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Debian 9 Stretch released

595 points by OberstKrueger 9y ago

shmerl 9y ago
At last the freeze is over. It started to be a bit annoying to build Mesa from source when stuff like newer llvm and libdrm are hard to squeeze into frozen Debian testing. I suppose the idea of reducing freeze time with "always releasable testing" didn't really work out (lack of resources?).
- mablap 9y ago
  I needed gcc 6 for testing and decided to upgrade the whole system about three weeks ago. It was very easy and it's still pretty stable. I might do a fresh reinstall now...
  - shmerl 9y ago
    If you go from stable to testing (or unstable), it should work relatively well closer to release time when bugs in upgrade path are mostly ironed out. I was talking about the freeze itself though. It affects testing too which is normally rolling. So if the freeze is too long, things start becoming annoying.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  Testing is usually a bad distribution to use for anything in production. If something breaks, it will stay broken for quite a long time until the fix makes it out of Unstable. Unstable is almost always a better choice. Things may occasionally break, but fixes will arrive very quickly.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    I'm talking about regular desktop usage, not about servers. And things break in testing only if maintainers messed up transition. Related packages should come in consistently otherwise.
    - LeoPanthera 9y ago
      I am also talking about regular desktop usage, not servers.
    - lfam 9y ago
      'Testing' is also usually the last branch to get security updates, sometimes weeks later.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        I think that's something they tried to fix, with testing security repo.
        lfam 9y ago
        Perhaps they are trying to improve the situation, but I read Debian security advisories regularly, and they are almost always published without a fix on the testing branch. Unstable is the Debian branch to use if stable is too slow for one's tastes. The testing branch is just for testing and it's really not safe to use on the internet.
  - TomatoTomato 9y ago
    Serious question... Can't you make the same argument against using stable for the same reason? > If something breaks, it will stay broken for quite a long time until the fix makes it out of unstable [and testing].
    - shmerl 9y ago
      Stable usually doesn't get such issues. They are related to transitions. Sometimes it happens, that some packages are stuck in unstable for example, because they don't build on some arch, while their related packages go through. In result, testing gets an inconsistent combination, while unstable is OK. It happens when someone didn't take care to specify that these packages should only move to testing together. This won't happen with stable, since it will get the consistent result in the end.
    - gcb0 9y ago
      that's sysadm 101. on stable you don't get data corruption bugs, and you shutdown or filter security holes until they are confirmed fixed. on testing/unstable you can have data corruption bugs and everything else. but you may bet that security fixes are done faster. emphasis on bet.
    - vacri 9y ago
      Stable moves much slower (if at all), so breakages are much less likely, and packages are battle-tested. A cutting-edge or rolling distro, like Unstable, gets a lot more changes, and you get to do the battle-testing yourself. Basically you install the Stable system to get a stable system, and then 'bring forward' just those packages you need.
scrollaway 9y ago
Finally! Been eagerly waiting for this. Congrats Debian team. This is surprising though: > Python 2.7.13 and 3.5.3 I thought 3.6 was in Stretch out of the box. Why 3.5 only (especially on a LTS)? :\
- shmerl 9y ago
  Could be it didn't make it in because of bugs. Some packages will be added post release.
- vbernat 9y ago
  Including Python 3.6, even as a non-default Python, would have required to rebuild all Python packages and handle the non-working ones (either fix the problem or explicitely exclude Python 3.6 support for this package). There was not enough time to do all that.
  - voltagex_ 9y ago
    Any bugs I should look at in particular? Does this mean we're stuck with Python 3.5 for the lifetime of Debian 9?
