Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" To Release In Early May

[Loafers]

You never actually supposed to RUN Debian testing / unstable as a distro though. They were package repos, that would be shuffled around, hence the freezes.

I do agree that they should have something continuous that isnt as haphazard as experimental but we can't really be mad that we're using it in a way that it wasnt designed to be used.

i was under the impression testing and unstable were distros since they had their own codename. also, grabbing select packages from testing/unstable isn't advisable since it may result in dependency issues, which is backports were created.

[moilami]

By the time Wheezy comes out , it is going to be outdated already LOL. Is going to be like that for years!

What evil and bad things will happen to me because of this so called "outdated"? Will I be using a version number of X < Y of a program Z? I don't see that as a problem.

[Loafers]

flamebait successful.

[Ericg]

i was under the impression testing and unstable were distros since they had their own codename. also, grabbing select packages from testing/unstable isn't advisable since it may result in dependency issues, which is backports were created.

Packages in Debian go like this...

They come into experimental (which may have dependency issues because the packages arent in there quite yet.) Eventually move to Unstable (all dependency issues should be sorted out by then). Then they move to testing (definitely should be totally fine by then). The problem is.. Debian Stable has package versions locked to a certain extent. Debian Testing is the NEXT version of Debian to be released and at some point in the release cycle the packages are locked to those versions.

So if you run Debian Testing, every 2 years for a few months you basically stop getting (significant) updates cuz of the package freeze.

[moilami]

flamebait successful.

Lol, k xD

It is good to get trolled every now and then.

[Alex Sarmiento]

You are right, you won't be seen as Ubergeek by your Windows using friends when you are not using a rolling release/bleeding edge distro or a distro for which being in the news and release at a fixed date is much more important than being bug-free or stable (like Ubuntu), so Debian obviously is not for the average troll.
Anyone who actually needs a stable OS will have no problem with older software in Debian (or Red Hat, FWIW).

Well, considering the fact that most upstream projects already release a stable product , and that the 'unstable' debian is widely considered highly stable , i don't know how much the debian project brings something to the table for regular users, unless you need some extra extra extra bits of reliability for some critical and custom task . The debian distro is more like a template distro , that also fist well for custom headless servers.

And i don't considerer Ubuntu, opensuse, fedora or any other non rolling distro to be systematically unstable or buggy. Maybe some high level desktop applications are buggy some times, but that's the norm for any OS aimed for regular users. For instance, is hard to label Ubuntu LTS releases or the Ubuntu server edition as buggy or unstable. And is funny that you call someone else a geek for using a more easy to use and friendly distro LOL

[c117152]

What? How can a freeze of Testing not affect Testing? That doesn't make sense. Testing is frozen for a good reason, making the great stability of the next Stable even possible, complaining about the freeze is totally missing the point.

You are right, you won't be seen as Ubergeek by your Windows using friends when you are not using a rolling release/bleeding edge distro or a distro for which being in the news and release at a fixed date is much more important than being bug-free or stable (like Ubuntu), so Debian obviously is not for the average troll.
Anyone who actually needs a stable OS will have no problem with older software in Debian (or Red Hat, FWIW).

Debian is enough for many users. The problem begins once you go beyond browsing the web, word processing and checking your email, you start seeing problems. If this wasn't true, then Ubuntu wouldn't have gained the popularity it gained in the first place.

My problem is I don't want pacman or rpms. I hate them and don't see the point of them at all. As a developer I always felt the multi-arch approach was the only reasonable solution and now with the arm cpus it shows. What bothers me is that the lack of a real .deb rolling release that isn't run by canonical's MiH inflicted stuff has led to ARCH and forced me to run a separate development machine, Makefiles and even code to handle old versions of packages. e.g. Journal functions missing from systemd 44 under debian; Wayland is at 0.85 meaning it's utterly useless to try and code to it with any hope of anyone actually using it in the next year and reporting bugs; Old gnome, old kde, ancient EFL\E17...

If at least unstable was the so called "bleeding edge" so I can tell people to apt-get from unstable... But when packages in sid are these old:

http://packages.debian.org/sid/systemd

http://packages.debian.org/sid/libwayland0

http://packages.debian.org/sid/e17

What am I suppose to do and say ?

