Debian is 1/2 of my Linux power combo. Debian servers, Ubuntu desktops. Love it.
Unlike Ubuntu, Debian's release cycle is so sporadic (and long) that I often forget they're working on a new release. Needless to say I was surprised and excited by this announcement. Props to the Debian team!
If you want a reasonable release cycle, without the drool-proofing of ubuntu, try Debian sid. It's the unstable branch, and gets rolling updates and the like. It is also reasonably stable.
Debian Sid treated me well enough until today, when I decided to upgrade all packages before all the post-Lenny stuff started flowing in. libxcb-render-util0 had previously been upgraded to Experimental's version when I installed Awesome 3, which was available only in Experimental. After removing Awesome 3, I was unable to revert back to Sid's version of libxcb-render-util0 (as well as libxcb1, which had also been upgraded) without removing a great number of other packages. After forty minutes of messing around with aptitude and dpkg without making headway, I said to hell with it and replaced Debian with a minimal install of Ubuntu.
Sid has also done some odd things in the past couple weeks, such as removing slocate from the repositories. It took me a few minutes to figure out that I ought to switch to mlocate. The primary drawback before that was the delayed security updates – due to the Lenny release process, the Firefox (well, Iceweasel) 3.0.5 upgrade took perhaps two weeks to enter Sid, leaving me with the vulnerable 3.0.4 for the period. Ubuntu seems to offer swifter updates.
A minimal install of Ubuntu is very nearly as lightweight as Debian. It provides a stable base and a clearer upgrade path than Sid, albeit at the cost of packages that are behind the cutting edge. Security updates for any packages in Ubuntu's main repository seem more timely than for those in Debian Sid; however, a great many lesser-used packages in Ubuntu's universe repository get no security support at all. Overall, given the issues I suffered when mixing bleeding-edge packages from Debian's Experimental with a Sid-based system, I believe Ubuntu is a better fit for my needs.
Regardless of which I settle on, both are a great deal more fun than Gentoo, which I ran for five years before switching to Sid in September. The novelty of being able to upgrade all packages in five minutes instead of fifteen hours still fills me with joy.
It's usually reasonably stable, but occasionally there will be severe breakage when major components are being updated and reach the repo's at different times. This happens more with X, Gnome, KDE ... but sometimes when major system libraries are upgraded bad things can happen.
For me, testing is the sweet spot. I have run a mixed Lenny/Sid (mostly Lenny, with the occasional package pulled from unstable, currently it's all Lenny) for a long time now and not yet had a serious issue that was not my own fault.
Testing is also a rolling release, but you've got one more level of protection in unstable for serious stuff to get worked out before packages get to you. There is also a useful tool called apt-listbugs which will display information about serious bugs during the upgrade process before packages are upgraded and allow you one last chance to abort the upgrade.
It's pretty commonly thought in the Debian community that if you're running Debian on a desktop system (as opposed to a server) then there isn't much reason not to run testing.
I will continue to track the new testing in due time. I'm kind of going to miss Lenny though. :)
Sometimes it's fun to be on the "bleeding edge", such as when KDE4 first went from experimental to unstable. Plus, it benefits Debian as they've more users testing potentially breaking packages and filing bug-reports.
I used to run unstable for a while and it was by and large still more than stable enough for general use, regardless of its name.
But as I got busier on my own development projects I stated to dislike the occasional issues that would pop up here or there and take my attention away from what I was really interesting in. Hence why I am now using testing with as little pulled from unstable as possible (usually that means nothing pulled from unstable).
I still like to contribute in my own little way, filing/helping with bug reports on the testing release. Just recently I was pleased to be able to assist the fglrx-driver maintainer (and myself) with testing a fix for a reported bug.
If I wasn't so busy, I'd probably still be running unstable, it's still more stable than a lot of distros out there. :)
I'm glad to see SELinux finally available as standard. This is one thing I've been missing as part of my security hardening on my Debian servers. It gives better peace of mind.
Oh! OpenJDK is now included as well. This just gets better and better.
Please don't misunderstand or compare Debian with Ubuntu. (at least I have the feeling that people do this nowadays because Ubuntu is so popular).
They have different release strategies, Debian focuses on stability and security as a Server orientated distribution. Ubuntu on the other hand has a strong commitment twoards the user desktop segment. Both is fine, I mean Ubuntu is basically just Debian with faster release cycles (and they like to taint their Kernel). (sorry for the oversimplification)
If you prefer more uptodate Software from the Debian side, please try testing, unstable and experimental. For the totally impatient there is e.g. Backports, Sidux and many more. Cross-pinning (mixing of Debian and Ubuntu is possible too.) Don't know how far Ubutnutu (or how ever you write that project name) has come.
Ubuntu's "strategy" is that they release every 6 months, and do a long term support release every few years. I am not sure those are the ideal numbers to use (6 months is short), but on the whole, I think I prefer that approach to Debian's "we'll release...sometime... if we're not debating how many GPL's fit on the head of a pin". Debian is excellent, and I started maintaining a few packages for it in 1997, but my involvement has waned to pretty much nothing, and these days I'm a mostly happy Ubuntu user.
"Use unstable" is a bad argument. Sure, it doesn't break most of the time, but it can and does. You can't base a business on that kind of thing.
Also, there is nothing inherently 'server' or 'desktop' about Ubuntu or Debian - the first may put some resources into improving the desktop experience, but the good patches eventually flow back to Debian, as it's all open source. And Ubuntu makes for a fine server, too.
Defining a good release strategy for everybody is difficult I suppose. You can't make everybody happy, because the intersection of interests from Server/Desktop people is just different I think. Of course Debian's rather slow release strategy is not so great either, which if I understand correctly was one of the factors why Ubuntu could grow in the first place?
The GPL issues, e.g. firefox->iceweasel naming issue etc. are really nitpicking I concurr, but that happens when you have your own constitution :).
You can base a business on Ubuntu? I actually don't know, it would be very interesting to hear advice from somebody who really knows Ubuntu and Debian very well. I mean have extensive Debian experience but Ubuntu rather little. Could you give me some advice on that?
I mean I have been working with Debian since forever and I know my way around. What do you e.g. mean with "doesn't break most of the time"? I haven't encountered anything even when using experimental which gives me too much headache. At least when I switch from apt-get'ing to aptitude for some rather weird dependency issues.
Than on the other hand your argument is that I want to base my business on that. If I really want to do that, why would I pick so new software anyway? (I read bugtraq, fd etc. that is a bad idea as far as I understand.) That screams for a xen/vserver based solution where I run my host system in a stable (very stable) environment and control my unsecure systems via virtualization. Or is that a bad idea?
Debian is not just slow, but slow and irregular with their releases. There's nothing that says "about every 2 years" or "let's try for once every 18 months" or something like that. It happens when it happens. That can be kind of maddening. With Ubuntu you have the choice to either grab on to the every-six-months version, or use the long term support version.
The "just use unstable/experimental" thing is fine if you have no memory of really big transitions... libc5 -> glibc6, for instance, caused a lot of breakage. There are no guarantees that that kind of thing won't happen again. Using unstable is fine if you're a hacker and don't mind helping out when something goes awry - I'm glad people do that, and did it myself at one time. But if you're not in a position to drop what you're doing to go chase down some obscure bug in a package, then perhaps unstable should be approached with caution.
Ubuntu and Debian really aren't that different - file layouts, tools... pretty much everything is the same. Which is good... it makes Ubuntu Debian + money for usability improvements + a more unified vision + a regular release schedule.
Oh, another thing I like with Ubuntu is that I can run exactly the same code on my laptop and server, which has proved to be quite convenient more than once.
Debian is fantastic though... if Ubuntu ever falters, I will go back without a second thought. They get a ton of things right and do great work.
> If you prefer more uptodate Software from the Debian side, please try testing, unstable and experimental.
Indeed. I have used Debian Unstable as my desktop OS forever, and it's wonderful. It does not break nearly as often as you might guess by the name. (Maybe once a year.)
It certainly breaks less than Ubuntu, although I got rid of my last Ubuntu machine about a year ago.
Interesting, could you tell me what you mean by break?
Is the issue ultimately solvable by e.g. aptitude and alike or you need to mess around by hand in the apropriate dpkg files?
fortunately my domU xen instances will not need KDE, however they will gladly welcome a stable xen 3.2. I've been using backports since then, but I'm glad stable is done. I seriously doubt many are using debian on their desktops...
Debian comes in three easy flavors: Stable, for those who cannot crash, testing, for those who don't really want to crash, but want some more recent software, and unstable, for people who don't care about crashing and who want up-to-date software.
I know many people who run sid (unstable) on their (desk|lap)tops. It has all the power of debian and apt, without the long release cycle.
I'd like to know, too. We use CentOS 5 for servers, and I hate it because anytime I want to do anything interesting, we have to compile stuff from source to get anything recent enough. (Ruby, Git, etc...)
Ruby, git, etc - is a very portable userland packages. It means they almost independed from an OS. It means you can focus on the quality of the OS, while fresh user tools can be easily backported from bleeding edge distros like Fedora.
I'm runing production servers which are 64-bit FC10 based systems onder the Xen 3.3 with kernels from CentOS.
Resent Fedora lacks support of 64bit dom0, but CentOS has it. xen-hypervisor I'm using is from FC11.
So, I have fresh developer tools along with latest Xen and very stable and well-tested kernel. It works pretty good.
It is not very difficult task to ask google search about how many key-developers receives their paychecks from RedHat and IBM and how many of them contributing to Fedora project.
Then you can try to figure out how many installations of RHEL around, in the worlds biggest datacenters and then which distro amazon or google uses.
Then you can take a look on RedHat's revenue.
At last, if you're really curious, you can download .src.rpm of the latest CentOS kernel and take a look to the patches.
and very last hint: Oracle. DB2.
Unlike Ubuntu, Debian's release cycle is so sporadic (and long) that I often forget they're working on a new release. Needless to say I was surprised and excited by this announcement. Props to the Debian team!