Debian sux
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Feb 07, 2008 11:40 AM EDT |
I just downloaded the Lenny netinstall .iso. Got it running, left it going overnight because it takes about 5 hours to download everything. Get up this morning to a failed install, because GRUB2 keeled over and wasn't able to install to the MBR. So I dink around with it- no way to make the damned thing boot. So I install Fedora 8, because this is a test machine and I need it on there anyway. Piece of cake, smooth as silk. (Fedora's many flaws emerge later ). I go to the GRUB command line and try my never-fail fixits, which is to find the correct boot parameters from the GRUB CLI. Well poor old Fedora's GRUB, which I believe is reliable original GRUB, can't even read Lenny's filesystem. (Another big potential security hole, kids- GRUB can read any file on a system regardless of the permissions.) All I get is error messages like "error 2: bad file or directory type." But I can mount Lenny's filesystem in Fedora and see everything fine. (ext3 on both, for those who are going to accuse my choice of filesystems) Much googling later I find other folks in a similar predicament and no fix, and the same problem reported well into the early parts of 2007. Some blame GRUB2. Some say "use LILO!" Me, I just go outside and hit a hundred balls for the dog to fetch. Then we both feel better. But I still hate Debian and I hate computers. |
| ColonelPanik Feb 07, 2008 11:44 AM EDT |
Debian 1 TC 0 Yay, Debian wins! |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 07, 2008 12:51 PM EDT |
So... you compare the "net install" against a CD#1 of another distribution? Why not pull down CD#1 (GNOME by default, watch for the KDE and XFCE specific CD#1 if you want that) and not have to spend so much time pulling down the packages? |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 07, 2008 12:53 PM EDT |
TC: I suggest you re-read the big stable/testing/unstable thread from about a week ago. If you want Debian and want it to "just work" then you'll want Etch. As for installing Lenny, I generally find that the easiest and most fool-proof way to do this is by installing Etch, then dist-upgrade to Lenny. Debian's upgrade path is usually less prone to errors than the new install path because many more people upgrade from stable to testing than there are people doing fresh testing installs. |
| tuxchick Feb 07, 2008 1:48 PM EDT |
Cal me like totally undemanding and unreasonable... but I expect the derned thing to at least boot. That's a pretty easy thing to test; it's not some weird little error buried deep in the guts that requires the exactly correct positions of the planets to become apparent. Now I'm braving the perilous, convoluted Debian bug-reporting system for... well, I'm not sure what. Maybe file a bug. Maybe find an answer. Maybe get lost and never come out. Bob, either way it's a long download. The netinstall usually saves some time. **p.s.** I don't really hate Debian. It's been my main Linux for years. But I sure get peeved at dumb stuff like this. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 07, 2008 1:51 PM EDT |
5 hours? Seems.... extreme. Anyway, just making sure folks know there's no restriction that they have to use the netinstall disk. |
| hkwint Feb 07, 2008 2:07 PM EDT |
Quoting:but I expect the derned thing to at least boot. And if not, one should be able to use a mini-ISO of ones choice and boot / chroot / env-update into its environment to save / copy the stuff one needs to somewhere else, like a USB-drive or so. About two or three weeks ago I tried SimplyMEPIS. I wasn't entirely happy with it, mainly because Debians 'manual' VMWare installation method sucks (or I missed out an automatical alternative or something?) - it's far and far easier on Gentoo (!). Nonetheless, SimplyMEPIS booted, and I am able to mount my SimplyMEPIS-drives from Gentoo. I believe MEPIS 7.0 - the one I used - is also based on Lenny, but I might be wrong. Okay, because of the clumsy CLI-centric way I work I was a bit pissed 'sudo' didn't work by default, but that was fixed easily by cp-ing my sudoers.conf from Gentoo to MEPIS and changing the on MEPIS non-existent (?) 'wheel' group to a group MEPIS recognized. Yeah TC, give MEPIS 7.0 (or 7.01) a try, it might be a cheap alternative of trying debian. Don't be afraid if X doesn't start from LiveCD, it didn't for me - but in the 'save config' it did and after installation it did work 'out of the box', so that was only a LiveCD problem it seems. Don't be a fool like I was to read the Windows-install / add-like messages MEPIS shows when installing and try to push the 'back' button to read the previous add, the back button isn't meant for that. Instead, it stops the installation and you have to start over again... If a Gentoo-user can live with MEPIS, maybe a Fedora-user can too? Oh, if you need to access EVMS partitions from MEPIS you are also a bit screwed, but it's not that hard to get it recognized in MEPIS, just install its tools. If you have EVMS