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Debian Sarge Declared Stable

The long wait is over. After nearly three years of development, the Debian project has released "sarge" as the new stable version of Debian GNU/Linux. While the community behind the largest open source project continues to celebrate the occasion, we'll take a brief look at what surely is the greatest Debian release in its 12-year history.

Despite only a minor increment in the version number (from 3.0 to 3.1), sarge represents a substantial improvement incorporating many new technologies and packages that have been provided by their respective upstream maintainers over the past three years. In terms of included packages, sarge is on a conservative side of things since most packages were in a state of "semi-freeze" several months prior to the release. The default kernel is 2.4.27 (an optional 2.6.8 kernel is also available in the initial GRUB boot menu after installation), the X window system is provided by XFree86 4.3.0, GNOME is at 2.8 and KDE at 3.3.2. While all of these packages are somewhat behind the current stable releases, sarge is still a major upgrade from woody. Just remember that if you had installed the then stable version of Debian just two weeks ago, your system would be running kernel 2.2.20 and GNOME 1.4!

Debian 3.1 has broken a number of interesting records. With a total of 16,792 individual DEB packages, it is, without a doubt, the largest Linux distribution release ever produced. Its source code comes on no fewer than fifteen 650 MB compact discs. If one were to download all CD images for all 11 supported architectures, plus the images for the unofficial AMD64 port, and source code, this would amount to a total of 177 compact discs, or over 105 GB of data! No wonder it took almost three years to put it all together! Another interesting tidbit: the official release announcement was simultaneously published in 18 different languages, while the comprehensive 33-page release notes are available in 15 different languages. The installation of Debian can now be accomplished in one of the 43 available languages, including some obscure ones, such as Galician or Welsh. All this clearly demonstrates that a well-organized community of volunteer developers and contributors can often accomplish more than a large commercial company employing dozens of well-paid software engineers!

Besides package upgrades, probably the most noticeable improvement in sarge is the brand new Debian Installer. Gone are the days when one had to navigate the unintuitive interface of "dselect" to select packages to install. Instead, the installer makes some intelligent partitioning and package selection guesses based on a preferred "scheme" as chosen by the user. As an example, selecting "workstation" as the preferred scheme, the installer would create separate partitions for /usr, /var, /tmp and /home, then install GNOME, KDE and many development packages. On the other hand, choosing "desktop" as the preferred scheme would result in a root partition with only one separate partition for /home, plus GNOME and KDE, and without the development packages. The available file systems include ext3, JFS, ReiserFS and XFS, while GRUB has replaced LILO as the default boot loader. The new installer also comes with a hardware auto-detection module enabled by default, although first reports indicate that these are not as powerful and reliable as the ones found in most other major distributions.

Sarge supports 11 processor architectures, which is the same as woody. One interesting omission is the increasingly popular AMD64 platform, which has been in development for some time, but has not been included in the main Debian archive due to disk space limitations. Nevertheless, the AMD64 edition of Debian sarge was released as an "unofficial" port, complete with the full package tree, CD and DVD images, as well as support provided by the Debian Security Team throughout the lifetime of sarge. Despite its "unofficial" status, the AMD64 port has been able to keep pace with the main Debian archive and the debian-amd64 mailing list is now the second most active among the ports, only slightly behind the debian-powerpc list.

Not everything went well with the release. An oversight while building the sarge ISO images caused that the sources.list entry for security updates pointed to the "testing" instead of the "stable" branch. This easily rectifiable problem only affected users installing from full CD or DVD images, which meant that these had to be rebuilt under a new version number - 3.1r0a. However, there was also a much more serious problem - a complete breakdown of the sarge security update infrastructure right after the release: "So, it looks like we'll be without security updates for quite a while," reported Martin Schultze in his web blog.

Now that sarge is out of the bag, what's next? Naturally, the development continues unabated in the unstable and testing branches, the latter of which has now been renamed to "etch". Etch will eventually become the new stable release. In the meanwhile, the unstable branch has already received a large number of new package upgrades from the experimental branch, including upgrades to some of the important base packages, such as Perl. GNOME 2.10 has also been moved to unstable. Next, we will slowly start seeing major upgrades to glibc and GCC 4.x, as well as a big migration to apt 0.6 with its newly added support for cryptographic verification of the origin of packages. XFree86 will be replaced with X.Org and KDE should also be updated to 3.4.x in the not too distant future.

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New Releases

The Amazing Fedora Core 4!

The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora Core 4. Some of the highlights include version 2.10 of the GNOME desktop, KDE 3.4, a version 2.0 pre-release of OpenOffice.org, PowerPC support, the Eclipse IDE, a "100% open source Java stack" (GCJ), install-time support for Fedora Extras packages, and lots more.

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Debian AMD64 Sarge released

Following on the heels of the big Sarge release is the release of Debian Sarge on AMD64. "Security Support for this release will be provided by the Debian Security Team via security.debian.org. Our security autobuilder will start this weekend. Should there be any DSA for sarge before that day we will provide it manually until then (but we dont expect this to happen at the moment)." There are also CDs and DVDs available.

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Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 CD/DVD images updated (r0a)

The first update to Debian Sarge has been released, due to a minor bug in CD and DVD images. This bug has been fixed in the r0a release. The problem can be fixed by editing /etc/apt/sources.list, but if you haven't downloaded yet you'll want this update.

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OpenSolaris is out

Sun has followed through and made the first OpenSolaris source distribution available. It can be gotten from the download page. Do read the release notes before you start grabbing things, though.

