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Debian squeeze (6.0) released
The Debian 6.0
release is now available. "Debian 6.0 includes over 10,000 new
packages like the browser Chromium, the monitoring solution Icinga, the
package management frontend Software Center, the network manager wicd, the
Linux container tools lxc and the cluster framework Corosync.
With this broad selection of packages, Debian once again stays true to its
goal of being the universal operating system. It is suitable for many
different use cases: from desktop systems to netbooks; from development
servers to cluster systems; and for database, web or storage servers. At
the same time, additional quality assurance efforts like automatic
installation and upgrade tests for all packages in Debian's archive ensure
that Debian 6.0 fulfils the high expectations that users have of a stable
Debian release. It is rock solid and rigorously tested." The next
development phase, code-named "wheezy," starts now.
(Log in to post comments)
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 6, 2011 13:55 UTC (Sun) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]
This represents a very significant effort: Debian is, potentially, the largest FLOSS project and certainly the most distributed. It was fun yesterday to listen in to the Mumble server and hear developers around the world discussing the progress of release, to follow it simultaneously on IRC and press releases - and to realise how big it all is now.
Debian 1.3 fitted onto one CD of source and one of binaries - Debian 5.0.8 fitted onto one Blu-ray disk at 14.8GB for binaries and another BD again for source.
Kudos to all involved - but I would say that, wouldn't I :)
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 6, 2011 18:51 UTC (Sun) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
I'm sure someone has already made this observation: Debian Unstable has gotten too stable. Still, I have to assume that bugs like crashes caused by video drivers are not release critical, because I can replicate some of those quite some time ago. Although Unstable (what I run) is quite different from Stable, I'm pretty confident those Radeon bugs replicate there too.
Anyway, I want to congratulate everyone who contributed, and I'm very happy for this release, although I wouldn't dream running stable on my computer. But I'll do update the home server to Squeeze soon.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 0:06 UTC (Mon) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
I agree about Unstable, but it's not too stable, it's too old. It's too old not because it'd be much too unstable otherwise, but because it gets frozen together with testing, or so I was told. If that's true, it's insane!
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 12:28 UTC (Mon) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
Unstable gets frozen with testing. Because the packages from unstable would otherwise propagate into testing (which they do automatically after 2 weeks).
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 12:33 UTC (Mon) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
Then stop the automatic propagation.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 13:35 UTC (Mon) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link]
That does actually happen for things that are frozen. The problem then becomes that packages that do need to go into testing can't as they get built for unstable and depend on non-propagating packages. The theory is that nothing gets frozen for very long but that doesn't seem to have been working so well recently.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 9, 2011 6:27 UTC (Wed) by lordsutch (guest, #53) [Link]
Unstable doesn't get frozen at all. However, it's a bit of a pain to update a package in testing during the freeze without also updating it in unstable first, so developers tend to avoid uploading new major releases of things that affect other packages. And since the archive folks are focusing on the release, requests for new packages (including renaming existing packages) tend to be on the back-burner too.
But things should be thawing out over the next couple of weeks, except for a few big transitions here and there that may need additional coordination (GNOME, OpenOffice.org->LibreOffice, etc.).
Role of Debian unstable Posted Feb 9, 2011 7:58 UTC (Wed) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]
> However, it's a bit of a pain to update a package in testing during the freeze without also updating it in unstable first, so developers tend to avoid uploading new major releases of things that affect other packages.
That seems to sidestep the crucial point. Debian unstable has a lot of testers, especially among Debian developers (that is partially because packages for upload are built against unstable). So to get high quality bug reports, your best bet is to upload to unstable. In the period right before a release, there are strong reasons to encourage bug reports against the packages targeted to the coming release rather than packages for the next one.
If that reality were to change, I imagine britney and related scripts would change quickly.
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 7:53 UTC (Mon) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]
> I'm pretty confident those Radeon bugs replicate there too
Bug number for the curious?
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 13:50 UTC (Mon) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=610818
I can see that I reported in against the experimental version of Radeon, but I've been trying for long to run Braid, so it's hard to believe that I always got a crashy combination of Kernel+Xorg+Radeon+Mesa.
I can see this is the only one I reported about video crashes. I'm ashamed and I won't be as lazy in future.
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 14:37 UTC (Mon) by jthill (guest, #56558) [Link] You're asking them to find a bug in an X server they didn't build, on a kernel they didn't build, with a hand-built xorg.conf.