you are screwed anyway. Especially when trying to shrink RAID-0-arrays, because that's not possible with EVMS, and if you want to copy the contents of one EVMS RAID container to another one but both have the same name in EVMS and you think it's easy to fix, you are even more screwed. Chances are you FUBAR the whole RAID-0 region like I did, and assuming mdadm can mount them with the option --assume-clean only to discover they were not clean is even a far more bad idea. Yes, rebuilding trees with ReiserFS takes a really loo'ong time - and if the result is all your music is garbled and your files are divided into halves and truncated randomly you're not happy. That's probably why EVMS is not a 'default' option in user-friendly distro's like MEPIS. You gotta love those 'default' settings (actually meant for new users) saving you from stupid ideas, don't you? |
| Laika Feb 07, 2008 2:29 PM EDT |
I downloaded the Lenny netinst ISO just yesterday and didn't have any problems with GRUB (ext3 was my choice, too). If you want to try the Lenny installation again, uncheck all the choices in tasksel and just install the packages that come with the netinst CD. That should give you a working core system, and you can later use aptitude to select, download, and install any additional packages that you need, in case GRUB turns out to work better on the second try. In aptitude, go to Tasks --> End-user and there you can select which desktop environment you want to install. |
| jezuch Feb 07, 2008 2:58 PM EDT |
Quoting:Anyway, just making sure folks know there's no restriction that they have to use the netinstall disk. I installed Debian a few months ago and noticed that even though this was NOT a netinst disk, it pulled half of the stuff from the 'net. Keyword: security updates. So, you see, these 5 hours are for your own good! ;) Oh, and... Quoting:Debian sux Of course it does! apt-get install sux man sux voila! |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 08, 2008 9:11 AM EDT |
Sure the Debian net install can take a long time. I've had to leave machines running overnight on slow connections ... and there are always three or so points in the install that require human input (and this human is generally sleeping during those times), so it takes that much longer. But I've really never had an unsuccessful Debian install. And Lenny has been running very well over the past few weeks on my six-year-old laptop (Gateway Solo 1450 w/ Celeron 1.3 GHz). The nine-year-old laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt) gets the Xfce Etch install but now runs Fluxbox (you get just a little more oomph with it in 233 MHz and 64 MB RAM). I dropped Lenny on one of the swappable drives on the test box (VIA C3 Samuel processor) in favor of my OpenBSD desktop experiment for the time being. |
| tuxchick Feb 08, 2008 9:33 AM EDT |
So many excuses for shoddy behaviors! I have a reasonable expectation that a fresh installation of testing, and yes, even unstable, will effing boot. What year is this, 1994? No, it's not. It's long past time for effing core functions to effing work out of the box. Oo a bootloader- such a new and radical technologees! I have a working testing installation now- starting from the Etch netinstall, then dist-upgrading. Sheesh. Yes, at least there is an effing workaround. It's still stupid. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 08, 2008 10:18 AM EDT |
But... but... Lenny isn't ready. It's being _tested_. I have also recently read someone saying that Debian "testing" is a "good half-way point" between stable and unstable. But that's just not _true_! Things broken in testing may not get fixed _ever_. There are no guarantees of anything. Don't install Testing until the Debian release of a new Stable is "soon" and they want people to hammer on it. (Bob shruggs and wonders why he has to say this so many times, yet no one seems to hear...) |
| number6x Feb 08, 2008 11:08 AM EDT |
TC, I always have the same frustration with Fedora. Its the only distro that has trouble with the video card on my desktop. Ubuntu usually gives me trouble as well If I try installing anything other than the vesa driver. I have to do a base install and then edit the xorg file by hand to get things right. Debian, Slackware, and opensuse work fine for me, but I have not done a net install of debian. It could be worse. Look at Windows Vista, it works shoddily no matter how it is installed! |
| wjl Feb 08, 2008 11:21 AM EDT |
Quoting:Things broken in testing may not get fixed _ever_. That's not true either, Bob. The "testing" branch will be made to the next "stable" one, after lots of bug fixing... cheers, wjl |
| rijelkentaurus Feb 08, 2008 1:01 PM EDT |
Quoting: I have a reasonable expectation that a fresh installation of testing, and yes, even unstable, will effing boot. You have that expectation because it's worked in the past, but that's no guarantee that it will work in the future or now. It is more correct to say that the Debian folk have a reasonable expectation that sometimes the testing and unstable branches won't work for you. If you want Debian on the cutting edge and a little more consistency, you should work with Sidux since making Sid usable is their main racket. I think you're being totally unreasonable with this argument. |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 08, 2008 1:48 PM EDT |