    - warbiscuit 9y ago
      Would love to know this myself. I'm in process of moving my company's main web app to python 3, and standardized on 3.5 to match Debian 9. But python 3.6 has so many cpu & memory improvements (not to mention things like f'' strings), seriously considering installing custom copy of 3.6... though not sure if I want the burden of maintaining my own copy of everything that will affect. Then again... "Debian stable" being rock solid stable is why I stick with it for production; if their caution in this is the price I pay, it's worth it.
      - voltagex_ 9y ago
        I'm not sure how tricky it'd be to maintain your own repo just for Python 3.6. It may be worth it.
donatj 9y ago
Golang 1.7... 1.9 is due out soon. Sigh, this is why I end up installing things myself without a package manager.
- mappu 9y ago
  Debian stable releases have a 2+ year lifespan so even 1.9 would be out of date for most of the distro's life. Luckily Go is quite easy to install and use from an isolated directory, and the majority of Debian usage here would be as a target OS where the Go compiler version doesn't matter. Also jessie shipped Go 1.3 but it was updated to Go 1.7 in jessie-backports, so you can probably expect further Go updates in stretch-backports when it's released.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    You don't need to use stable. Debian testing is rolling and only stalls during release freeze period.
    - kfrzcode 9y ago
      I use unstable in my day to day and have had minimal problems.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Same here, my laptop as been on unstable for over five years and it's been fine.
        ReverseCold 9y ago
        Unless you need Debian for some reason, why not use one of the arch based distributions or fedora/some other redhat based one? Those always have the latest packages.
        icebraining 9y ago
partycoder 9y ago
fyi Debian names their releases after Toy Story characters. Sid (Debian unstable) is named after the guy that breaks the toys.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  And experimental is called "rc-buggy". (Debian has the notion of "Release Critical" or "RC" bugs, which affect migration from unstable to testing, so I find the nickname "rc-buggy" for experimental hilarious.)
  - glandium 9y ago
    IMHO, rc-buggy would have been a better pun for unstable (which is where packages with RC bugs are blocked until they can transition to testing).
    - JoshTriplett 9y ago
      It would have been, yes, but sid was already named.
- wichert 9y ago
  A nice inheritance for the days of Bruce Perens, who used to work at Pixar.
- Kostic 9y ago
  I've also heard that Sid is acronym for "Still in development".
  - partycoder 9y ago
    Debian wiki says that backronym is incorrect. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#Which_Toy_Story_character_is_Sid.3F https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#Which_Toy_Story_chara...
lamby 9y ago
Chris Lamb here, Debian Project Leader for 2017. Would love to get your feedback on the parallel "Ask HN" thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579080
- Diederich 9y ago
  Thank you for all of your hard work.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  Thanks for everything you've done for us!
- agumonkey 9y ago
  I don't use debian anymore, was my first linux distro, I align more with arch but I'm very happy to see you walking steadily. Happy distrofathersday
  - lamby 9y ago
    > I align more with arch Could you briefly outline why? :)
    - Latty 9y ago
      I thought I'd answer despite not being the person you asked. I run Arch because it's so bare by default, without an installer. As a power user, the fact that I know exactly how my whole system is wired together and what is there means when things go wrong or need to change, I know where to go. That and I often want to be on the bleeding edge, and the rolling release and AUR makes that super easy.
    - jrimbault 9y ago
      Not the OP. But also in the same case, Debian was my first distro, these days I align more with Arch. The ArchWiki is a gift to all the community. Rolling releases, not testing. With Arch there's a feeling of owning your OS without going full LFS. I am currently planning a summer reformatting for a laptop and I can't imagine not using Arch. But those are concerns only for my personal computers. On my servers or quick VMs I still prefer Debian.
