What's wrong with debian?

From: Jan Lühr (jluehr_at_gmx.net)
Date: 02/28/05

  • Next message: Jan C. Nordholz: "Re: Routers and resolv.conf: [was: extremely slow to ssh out from my machine]" 
    To: "Debian-user" <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:50:50 +0100

    Greetings,

    I've been following debian for years - potato was the first release I actually
    used on productive machines.
    When potato was released, release periods of two years were discussed. And two
    years later woody was released.
    However, the release of woody was promised a few times, before it was actually
    released.
    And today?
    Following debian-announce just _one_ message was posted in 2004.[1]
    In 2003 the list was a little bit alive. Some stuff about the server
    compromise and two, instead of one woody-re-releases.

    Sarge was announced and expected in mid 2004.
    The progress in sarge is measurebale, but that seems to be all.
    More than one year ago, a timeline for a sarge base-freeze was announced [3]
    and debian-installer should receive last minute fixes only in mid-march 2004
    and go into beta testing.
    Now we'll probably see d-i rc3 in march 2005.[4]
    In March 2004, Sarge was expected in June 2004 [5], but we all know, the
    release didn't happen.
    In Aug 2004 Sarge was expected in Sep 2004, but we all know, the release
    didn't happen.[7]
    But blaming d-i is quite unfair, because the security part (for instance(!))
    also had/have some difficulties.[6]
    Thus for a while the release was planed refering to the status of the sec part
    [8]
    And yet?
    Following the different announce-lists, for an user like me, the current
    release status updates look more or less like the ones one year before (Of
    course, d-i rc3 sounds better than beta3, but that's all).
    For other distros like ubuntu, netbsd, gentoo and com. distros like suse and
    red-hat release schedules are not a big problem) ...

    So, well, what's wrong with debian?

    What's preventing the sarge release? What blocks it for more than one year?
    On the one hand this question seems to be quite naive, and I don't wanna start
    an "Who do you want to blame today" campaign but on the other hand
    following different lists and forums, questions like "can I use Sarge instead
    of woody" or "is sarge ready for production use" are quite popular. Seeing to
    the participants eys, their concerns and arguments seem to justified in some
    way. And besides of the robustness of a well tested system, the age of woody
    makes it unuseable in some situations.
    The security support for woody is in no better shape. Sec-support for mozilla
    has been given up[9], and the all important, already promised kernel-updates
    have been missing for months [10]. (Of course using sid's kernel source is
    quite a good work-around - but hey, it's a work-around) ...
     
    Dear reader,
    thanks for your patience while reading through my lines - and maybe for
    following my cross-references at the end of this mail.
     I'm using sarge on some less important production servers and the changes in
    sarge are sometimes painfull and cause some troubles.
    Perhaps you may explain to me: "What's wrong with debian?".

    (Hope to) Keep smiling
    yanosz

    [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/debian-announce-2004/threads.html
    [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/debian-announce-2003/threads.html
    [3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/02/msg00009.html
    [4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/02/msg00010.html
    [5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/03/msg00026.html
    [6] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/09/msg00005.html
    [7] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/08/msg00003.html
    [8] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/11/msg00003.html
    [9] http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2004/03/msg00086.html
    [10] http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2005/01/msg00070.html 

    -- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
  • Next message: Jan C. Nordholz: "Re: Routers and resolv.conf: [was: extremely slow to ssh out from my machine]"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: Whats wrong with debian?
      ... Woody is just getting too old, ... Well you can use sarge, seems stable enough, however no ... To me it starts to make debian far less useful. ... start using other distros. ...
      (Debian-User)
    • Re: What will happens when sarge becomes stable?
      ... I have some Debian Woody servers running in production environment. ... > sarge progress and that is the reason of my question. ... A few months ago I changed all occurrences of stable to woody. ... mistake in your thinking is with regard to kernel-image. ...
      (Debian-User)
    • Re: Whats wrong with debian?
      ... > Well we have over 300 Debian servers in production most running Sarge. ... environment than testing, tuning and using sarge for the last 1-2 months. ...
      (Debian-User)
    • Re: Debian woody or sarge?
      ... > month or two and am currently wondering whether to install woody or ... If you're new to Debian, I'd strongly suggest starting with the stable ... distribution (so, in this case, woody); if you decide it's too stale ... think I've seen an announcement yet naming a date for the sarge ...
      (Debian-User)
    • Re: Where should I start ?
      ... > Which version of Debian should I download, ... Woody CDs amount to about 4.5GB. ... Sarge doesn't have a CD set yet (I ...
      (Debian-User)