Bug for bug, Lenny's running better on my one laptop than Etch. I think it's mostly due to improvements in GNOME, but having an Alps touchpad (instead of the more common Synaptics variety) can be hell. So far, only Ubuntu 7.10 has enabled me to toggle the tap-to-click "feature." While I still have hope that Lenny will roll in a newer version of GNOME that allows me to turn tap-to-click off, when I am tapping to click, the GNOME menus in Lenny like it a lot better than those in Etch did. I have had a few too many Epiphany crashes of late, but I haven't been using the Lenny partition heavily enough to call it a persistent problem. As far as older kernels being better, the 2.18 kernel in Etch managed my Gateway's CPU fan just fine (as do the kernels in Ubuntu 7.04 and CentOS 5). But the newer kernels in Lenny and Ubuntu 7.10 require some "intervention" on my part to keep the fan from blowing all the time. I'm still working on the best solution, but with a fan that loud, anything that keeps the noise down is better than nothing. Why the kernel maintainers (or those compiling said kernels for the various distros) would want to hobble ACPI support for a 2002-era laptop is beyond me ...) I haven't written it up yet as a blog item, and I doubt it will ever happen, but if the Debian Project decided to put out their own installable live CD with an application scheme matching standard Ubuntu -- call it Debian Lite, or whatever -- they could tap into that vast Ubuntu fan base and get Debian a whole lot more traction beyond those already using it. Live CDs -- especially ones that include installers -- are a must, I think. If small projects like Wolvix, Puppy and Damn Small Linux can do it so well, why not Debian? |
| tuxchick Feb 08, 2008 1:48 PM EDT |
Quoting: I think you're being totally unreasonable with this argument. Really. And how low a bar do you think is reasonable? Apparently 'useless'. Quoting: 6.6 What does the testing directory contain? Packages are installed into the `testing' directory after they have undergone some degree of testing in unstable. They must be in sync on all architectures where they have been built and mustn't have dependencies that make them uninstallable; they also have to have fewer release-critical bugs than the versions currently in testing. This way, we hope that `testing' is always close to being a release candidate. http://www.us.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-ftparchives#s-testing I guess you could hair-split and say that 'installable' doesn't mean 'bootable.' Especially if their goal for a release candidate is also installable but not bootable. |
| hkwint Feb 08, 2008 1:56 PM EDT |
Just a stupid question: Such a bug as TC describes would normally appear in Bugzilla a gazillion times within minutes, and after all duplicates are truncated, that bug would be labeled 'blocker' or 'critical', or am I wrong? In that event, it wouldn't take a genius to puzzle out this bug has the highest priority of all potential bugs for the people using netinst. So, it should be fixed within two days I guess. Because Lenny is the test-branche, it shouldn't take weeks to 'patch' it, since Lenny is not run on production systems, and therefore such a patch doesn't have to be tested for four weeks or so. Therefore, I looked at Debian's bugzilla. For some reason, it showed 'There's no GRUB maintainer' http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=... which sounds odd to me, but then I found this: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=462701 It took the people at Debian Testing 2 weeks to reply to this bug report, though this is definitely a showstopper. Therefore, multiple things could be going on: -The bug is invalid, and therefore there's no problem -The bug is valid, but other Debian Lenny users suffering from the same bug do not bother to confirm, so it looks only one person has this problem. If that's true, the ones not filing a bug report are to blame, or it's too difficult to use Debian's bugzilla. As someone who never used Debian bugzilla before till today, it looks like that might be the problem, as it isn't the easiest thing to use, and this could be one of the reasons people - like in 'average users' are reluctant to use it, -Debian is incompetent at bug-fixing - two weeks to respond to an 'unbootable system' bug is far too long, even when compared to the speed of release cycles at Debian, -Debian doesn't wish to fix bugs in testing, instead telling people to use 'outdated' software they consider stable. They don't mind 'testing' is completely broken when the release of a new stable version based on the current testing version is not near. Now comes the bad news - either for GRUB