[Alex Sarmiento]

What evil and bad things will happen to me because of this so called "outdated"? Will I be using a version number of X < Y of a program Z? I don't see that as a problem.

There's not problem at all, unless you buy a new hardware and debian "6.0" wont boot because your hardware is not supported by the outdated software and drivers. maybe you don't care about new performance and power optimizations. Or maybe you don't care about enhanced and improved utilities that makes your life better and more enjoyable. Firefox 3.5? really? I was just thinking about the irony of the 'news' in that debian is going to be updated , and that's the news.

[Vim_User]

Well, considering the fact that most upstream projects already release a stable product , and that the 'unstable' debian is widely considered highly stable , i don't know how much the debian project brings something to the table for regular users, unless you need some extra extra extra bits of reliability for some critical and custom task .

So you mean that no "regular" user wants to have a system that is as bug-free as possible? And that the long development phase that Debian has for exactly this purpose is kind of a waste of time? Like removing about 1500 bugs that were considered release-critical by the Debian team in the last 4 months? Tip: Go to the Debian forum and ask how many "regular" users are running Debian Stable, you will be surprised.

And i don't considerer Ubuntu, opensuse, fedora or any other non rolling distro to be systematically unstable or buggy.

openSuse does not fit into that list, they do not have such a short release cycle as ubuntu or fedora have, a release cycle that is shorter than the Beta/freezing phase of distros that are considered to be stable. And a distro like Ubuntu, that releases at a fixed date, no matter in which state the distro is, can't be considered to be stable.

For instance, is hard to label Ubuntu LTS releases or the Ubuntu server edition as buggy or unstable.

Sure, that must be the reason why Canonical recommended to their LTS users not to upgrade to 12.04 LTS (by the way, besides the default package selection there is no difference between the desktop and server edition) before the first point release. Just because they knew already that they have released a buggy product and have shifted the beta-phase after the release date. Guess what people that need a stable system think about such a behavior, when the release date and being in the news is more important than stability or a low bug-count. You know that the LTS releases are derived from Debian Testing, but without the freeze-phase to get rid of the (again, about 1500 release-critical only in the last 4 months) bugs? And you think it is hard to label an LTS release as buggy or unstable?

And is funny that you call someone else a geek for using a more easy to use and friendly distro LOL

Read my post again, I have not called you a geek, I have talked about the image seen from Windows users.

[pingufunkybeat]

Well, considering the fact that most upstream projects already release a stable product , and that the 'unstable' debian is widely considered highly stable , i don't know how much the debian project brings something to the table for regular users, unless you need some extra extra extra bits of reliability for some critical and custom task . The debian distro is more like a template distro , that also fist well for custom headless servers.

"Debian Stable" does not mean that the software is stable (some of upstream releases are, some are not).

It means that the distribution is stable. All the weird interactions between different packages have been resolved. No update will ever introduce bugs. No strange gotchas when the new (stable) version of package X is combined with an old (also stable) version of package Y.

This is perfect for non-bleeding edge workstation. It's perfect for servers. No update breaks anything. Ever. Nothing crashes. Ever. Yeah, you use GCC 4.6 instead of 4.9 and your desktop is a year old. For most real work, this does not matter at all.

And i don't considerer Ubuntu, opensuse, fedora or any other non rolling distro to be systematically unstable or buggy.

They are not "systematically" unstable or buggy, but they have their gotchas.

Debian stable doesn't. No gotchas. It's not like OpenSUSE or Fedora, it's like SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For some people, the occasional gotcha is not an option. They run debian stable.

There are plenty of good distros for people who don't mind an occasional gotcha, but want new software. Debian stable is not it. It doesn't even pretend to be it. It's pedantic, it's obsessive-compulsive, it's over-the-top conservative, for people who need over-the-top conservative. It's not for everyone. If your glibc absolutely must be less than 6 months old, and if you go crazy that you have to run GNU Bash 4.2, when 4.2.1 is out, then you really need a different distro, because Debian stable is not it. Debian stable is stable. Stable stable, rock stable.