!”
They’re pretty hostile to questions, concerns, and reality
They’re “talking shit” not “talking nonsense”.
Oh no here we go again, whenever a new Debian release comes out I always install it out of nostalgia (Debian 3.0 was my first experience of Linux) and then quickly revert back to arch. But maybe this time I’ll stay…
Congrats and thanks to all involved in this release; a new Debian is always a pleasure to play with. I guess it’s like being made to wait for Christmas
As someone said about KDE on Slashdot – every new release is like a box of chocolate, with worm in the seventh one.
I have yet to hit a worm with Ubuntu Maverick, so it appears Squeeze is the first Debian release I won’t even try out on a hobby machine…
I’m sorry that Ubuntu Maverick has bugs, and probably you have met some worm, even if you haven’t noticed it.
Try LMDE, you might like it. IMHO it’s People’s Debian much more than Ubuntu.
I settled on LMDE for my Linux needs (with Liquorix kernel for multimedia though).
I remember reading a review when mint first got released, it seemed interesting and looks like it’s matured a lot.
I’ve been looking for a system to install on my parent’s machine and this sounds perfect – Thanks for the link would never have remembered without it.
Personally I do like playing around with my Linux box, and I don’t mind spending a bit of time getting things set up so I think I’ll stick with Arch for now.
The main advantage it has over Debian for me is the rolling release system, I get a pretty stable up to date system with very little effort and when it does occasionally break things I get an excuse to be geeky for a bit. Win Win in my book.
It’s been a few years since I ran FreeBSD (and thus subscribed to their mailing list). However, I distinctly remember a fair bit of angst (bordering on outright hostility) to Debian “polluting” the FreeBSD environment with the GPL userland. The thought of running a GPL’d “grep” or “ls” command on FreeBSD seemed like blasphemy to most of the folks on the mailing list.
At the same time, they would have to bite their tongues when it came to running Gnome, KDE, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc. Short of surfing the Internet in text mode and writing resumes in VI, BSD users have little choice if they want a desktop system. On a FreeBSD server system (with no graphics), you can avoid GPL’d software, but with difficulty.
I do sympathize with the BSD folks when it comes to running binary blobs in order to get hardware working. However, that’s not really a license issue. Most Linux users would love to rid themselves of the blobs too, but there is little choice if you want a fully-functional system. The only way to eliminate closed-source drivers is to purchase hardware for which open-source drivers are available. Again, it’s less of an issue if you’re only running a server.
Anyway, my whole point is that I doubt the FreeBSD folks will be jumping for joy about this Debian/FreeBSD project. I also think only a small minority of Debian users have any great desire to run the FreeBSD kernel. But maybe I’m wrong.
Edited 2011-02-06 22:15 UTC
Well, I don’t know if it would have any direct value, but the BSD kernels are always said to have higher code quality and be more secure than their Linux counterparts.
Also, it would just be so cool if you could just apt-get install bsd-image and dual boot.
Another advantage could be that you could run ZFS natively, since CDDL isn’t compatible with GPL, but it is with BSD.
From a developer’s standpoint, I may say that the FreeBSD kernel is more tidy and much better documented. The whole FreeBSD operating system is more consistent in general.
But maybe this is an unfair statement, as Linux traditionally stands for a whole family of different operating systems that usually are an arbitrary collection of packages, while FreeBSD is “the operating system”, and then there’s “everything else”.
As a long-time FreeBSD user, both in servers and in desktops, I may reply with the following statements, without claiming to speak for any group, community or society:
I think you’re painting a picture here that does not match reality. Being on the FreeBSD lists myself for few years now, I did not get this impression. Of course, there are certain complaints about “Linuxisms” that simply do not work on FreeBSD, but using wirking GNU tools is not considered a problem. Sometimes, problems occur when programs that have been ported to FreeBSD do assume things that are Linux-specific and that’s why not present on a FreeBSD system. But this has nothing to do with the license, but with bad programming and portability.
A GPL-free system would in fact be restricted to the field of servers mainly, at least some server software is not GPL, but a more BSD-like license (e. g. Apache).
