There's A Push To Try To Release Debian 8.0 Jessie Before February

[chrisb]

If default does not work for you pick one from experimental, and once jessie is released forget about experimental but pick it from backports repo, that is how things goes in Debian... other then that you can use some third party repo or compile your own.

Do not pretend if you use Fedora you never use experimental repo like koji, etc... or if you use Ubuntu you don't use some ppas

Users should not have to use experimental repos, third party repos or compile their own to get stable graphics drivers. If you install Fedora or Ubuntu right now you will get recent and more stable Intel drivers by default, without any experimental repo or PPA.

Because those are not stable like Debian stable Both Fedora and Ubuntu non lts are not enterprise distros . Those are Ubuntu LTS, RHEL, Debian Stable, etc.

So how come Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, an "enterprise distro", shipped with a recent Intel driver back in April, six months ago? Think about that for a moment: the driver shipped in Ubuntu LTS April 2014 is more recent and has fewer bugs than the driver Debian will ship with Jessie at some unknown time in 2015. It makes no sense.

Really you have that driver in Debian, so don't know what is this discussion about

Why do people think that packages in the experimental repository are suitable for normal users? You say that Debian is an "enterprise distro" and "made of enterprise quality methods", but then say that people who want a stable system should manually configure and install drivers from an experimental repository? The Debian project describes Experimental as "packages and tools which are still being developed, and are still in the alpha testing stage. Users shouldn't be using packages from here, because they can be dangerous and harmful even for the most experienced people." And the Debian Security Team tell people not to use Experimental because it does not get security updates. So why should normal users have to use it to get a stable system?!

[dungeon]

That excuse doesn't change the fact that the version in Jessie has lots of bugs, whereas the more recent versions in Fedora and Ubuntu have far fewer bugs.

Debian Stable is community distro maded of enterprise quality methods. RC releases are by definition not that, those can happen to come if there is not other way around, but mostly just sits in experimental.

then why is Intel shipping them to its customers?

Intel does not care much about legacy, but about future hardware (that is how development mostly goes) and particulary about existing Debian's users that is Debian's job to do and Debian as you see provide good solutions: latest stable and latest pre/releases for you to pick it up (are we missing something, other then latest might not be the gratest?) . If default does not work for you pick one from experimental, and once jessie is released forget about experimental but pick it from backports repo, that is how things goes in Debian... other then that you can use some third party repo or compile your own.

Do not pretend if you use Fedora you never use experimental repo like koji, etc... or if you use Ubuntu you don't use some ppas

Why are Fedora and Ubuntu both shipping them in their stable releases?

Because those are not stable like Debian stable Both Fedora and Ubuntu non lts are not enterprise distros . Those are Ubuntu LTS, RHEL, Debian Stable, etc.

Really you have that driver in Debian, so don't know what is this discussion about

[chrisb]

Yet that is latest release intel maded , others are pre release rc drivers and you have those always in experimental:

That excuse doesn't change the fact that the version in Jessie has lots of bugs, whereas the more recent versions in Fedora and Ubuntu have far fewer bugs. If the newer drivers are just "pre release rc drivers", then why is Intel shipping them to its customers? Why are Fedora and Ubuntu both shipping them in their stable releases?

[dungeon]

The video bug, Iceweasel bug and TearFree bugs are all fixed upstream, but not in Jessie.

Yet that is latest release intel maded , others are pre release rc drivers and you have those always in experimental:

https://packages.debian.org/experimental/xserver-xorg-video-intel

You can install from there if you want, so are those issues fixed with that prerelase ddx?

Yet the bug reports are still open for the version in Jessie. If the bugs have been closed, then the bug reports should've been closed.

Once when new release intel maded and it is uploaded for jessie those bugs maintainer will probably marked as fixed.

Why Intel made so much RC prerelase ddx drivers i don't know, i can only guess that might be because those are not so stable for all users Thus that is why it sits also so much time in experimental.

[chrisb]

From the looks of the bug page, it looks to be problems on very specific cases : kfreebsd, specific laptops, or old video cards (i845!!!)[/quote

I run debian jessie on :
- i7-3537U with HD4000
- A haswell nuc
- i7-4770
(and other stuff without intel graphics)
and it works without problems...