forlorn 9y ago
How long does it usually take for things to settle down in Testing after a stable release? I heard it might take up to several months.
- lamby 9y ago
  I would actually recommend running unstable these days.
  - plange 9y ago
    Unstable over testing? Really? Why? :-) I've been running stretch on a lenovo carbon x1 for the last 2 years and it's been one of the first problem-free experiences running linux on the desktop (linux user for.. 18 years). Really awesome. Thanks!
    - vacri 9y ago
      I've been running debian on an x1 carbon as well (gen 3). I was impressed that it 'just worked' to the point that I even got an inbuilt wireless modem, popped the SIM card in, and the only bit of configuration I had to do was, literally, choosing which of my ISP's APNs to connect to.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - progval 9y ago
      It takes security fixes a few days to get from unstable to testing.
    - brusch64 9y ago
      Some years back I was using testing. It was the year they changed over from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3. I couldn't use the stable release because my mainboard and cpu wasn't supported. Boy, was this a hard process. It took some months until my system worked without GDM crashes. After that I changed over to Arch and been a happy Arch-er since than. I wouldn't recommend running testing. I've heard that unstable is more like Arch linux and the rolling release model of Arch Linux works very well for me.
rkv 9y ago
One of my favorite changes: > If you use debhelper/9.20151219 or newer in Debian, it will generate debug symbol packages (as <package>-dbgsym) for you with no additional changes to your source package. These packages are not available from the main archive. Please fetch these from debian-debug or snapshot.debian.org. No more shipping -dbg packages with full binaries. And less storage space is always a win.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  -dbg packages never shipped full binaries (with a few exceptions for unusual libraries); they always shipped detached debug symbols. This change just makes them automatic and puts them in a separate archive.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Did not know this about Debian. I've been using Debian as my base Docker image more often these days and I'll keep this in mind for future debuggin'
    - oneplane 9y ago
      Base docker image? Sounds like you are using docker to run a complete OS.. not sure if that's the best way to do either thing. (Container: run the app, not the OS. Need a virtual OS? run a vm..)
      - djsumdog 9y ago
        No, I use Docker to run a single process. You still need a base image. Some people use Alpine, some Ubuntu, some Debian and some roll their own. Here are the Debian base images: https://hub.docker.com/_/debian/ https://hub.docker.com/_/debian/
  - rkv 9y ago
    Did not know that, thank you. Do you know happen to know how it is done? When I pull the debian tarball for nginx (which has a -dbg package with symbol files) I see: > dh_strip --dbg-package=nginx-$(*)-dbg Which is the exact same command I use in my rules file. But instead of giving me a -dbg package with symbol files debuild gives me a -dbg package with the unstripped binary. Not sure what I am missing. I am following the DebugPackage guide on the Debian Wiki[1]. 1. https://wiki.debian.org/DebugPackage https://wiki.debian.org/DebugPackage
milankragujevic 9y ago
Downloading it, does anyone know how does Debian work on a MacBook Air 7,2?
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  Probably best to run it in a VM.
- skynode 9y ago
  Why not run it on a new box?
  - milankragujevic 9y ago
    I don't understand what you're trying to say. I want to use Debian as my daily OS because I don't like how macOS does things, and I got a MacBook because they are good quality and have a good warranty and I can run all 3 platforms (Win+Lin+Mac) on it if I so desire.
    - skynode 9y ago
      You like Apple's hardware but not its OS. I think there are better compromises out there, but of course, feel free to do your thing.
      - milankragujevic 9y ago
        I don't wanna argue, but keep in mind that I'm in Serbia and that I bought the MacBook with a "special financing plan" which the Apple reseller offered but not any of the generic stores that carry such ultrabooks as the XPS 13 or the Spectre...