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 15:28 UTC (Mon) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
Actually not. I never got Braid to run on Debian even before, and I'm always on the Testing or Unstable distro. It just happened that at the time I found those in experimental and tried hoping it will work.
All the packages come from some Debian repository, while xorg.conf minimally edited by hand, and not for fun.
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 22:10 UTC (Mon) by jthill (guest, #56558) [Link] Oops. Sorry, I checked sid and a quick google. There's a comment on the braid site about dual monitor trouble, though I guess you've already tried that.
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 20:30 UTC (Mon) by svena (guest, #20177) [Link]
A bit off-topic, but anyway:
Package maintainers seldom have the time to forward bugs, or play bug ping-pong between upstream and users. The best way, both for you and for them, is to report the problem directly upstream: https://bugs.freedesktop.org
The driver for r600 card is still under heavy development, and for something like Braid you really need the latest bits from git. Be sure to get the gallium driver too.
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 21:29 UTC (Mon) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
I guess that's something to remember, but my "abuse" (its unintentional) of Debian maintainers does have a few reasons:
-my supposition about which package has the problem might be wrong, them I'm invited to go report to the correct upstream. With Debian this didn't happen. -I can only keep track of so many bug trackers (Debian, KDE and freedesktop). I'm not really willing to create a new account, learn how to search in yet another custom tracker for each new bug.
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 7, 2011 21:36 UTC (Mon) by svena (guest, #20177) [Link]
Well, in this case it's most likely not a bug in the DDX driver, so it needs to be reassigned either way.
The bug tracker for both the radeon ddx driver, and the 3D driver _is_ freedesktop.org, so no need for new accounts or learning a new tracker. (Kernel bugs/hangs related to graphics can AFAIK be filed there too.)
Radeon crashes Posted Feb 8, 2011 23:42 UTC (Tue) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]
Thank you. Interesting indeed.
Two systems upgraded so far... Posted Feb 8, 2011 18:10 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I upgraded my work desktop yesterday. It was a rather rough upgrade, but entirely my fault. I had hand-compiled XFCE and had some incompatible .so files lying around in /usr/local/lib. Got all kinds of mysterious errors and was going crazy for about an hour. My laptop, on the other hand, was mostly stock Debian and the upgrade was as smooth as silk. Great job, Debian developers!
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 6, 2011 23:49 UTC (Sun) by tkmzk (guest, #72769) [Link] includes over 10,000 new packagesCongrats on all the hard work. However, while it's all very well to boast about the number of packages in a distro, that's only part of the picture. How many of those packages are properly supported? By that I mean: are there enough Debian developers to provide fixes for bugs and security issues in a timely manner? Debian 6.0 contains software that is rather old already. It's quite likely that many upstream projects have moved on to newer versions, in effect "abandoning" the versions that are in Debian 6.0. Are there enough people to do backports of fixes for all of the included packages? The staleness of the packages brings into question the value proposition of Debian 6.0, in contrast to RHEL 6 or (the upcoming) CentOS 6. While CentOS has a smaller number of packages, it will contain (via RHEL) refreshes to support new hardware. RHEL updates also contain new functionality (eg. backporting of ext4 and incorporation of KVM in RHEL 5). There is also the addon EPEL package repository for RHEL, which brings in an another contrast to Debian: it would appear that the packages in EPEL are upgraded over time, while the corresponding packages in Debian remain frozen. I'm not disparaging the work of Debian developers - merely questioning how does a "frozen" release (that's supposed to be maintained for a good number of years) fit into a world that changes. I believe the stability/freshness trade-off present in Debian 6 is too strict.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 0:03 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
I often wish (by the end of the release cycle) that Debian would move just a little bit faster. Maybe 1.5 years instead of 2 years for release cycles.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 1:30 UTC (Mon) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
It doesn't really need to be faster. People do not want to upgrade too often, and don't forget old stable is supported only for an year. What it needs is to be at predictable times so you can plan.
With the current situation you never know how long each release is going to be supported. But at least you kind of expect it is about three years. In that sense it is good that Debian moves slowly.
I really like how Ubuntu LTS works. Guaranteed upgrades every two years and support for three additional years. I wish Debian would adopt a similar model, though understandably with a shorter support period, probably one year.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 8, 2011 18:16 UTC (Tue) by xtifr (subscriber, #143) [Link] "I really like how Ubuntu LTS works. Guaranteed upgrades every two years and support for three additional years. I wish Debian would adopt a similar model, though understandably with a shorter support period, probably one year."There's a business opportunity waiting, if someone wants to offer support for oldstable longer than Debian does.... Could even do well if it was focused on the server, and offered selected optional backports (e.g. Apache).