But then the question is: Why should one want to avoid GPL software just because of its use? I can understand problems if you want to develop something and release it as BSDL software, but as soon as you require GPL parts, this is not possible anymore, as far as I understood the licensing mechisms.
Still, there are things that are considered “bad style”, such as GNU long options, or simply missing documentation. Again, this has nothing to do with licensing, it’s often just a coincidence to be observed.
However, licensing fanatism has – in my experience – never been a field where the FreeBSD community is very active. They are adult enough to accept GPL instead of fighting it as being “unfree” or “viral”. There are enough other people to do so. 🙂
Don’t forget the option to purchase hardware that conforms to standards. In this case, software is prepared to work with them, and there is no need for drivers that may contain binary blobs. I do admit that this is very hard, especially in the home consumer sector, and it’s often a bit expensive.
Server hardware traditionally emphasizes standard compatibility more than commodity hardware.
In worst case, “we” don’t care. 🙂
No, seriously: I do consider the use of a FreeBSD kernel in a Linux system (or should I say GNU system) an interesting chance for users or developers who are familiar with Linux and want to learn FreeBSD. So they can experience new features without entirely giving up their ways of doing things. There is even the chance that some of them become regular FreeBSD users – users of a real FreeBSD system.
I think so, too. Just the geeks among geeks will do so for educational purposes. 🙂
Thankfully at least some projects (Qt, PyQt and some others) will allow you to release your application and source using a compatible license such as BSD.
I agree completely. Linux man pages are usually, excuse the word, ass. I guess I’m spoiled by the openbsd ones.
Manpages? In modern Linux? You must be kidding. 🙂
It seems that very often documentation is left to the users, means: there are no manpages at all. Maybe a -h or –help option advises the user to consult the web, search google, some arbitrary wiki, if any.
But of course I can understand the feeling that there is no need for documentation. Agile programming emphasizes working software, where documentation traditionally is not important, as working software claims to need no documentation. Infrastructures that change their specification every day, and when they become fully functional, they are obsoleted – also candidates where it makes no sense to waste time working on documentation.
The FreeBSD OS, for example, is excellent for developers, as all things are documented: sytem binaries, kernel interfaces, configuration files, library calls, maintenance procedures and operations.
Many ported software does follow this quality approach (e. g. “man xmms”, “man opera”, “man mplayer”); on the other hand, most “modern” software does not do so (try to find manpages for most KDE and Gnome programs), but all the “old-fashioned” stuff provides manpages. There are also programs that just have a short manpage refering the user to “info”. In practice, “man” seems to be more usable than “info” as a reference – searchable and postprocessable.
With the rise of the desktop, manpages (as any kind of documentation) is only interesting for a niche group of users, mostly developers, system programmers and administrators (for troubleshooting). The “generic crowd” does just trial & error. 🙂
Mplayer is very thoroughly documented in it’s man page.
The problem is that it’s ONE GIGANTIC FSCKING MAN PAGE.
It’s also an advantage as you can easily do full text searches (as there is no limiting hierarchy). Also keep in mind that a manpage traditionally is not a how-to or beginner guideline – it’s a (complete) reference. It can’t be anything else.
But you are right: In order to use the mplayer manpage properly, you need to know what to search fore. Fortunately, mplayerhq offers a usable (!) web page with a task-oriented summary of options and examples. In my opinion, this is a good combination. Manpages are great tools for certain purposes, but they are not general tools for all imaginable purposes.
Word.
It’s a great resource if you’re online.
Offline… well, I’m rarely offline, myself.
I’d basically have to be in a cave.
There are occassions where you don’t have the chance to access any online information. They may not appear very often, but here’s a case I had: For a specialized kind of video server that encodes surveillance camera input using mencoder, it was required to change some encoder options. This system, because of security reasons, was not connected to the Internet, was placed in a room where no Internet connection was available and had to be configured directly (through a local console) – requirements demanded by its user. So I was happy to run “man mencoder” and check out how the desired options had to be coded.
That being said, see manpages as what they are: Useful references for a niche group of users (power users, administrators, programmers). And in worst case, you’ll be happy to have them.
Ok…
I’m not sure what you’re getting at by replying to my post in particular…
What I’ve said is that the man page for mplayer is absolutely massive, and that, personally, I’m generally online.