        jameskegel 9y ago
        I am not sure I understand
aorth 9y ago
Nice! I see it's already available on Linode.
- mysticmode 9y ago
  Oh that's nice. I'm about to deploy things to Linode. Will check now.
boondaburrah 9y ago
Well, my Tangerine iMac will be sad to see debian support go.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  233mhz PowerPC? How long did you keep it going for? How long did you use it for?
  - boondaburrah 9y ago
    Actually a 400 MHz one. Through the help of eBay I upgraded it to 1GB RAM and 160GB HDD. It's currently built into a desktop arcade machine running MAME. I have an awful habit of re-using old tech instead of throwing it out. Hopefully I can eventually get rid of the stuff that still works at the MIT FLEA or something.
- jballanc 9y ago
  There's always NetBSD! ;-)
tlikonen 9y ago
My favourite change is the transition to GnuPG 2.1 as the default /usr/bin/gpg. Particularly the "trust on first use" (TOFU) trust model is a really good improvement.
- AaaaBbbbasas 9y ago
  My favourite change is the transition to death of Ian.
rxlim 9y ago
Congratulations. The return of Firefox branding makes me feel nostalgic. I remember using Firefox 1.04 on Debian in the early 00's. This was in the golden age of Firefox, when every new release was an improvement and it was a lean non-bloated alternative to other browsers. In the past Debian was considered to be one of the most stable Linux distributions available. Stability and quality was a priority above anything else. However, around 2014 something changed when systemd was forced into Debian in a way that would never have happened before the new generation of developers took over the project. Maybe this is just something we have to get used to, young developers seems to value ease above quality and stability, this also explains the current flood of Electron apps.
- vbernat 9y ago
  Half of the technical committee chose systemd. None of them are new comers. The casting vote in favor of systemd was done by Bdale who is a Debian developer since the very beginning.
  - rxlim 9y ago
    systemd was just a symptom. Multiple developers that had been working on Debian for many years, left the project in that period for various of reasons.
- gcb0 9y ago
  wait, there are packed electron "apps" in linux distros??? why? that's like packaging flash games!
wichert 9y ago
As a former Debian Project Leader from many years ago: congratulations on another fine release!
- lamby 9y ago
  Hey Wichert, nice to see you pop up here!
emilsedgh 9y ago
I'd like to know if the Linux server landscape is changing in favor of Debian due to Docker. It seems most popular packages are based on Debian. Although Alpine Linux is my personal choice.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  Alpine is the default iirc
  - krzyk 9y ago
    Strange, this is the first time I hear about Alpine, most of the server stuff I work/worked with were either Redhat or Debian.
    - devonkim 9y ago
      A lot of people porting older applications that depend upon base OS assumptions into containers will probably be using more full-featured containers. With greenfield applications I would expect more use of Alpine or even the scratch base image for people trying to deploy truly minimal containers.
- jedisct1 9y ago
  Pretty much the opposite. Alpine is the recommended base layer, and is progressively replacing Debian and Ubuntu in many images.
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago
Don't forget to verify the install medium, which is a little more involved with Debian. If you're already running a trusted Debian system, then install the debian-keyring package. Packages are signed and verified, so those keys don't need further verification. Otherwise, fetch the keys in [0] with gpg: $ gpg --keyserver keyring.debian.org --recv-keys <...> # e.g. 0x6294BE9B Then, verify the key's fingerprint with [0]: $ gpg --fingerprint Unless you don't trust your CA, this is good enough. Finally download the checksum and their signature files, and verify their signatures: $ gpg --verify <...> # e.g. SHA512SUMS.sign $ gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-role-keys.gpg --verify <...> # if using debian-keyring package [0] https://www.debian.org/CD/verify https://www.debian.org/CD/verify
- jbverschoor 9y ago