Glad to hear it works well for someone. Just today I hit what appears to be bug #757435 or perhaps bug #764757. Crash in i965_dri took down Xorg and the whole desktop. Previously I had problems with mplayer video corruption which is possibly bug #735322 and I also had an odd problem with the driver turning off the monitor when running Iceweasel on certain sites (the Iceweasel monitor would turn off but the others would still be on). But my main issue with the Jessie driver is that is that TearFree does not work. That is a problem since every desktop (except KDE and Gnome) requires TearFree on recent Intel GPUs (since Sandy Bridge) otherwise there is tearing. It's been a known problem since 2012. At this point people usually recommend Compton, but I've tried it, and it does not work for my setup, maybe because it is multi-monitor, or maybe some other reason - I've seen several other reports that Compton reduced tearing on an Intel setup but did not eliminate it completely, and I've seen people say that it had no effect at all on tearing. Compton seems to be a variable solution.

The video bug, Iceweasel bug and TearFree bugs are all fixed upstream, but not in Jessie.

I don't have intel hardware here, but i tried AMD 2 Kabini setups and one Kaveri APUs all works fine with Jessie

Those are all testing bugs, not just jessie bugs... some of them are from etch testing, etc

Yet the bug reports are still open for the version in Jessie. If the bugs have been closed, then the bug reports should've been closed.

[dungeon]

There is still Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Gnome etc. for those who don't like Unity. One reason to use Ubuntu over Debian is that Ubuntu has hardware enablement (backports of modern kernels and drivers to prior releases) so that it will work on new hardware. Case in point - Debian Jessie still does not work properly on Intel GPUs from Ivy Bridge onwards (ie. every Intel laptop sold since 2012). xserver-xorg-video-intel in Jessie has almost 100 open bugs filed against it. The Debian Wheezy installer (various releases from 2013 to 2014) wouldn't even boot on Ivy Bridge graphic systems. Broadwell will be out soon, and yet Jessie - to be released in 2015 - is still unstable on Intel GPUs from 2012+.

I don't have intel hardware here, but i tried AMD 2 Kabini setups and one Kaveri APUs all works fine with Jessie

Those are all testing bugs, not just jessie bugs... some of them are from etch testing, etc

Besades Intel was only platinum sponsor for DebConf 2014 that somehow tell me you must be wrong

[chrisb]

Back there, when I installed Ubuntu I got Unity and I additionally installed GNOME. Suddenly some programs where installed twice, vanilla and unity flavor. Also the vanilla programs were a older version. Then there were other quirks with the configuration and so on. This wouldn't happen if the default DE was GNOME because those bugs were fixed before they release a new version. So somehow the default DE matters because it's the one that is best integrated in the OS.

If you install two different desktops on the same system you might run in to problems and quirks, but this is true regardless of whether you are using Ubuntu or Debian. The problem is that the developers of the various desktops don't test or care about integration on multi-desktops systems. Services that are implemented by desktops using functionality outside of the desktop itself are a problem, for example power saving, screensavers, and other system areas. Also dbus can cause problems here, because different desktops attempt to activate some service but dbus decides which one gets run, eg. for notifications, if you have XFCE and Gnome installed, the Gnome handler is always run so XFCE notifications don't work properly. There are also runtime file-based changes, eg. XFCE screenlock behaves differently depending on what else is installed on the hard drive, so if you install an XFCE desktop you might get xscreensaver, but if you then add gnome, XFCE will run gnome-screensaver even though your XFCE install and settings are exactly the same as before.

[chrisb]

But it isn't just the default DE, is it? It is also that big non-standard display stack that comes as a "bonus" with Unity 8. Single vendor solutions always end up being a problem in one way or another.

Yes, it is just the default DE. If you run KDE or Gnome or XFCE or whatever it will still use Xorg.

[doom_Oo7]

Broadwell will be out soon, and yet Jessie - to be released in 2015 - is still unstable on Intel GPUs from 2012+.

From the looks of the bug page, it looks to be problems on very specific cases : kfreebsd, specific laptops, or old video cards (i845!!!)

I run debian jessie on :
- i7-3537U with HD4000
- A haswell nuc
- i7-4770
(and other stuff without intel graphics)
and it works without problems...

[TheOne]

Back there, when I installed Ubuntu I got Unity and I additionally installed GNOME. Suddenly some programs where installed twice, vanilla and unity flavor. Also the vanilla programs were a older version. Then there were other quirks with the configuration and so on. This wouldn't happen if the default DE was GNOME because those bugs were fixed before they release a new version. So somehow the default DE matters because it's the one that is best integrated in the OS.
Switching back to Ubuntu is no option any more because I'm happy with Arch and Debian.

I also switched to archlinux but I did it because I wanted a rolling release distro, got tired of the 6 month ubuntu upgrades that sometimes failed and required a fresh install. Besides that Xubuntu worked just fine as Lubuntu...

The main advantage I see with arch is you are always up to date with software and somehow pacman has superior performance and easier usage than debian apt tools, theres also the arch linux user repository which has everything you could need, better than handling PPA's.