That’s all, no more.
How’s audio card support on FreeBSD? I’m especially curious about the more pro-ish ones.
Check the supported hardware list for sound cards:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/hardware.html#SOUND
For high definition audio, see the manpage of the snd_hda driver which lists the supported models (as every driver manpage does):
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=snd_hda&apropos=0&sektion=…
As long as the manufacturer did conform to standards when building the device, or if there is good open-source support for it, you won’t have problems getting it running.
I’ve been using a CMI-based card for many years now, but I have to apologize that it’s not a “pro-ish” one. But it works very well, no problems, for many years now. My “new” (haha) system contains a typical onboard device which works with the snd_hda driver, but I doubt this is what you mean by “pro-ish”, so you better ask on the mailing list or a forum for specific experiences in the more professional audio sector.
Both my laptop (ArchLinux) and my home server (FreeBSD) all run without any closed source drivers.
It’s not that I’m against closed drivers, just that everything already ran out of the box with the open drivers.
Aside WiFi drivers (which thankfully my laptop worked with FOSS), the only consumer hardware that springs to mind as awkward to work with is graphics hardware – and half the time the closed drivers are /MORE/ buggy than the open source alternatives anyway.
People often talk harshly about the state of Linux / FreeBSDs drivers but the fact is most hardware is pretty well supported. Unfortunately it is true that some open source drivers aren’t as functional as their closed counter parts, but most of the time most of the users don’t notice the difference (again, graphics drivers being the most prominent exception)
Yes, graphics drivers are the last major hurdle open-source has to overcome.
What mailing list was that? I don’t remember anything quite so virtiolic on any of the lists I frequent. It was more along the lines of “why would you want to do that?” and not “OMG, burn the heretics, fetch the pitch forks, join the mob, run them out of town”.
I’ve run AMD64 testing for years and I won’t change until there isn’t a Debian any more.
You’re the perfect everything!
One of the best things (along with software freedom, support for several processor architectures, and the large collection of packaged software) in Debian is reliability. If you get your Debian installation working, it just keeps on working, so you can concentrate on actually doing some stuff with your computer instead of worrying if the next software update will introduce some new exciting bugs.
Thanks to its reliability, Debian is currently perhaps the most popular GNU/Linux distro for servers:
http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux
https://secure1.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200907/apacheos….
>Thanks to its reliability, Debian is currently perhaps the most popular GNU/Linux distro for servers
Quantity says nothing about quality. Have a look at CentOS for example or FreeBSD on really big servers at Cisco, Juniper etc.
For servers, I might consider OpenBSD over FreeBSD but both being BSDs, either would likely due. Debian’s focus on security and stability makes a difference though too. Debian is well within the solid server distros beside Red Hat/CentOS and the other big names.
Debian’s release cycle alone sets it apart from other distributions. Debian Stable gets only security and stability updates; they don’t add new buggy code. It’s not about including the latest blingy new app title or version number along with all it’s bugs and security affecting variables.
Debian may be comparable with Red Hat, CentOS and other trusted Linux based server distributions. It may even be lesser than the BSD options. I just wouldn’t discount it based on a “popularity” argument when technological merits apply.
I put my wife on Debian about a year ago after kicking Windoze out of the house… it took a couple of months of getting use to, but now she will use nothing else. I just installed Debian 6, and she won’t let me touch her pc after setting it up. it’s cool… I won’t let her my Slackware and FreeBSD boxes, just glad she wanted to make the switch.
hmmm…. give it a name.
I am not impressed with the setup of Xorg in Debian 6. X -configure yields a mostly empty xorg.conf.d/ directory. Maybe it’s me but I don’t like hand tuning an X configuration.
Why do you need an xorg.conf? some weird card?
No, its a vanilla intel of recent vintage. Xorg only gives me vesa.
That’s… bizarre.
I don’t have an xorg.conf and it’s just fine.
Well, if it’s Sandy Bridge… there’s not even a stable xorg driver in existence.
The X4500HD is the most recent chip with a fully-working driver, iirc.