  It's not working for me.. # gpg --keyserver keyring.debian.org --recv-keys EF0F382A1A7B6500 gpg: requesting key 1A7B6500 from hkp server keyring.debian.org gpgkeys: key EF0F382A1A7B6500 can't be retrieved gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.
  - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago
    Where are you getting "EF0F382A1A7B6500" from? The short key ids on the page, at least for me, are: 64E6EA7D 6294BE9B 09EA8AC3
    - jbverschoor 9y ago
      # apt-get update ......... Reading package lists... Done W: There is no public key available for the following key IDs: EF0F382A1A7B6500
      - jbverschoor 9y ago
        apt-get install debian-archive-keyring seems to do the trick
      - deleted 9y ago
stevekemp 9y ago
Nice to see this release; I'd already started upgrading some of my lightly-loaded servers over the past few weeks but the "real" ones will wait a little longer. One thing that is new in this release is the availability of mod_http2, for Apache. I'm looking forward to seeing if that will increase the response-time of my various websites.
hitlin37 9y ago
Thanks a ton to the whole debian team. You do amazing job that keeps the modern computing running day and night.
hitlin37 9y ago
Anyone else tried to get debian running on Macbook pro late 2016?
ensiferum 9y ago
Does it support USB yet? ;-)
sft 9y ago
A lot of the core development packages like Postgresql are already several versions behind. And who even uses DVDs to install any more? Why are they still sticking to that dead medium?
TekMol 9y ago
I have been running a little "Single Server LAMP Lifestyle Business" for 15 years now and it has been happily crunching away on rock solid Debian all the time :) All in all I spend a few hours per week on it and it pays all my bills. Thank you, Debian team! From what I read [1] Debian 8 will be supported until April 2020 and Debian 9 until June 2022. So in 2020 I will have to decide to either switch to Debian 9 or to Debian 10 which probably will be out by then. Is that correct? My feeling is that it might make things easier for me to skip Debian 9 and go directly with Debian 10. I did the same with 7. My server used Debian 6 until I switched to Debian 8. [1]: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  I have to wonder - if it runs your business, have you ever donated to Debian? This isn't having a crack at you, most people haven't donated.
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    Code contributions are appreciated as well :)
stephenr 9y ago
As I mentioned yesterday on the "Upcoming" comment thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14574287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14574287), if you're looking to start using Stretch in your Vagrant dev environment, we're uploading AMD64 & i386 boxes for both VirtualBox and Parallels providers to Atlas as I type this. (If you're reading this soon, make sure it's v1.2.0, v1.1.0 is based on RC5 from a few days ago) Edit: the uploads are complete, v1.2.0 of debian9-amd64 and debian9-i386 are released. https://atlas.hashicorp.com/koalephant https://atlas.hashicorp.com/koalephant If there is user demand for it, we can look into vmware boxes, and possibly hyper-v too. Apologies if anyone feels this is off-topic/opportunistic - AFAIK all other Debian 9 boxes on Atlas target Virtualbox only, and while projects like Boxcutter (which we forked from) do support Parallels/etc, they aren't always the quickest to produce new boxes.
tamalsaha001 9y ago
Really looking forward to this release. We run Kubernetes with Debian 8. One of the big pain points has been needing to enable Docker memory accounting. I read that memory accounting will be enabled by default in Debian 9. Is that still the case?
blfr 9y ago
Chromium 59.0.3071.86 How well is Chromium supported on Debian? I like it as a secondary browser for its excellent support of multiple profiles but I run Ubuntu and had to switch to Chrome because Chromium doesn't seem to be updated promptly.
- hansjorg 9y ago
  You should check out the new contextual containers feature in Firefox if you haven't. Both more convenient and more powerful than profiles. As someone commented elsewhere in this thread, you can get FF version 52 in the security repo of Stretch, even if the default browser is Firefox ESR. https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/
  - blfr 9y ago
