Debian 8.0 Jessie Is Ready For Release This Weekend

[Bill]

Well, a good question. There are several reasons: I have about always had some problems with Ubuntu. The Base Ubuntu works good enough, but often times if I needed some applications not included in base installation I encountered problems. I don't quite remember the exact applications and issues except about Gplot, Gnome, and Upstart. I also do maintain several machines, and Debian has given most trouble free time with them, and I prefer to use the same OS at home.

That said, I may try the new Ubuntu so I can see the difference in performance between Ubuntu and Debian.

Seriously though there is a huge difference in performance between Mesa 10.3.2 (The one included in Debian) and Mesa 10.5.2.I tried the Mesa drivers back when 10.3 was default and I could not play any game and now I can.But if you are not doing gaming or graphic intensive work Mesa 10.3 is fine.

[dungeon]

Graphic drivers bugs should not stop Debian release, those drivers always have bugs in some scenarios on other distros too .

Debian releases with support for many architectures, some are known that does not even have graphic driver support, etc...

[soulsource]

I have to say why are you using Debian Jessie if you are using the open source drivers.The one's included in Debian Jessie are about 6 months behind the latest Mesa release and at this point it would be better to even use Ubuntu for your card.

From my experience up to now, Debian is more stable than Ubuntu, and there are situations where one just wants to run a Desktop (with 3D acceleration), but doesn't care much about graphics performance.

The crashes aren't an issue for a server, where one can simply stop/uninstall X11, but on a desktop they are a no-go. Annoying is, that there would be a simple workaround. All the maintainer of the mesa package would have to do, would be to build it with the patch that disables asynchronous DMA...

[nanonyme]

Even when it is released, the transition to systemd as init, dracut for initramfs, and supporting stuff for desktop environments makes it a *really rough* upgrade. I'd advise anyone happy with their wheezy installation to not upgrade it at all, but consider jessie only for new installations.

3 out of 3 of my wheezy systems were unbootable after upgrading them this past week. I managed to get one booting again with systemd, after some painful diagnosis of some udev-related issue. On the others I had to manually repair initramfs to be able to access LUKS encrypted root, then restore original sysvinit-core to get them booting properly again; and still some basic functionality no longer works, like the shutdown/reboot buttons in the login manager and XFCE.

Eh, I found it a breeze compared to upgrading to Wheezy. Iirc it still ships with a version of Grub2 with which if your /boot is on a multi-disk LVM2 volume, it will not get detected by grub2 config generator script

[Bill]

From my experience up to now, Debian is more stable than Ubuntu, and there are situations where one just wants to run a Desktop (with 3D acceleration), but doesn't care much about graphics performance.

The crashes aren't an issue for a server, where one can simply stop/uninstall X11, but on a desktop they are a no-go. Annoying is, that there would be a simple workaround. All the maintainer of the mesa package would have to do, would be to build it with the patch that disables asynchronous DMA...

Yes but that stability does not mean you should use a outdated Mesa driver instead of the latest version which is already stable enough for desktop usage.

[Calinou]

I agree. Debian Jessie is not yet in an acceptable shape. I strongly recommend not to upgrade from Wheezy yet.
Especially AMD users should still wait:
The GNOME desktop does not work with the AMD proprietary FGLRX driver
So, who wants to use Gnome with AMD hardware should use the open source driver. Sounds good, but there's still this little bug:
Kernel crashes with radeonsi

I'm using Jessie just fine with Nouveau (no crashes or rendering issues, suspending works); your mileage may vary.

[cynical]

I don't quite remember the exact applications and issues except about Gplot, Gnome, and Upstart.

I don't know about Gplot but Gnome is fine now besides being outdated due to the different release schedules of the two camps involved, and Ubuntu has painlessly transitioned to systemd so you shouldn't have any problems there either. Ubuntu's Unity has been stable and steadily receiving bug fixes for several releases now. Still, you should stick to Ubuntu Gnome if you are using the Gnome desktop, in order to get a clean install.

[moilami]

I don't know about Gplot but Gnome is fine now besides being outdated due to the different release schedules of the two camps involved, and Ubuntu has painlessly transitioned to systemd so you shouldn't have any problems there either. Ubuntu's Unity has been stable and steadily receiving bug fixes for several releases now. Still, you should stick to Ubuntu Gnome if you are using the Gnome desktop, in order to get a clean install.

Well, I downloaded 15.04 image and should install it today.

[DeeK]

Well, a good question. There are several reasons: I have about always had some problems with Ubuntu. The Base Ubuntu works good enough, but often times if I needed some applications not included in base installation I encountered problems. I don't quite remember the exact applications and issues except about Gplot, Gnome, and Upstart. I also do maintain several machines, and Debian has given most trouble free time with them, and I prefer to use the same OS at home.

That said, I may try the new Ubuntu so I can see the difference in performance between Ubuntu and Debian.

You could try installing the mesa drivers from sid/unstable. They've got version 10.4.2 in there.

I use a jessie system for my own home PC, and selectively pick packages from testing and experimental to install. That way, I can get the latest and greatest, while running on a stable base.

[nanonyme]

Yes but that stability does not mean you should use a outdated Mesa driver instead of the latest version which is already stable enough for desktop usage.

Well, yeah, Debian probably should consider bumping graphics stack packages more aggressively before freeze. It's not like they affect other than desktop users anyway. Oh well, maybe once X.org X11 stack goes away, things will change. X11 ABI stability breakage commonly is a major deal-breaker for upgrades