On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 11:16:14AM -0800, Mark Bigler wrote:
> On Friday 28 December 2001 10:07, Justin Bengtson wrote:
> >
> > now if debian would just get off that constant six month old (or
> > however long) software model...
"Debain GNU/Linux 2.2 (a.k.a. Potato) was released on 14 August, 2000."
> > not to mention that 2.2 kernel!
The 2.2 kernels are *still* more stable than the latest 2.4 kernel on the
only Linux box at work (which is running Woody BTW).
> It's good to keep in mind that Debian stable is intended to be a base
> that stable machines can depend on, for long periods of time, to not
> cause problems when packages are updated.
Lets see here ... OpenBSD has a stable release every six months ...
That is, a stable release (depending on how you define "stable release",
they could be argued to be *more* stable than Debian's releases) that
includes new and updated software, and new hardware support.
> I would very much like to see a Debian branch, say "wobbly," that had a
> full release complement of "boot floppies," etc. that were as fresh and
> bug free as possible (remember too that nothing even makes it into the
> testing branch unless it builds for _all_ supported Debian
> architectures).
OpenBSD officially supports six (x86, macppc, sparc, sparc64, alpha and vax)
architectures and, unofficially, I think another six. And, of course,
there's a new set of boot floppies for each release (and you only need *one*
to install).
> But, that would increase the workload on the already
> overworked volunteers who keep Debian going.
IMO, this is only bacause Debian focuses on packages, instead of the
base OS. Can I do a "make build" or "make world" and completely
rebuild Debian's base? NO! I have to build a bunch of packages.
And, of course, I have to build the package building and managing
packages (talk about chicken and egg) and hope they are stable and
bug free.
> As it is, the testing
> branch does fairly well at keeping most packages fresh and usable.
> However, as you point out, many packages people want, say Mozilla, can
> lag by several months for various reasons
Well, *if* it were policy that there was a release every six months
or whatever, it could be done, that's just not Debain's policy. Cut your
losses, you'll be happier in the long run. Mozilla and other packages
are simply *not* important to the base OS, period.
> I'm going on a bit long, but, as you found, it's best (aside from
> philosophical reasons) to choose Debian because you want a Distro that
> is relatively easy to maintain, not because you want to be leading edge.
^^^^^^^^
relative to what?
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