Submitted by That rare event where tried and true Debian releases a new version. “This new version of Debian includes various interesting features such as multiarch support, several specific tools to deploy private clouds, an improved installer, and a complete set of multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories. Multiarch support, one of the main release goals for ‘Wheezy’, will allow Debian users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. This means that you can now, for the first time, install both 32- and 64-bit software on the same machine and have all the relevant dependencies correctly resolved, automatically.”
Isn’t that in all the 64bit distributions nowadays? For like 6-7 years already, to say the least?
You’d think so, but no. Usually there was a hackjob “ia32-libs” package and a bunch of other kludges to make it work. This way there’s none of that, you just dpkg –add-architecture i386 && apt-get update && apt-get install foo:i386. There’s no library dependency collisions or anything because the libraries go in /usr/lib/$ARCH/ instead of /usr/lib/. It’s very well done.
It goes further. Install the package “qemu-user-static” and you can actually run foreign architecture binaries through qemu.
That means, even if you decided to drop x86 in favor of ARM in the future, you will still be able to run binary-only x86 applications on ARM as if they were running on native hardware.
It’s as seemless as Rosetta on MacOS, but it supports all architectures Debian supports.
Adrian
The below linked Debian wiki page gives a good overview of it. To put it simply, it is “true” multi-arch; it can be used outside of x86 entirely. It goes far beyond just letting 32-bit programs run on an AMD64 machine.
http://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch
Edited 2013-05-05 22:53 UTC
And AMD are thinking of building fully cache-coherent x64/ARM combo CPUs:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/amds-heteroge…
NOW KISS!
I understand that, but saying it’s the first time you can have 32bit and 64bit binaries on the same machine is kind of bs.
And that is why nobody said that. From the original post: “install both 32- and 64-bit software on the same machine and have all the relevant dependencies correctly resolved, automatically.”
Yeah. Say that to the skype guys that insists on making 32bit dependencies on their “64bit” package for example…
Debian Multiarch is more than just 32-bit libraries on 64-bit Linux. It allows for completely mixed instruction sets, such as ia64/x86 for older Itaniums that have x86 emulation built in, or emulated architectures, such as arm/amd64 when used with qemu.
It also allows for mixed OS setups, say installing Linux libraries along FreeBSD libraries when using the FreeBSD kernel, or Irix binaries alongside Linux on MIPS architectures.
There’s more that comes along with it, too.
http://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/TheCaseForMultiarch has a good rundown of the capabilities and changes that come with Multiarch
It took until 3.6 for Gnome to start to suck less. What’s they’re to gain by sticking with such a buggy version like 3.4 when 3.6 is finally sucks less and 3.8 is actually almost usable.
Also, what’s what’s to be gained with Linux. 3.2 when there have been so many improvements in 3.4 – 3.8?
People were saying similar things when Debian 6.0 got released as well. If memory serves, I think they released 6.0 with 2.6.32, and some folk were disappointed because there was some SSD-specific feature in 2.6.33 or .34 (I think it was TRIM support).
Most people should really run Testing (and backports) if they want anything even close to recent with Debian. The Stable releases are really for the moss-grown servers that have been up since the first Woodstock.
Anyways, congrats to the Debian team.
My condolences to Sid users who’ll soon suffer massive trauma once the frozen repos thaw out and bucketloads of borkage head their way.
Edited 2013-05-06 01:04 UTC
For me, the difference is, that even though the GNOME version shipped with Debian Squeeze was dated at the time of release, it was not quite as dated, but what’s more relevant than that: It was incredibly usable. I found GNOME 2.32 to be a very mature, elegant and user-friendly desktop.
I have been using Debian on the desktop since 1999 or so. Most of the time I used GNOME as my default desktop, and Squeeze was certainly my favourite release. Compared to that, GNOME 3.4 feels rather incomplete. It takes away more functionality than it provides. E.g. I really regret loosing all my panel applets, loosing the ability to use Compiz with GNOME. I hate the solid black of the panel. I can’t understand why anyone would find this elegant. GNOME 3.4 feels half-baked. GNOME 3.8 by contrast is much more snappy, it is faster, more mature, offers more functionality.
While I stayed with squeeze until shortly before the release of wheezy, I think I won’t stay long with wheezy, I’ll probably upgrade to Jessie as soon as it has stabilized a bit.
To late 211 updates so far today.
Huh??? 211 updates to what?
It depends on the version available when Debian freezes. I don’t use Gnome, but I suspect that version 3.4 has had most of the bugs worked out of it.
Also, people who use Debian for a desktop tend to keep certain items up to date. I run Wheezy, but am also running XFCE 4.10. For Iceweasel, I am running version 20. For LibreOffice I run 4.0.3.
What’s to be gained? Stability and long term support. Drivers from later kernel versions also tend to migrate into version 3.2. Later kernels and versions of Xorg will migrate into Wheezy via backports.
No, I run a stable and up to date desktop with Debian Wheezy, but you do need to know your way around.
Kernel 3.9 is coming to trunk for experimental. 3.8 is screaming fast on this machine, but there is a header missmatch in 3.8-trunk so i can not get vmware workstation up and running so i still have 3.2 up and about for now.
I look forward to the newer kernels hitting wheezy-backports. When moving from Squeeze to Wheezy, there wasn’t any real kernel update, as I was running a backports version of the Wheezy kernel in Squeeze.
try this I am running Wheezy with a 3.8 kernel and I was able to get the latest VMWare Workstation running http://mergy.org/2013/03/three-tips-to-get-vmware-workstation-9-goi…
Thanks to all the Debian developers Wheezy is really nice.
Edited 2013-05-07 14:17 UTC
If anyone around here is through a squeeze-wheezy stable upgrade I’d appreciate (I’m sure others would as well) any “bad news” reports before I jump into upgrading our web&db servers. Maybe it’s too early after the release, but I didn’t see many reports on upgrades (with or without success).
My previous Debian stable upgrades have all been relatively painless, so I’m hopeful.
Worked great for us in al our scenarios, but on the other hand wheezy has been feature-add frozen and stable as a rock for a long time now.
I have had several failures, all attributable to running a version of Wine from an Ubuntu Lucid PPA (a major no-no). The Debian replacement fails and halts the upgrade. You force the failed package to install using dpkg –force-all. Then you run apt-get -f install, and then run another dist-upgrade.
Thanks. I’ll also add a reply of my own: I upgraded 1 server yesterday, without any major problems. Since the old stable had a custom early 2.6 kernel, I compiled a 3.2.44, dist-upgraded, made sure udev is installed, and basically that was it. I didn’t notice any problems as of yet. So, nice job again from the Debian team.
Edited 2013-05-07 07:06 UTC
Time to buy a new desktop to go with this. I’ve been holding off, waiting for it to be released.
Uhm, I dunno …. The words “Debian Stable” and “new desktop” don’t exactly go together.
Unless you’re getting something really barebones that’s been on the store shelves a while, you’re probably going to need newer kernel, xorg, lm-sensors, Nividia/Ati drivers and some other libs from a more recent branch to play nice with brand new hardware, I’d wager.
Then again, I don’t run Stable (or even Debian anymore), so what do I know.
I run Stable, I like stable, a 3.2 kernel will be new enough, and I can eventually update what I want from Backports, when things become available. My current rig runs squeeze, with some software from backports, it’s amazingly stable, and fast.
ATI and NVidia drivers are in non-free, so there is no issue there, Virtualbox from oracle, and xfce 4.10, and I’m good.