and GRUB2 bugzilla reports there's no maintainer, a very confusing and disturbing message. What's going on here? After clicking through, using GRUB2 I read GRUB2 is a dummy package. GRUB2 doesn't have major to critical bugs, according to Debian's bugzilla. Also, there's a bug labeled 'serious' also containing a blocker: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=460177 However, I can't find out for what branches this bug appears. Also, looking at the bug reports, I can't find the status of th bug, like FIXED, INVALID etc. Why is this bug serious and the other one critical? I don't understand. Why don't the actual bug reports contain information about the status of this bug and in what Debian versions this bug appears? I don't understand either. There are things I have not found out as of yet, the things I'm complaining about are not relevant and I'm talking garbled garbage for some reason beyond me, or the Debian bugsystem is flawed - at least when it comes to new users. For some reason, though I'm not sure, I can't remember having this sort of problems with Gentoo's bug system. I also can't find any help easily how to use the bug tracking system. No, after Debian doesn't boot, Debian doesn't appear to invite one to try to look for similar bug reports and fixes or file a bug report yourself. My only frame of reference, sadly, is Gentoo. Even at Gentoo - at which people complain about the release-system a lot, it's easier to find a bug and possible patch - or at least read how to use the bug system. Or I'm plain ignorant for some reason, but I honestly tried to use the Debian bug system. So my conclusion - as far as a non-Debian user can tell: -Debian Lenny doesn't have a maintainer for GRUB or GRUB2 it seems, which is really alarming if you don't know the reason and if this matters at all or not. Personally, I consider GRUB about the most important packages of a Linux-system. Yeah, sure, there's LILO. I haven't needed it since I found out how to use GRUB however, and running it every time after updating your 'menu' it's a pain in the bottom. -GRUB1 does have 1 'blocker' bug, though Debian bugzilla doesn't use the 'blocker' tag, and after two weeks there has only been one reply to this bug, asking to explain more about the bug, -GRUB2 doesn't have bugs labeled 'critical' or 'major'. -Debian bug system doesn't leave a good impression - or better, it leaves a bad impression. Although, at least to me. So, until today I had expectations about Debian too. I even considered migrating from Gentoo to Debian, because I'm sick of compiling. People over here at LXer told me even Debian testing was a 'really stable branche' with almost no problems appearing. And if not, there would always be bugzilla, not? After today I think different. The 'stable' branch of Debian is probably fine, but I - as a desktop user - consider it outdated. The 'Testing' branche doesn't seem stable to me, and it might take two weeks if you have an unbootable system before you get any help. I say 'might', because for a bug labeled 'serious' it only takes one day! Nope, after my 'searching adventures' of today I decided I'm not switching to Debian Testing, neither am I going to switch to Unstable. Stable would be a good solution if I didn't long for 'pretty up-to-date' software (It doesn't have to be bleeding edge like Sabayon or so). That means I'm not switching to Debian at all, since I deem it, well, how to put it? As far as I can see, either I'm a dumb ignorant user, or Debian is a vacuum cleaner, to say it polite. |
| azerthoth Feb 08, 2008 2:22 PM EDT |
hkwint, while I love Debian, you have just found out the reason I moved away from it and finally landed with Sabayon. I'm not one to recompile my whole OS every so often, I just keep an eye on the packages I use and glsa. If I do run into a blocker and forums/wiki/google doesnt turn up anything I can pass a bug report up and even if it isnt one of the packages the sabayon overlay initially had in it, I can usually count on a working build within a day or two. I will admit though I am still looking for "the ultimate" distro as well. One that has the power and flexibility of Gentoo, the ease of maintenance of Debian, and all the bleeding edge package selection of Sabayon. Fabio is making progress on that, however after my last glowing reports of Entropy, I am not sure that it is in a direction that I will ultimately find usefull. |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 08, 2008 2:26 PM EDT |