    Interesting. Does it also allow different settings/addons per each profile?
    - hansjorg 9y ago
      I don't think so, but some addons support per container settings. For example Cookie AutoDelete where each defined container can have its own whitelist: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
- XzetaU8 9y ago
  For the latest Chromium builds on Ubuntu you can add the "Canonical Chromium Builds” PPA https://launchpad.net/~canonical-chromium-builds/+archive/ubuntu/stage https://launchpad.net/~canonical-chromium-builds/+archive/ub...
- vbernat 9y ago
  Chromium has an exception to always keep it up-to-date with the latest version. In Jessie, it was updated in the same week as for unstable.
mlcdf 9y ago
Firefox is back. Me: Yay! In version 45 (released on March 8, 2016) Me: WTF.
- thanksgiving 9y ago
  I am on Jessie. I am on 52.2.0.
- bonyt 9y ago
  It's Firefox-esr in the repo, which is the extended support release, https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ I think 52 is in the security repo now, though
  - mlcdf 9y ago
    Oh okay. Thank you!
- vacri 9y ago
  Debian Stable is just that: stable. The default browser is an Extended Support Release (marked as such by the vendor, not Debian), so it'll stick around longer. An ESR is more useful for use cases like education or companies that roll their own SOEs and like to document things for users. Browsers love randomly changing the UI or other behaviour on a whim (and on a 6-week cycle). So, it's a browser's ESR by default, and you can always install another one.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    > The default browser is an Extended Support Release (marked as such by the vendor, not Debian), so it'll stick around longer. But Debian Jessie was the "Stable" version for roughly two years. Mozilla's end-of-life for ESR 52 is on June 26, 2018. If Stretch has the same lifetime as Jessie, that leaves roughly one year during which Firefox ESR 52 will be end-of-life. So how will Debian Stretch remain stable during a period when it is shipping an end-of-life Firefox for which-- as Mozilla states-- "no further updates will be offered for that version?" edit: typo
mayhew 9y ago
I've been running Stretch for 6 months and can't remember a single crash or issue. Amazingly stable release, kudos and thanks to everyone involved.
ClashTheBunny 9y ago
It seems you have committed to supporting Python 2.7 for two years longer than official support. Could you comment on that situation?
- avar 9y ago
  This also applies for the perl version they shipped, perl releases are supported for 3 years, Debian for 5. It's inevitable that you're going to get mismatches between OS support and "official" support for the specific packages that go into that release. Not all projects provide supported releases over a period of years, so distros just do their best to patch any issues that upstream has stopped caring about past that point. In practice the only thing that's going to be a big worry are new security issues, which upstream is usually willing to go out of their way to fix for versions still used in the wild, even for technically "unsupported" releases, at least the Perl project is, I don't know about Python.
- Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 9y ago
  I'd expect most packages to be EOL from the perspective of upstream by then. It's a normal thing for distributions to backport fixes, sometimes even develop them themselves when required.
- collinmanderson 9y ago
  I think it's pretty normal for Debian (or any distro) to support software beyond the normal upstream support.
- RUTHLESS_RUFUS 9y ago
  Very glad they're supporting 2.7! Hope we'll stick with it for a while yet. 3.x derailed that language :(
ausjke 9y ago
I use debian mainly for servers. Tried Debian 9 this morning for desktop, do not like the hidden-by-default-activities UI, also D9 does not recognize my dual LCDs(Ubuntu has no issues with that), so it will be the same for me: All servers will be upgraded to Debian 9, Ubuntu LTS for the desktop, and ArchWiki for documentations. Good for now and Thanks for the new release.
wvh 9y ago
Happy to report I updated last week already and even my cubox-i (arm) booted just fine on first attempt. Thanks and congratulations!
AaaaBbbbasas 9y ago
Io penso che se Jobs o Gates fossero morti nelle stesse circostanze, ci sarebbe stata tutta un'altra reazione. Vaffanculo utenti Debian. Di cuore.