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 9:27 UTC (Mon) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link]
I think help is underway :-)
the most interesting idea in this realm is "constantly usable testing" <https://alioth.debian.org/projects/cut/>. Other distros are too testing the waters in this "rolling release" area.
I think this, and more lenience in the dependencies of packages (i.e. don't consider packages for a more-or-less stable distribution wich depend on too-new things) could help a lot.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 19:51 UTC (Mon) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
backports.org helps a lot. If it still doesn't move fast enough for you, use Sid. You will occasionally have to deal with package breakage resulting in uninstallable packages. Usually KDE in my experience. This is an excellent reason to install on a snapshot. (Never mind that I don't do that myself because of user hostile LVM, I just fix the breakage.)
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 20:00 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Yeah, we use backports for several packages (Postgres, for example). However, it's not a full replace for the whole Debian.
For example, I've been waiting for Squeeze to move our website to Debian-supported Drupal.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 1:54 UTC (Mon) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
Debian also gets some new hardware support during the support period of a stable release. The ethernet card in my computer wasn't supported in the initial release of lenny but support was added later.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 6:05 UTC (Mon) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
> brings into question the value proposition of Debian 6.0, in contrast
> to RHEL 6 or (the upcoming) CentOS 6
Debian does get support for new hardware, eg. in form of the "squeeze-and-a-half" kernel provided usually about one year after the release. The original kernel also gets updated not only with security updates.
Regarding value proposition, unlike RHEL/CentOS etc., Debian is also an universal operating system, with no such one target area like "x86 desktops and servers and a few new ARM devices". I can see that in eg. that my NAS device (=home server at the same time) and mobile phone run Debian. The universalness can of course be also seen in the huge amount of packages for a variety of purposes. For x86 the competition is of course more tight, and there are many more things that can affect choices. For me Debian as the purely community developed distribution among other things has certain appeal nothing else easily provides.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 8:46 UTC (Mon) by linuxrocks123 (guest, #34648) [Link]
What phone do you have that runs Debian, and where can I purchase it :)
---linuxrocks123
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 9:20 UTC (Mon) by tomtervo (subscriber, #33398) [Link]
Nokia N900 is based on debian:
cat /etc/debian_version
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 8, 2011 23:21 UTC (Tue) by jebba (✭ supporter ✭, #4439) [Link]
...which in the case of N900/Maemo is Debian 4.0, etch.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 10, 2011 7:06 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Ouch, oldoldstable. There are some efforts to support N900 on pure Debian for those who want something newer:
http://wiki.debian.org/pkg-n900
There is also Mer, although with Nokia moving on to MeeGo I think Maemo might be becoming a community distro and Mer being merged into it:
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 11:46 UTC (Mon) by ableal (guest, #57174) [Link]
The HTC HD2 phone (nice hardware sold with WinMobile 6.5) has quite a few alternative ROMs, including Ubuntu (though not pure Debian). Drill down here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=531
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 11:57 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
My OpenMoko Freerunner runs Debian, you can buy it from one of the distributors:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributors
With the FSO stack and SHR distribution being ported to more phones (like the N900, Palm Pre & HTC Dream), it wouldn't be hard to get support for those phones in Debian.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 16:19 UTC (Mon) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
> What phone do you have that runs Debian, and where can I purchase it :)
http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=Neo%20Freerunner
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 4:56 UTC (Mon) by MTecknology (subscriber, #57596) [Link]
Dang.. I wanted to get a new package in there and move in some amazing modifications to another but I guess I missed it. I guess the new one will need to wait for Wheezy. The modifications will definitely need to land though. Plenty of open bugs to solve. :)
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 7:53 UTC (Mon) by Tomasu (subscriber, #39889) [Link]
I really hope this means I might see KDE 4.6 packages sometime this decade.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 8:00 UTC (Mon) by rilder (subscriber, #59804) [Link]
As posted elsewhere, this is like seeing the Halley's comet.
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 16:20 UTC (Mon) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]
I saw Halley's comet, it was much less exciting. :)
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 13:24 UTC (Mon) by webmastir (guest, #59528) [Link] Awesome. I'm very excited for this rls. Upgrading my home server now :D
Debian squeeze (6.0) released Posted Feb 7, 2011 22:08 UTC (Mon) by jthill (guest, #56558) [Link] There's a nice article up on NetworkWorld, making a basic point well.
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