Debian Etch to be Released in December

lord_rob the only on writes "According to a ZDNet article, the next release of Debian should be available in December 2006. From the article : 'The date represents a dramatic improvement in the regularity of Debian's development cycle. Etch will be shipped only 18 months after the previous release, version 3.1.'

an improvement?

[croddy]

Sure, it's an increase in the frequency, but is it really an improvement? Are people really clamoring for an update over sarge?

Debian's QA process takes a long time, but it's nice not to have to go through a dist-upgrade every few months on servers that need to be left alone and 'just work'.

Re:an improvement?

[RangerRick98]

Poor Debian. When they don't release for years upon years, people complain and poke fun at them for being so slow. When they pick up the pace, people complain they're releasing too often. (Yes, I understand it's not the same group of people in both cases; I just find it funny.)

Re:an improvement?

[zaguar]

but it's nice not to have to go through a dist-upgrade every few months on servers that need to be left alone and 'just work'.

I assume you're referring to Ubuntu. Ubuntu does NOT require you to dist-upgrade, it is your choice. You WILL be supported on Hoary and Dapper with security releases for years. It is entirely unneccessary to upgrade every couple of months for a server. Find something, and stick with it.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Hellboy0101]

What people have to understand is that Ubuntu, for all it's goodness, is pretty much a polished over version of Debian Testing. If you want a shiny new OS, create a cron job to run apt-get dist-upgrade every 7 days (after you've added the testing/security repositories). You could have a new Debian every week if you wanted to. :)

Finally a faster Debian release.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see some people complaining (probably out of jest) that this release is too fast.

What a load of bollocks.

I've been working as a server administrator for 8 years now. Debian was quite okay from '98 until about '00. After having newly upgraded from slink to potato I found that the mysql installation was so old that developers wouldn't touch it at all. Upgrading it in a nice way was not exactly an easy thing to do - as just COMPILING a newer version was hell - due to it depending on things that was too new for this 'stable' distro.

This is only one thing. Other things are year-old releases of things such as snort. What good is it? The simple answer is that it's no good at all. Some sorts of software NEEDS to be bleeding edge. Think of it as running a years-old version of an antivirus engine. Sure, you can try to hack the signature files to be able to detect new viruses, but some kinds will just "slip past due to the detection engine". Same with snort and various other goodies.

Debian is quite simply releasing too slowly for most needs. Sure, I'm pretty sure it's good enough if you can hand compile all the libraries you need for newer software which is in business demand .. but .. ehh .. if you're up to that task for most tasks - you can just as well roll your own company distro and keep that stable. Not that much more work.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering, I'm working at a company where a huge lot of our installed base is 5-6 year old distros, with our add-ons. We compile libraries for breakfast. But for a distribution to be based on that assumption? Bah I say. It's bollocks! And people who claim that it's a good thing? Get real.

Congratulations to Debian if they manage to get the release out this december.

Re:Run for cover!

[Alioth]

To put it in perspective, Debian got Woody and Sarge out in the time that Microsoft has taken to go from XP to Vista. They might even get Etch out before MS gets Vista out. So relatively speaking it's not that bad (especially considering how many packages Debian supports).

Debian vs. Microsoft

[Just Some Guy]

Let me get this straight: there will have been three Debian releases between major desktop Windows releases? That right there is enough to have the release management dragged out and shot. I mean, you know there's going to be a new version of OpenBSD every six months, so that's no big deal. But when Debian is out-releasing you, it's clear that your house is Not In Order.

Congratulations, folks, seriously. I'll be looking forward to that big apt-get!

Re:Damnit!

[beef3k]

Sounds like you chose the wrong distro... use CentOS [centos.org] instead.