Anthony Towns Elected New Debian Leader 69
daria42 writes "Australian developer Anthony Towns has just been elected Debian Project Leader starting 17 April. In his platform for election, Towns said the most important issue for Debian was 'increasing its tempo'. 'We've been slow in a lot of things, from releasing, to getting updates in, to processing applications from prospective developers, to fixing bugs, to making decisions on policy questions, and all sorts of other things,' he said."
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slowness (Score:2)
The three main BSD projects are comparable to Debian, yet they manage to get their releases out on a (fairly) regular basis.
Re:Slowness (Score:1, Insightful)
The only one I have any experience with is FreeBSD, and I can say for a fact that I would never dream of using an X.0 release of FreeBSD. Since I've started following their progress, it's always taken till at least X.4 before a major version was stable enough to consider for serious use.
This is in no way comparable to Debian, which prefers to wait six months longer and then get things
Re:Slowness (Score:3, Informative)
OpenBSD has a different release policy (i.e. a release every six months) that works very well. The 3.9 release is coming 1th of May, but the release in November will have version 4.0. Of course, someone had to ask if 4.0
Re:Slowness (Score:2)
OpenBSD supports an impressive list of 16 arches. Debian supports 11 arches. However, Debian and OpenBSD use different definitions of "support."
So for OpenBSD this means that they have working installer, you can compile your own kernel on your own box and most of t
Re:Slowness (Score:3, Informative)
It's requirement for a supported arch that not only the kernel, but userland (including thirdparty applications like perl, Apache httpd, BIND, Sendmail, gcc toolchain and more) must also be built natively: cross-compiling is not sufficient to claim support, unlike some other OS that shall be unnamed. Some archs, like vax, is limited by hardware, wh
Good Move (Score:1)
Re:Good Move (Score:4, Insightful)
This is one of the problems with free software. If developers are less accountable, fixed release dates are more difficult to achieve. On the other hand, almost all proprietary software seems to be facing the same problem, and sometimes to a greater degree...
Re:Good Move (Score:2)
Re:Good Move (Score:2)
Re:Good Move (Score:2)
and yes, I love deb too. Go Debian Go!
Re:Good Move (Score:2)
Unlike the equally unpaid Gentoo Developers who manage to make 2 releases every year, and at point even did 4 (but that was, i admit, too much work).
Re:Good Move (TT) (Score:1)
Best intentions... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, as much as I'd love to see Debian update faster, I'd hate to see them take one of those expediencies to get the job done.
Re:Best intentions... (Score:3, Insightful)
different profiles for different architectures (Gentoo 2006.0 may have different stable versions for an app for different architectures, assuming the app is available for both
arches in the first place) while Debian requires that the stable profile for each arch is
synchronized.
Re:Best intentions... (Score:1)
I wouldn't. Who cares if new releases still work on Alpha? If that slows down the other 99% of the world then drop it, and leave it to a specialized subproject to deal with. The three people who care can work on it.
Joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Joke (Score:2)
If we had only used that method in choose the current US President ...
Re:Joke (Score:1, Offtopic)
And as for Bush, he appears to be a level-headed fellow.
Re:Debian (Score:5, Insightful)
I like a ton of distros but I seem to always come back to Debian. For a bunch of guys that can't get their act together, they still make the others looks bad.
Re:Debian (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Debian (Score:1)
Re:Debian (Score:2)
Re:Debian (Score:2)
Re:Debian (Score:1)
From your post it's not obvious what the purpose of Debian Testing is in your opinion, you only seem to suggest that "testing should be avoided." Let me clarify how I see the purpose of both Testing and Unstable.
Unstable is Debian's main development branch and it's INTENDED to break every now and then because it's the branch where most of the development takes place, it's "Still In Development." If Debian Unstable doesn't break often enough, then this can only mean that Debian doesn't develop as fast as it
Re:Debian (Score:2)
Let me clarify as well, I did mean not that people should avoid testing, but that testing is its own special thing, (as is sid) with its own special requirements to manage properly. And that it can be difficult to maintain a system in good working order over time if you are tracking testing. It lac
Debian? (Score:1)
(yes, it was a joke)
Re:Debian? (Score:1)
Re:Debian? (Score:1)
Debian bites off too much (Score:1, Interesting)
I think even Ubuntu tries to put too many packages in the base release. They should take a hint from the BSD distros which use this method with the base install and ports. Hell, Windows uses the same method. After installing
Worst idea ever? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really trust distributions that guarantee a release every 6 months, because I get the impression they must be rushing things. I'd prefer something quality, even if it's usually "behind the pack".
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
They just can't make everything work stable when there are thousands upon thousands of packages, that's why it takes so long to release anything. In the meantime we're stuck with either an incredibly outdated system or running the unstable branch that changes way too often and sometimes breaks (not good for servers or media boxes and similar).
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:3, Informative)
The idea isn't to skip testing, the idea is to decouple the release schedule of the OS from the release schedule of the applications. So long as the base Debian system maintains compatibility between releases (and I was under the impression it did), it shouldn't matter to the applications when new versions of the OS is rel
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
So not only should the package maintainers test for OS release X, but also for several other releases as well. In addition there will be updated packages that needs testing. Nice idea, if you are willing to pay the (mostly) unpaid package maintainers to do this. Do you?
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
Package maintainers don't do the majority of the testing as it is, that's what the 'unstable' and 'testing' distributions are for. Or are you under the impression that each and every package maintainer has a computer of each architecture supported by Debian dedicated to testing? Testing has always been a distributed task.
Did you miss the part of my comment about Debian remaining compatible from release to release? Are you claiming Debian don't already do that? Do you understand the implications that
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
I'm astonished that Debian does this, since it clearly implies much extra work in testing an updated package (No wonder that Debian releases so seldom) That is why I misread your comment concerning compatability from release to release. On OpenBS
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
I do (in an aspect). While it is true that Debian tries hard to be compatible from release to release, compatible doesn't mean you can just take, let's say, Postfix from Potato and through it into Sarge (that's obviously true if we consider only the binary packages and their DLL dependencies, but it is equally true regarding package configuration tools, integration w
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want a distro that does significant upgrades to core packages every few weeks, get Fedora. Its great for that. Sucks for stability, but it has a really fast upgrade cycle.
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:4, Informative)
The slower release cycle is offset by two things. If you know you need a fresher system, and are willing to sacrifice some stability for updated packages, you have as many choices as you can handle: adding a few packages from testing to your stable system, directly tracking testing or unstable, some mix of any of the three, or even adding packages from experimental if you really want to go out on a limb.
The power of Debian is not only in APT, but in Debconf, the configuration system. Configuration changes are pretty much a given on a system that's directly tracking sid, but are unheard-of (and perhaps even forbidden?) in the stable release. The ease of administration that comes with knowing that changes Debian stable will consist only of backported security patches makes it worth the wait.
Lastly, a system administrator does not want to have to go through a major operating system upgrade on numerous heterogenous servers every 9 months. Knowing that it will be somewhere around 18-36 months between Debian releases means spending a lot less time migrating and fiddling with systems just to keep up with supported releases.
Other distributions do release every 6-9 months. It's not for me... except when it is, and I use testing/unstable in those cases :-)
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
Re:Worst idea ever? (Score:2)
I hang out on debian-user a lot and I can say, that having everyone on the same page helps a LOT. In fact, you can count on one hand the number of recurring problems and they usually only involve a couple packages.
What does this mean? That out of something like 16,000 packages, spanning 3+ releases (still some Woodies out there), only a handful are problematic. True, a lot of those packages are not used by many, but still, it is telling. Debian Just Works, by and large.
Re:Debian bites off too much (Score:2)
I don't care how often "stable" releases. I track "testing" with frequent dist-upgrades on my desktop machines, and on servers I'd not worry if "stable" was a bit long in the tooth.
Throwing away the packages to get a rapid release cycle would be a bad bargain for me.
Re:Debian bites off too much (Score:2)
Re:Debian bites off too much (Score:2)
Re:Debian bites off too much (Score:1)
Try the Debian netinst images (~180mb) and don't select any additional packages. Makes a great minimal installation. Very neat.
Deslyxia. (Score:2)
I can see I'm not the only one who read that as, "Anthony Debian Elected New Town Leader."
-Loyal
Brandon replaced after only 1 year? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, did Brandon resign the post, or did the Debian voters just decide that 1 year of Brandon was enough? I presume that Debian must elect a new leader annually? Are incumbents allowed to run for a second term? Did Brandon run again? Can anyone provide a post-mortem of Brandon's year - was it generally considered that he did a good job in the post?
Re:Brandon replaced after only 1 year? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Brandon replaced after only 1 year? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Brandon replaced after only 1 year? (Score:5, Informative)
Changes (Score:2, Interesting)