At least in Stable. You could try getting the driver and a kernel from Testing/Sid, which would require setting up pinning…
Edited 2011-02-07 04:53 UTC
You might try just installing xserver-xorg-intel or the applicable xorg server for your video card. When you
“aptitude install xorg”
you get all xservers along with it and Xorg guesses at what to use. If instead, you
“aptitude purge xorg && aptitude install xserver-xorg-intel”
you get only that xserver and the required parts of xorg that wrap around it. This will force Xorg to use the intel xserver because that’s all it has available.. and, keeps your install clean of excess packages.
For me, this was actually in the reverse. Early Debian6’s xserver-xorg-intel was broken; no worky with my X201’s Intel GPU though the chip is listed as supported. For a few months, I ran on xserver-xorg-vesa until an Intel update turned up that fixed it.
On key tip! Install openssh-server and be ssh’d into the machine when mucking with your xserver settings. It sucks to break your local display and not have a remote ssh into a command line through which to fix it.
There’s only one X Server from xorg.
I think you’re talking about display drivers, as there doesn’t appear to be a package named “xserver-xorg-intel”.
I think you mean “xserver-xorg-video-intel” which is the local video driver for the X.org X Server.
Yes, that will bring down all the proper *xorg* packages, but I think it’s important to recognise the differences if you’re really digging that deep.
That’s the one. Knew if I had a guess at the package name, someone would correct me. (stock on a work machine so didn’t “aptitude search” to confirm)
Ah, I see.
apt user, here. I rarely need the advanced search features of aptitude, and if I did I was never good with regex.
Purely laziness on my part for not reaching across the room to the Debian box. I may have to look into aptitude’s search features further though. I’ve only used the basic:
aptitude search [to search package names]
apt-cache search [to search package descriptions]
It was an easy habit to carry forward from my apt-get use so I’ve not looked into aptitudes search beyond the basic.
Yep. This is normal for all modern distros that use x.org. A text xorg config file is a thing of the past…
A welcome release thanks Debian team.
Okay, I understand that I must be wrong, because there’s no way that Debian would say this and mislead, but didn’t Fedora and Ubuntu do the same thing some time ago? There’s even been a dustup on Fedora’s excluding the most recent texlive distributions because they can’t easily resolve the licenses. So do I really understand correctly that Fedora and Ubuntu still retain non-free firmware files? If so, are there free alternatives, or are people running machines that require such firmware unable to run Debian?
I’m pretty sure they mean it’s a first for Debian. That’s they way I took it to mean, anyways.
It seems pretty obvious that they mean “first [Debian] fully free kernel” versus “first fully free linux code kernel code tree ever compiled for user consumption”.
Since the majority of the firmware is non-free, in the OSS sense, I’m sure they do. At least I hope so because I honestly don’t give a rats ass if firmware is open-source or not as long as the copyright is clear and allow free redistribution.
In the way the Ubuntu folks opt-in by enabling “Metaverse” repository, the Debian folks can opt-in by enabling the “non-free” repository.
If you need a specific firmware during initial install, you might want to start with the alternative install ISO which contains proprietary firmware. I sure will for my machines since I’m only going to add the firmware after anyhow.
What it means is that users who choose Debian and don’t choose the additional step of enabling Non-free won’t have access to the non-free packages including those contained firmware and drivers. The users who need non-free packages, drivers and firmware should enable the non-free repository or use a distribution with less focus towards shipping libre licenses based defaults.
For those interested who don’t already know; you add “contrib non-free” to the end of each of your repository lines:
#/etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.debian.org/ debian/squeeze main
becomes
deb http://ftp.debian.org/ debian/squeeze main contrib non-free
(whatever your Debian, Debian update and Security update lines are.. add “contrib non-free” after “main” and carry on)
I know I did something wrong during the installation of debian kfreebsd(amd64) w/ zfs, grub installation keep failing.
Anybody had success install deb kfreebsd with ZFS?
“One of the things Ubuntu did was to make Debian actually usable, and that is a really good thing”.
My person opinion:
a) website still sucks.
b) GNU/Linux mixed brand really sucks.
c) the whole community as stability freaks
I guess Torvalds is really wise.
Troll.
Alternatively, I’d be interested to know where I can track package progress (unstable to testing is easy but that won’t be valid tracking for me until Weezy is into it’s final six months before release.