595 points by OberstKrueger 9y ago

At last the freeze is over. It started to be a bit annoying to build Mesa from source when stuff like newer llvm and libdrm are hard to squeeze into frozen Debian testing. I suppose the idea of reducing freeze time with "always releasable testing" didn't really work out (lack of resources?).

mablap 9y ago
I needed gcc 6 for testing and decided to upgrade the whole system about three weeks ago. It was very easy and it's still pretty stable. I might do a fresh reinstall now...
- shmerl 9y ago
  If you go from stable to testing (or unstable), it should work relatively well closer to release time when bugs in upgrade path are mostly ironed out. I was talking about the freeze itself though. It affects testing too which is normally rolling. So if the freeze is too long, things start becoming annoying.
LeoPanthera 9y ago
Testing is usually a bad distribution to use for anything in production. If something breaks, it will stay broken for quite a long time until the fix makes it out of Unstable. Unstable is almost always a better choice. Things may occasionally break, but fixes will arrive very quickly.
- shmerl 9y ago
  I'm talking about regular desktop usage, not about servers. And things break in testing only if maintainers messed up transition. Related packages should come in consistently otherwise.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    I am also talking about regular desktop usage, not servers.
  - lfam 9y ago
    'Testing' is also usually the last branch to get security updates, sometimes weeks later.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      I think that's something they tried to fix, with testing security repo.
      - lfam 9y ago
        Perhaps they are trying to improve the situation, but I read Debian security advisories regularly, and they are almost always published without a fix on the testing branch. Unstable is the Debian branch to use if stable is too slow for one's tastes. The testing branch is just for testing and it's really not safe to use on the internet.
- TomatoTomato 9y ago
  Serious question... Can't you make the same argument against using stable for the same reason? > If something breaks, it will stay broken for quite a long time until the fix makes it out of unstable [and testing].
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Stable usually doesn't get such issues. They are related to transitions. Sometimes it happens, that some packages are stuck in unstable for example, because they don't build on some arch, while their related packages go through. In result, testing gets an inconsistent combination, while unstable is OK. It happens when someone didn't take care to specify that these packages should only move to testing together. This won't happen with stable, since it will get the consistent result in the end.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    that's sysadm 101. on stable you don't get data corruption bugs, and you shutdown or filter security holes until they are confirmed fixed. on testing/unstable you can have data corruption bugs and everything else. but you may bet that security fixes are done faster. emphasis on bet.
  - vacri 9y ago
    Stable moves much slower (if at all), so breakages are much less likely, and packages are battle-tested. A cutting-edge or rolling distro, like Unstable, gets a lot more changes, and you get to do the battle-testing yourself. Basically you install the Stable system to get a stable system, and then 'bring forward' just those packages you need.

scrollaway 9y ago

Finally! Been eagerly waiting for this. Congrats Debian team. This is surprising though: > Python 2.7.13 and 3.5.3 I thought 3.6 was in Stretch out of the box. Why 3.5 only (especially on a LTS)? :\

shmerl 9y ago
Could be it didn't make it in because of bugs. Some packages will be added post release.
vbernat 9y ago
Including Python 3.6, even as a non-default Python, would have required to rebuild all Python packages and handle the non-working ones (either fix the problem or explicitely exclude Python 3.6 support for this package). There was not enough time to do all that.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Any bugs I should look at in particular? Does this mean we're stuck with Python 3.5 for the lifetime of Debian 9?
  - warbiscuit 9y ago
    Would love to know this myself. I'm in process of moving my company's main web app to python 3, and standardized on 3.5 to match Debian 9. But python 3.6 has so many cpu & memory improvements (not to mention things like f'' strings), seriously considering installing custom copy of 3.6... though not sure if I want the burden of maintaining my own copy of everything that will affect. Then again... "Debian stable" being rock solid stable is why I stick with it for production; if their caution in this is the price I pay, it's worth it.
    - voltagex_ 9y ago
      I'm not sure how tricky it'd be to maintain your own repo just for Python 3.6. It may be worth it.

donatj 9y ago

Golang 1.7... 1.9 is due out soon. Sigh, this is why I end up installing things myself without a package manager.

mappu 9y ago
Debian stable releases have a 2+ year lifespan so even 1.9 would be out of date for most of the distro's life. Luckily Go is quite easy to install and use from an isolated directory, and the majority of Debian usage here would be as a target OS where the Go compiler version doesn't matter. Also jessie shipped Go 1.3 but it was updated to Go 1.7 in jessie-backports, so you can probably expect further Go updates in stretch-backports when it's released.
- shmerl 9y ago
  You don't need to use stable. Debian testing is rolling and only stalls during release freeze period.
  - kfrzcode 9y ago
    I use unstable in my day to day and have had minimal problems.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Same here, my laptop as been on unstable for over five years and it's been fine.
      - ReverseCold 9y ago
        Unless you need Debian for some reason, why not use one of the arch based distributions or fedora/some other redhat based one? Those always have the latest packages.
        icebraining 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago

fyi Debian names their releases after Toy Story characters. Sid (Debian unstable) is named after the guy that breaks the toys.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
And experimental is called "rc-buggy". (Debian has the notion of "Release Critical" or "RC" bugs, which affect migration from unstable to testing, so I find the nickname "rc-buggy" for experimental hilarious.)
- glandium 9y ago
  IMHO, rc-buggy would have been a better pun for unstable (which is where packages with RC bugs are blocked until they can transition to testing).
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    It would have been, yes, but sid was already named.
wichert 9y ago
A nice inheritance for the days of Bruce Perens, who used to work at Pixar.
Kostic 9y ago
I've also heard that Sid is acronym for "Still in development".
- partycoder 9y ago
  Debian wiki says that backronym is incorrect. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#Which_Toy_Story_character_is_Sid.3F https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#Which_Toy_Story_chara...

lamby 9y ago

Chris Lamb here, Debian Project Leader for 2017. Would love to get your feedback on the parallel "Ask HN" thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579080

Diederich 9y ago
Thank you for all of your hard work.
jameskegel 9y ago
Thanks for everything you've done for us!
agumonkey 9y ago
I don't use debian anymore, was my first linux distro, I align more with arch but I'm very happy to see you walking steadily. Happy distrofathersday
- lamby 9y ago
  > I align more with arch Could you briefly outline why? :)
  - Latty 9y ago
    I thought I'd answer despite not being the person you asked. I run Arch because it's so bare by default, without an installer. As a power user, the fact that I know exactly how my whole system is wired together and what is there means when things go wrong or need to change, I know where to go. That and I often want to be on the bleeding edge, and the rolling release and AUR makes that super easy.
  - jrimbault 9y ago
    Not the OP. But also in the same case, Debian was my first distro, these days I align more with Arch. The ArchWiki is a gift to all the community. Rolling releases, not testing. With Arch there's a feeling of owning your OS without going full LFS. I am currently planning a summer reformatting for a laptop and I can't imagine not using Arch. But those are concerns only for my personal computers. On my servers or quick VMs I still prefer Debian.

forlorn 9y ago

How long does it usually take for things to settle down in Testing after a stable release? I heard it might take up to several months.

lamby 9y ago
I would actually recommend running unstable these days.
- plange 9y ago
  Unstable over testing? Really? Why? :-) I've been running stretch on a lenovo carbon x1 for the last 2 years and it's been one of the first problem-free experiences running linux on the desktop (linux user for.. 18 years). Really awesome. Thanks!
  - vacri 9y ago
    I've been running debian on an x1 carbon as well (gen 3). I was impressed that it 'just worked' to the point that I even got an inbuilt wireless modem, popped the SIM card in, and the only bit of configuration I had to do was, literally, choosing which of my ISP's APNs to connect to.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - progval 9y ago
    It takes security fixes a few days to get from unstable to testing.
  - brusch64 9y ago
    Some years back I was using testing. It was the year they changed over from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3. I couldn't use the stable release because my mainboard and cpu wasn't supported. Boy, was this a hard process. It took some months until my system worked without GDM crashes. After that I changed over to Arch and been a happy Arch-er since than. I wouldn't recommend running testing. I've heard that unstable is more like Arch linux and the rolling release model of Arch Linux works very well for me.

rkv 9y ago

One of my favorite changes: > If you use debhelper/9.20151219 or newer in Debian, it will generate debug symbol packages (as <package>-dbgsym) for you with no additional changes to your source package. These packages are not available from the main archive. Please fetch these from debian-debug or snapshot.debian.org. No more shipping -dbg packages with full binaries. And less storage space is always a win.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
-dbg packages never shipped full binaries (with a few exceptions for unusual libraries); they always shipped detached debug symbols. This change just makes them automatic and puts them in a separate archive.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Did not know this about Debian. I've been using Debian as my base Docker image more often these days and I'll keep this in mind for future debuggin'
  - oneplane 9y ago
    Base docker image? