Submitted by “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.
Wouhou!
long live debian. I going to install it on my macbook today!
Do comment(to me) if debian support for macbook got a whole lot better then the previous release or not.
It’d be very weird if it hasn’t, as 4.0 has a much newer kernel…
Well no, the new kernel(you need a custom one anyways) isn’t the big hold back on the macbooks. It’s more of the small things, like touchpad, grub, wireless, …
I tell you once and for all, macbooks are the last piece of hardware to run linux well out of the box
I just wondered if you still needed to do as much work as normally is required, see http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook for all the horrors. (in comparison to my dell laptop where by default everything works)
weird these macbooks don’t work that well, they all have the same hardware (unlike dell laptops, every second one is different again) and are used a lot by FOSS hackers…
Just out of interest:
Are you going for a double (triple?) boor system, or are you planning on using it as your sole OS?
Do comment(to me) if debian support for macbook got a whole lot better then the previous release or not.
don’t know, never had a macbook before, but now they’re only nicer PCs… Good ol intel under the hood.
Just out of interest:
Are you going for a double (triple?) boor system, or are you planning on using it as your sole OS?
dual boot with OSX. My g/f loves osx. I think finder sucks and osx just doesn’t feel like home…
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
I have to agree with you garymax, and I cant understand why you were modded down. I hope both distros benefit from each others existence.
Edited 2007-04-08 14:59
You do know that Ubuntu is based on Debian? So Debian being updated will also benefit Ubuntu and other debain based distros.
“””
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.
True, but debian needs releases to have ppl using it and keep it’s developers working on it…
Lol I spend about 11 years with Debian and now since two years I’m with FreeBSD. Ubuntu was never a choice in terms of quality, Ubuntu is “something” but it’s not quality and it’s definitely not Debian!
It’s actually mostly Debian, and they commit their changes upstream, so there’s some Ubuntu in Debian too.
Yes this kind of disservice is the best joke around. Take 99% hard work of Debian developers and 1% arguable work of Ubuntu developers. This naive assessment of the situation is a common mistake in Ubuntu community.
Uh, no that’s what Opensource is all about. You can bitch about it all you want, but Ubuntu is the best of both worlds, Debian base and bleeding edge technology. and if you contribute back, you’re doing your part. Debian is important, and as I said in another post, I am installing it right now, but get over the bitterness. Ubuntu is successful because of Debian, and they acknowledge that. They also develop new ways of doing things, like upstart, so the amount of Ubuntu derived code in Ubuntu goes up with each release. This is a thread about Debian however, and I am very happy about the release of Etch, so I won’t continue this off-topic thread.
Edited 2007-04-08 16:27
I agree with much of what you said.
However, could we please stop this Ubuntu discussion?
This is about a new debian release, and as with any other distribution release, people want to share their impressions, opinion or maybe simply joy in this new release, not talk about an other, though related distro.
Thanks!
as i said in my last post
“This is a thread about Debian however, and I am very happy about the release of Etch, so I won’t continue this off-topic thread. “
I made the assessment as a die-hard Slacker!!
Long love Slackware and The Man…
It was never said that Ubuntu==Debian. Only that Ubuntu has eclipsed it in terms of popularity and to the point that anyone looking for a Debian-based desktop thinks Ubuntu not Debian.
> Debian-based desktop
That’s the keyword, desktop. (K)ubuntu is mostly focussed on the desktop, thus a better choice for that. Debian has always been more of a server OS, so nothing new here.
Lol I spend about 11 years with Debian and now since two years I’m with FreeBSD. Ubuntu was never a choice in terms of quality, Ubuntu is “something” but it’s not quality and it’s definitely not Debian!
I guess you took the advice “Install kernel 2.4 or better”, and installed FreeBSD
.
I should probably be modded down for this but I can’t help myself. So don’t read any further if you don’t want to waste your time. Some posters are just so stupid I can’t help myself.
Babi Asu, I’ve read about 5 of your posts today in various threads and not a single one had anything intelligent to say. In fact I find it hard to even understand what you are talking about. So maybe Babi, should just stop posting until he has something even slightly on topic and intelligent to say.
For cryin’ out loud. What a party crasher. Can we please celebrate the release of DEBIAN without having to make it about Ubuntu? Grr…
Agreed, let’s please stick to Debian. I’m not the least bit interested in Ubuntu and this is not the place to talk about it.
I find it funny actually. It’s almost as if people need to convice themselves that Ubuntu is the right thing for them without ever experiencing complete stability first hand.
Complete stability==Slackware
slackware— the best of 1995
We all respect Slackware here, but:
1)This is a thread about Debian
2)Debian is at least as stable as Slackware
I will avoid mentioning that Debian is a lot easier to maintain.
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.
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.
I’d guess the server hadn’t synced yet?
Finally, its out !! Yippeee
Eclipsed? Perhaps on the desktop, that much I’d concede, I’m running it on my computers on the desktop, but on my servers? Sorry, I’ll stick with Pure Debian or baring that, CentOS.
I’m sure Debian is a fine server OS from a technical point of view, but the advantage of Ubuntu over Debian is that it have better financial backing and a fixed end of support date (2011 for the current server version). This makes Ubuntu much more attractive to e.g. CEOs.
Other than that, without Debian there would have been no Ubuntu. So there is all reason in the world for Debian developers and users to celebrate the new release.
Edited 2007-04-08 17:52
Grats to the Debian team!
I’ll have it Etched in my brain right now!
Stupid: why must it collide with my enlistment??? This sucks! Now I’ll have to wait a month for it!
EDIT: yes, I know sid is always available but I want it for some old server… And the installer disc is updated with each release…
Edited 2007-04-08 15:26
Finally!
Thanks Debian for the work you put into this release.
As for the Ubuntu comments, i would say that Ubuntu and Debian are in different classes.
Debian is one of the giants of linux distros, and ubuntu and many other distros merely stand on its shoulders.
Debian is one of the giants of linux distros, and ubuntu and many other distros merely stand on its shoulders.
That was true six months ago. Now I think that both distros complement each other.
Edited 2007-04-08 16:17
Ubuntu is nothing without Debian.
Also, Ubuntu isn’t giving back as much as they say they do, for instance Ubuntu holds back Gnome upgrades to Debian until after Ubuntu released…
Great compliment to Debian… not so much.
With my previous post, I’m not being disrespectful to the debian distro.
Features like…
upstart
Live CD/DVD
Different branches eg Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu
Launch pad
Are great for both distros, sharing repositories is also good for both Ubuntu and debian.
(PS my previous post also did not go against this sites rules, loosen up people <-;)
Umm, *buntu is one repo… that is incompatible with Debian’s repo’s due to different glibc (amoungst other things…)
Launchpad certainly isn’t giving back to the community either, it is closed source… Although I hear DD’s were really happy to hear they’d been signed up for Launchpad automatically.
Well. I guess I should concede that I was wrong in all those posts I’ve made previously which said Etch wouldn’t be released until at least next December.
Any good recipes which include gray felt would be appreciated.
Scouring the Julia Child Recipe Archives has so far turned up nothing.
Edited 2007-04-08 15:47
Gonna try it out any second
There are many ways to measure the popularity of Linux distros and Linux in general, none of them considered very reliable – but if server overloading is any indication then I’d say Debian is VERY popular right now.
You guys rock thanks for the news.
Go Debian, go!
Two releases a day! I’m impressed.
Ubuntu is OK. It doesn’t matter which one is better now. Let’s party.
We will party too when ubuntu will release.
EDIT:
Oh! By the way – new Debian Project Leader has been elected today too!
http://www.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_001
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/04/msg00004.html
Kind regards,
Edited 2007-04-08 16:29
Torrent link, kthx
… is now finally over. I cannot recall, how many months Debian was frozen, but I’m really looking forward to the flow of fresh upstream releases into the unstable tree to resume.
ATM most of my desktop is from Debian’s experimental branch. I can’t wait for all those packages to finally enter Unstable.
Once you have learned to cope with Debian Unstable, there is little that might tempt you to migrate to Ubuntu. In particular, I have the impression that the Debian kernel is in a better shape than the Ubuntu one. I have both Debian Unstable and Ubuntu Feisty on my desktop machine, and feisty always crashes on me in a number of situations related to specific hardware, where Debian copes just fine.
After all, I feel that the major benefit offered by Ubuntu is the regular release cycle. Apart from that, the layer added by Ubuntu to hide the complexity of the underlying system is very thin and incomplete.
E.g. if you want to modify the boot manager configuration, the name of your config tool is
“sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst” Same for Xorg and many other core aspects of the system.
Therefore, I don’t believe, that a large number of sysadmins will feel an urge to migrate from Debian to Ubuntu…
Edited 2007-04-08 17:24
I wonder if they will adopt Ubuntu’s news init system Upstart in the next version after Etch? Any other decisions yet about the new things that they plan to develop for Etch+1?
By the way, has the code name of the next Debian version been decided yet..?
Yes it has. The next stable release will be called Lenny.
“Any other decisions yet about the new things that they plan to develop for Etch+1?”
Replying my own question: the general guidelines for the next release (like shortening the release cycle) are quite well outlined in the Etch release email announcement by Andreas Barth:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/04/msg00005.html
Looks promising to me. Good luck!
Good food for my hppa
No support any more for MC68K – Atari and Amiga. Wonder what Amiga and Atari users will do now?
They upgraded and are using their 3rd pc now.
but really not that big a deal for many Debain users… I have had etch running on a couple different boxes for quite a while. It is nice that Etch is officially released but makes little difference to me as far as my installs go. All it means is I am now running release versus testing. In a year or so I might start building boxes with the next version of testing, but for now life goes on as usual.
Still a good milestone for the project and I am glad it made it out the door. Now the team can start focusing on the next generation.
Edited 2007-04-08 18:15
congrats to the debian team, and I find it very interesting that they managed to get this out within their timeframe they want to have releases in (18-21 months)
im interested in trying/using debian, currently use ubuntu, but i see that etch ships with a rather old version of gnome, is 2.18 in any version of debian?
Edited 2007-04-08 19:49
Well, now that stable has been released, I expect to see Gnome 2.18 in Sid soon, then in testing.
Wowww! This is the best Easter present I got.
Worth the wait. Quality over quantity I say. I tried Ubuntu’s last three offerings but like a car, I would rather have dependability over a new body style that would risk having the wheels fall of on the Interstate.
I’m very pleased Debian 4 etch is out. I’ll be pleased when *buntu feisty is out too…
choices choices…
When It comes to GNOME, I was going to download it but seen only GNOME 2.14 release.
same here, though i heard unstable has 2.16 and should get 2.18 soonish.
congrats to the Debian team!
I like debian! This is a really great month.
Ubuntu and Debian are released in new versions, great!
Now that the new release is happily out, and also a new project leader has been elected, hopefully the Debian project will get its many serious inner quarrels and fights solved and settled better too?
A small example of the not-so-nice things in Debian nowadays, the Debian Weekly News http://www.us.debian.org/News/weekly/ has been far from weekly for a long time now, and like many know, that has to do with the inner quarrels within the Debian project too.
And what is the constant hatred (envy?) that many Debian people still hold agaist Ubuntu, its closest relative among the biggest distributions? It should be very clear to everybody that both projects, Debian and Ubuntu, benefit each other a great deal, so there should be no reason for childish anti-ubuntu sentiments within the Debian camp?
Such inner fighting, bad behaviour and bad publicity for Debian is sadly likely to drive people away from the project, to, for example, Ubuntu.
But anyway, congratulations for Debian for getting 4.0 Etch released and hoping many happy and succesful years for the project!
Edited 2007-04-08 22:06
guess that got him wrong…
LXF: If Debian was a do-over, is there some way that that could have been fixed?
IM: Frankly, I can see this on Slashdot already, so I might as well keep going! I think the fundamental mistake was this adoption of a democratic process, which happened after my time and I was opposed to.
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/murdockint.html
I recently picked up two new computers. One was a Samba file server. It arrived with an Ubuntu install, which got replaced with Debian, largely because the rest of the house runs Debian. The other was a machine assembled from parts ordered from Newegg.
I wanted this to be a multimedia server for my stereo, except, it’s not a server. It pulls stuff from the other new machine, located on the other side of the house. As it sits under a standard television, there is no room for a monitor. The box has s-video output, and I plugged that into the TV.
Using the standard 80 column display, I installed Debian. Standard TV hasn’t changed since I ran a Color Computer on a TV in the early 80s. It looked bad then; it looks bad now. I also installed XORG and KDE. I gave XORG a 640×480 display, and hoped for the best.
“The best” is a lot better than I expected. It was actually legible. Linux TV; Kaffeine grabbing what it needs and sending it to my stereo. Above all, it was easy. Debian has come a long way since the “good old” installers of Potato and Woody.
After d/ling the netinstall cd via bittorrent and installing in about 3 hours, the system is finally up. Basically the desktop defaults to Gnome and is a really nice setup. Using it now and I have to say congrats to all who made it possible
I am using this on a Pentium II 450mhz w/ 384 mb of ram and it works fine. I also have 6 other computers which are far newer and run Vista, but I have to say I always have more fun on systems like this one I am typing from. Something seems more “stable” (no pun intended) to me when I am using Linux.
My heartiest congrats to all the Debian developers, Debian is hardcore Linux imho. Can’t wait to download Debian DVD’s and install on my office PC
good to see it finished. congrats and big thanks to debian team!
Can we not just extend a nice welcome to the new Debian release, period?
I love Ubuntu, but I also love Debian since Ubuntu grew from Debian. Why do users have to pit each other as if they weren’t related to one another? Neither of the two leeches off the other the way MS does off Novell, and some devs work for BOTH distros.
I appreciate that the community has Linux close to their hearts, but there are a LOT of times when we step over the line between sanity and fanaticism. This has got to stop. It only breaks the community into factions, and that’s never a good thing.
Debian is a gift and this user is grateful for it. No one has to use it (unlike the countless thousands chained to another OS), no one has to like it. But like all the best gifts, it is simply there and free to you if you want it. There’s no awful corporate business type at the gate trying to charge you for breathing. Step right in and enjoy. So well done, everyone
I’m typing this on Etch and it’s been running extremely well for some months now. So in a way the bigger news for me in this story is the new DPL and whether he’ll be able to implement his ideas. They sound quite ambitious but they also sound interesting and perhaps are what Debian really needs. I hope he succeeds.
Are you really saying what i hope you are saying!
RM to Zune
http://www.rm-converter.net
Debian praises itself for being built on democratic principles. Leaders are elected, major decisions are taken by vote, etc.
Yet this kind of democracy doesn’t quite correspond to what we understand as democracy in most countries but rather a “people’s republic”. A small party of developers (1000 or so) makes all the decisions about where Debian goes. The user base, hundreds of thousands of people maybe, are expected at most to report bugs and otherwise praise its wise leaders, with no saying about the project’s direction.
What if those hundreds of thousands actually had a direct saying? What if registered Debian users voted about what (not how) should be done? For example, get a release at a fixed schedule no matter what. Or not. Include closed source software (e.g. Sun Java in the past). Or not. Or, don’t treat all programs as equal in importance. Or have seperate releases for desktop and server. Or drop deprecated platforms. Or get a “useless” flashy boot splash. Why would anyone want that, I don’t know. But people voted and I guess we’ll just do that.
Now I understand this is a volunteer project, you can’t force volunteers to do something, right? On the other hand, you can’t force them to stay in the project either. They can stay as long as they agree with the general direction of the project and they can drop out any time they want.
What if democratic values extended to the whole user base, not just developers. Do you think this feedback mechanism you allow the product to align better to people’s needs and wishes (even irrational ones?)
Edited 2007-04-09 10:40
Maybe simply becouse democracy does not work as intended, 5 stupid users will count as more important voice than 4 smart developers, You really want that?
More people You ask, the more stupid the question must be if You want all of them to anwser.
Forget democracy, it only hides the fact that community is ruled by few with a illusion of “People’s Power” ™ (words that blinds many today).
Do You realy think that in so called democracy peoples can change anything? You will only change what they will let You change.
For example: anyone I know in my country, and I’m from Poland, want taxes to be lower but does not makes them lower, if democracy would work whey would be lowered years ago. But few people would like to forbid pornography and current goverment will try to do that, so no more naked girls in press (this won’t probably happen now, but who knows the future).
They listen to people’s voice but they hear what they want.
Please don’t give the power of choice to someone who does not know what to do with it and knows nothing about things he controls (or what’s even worse have false idea that he knows while he does not).
>Maybe simply becouse democracy does not work as intended, 5 stupid users will count as more important voice than 4 smart developers, You really want that?
I probably didn’t get my idea out clearly enough.
This isn’t some idealistic, political or dogmatic assumption that a touch of democracy here and there magically improves everything. I think it’s quite pragmatic.
What is the goal of the Debian project? To come up with a product that satisfies its users, thus remains relevant, while staying inside some shared principles e.g. use and promote open source software.
In a commercial setting, you would do market research or polls and statistics to come up with a clear idea of the goal, which characteristics the finished product should have to be actually useful and succesful to consumers (or plainly attractive).
This is the basic idea of voting: a feedback mechanism for judging in a crude way the total sum of the actions taken by leaders. Did they improve or worsen things, more or less? It’s far from perfect but much better than having no measurement of success or failure at all (until it’s too late).
By having only Debian developers vote, you can have at most a product that satisfies Debian developers. Then hope that they are “enlightened” enough to guess, or even give a damn about users wishes (some of them may be quite dumb e.g. a better default wallpaper may still make users more content)
>anyone […] want taxes to be lower but does not makes them lower
Notice I said that users should get a vote on what should be done not how it should be done. Few people have the technical skills to actually drive the project forward, but they can still tell whether they are pleased or disappointed with the finished product.
If users are pleased, they stay with Debian. If they aren’t, they flight to Ubuntu.
Please don’t give the power of choice to someone who does not know what to do with it and knows nothing about things he controls
If I am a passenger in a car and don’t know how to drive, can I still get a saying about where I actually want to go?
Edited 2007-04-09 19:15
So what feedback would You like, You have forums now which are browsed by at least some developers, they got mailboxes where You can send messages and You got bugzilla where You can fill a bug if You think that something works wrong. What else do You need? If You ask users if releases should be more frequent then You can forget about No button on this vote. If You ask users if debian should use more recent versions of X software than they will most certainly say yes but remember that debian have philosophy about software versions and if You want to change that then You want to force debian to be something different than it is, and this is something that _leaders_ should do, not random users who come ang go.
If it’s not Your car that You should ask where it is going before You get in, plus You can always _ask_ the man at the wheel if he will go where You want.
But debian is more like a bus, if You are driving a bus than You don’t want each and every passanger to come and tell You to go here or there, You pick a route, tell passangers where You are going and if they like it they will stay.
I guess I would call Debian a participatory democracy. You must be involved in the development of Debian in order to guide its development.
However, I am sure there are ways to get involved in development without being a “coder”. There are help documents to write, packages to create, tests to run, etc. I imagine it would be possible for almost any user to find a way to help, and thus become a voting member.
Am I right? I am not a Debian developer, so I am just guessing from the outside.
And chewing on my fingernails, as I watch each package from my dist-upgrade downloading…
I’m happy to see that debian developers have resisted putting pictures of flashy balloons or landscape on their desktop. Such things may look good but is a bit distracting. In some cases it even makes it harder to see icons on the desktop or to read the text.
Instead the background they have selected gives a very professional impression. Much better than what you get from some more commercially oriented OS vendors.
The desktop background contains no small details that could clash with details in icons or icon text. Yet there are distinct areas, distinguished from each other by different color tones, that can serve as landmarks for the user when he memorizes where on the desktop he has put a certain icon.
Some people may say that it is a bit boring, but from a usability point of view boring is good. The OS should not try to compete with the users documents for the interest and attention of the user.
Very well done!
I agree. Too much time is wasted on alien landscapes and shimmering icons that spin and twirl. Eventually these things just become distractions. I remember in Windows 95 where the rage was sound themes for the desktop. There were all kinds of “beeps” and “boops” for various actions. It sounded cool, but it quickly became very annoying. Amazingly, computers are sometimes used to accomplish actual work!
[EDIT: Reduced amount of quoted text]
Edited 2007-04-09 17:48 UTC