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux 'etch' news

With Sarge out the door, it's time to shake things up in etch, the new development branch. To get that off to a rousing start is the C++ ABI change which will ripple through the toolchain (glibc, binutils, linux-kernel-headers, gcc).

dpkg 1.13.9 ("On like Donkey Kong") made it's way into sid. You can find out more about the planned development in the dpkg 1.13 in Bits from the dpkg maintainer.

Bill Allombert adds some bits of experience gained from handling upgrade-reports in the hopes of a smoother sarge -> etch upgrade.

Aurelien Jarno notes that the addition of SELinux support may cause problems for the GNU/kFreeBSD and GNU/Hurd ports and explains the correct way to support these ports.

Bill Allombert also looks at the Debian menu update and /usr/share/menu transition.

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The security state of Fedora Core 4

Mark Cox has posted a message describing the process that the Red Hat security team went through to verify that Fedora Core 4 was free of known vulnerabilities. They went through several hundred vulnerabilities from the CVE list, and, for each, verified that FC4 was not vulnerable. "For 20030101-20050607 there are a potential 863 CVE named vulnerabilities that could have affected FC4 packages. 759 (88%) of those are fixed because FC4 includes an upstream version that includes a fix, 10 (1%) are still outstanding, and 94 (11%) are fixed with a backported patch."

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Installation Guide for Fedora Core 4

The Fedora Documentation Project has announced (click below) the availability of the first Installation Guide for Fedora Core from the Fedora Project.

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Fedora Foundation

The newly formed Fedora Foundation restates its goals and vision for the Fedora Project.

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New Distributions

Slamd64 10.1 Released

Slamd64 is an unofficial port of Slackware Linux to the x86_64 architecture; despite the name containing AMD64, Slamd64 should work both on K8 (AMD64) and EM64T (some Intel) processors. Slamd64 10.1 was announced (click below) June 14, 2005.

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Distribution Newsletters

Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of June 13, 2005 is out. This week's news covers PegasosPPC Open Desktop Workstations with Gentoo preinstalled, a new Gentoo/MIPS SGI LiveCD, a new version of Christian Hartmann's GuideXML editor, the developer of the week Michael Cummings and more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 104

The DistroWatch Weekly for June 13, 2005 is out. "Today's release of Fedora Core 4 marks the end of the current "release season", with only some of the smaller project likely to make any new releases between now and October. What effect will the controversial Apple's switch to Intel have on Linux? Hardly any, we believe. The featured distribution of the week section had to go to Debian GNU/Linux, following its much awaited new stable release early last week. And if you are still struggling to rid your inbox of all the unwanted drug and mortgage offers, Robert Storey provides further tips in the second part of his article on SpamAssassin."

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Minor distribution updates

MEPISLite Released

MEPISLite 3.3.1 is available via the MEPIS Linux ftp site. MEPISLite is designed for home users with modest hardware and for those who want to use a light-weight version of MEPIS with a MEPIS Traveller Disc.

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Always Current Lineox Enterprise Linux 4.026

Always Current Lineox Enterprise Linux 4.026 adds Update 1. Click below or see the release notes for more information: x86 architecture, AMD 64-bit x86_64 architecture.

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Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS Update 1

Update 1 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 is now available. It features numerous security and driver updates and is fully compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Click below for additional information.

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Package updates

Fedora Core 3 updates yum

This new yum-2.2.1-0.fc3 release fixes multiple small bugs.

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Mandriva updates cyrus-sasl

A problem was discovered in saslauthd (part of cyrus-sasl which handles the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)) when using the LDAP authentication mechanism. Any administrators relying on saslauthd with LDAP authentication should upgrade their packages.

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Slackware Linux updates

Recent updates to slackware-current include upgrades to several alsa packages, several kde packages, plus gnet-2.0.7, lcms-1.14, lesstif-0.94.4, libexif-0.6.12, samba-3.0.14a, glib-2.6.5, k3b-0.12, and more. See the change log for full details.

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Newsletters and articles of interest

The Debian legacy (NewsForge)

This NewsForge article covers several Debian inspired variants. "For example, there are commercial distros such as Xandros and Linspire that contain extra proprietary software. Ubuntu is a popular user-friendly distribution, though recently there have been questions as to Ubuntu's ongoing compatibility with Debian proper. And Progeny, the company formed by Debian creator Ian Murdock, offers customized Linux solutions for commercial use."

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Distribution reviews

Ubuntu Linux Desktop Reviewed (LXer)

Tom Adelstein has published a review of Ubuntu Linux 5.04 at LXer.com. "A tip of the hat to Ubuntu for its success. This distribution goes beyond a free, open source operating system with a business service model. Ubuntu has attracted and cultivated a dynamic and robust community of people willing to make the world a better place."

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Review: Debian 3.1 (NewsForge)

Bruce Byfield takes a look at Debian 3.1 on NewsForge. "Debian 3.1 is noticeably more security-conscious than other major distributions. You need the root password to mount removable drives or shut down the system. Similarly, as a minor obstacle to script kiddies, the root user cannot log in to a desktop. Nor are any unnecessary daemons configured, with the possible exception of atd."

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My Workstation OS: Frugalware (NewsForge)

NewsForge hears from a Frugalware fan. "Everything in Frugalware is built with simplicity in mind. Frugalware's Hungarian developers say this Linux distro is meant for the intermediate user. I say you just need to have some basic knowledge of Linux or the enthusiasm to learn it."

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