I think this is a clear case of "your mileage may vary." For one reason or another, I've borked three Ubuntu installs in a row (two 7.10, one 7.04), and for that reason, on an entirely different machine I'm running 6.06 and really enjoying it being trouble-free. I haven't heard an outcry of "my Ubuntu Gutsy went to s***," so I can only assume that the fact that mine has, indeed, gone to s*** is somewhat of an anomaly. Everybody love PCLinuxOS, but on the machine I tried to install it on, I couldn't even get to a boot prompt. I've heard complaints about Puppy Linux, but I've yet to find anything it won't boot and run well on. Debian may have a few (or many) unfixed bugs, but I've never had a Debian install go bad -- and I've been using it continuously for nearly a year now. And having my most recent Lenny "bug" cleared up in about a month was a nice thing to have happen. I was also recently able to run the Ted word processor in Lenny; the app has been broken in Etch. I don't know if it's Lenny or just dumb luck, but it works. When I do my distro reviews, I have a limited amount of hardware at my disposal. And I'm only reporting my experience. Unless the distro is completely hopeless, somebody's going to probably love it, but others will hate it. Again, your mileage may vary. So keep /home on its own partition, back up everything twice, and you can change distros like underwear. |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 08, 2008 2:27 PM EDT |
There's a distro called Fabio? Fabio? Does he know? |
| wjl Feb 08, 2008 2:53 PM EDT |
Carla, Hans, first: Lenny isn't a user system. Bob tried to explain that several times in the past. If some software is too old, there's the backports repositories, if the kernel is too old, well, Etch-and-a-half is coming. second: this is the wrong place to complain. In case of bugs, they should be reported to Debian. In case of questions, there's the mailing lists, and the same content is also accessible in the newsgroups. I can understand your frustration, but here is simply the wrong place for it. third: my wife still runs Lenny, much out of the same reasons like Hans said: she wanted to see all that newer stuff and test newer software and such. She's pretty happy with it already, and more and more bugs are gone by now. Still, I don't remember how I set up her machine last time, so to reproduce TC's results, I got a new Lenny netinst iso from the Debian site, and installed it into a virtual machine on my computer. It came up just fine. My image was dated "Fri Feb 8 21:34:56 UTC 2008", so maybe you can try with own virtual (or even real) machines with that one? I did not get grub2 however; mine just says 0.97-30 HTH, Wolfgang |
| wjl Feb 08, 2008 2:58 PM EDT |
Another one: After finishing, I went to the "known issues" link from the Debian Lenny installer page, and it brought me to http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Today And there, in the "Past" section, I saw an entry "[04 Feb 2008] The installation of grub will fail when installing Lenny for i386 or amd64 using daily built images. Reason is a change in the default inode size for ext2/ext3 partitions. An update of grub has already been uploaded." Maybe that explains something... As was said so often: work in progress. Sorry bout your bad experience, guys & gals. best, Wolfgang |
| Laika Feb 08, 2008 6:02 PM EDT |
The daily build of the netinst ISO that I used is dated "20080206-21:38" and, like I already said, it didn't have any problem installing GRUB in ext3 partition on an i386 computer. So the Debian developers seem to have fixed that problem pretty fast. Of course, this bug has only hit people who tried to install Lenny using the daily builds of the debian-installer. Users who already had Debian testing installed wouldn't have noticed anything. The daily builds of the debian-installer can be horribly broken from time to time and they probably shouldn't be used as an indication of the general quality of Debian's testing branch. |
| thenixedreport Feb 08, 2008 7:21 PM EDT |
"Debian sux" *sigh* If it bothers you that much, stay away from the bleeding edge stuff. |
| bigg Feb 08, 2008 7:29 PM EDT |
> hkwint, while I love Debian, you have just found out the reason I moved away from it and finally landed with Sabayon. Ditto for me, only I moved to Arch rather than Sabayon. I wasn't going to jump into this thread given that I started the previous one, but you summed up my feelings very nicely, Hans. This whole thread makes me confident that I made the right choice. |
| thenixedreport Feb 08, 2008 8:18 PM EDT |
Arch. I may have to try that sometime. A clarification is in order: When I said bleeding edge, I meant Lenny, not plain 'ol Etch. :) It's also quite helpful to read the release notes before attempting an install. On the other hand, I am guilty of not doing that myself. *runs and hides* |
| hkwint Feb 09, 2008 4:18 AM EDT |
Okay, I'm starting to understand how this Debian version and release system work I think / hope. It looks like some people - like myself - may assume Debian sucks because they don't understand the version / release system. In my opinion, it's all rather complicated, but nonetheless I'm trying to understand. Maybe this is the wrong place, but 'familiar' people are helping here. So there are two ways to use Debian testing: -I can use a daily build which may be broke, and if it's broke, maybe there's one bug report saying it is broke, but that's not relevant because the next day will have a new daily build where the bug might be gone. Probably not much people try the daily builds, since most 'testers' will update incrementally, because that's less work. -Also, I can use a 'stable' branch, and in an incremental manner update to testing. -Also, if I want about the same experience but a bit more stable, I could use the stable branch instead, but use the 'backports' for newer software, -There are 'in between' releases of stable releases, like Etch and a half. Is that correct? If it is, using a daily build just seems like an unfortunate choice new users should be warned of, as it's kind of a 'CVS/SVN checkout' or so, and people like me can understand a 'CVS/SVN checkout' may be broke, like with almost any software project. However, surfing the Debian site and trying to find out how to install 'Testing', Debian recommends me to use the daily snapshots http://www.us.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ Also, I found this line interesting: Quoting:Testing breaks less often than Unstable. But when it breaks, it takes a long time for things to get rectified. Sometimes this could be days and it could be months at times. That's odd for 'new potential' Debian users like me. As 'Testing' is ought to be the new stable, one would suppose bugs in 'Testing' are fixed more quickly, but on the other hand it seems Unstable is where all the work is done. Phew, quite confusing, but as indicated, I have the idea I start to comprehend a bit of it. When it comes to usability, a lot could be done about the way Debian explains its version / release idea to 'Debian-noobs' like me. |
| Laika Feb 09, 2008 5:32 AM EDT |
It appears that tuxchick found a bug in the daily build of the Lenny installer that was fixed soon afterwards. However, this installer bug (or GRUB bug, to be more precise) didn't affect people who already had Debian testing installed. The debian-installer doesn't have similar "unstable-testing-stable" stages as the rest of the Debian distribution -- it only has stable versions (that are used in the stable Debian releases) and a development version. When the installer is under heavy development, the development version of the installer may occasionally become broken. Using the latest stable version of the installer (in this case, the Etch installer) should always work and users can then use apt-get (or aptitude) to upgrade their installed system from stable to testing, just like tuxchick did. But the development version of the installer also needs testers who send bug reports and help developers to improve it. |
| rijelkentaurus Feb 09, 2008 5:55 AM EDT |
Quoting: Really. And how low a bar do you think is reasonable? Apparently 'useless'. You're griping about the quality of beta software (perhaps alpha at this point). It's reasonable to expect stability from the stable branch, it's silly to expect it from the testing or unstable branches. Yes, you usually get it, but you know what you're using, so take your lumps when something bad happens and question if maybe you need to run stable instead if you're going to be so sensitive to bumps in the road. I installed Lenny a few months ago after Etch starting getting a little old, and it could not at that point compile the Nvidia driver for my card. Did I blame Debian for putting out a crappy product? No, I cursed myself for trying the testing branch instead of staying with stable. Hey, it was my fault, I knew the risks. So did you. |
| jdixon Feb 09, 2008 6:14 AM EDT |
Spoken as a Debian outsider, the consensus seems to be that if you use anything other than stable with backports, you have to expect things to break on occasion. Which is not unreasonable, but is not the way Debian testing is usually reported to the public by Debian users. In the final analysis, it sounds very much like running Slackware-current, which is not something I'd recommend to most users. |
| wjl Feb 09, 2008 9:05 AM EDT |
Quoting:That's odd for 'new potential' Debian users like me. As 'Testing' is ought to be the new stable, one would suppose bugs in 'Testing' are fixed more quickly, but on the other hand it seems Unstable is where all the work is done. Right, Hans. Most Debian Developers I know run unstable, because that is where the uploads go anyway. If they don't get any grave/severe reports, things move to testing after 10 days, more or less automatically. And "testing" is called "testing" because that is the point where users (and some developers) really start testing the stuff. If some bugs are discovered, they are solved, and new packages are put into - unstable of course. That's the "normal" way of a package through the repositories. Noone is really discouraged to go and try and use testing - but end-users (sorry, Carla and Hans, both of you are not the typical "end-user" in that sense) are also not encouraged to try it. And if they do, then yes, they should expect that things can/will be broken in between. Usually, the "worst" time is directly after releases, when developers try out new things, and it constantly improves short before a release, when all the bug-squashing parties happen. cheers, Wolfgang |