Anyhow, previous to the Sunday/Monday announcement, these packages looked like they’d be included into the new Debian stable:
aircrack-ng
bastille
evolution-mapi
mondo
Anyone know if these still make the exceptions list to be added into Squeeze or am I shopping for a new primary distro? I mean Bastille was one of the reasons for switching to Debian and it’s going be in Deb4/Deb6 but skip Deb5? WTF?
Sorry to ask here, spent my time with the intertubes searcheses already with no luck.. may have to try the mailing list but I’d rather not spray my email all over the place.
What?
What are you asking?
The _next_ Stable? No one knows what will or won’t be included in the next release.
The current Stable? There’s a package search.
Are you asking _why_ a certain package might be excluded from stable?
I’m just confused.
I’m asking if and/or when some specific packages will make it’s way into Stable based on it seemingly included in Squeeze Testing’s hold exceptions list.
Evolution-mapi required to tap into current versions of Exchange. It’d be nice to have but I can live without Evolution; have so far.
Aircrack shouldn’t be an issue either. It’s kind of an important part of my toolbox and rarely missing from distro repositories these days.
zim – nice to have but .48 and .49 have a nasty bug that should be fixed in .50 (can eat page content when renaming a page.)
Bastille – WTF? How is this missing from Stable. The distro focuses on security and stability but is going to skip Bastille for Deb5 only to drop it back into Deb6? I’m confused here which is why I ask if others know the reason or can point me to proper reading.
I’ve checked the package search. Bastille and Aircrack existed and where maintained in Lenny Stable and until four or five months ago in Squeeze Testing. Then they dropped out of Sqeeze Testing with a note that they where excluded from the package hold. Now they are in Weezy Testing and Lenny Oldstable but not Sqeeze Stable.
I’ve got Bastille and Aircrack on my older Sqeeze install only disovering there loss when I had to reinstall a second machine and got “package not found” errors from. Since then, they’ve been tabs in my browser watching for them to drop in.
I’m trying to figure out how long I should wait. If it comes down to it, I’ll checkinstall them from source (excluding Bastille) but I prefer to limit how much I dirty a distro from outside native packages.
Heck, backports would be fine. I just want to know if these packages are going to remain absent from Squeeze Stable so I can get on with it.
Unfortunately, the “new website” version of packages.debian.org is broken and shows 0 results for packages in stable.
Spent the better part of the morning trying to figure out which versions of Firefox (Iceweasel) ships in Lenny, Lenny-backports, and Squeeze. Yeah, good luck with that … 0 results for anything except Sid.
deb4 Iceweasel 3.0.6-3
deb5 Iceweasel 3.5.16-4
I don’t have an Etch or Weezy handy but that’s Lenny and Sqeeze
You mean something like PTS: http://packages.qa.debian.org/ ?
aircrack-ng – http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/aircrack-ng.html
bastille – http://packages.qa.debian.org/b/bastille.html
evolution-mapi – http://packages.qa.debian.org/e/evolution-mapi.html
mondo – http://packages.qa.debian.org/m/mondo.html
Edited 2011-02-08 16:16 UTC
Cheers. Been through packages.debian.org and keep a few tabs lurking packages through bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl but this seems to be what I was missing.
Thanks, I’m off to do some reading.
Sorry, one last OT question. The packages.qa gives a nice current status of a package. Does it indicate if a package will be included into a specific version? It may and I’m just blind today.
I guess what I’m after is a list of packages not currently in Stable’s repositories but that may trickle in still based on being exceptions to the usual new package hold on Stable. My example, Bastille, made sense since it relies primarily on other packages and it’s own list of possible config changes to harden a system. (edit: one would want to let it’s dependencies stabilize before updating it) My surprise is that it remains absent after Squeeze is deemed Stable.
Edited 2011-02-08 17:11 UTC
I believe you meant to start out the article:
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Are you fudderwhacking good sir?
can i have your comment about running debian squeeze on production server
Any Debian Stable is a very good choice for a production server.
I recommend securing it a bit more (disabling remote root login on SSH connections, closing off things like telnet, etc) but it’s either Debian or a BSD on a production server, imo.