LWN: Comments on "The new Debian etch release schedule"

The new Debian etch release schedule

woakley — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:42:58 +0000

So chaps. Any news on where you're at now? Would be very helpful to get some idea. I note that the releases page hasn't been touched with any updates.

regards

- William

The new Debian etch release schedule

Segora — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:53:43 +0000

For me it was a custom installation based on Debian (whatever was current in '95) on a 386SX16 w/ 2MB, as far as I remember. Stripped down kernel, UUCP, some console mail user agent. Probably something like Xpoint would have worked better, but hey - it worked good enough and was completely free.

Longest-running Debian installation?

stevem — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:12:40 +0000

My first Debian installation from October 1996 is still going. It has been migrated across to new disks and new hardware multiple times in the interim, and (obviously) upgraded quite a few times since.

It was my only machine at the time, a 486 DX4/120 IIRC. It's now running on a dual-core AMD64 and is the main server at home, used for NFS space, music and (of course) the local Debian mirror. It's also the machine where most debian-cd development work happens.

The only thing that may kill it now is the fact that I'd like to move over from i386 to amd64. Once I do the etch upgrade, I'll look into that; I hope I can find a way to keep it going despite an architecture change... :-)

The new Debian etch release schedule

a9db0 — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:59:36 +0000

I've an old firewall that started with (pause whilst I dig through a large stack of CDs) Potato. Currently a Sarge/Etch blend. Still runs fine. I'll replace it when some component of it dies - though it's a 10 year old Compaq P90 that shows no signs of failure.

The new Debian etch release schedule

ballombe — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 14:31:38 +0000

> What is the longest anybody here has had a single Debian install going, (especially if it was for a personal desktop)?

I know of two desktop machines (only one being used daily) that started their
life with Slink (in 1999) and are still running now, after being upgraded to each newer release up to Sarge and they probably be upgraded to Etch once it is released.

On a unrelated note, I managed to install woody on a m68k with 4Mb of RAM.
(a Falcon 030 at 16MHz).

The new Debian etch release schedule

cortana — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:34:44 +0000

Try http://people.debian.org/~sesse/bugscan/ instead. It is a version of the official RC bugs graph that has extra code that takes into account version tracking information from the bug tracking system. It should display the same info as the bts.turmzimmer.net page with the correct flags set.

The new Debian etch release schedule

broonie — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:33:19 +0000

The larger count includes bugs that aren't in the release candidate (for example, because the package is not going to be released).

The new Debian etch release schedule

rmayr — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:04:36 +0000

My desktop machine is running Debian unstable since about 1999, and still
counting. And yes, it's basically the same install from back then, I just
regularly try to spend some time to clean up old cruft.

The new Debian etch release schedule

maney — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:03:04 +0000

Hmmm... it was a long time ago. Maybe 4MB wasn't quite enough for the installer, even though it was plenty for a small server or firewall sort of thing and I've misremembered the numbers. There were a couple of these old 386SX desktop boxes sitting aorund, so I might have stuffed two machine's portions into one for installation. They were the remains of a DOS/Windows 3.x lab that was on its last legs, and I'm thinking that 4M would have been fairly hefty for that (bearing in mind they were old ten years ago, and that district *always* bought the minimal spec they could get away with at the time of purchase).

Anyway, as near as I recall, Debian's release schedules were kind of flexible even back then. :-)

The new Debian etch release schedule

drag — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:31:40 +0000

Not I.

The leastest (is that a word? It should be if it isn't) machine I ever had Linux installed on was a old 386 Thinkpad laptop with 6 megs of RAM. This was maybe 4 years ago? I had to use a special floppy-edition that was unusual (most floppy-based distros required you to load the disk into RAM to free up the disk for more stuff. I didn't have enough ram to do that). Then I had to install my software using packages from some ancient version of Slackware.

I wanted to use it as a serial terminal. Ended up blowing Linux away and went with MSDOS + kermit. (nowadays I'd use freedos). I liked that a lot. It is my opinion that no laptop should ever be thrown away as long as it has a decent screen, a keyboard, and a serial port. :-)

What is the longest anybody here has had a single Debian install going, (especially if it was for a personal desktop)?

I know I had one install going from about 3 years and a few months, which I know isn't that long. I tracked unstable and I actually transfered it from drive to drive once as my hardware gradually upgraded. It probably outlasted 3 major revisions of hardware for my desktop.

The new Debian etch release schedule

maney — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:32:32 +0000

Debian obeys Brook's Other Law, which tells us to plan on throwing one deadline away, because we will anyway. :-)

I think I first installed Debian in the days of Bo, but it was probably Hamm by the time I was running it seriously. Remember when you could install on a box with 4M of RAM?

The new Debian etch release schedule

k8to — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:43:08 +0000

That page, while interesting, isn't really self documenting. The colors, some of the markings are not explained, and have meaning. I've stumbled on it before.

The new Debian etch release schedule

aisotton — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:36:46 +0000

They won't make it. They never have. It'll be May (at least) until they release.

Greetings,
Aaron -- Using Debian since potato

The new Debian etch release schedule

pflugstad — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:31:59 +0000

If you follow the link [2] provided in the email, it shows 32 open bugs. I don't know what the difference is, nor do I follow Debian development enough - just pointing this out.

Pete

The new Debian etch release schedule

svena — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:21:45 +0000

No, see [2] above, there are 32 RC bugs for Etch.

The new Debian etch release schedule

ss — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:52:14 +0000

Good to know they are upholding tradition and are already behind schedule.

Mar 13 there should be only 40 bugs, but the bug page at
http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
reports 70 for today.