| hkwint Feb 09, 2008 3:29 PM EDT |
Quoting:The debian-installer doesn't have similar "unstable-testing-stable" stages as the rest of the Debian distribution -- it only has stable versions (that are used in the stable Debian releases) and a development version. OK, that probably was intended to make life "simpler" for users trying to wrap their heads around the unstable-testing-stable thing. After reading this whole thread, I suppose the best way to 'test' Debian would be to make a stable install with the stable installer - and apply security fixes, than use the backports to update some packages, make a backup while all still works, and than maybe 'upgrade' to the testing branch. That's rather different than the ports system found in *BSD and Gentoo I'm familiar with, where only 'stable', 'no info available' and 'proven to break your system' exist (at least that's true for Gentoo) and 'stable' is almost nowhere mentioned at all, so you don't even _know_ you are running stable. Also, 'stable' for Gentoo most of the times means 'not older than one month' or so. Someone just needs to become familiar with the differences in the concepts and terms between those distro's I assume. Quoting:usually, the "worst" time is directly after releases, when developers try out new things Right, Sander already warned me for that. OK, after all is said and done, I think I should try it on a VM. Life would be easier and especially less confusing if I never used other BSD and Linux distributions and thought the 'Debian way' was the only way to go I guess. |
| tuxchick Feb 09, 2008 4:53 PM EDT |
Thanks Laika, that's some good information. |
| wjl Feb 10, 2008 4:35 AM EDT |
On a sidenote, TC: One of the DDs just posted something about grub2, at http://oskuro.net/blog/freesoftware/time-for-grub2-2008-02-0... So that seems to be the "current" state of it. Maybe I'll go and try it; I just set up a couple of (virtual and real) machines, so... cheers, Wolfgang |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 11, 2008 12:03 AM EDT |
Quoting:There are 'in between' releases of stable releases, like Etch and a half. There aren't. There are more current releases of Etch, but they are simply plain old Etch with all security fixes already applied so you don't have to download 300 Mb of updates after installing Etch. They don't have new versions of packages. Quoting:That's odd for 'new potential' Debian users like me. As 'Testing' is ought to be the new stable, one would suppose bugs in 'Testing' are fixed more quickly, but on the other hand it seems Unstable is where all the work is done. It does make sense if you understand how Debian is developed. When someone finds a bug in testing, the bug is fixed and the updated package is put in unstable, not in testing. The fixed package will spend at least 10 days in the unstable branch to make sure that nothing else goes horribly wrong. Then it's put in the testing branch. So, any bugs in the testing branch will take at least 10 days to be fixed. Only in very rare circumstances can a package skip the 10 day wait. An important security fix for example, or a bug that causes major system-wide breakage but which has a trivial fix. |
| wjl Feb 11, 2008 4:53 AM EDT |
Quoting:There are 'in between' releases of stable releases, like Etch and a half. There aren't. There will be, Sander. That Etch-n-half is a new trial, to make the stable distribution run on more recent hardware. See: http://wiki.debian.org/EtchAndAHalf However, there's a DD doing things like these since long. His name is Kenshi Muto, and he just posted: http://kmuto.jp/b.cgi/debian/d-i-2624-etch2.htm So, for anyone wanting to have a stable yet recent version of Debian (assume a brand-new notebook for instance), these would be a good choice IMHO. cheers, Wolfgang |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 11, 2008 5:52 AM EDT |
I wonder, what's the difference between etch-and-a-half and etch+backports? Aside from the fact that etch-and-a-half comes on an installation disk. |
| hkwint Feb 11, 2008 6:08 AM EDT |
After reading the minutes, seems like that 'release' will be supported till Lenny is released, so it's a 'static' target. Etch+backports in more like a moving target I guess? Also, Etch-and-a-half will not have updated KDE/Gnome, while backports probably will, I assume. |
| wjl Feb 11, 2008 9:48 AM EDT |
Yeah, backports is just what some people want on their stable systems, so they compile whatever they need for stable (at the moment, Etch). I've done that myself in the past, tho I never made any "official" packages. Etch-and-a-half is more like a test to see if people will want this for newer hardware, until the next version becomes stable. No new "biggies" in there like Gnome or KDE, just a newer kernel and maybe some backports. And an installation disk is important if you have to deal with newer hardware, which would otherwise maybe even not connect to the net afterwards. So yes, Etch-and-a-half will come as an installer. cheers, Wolfgang |
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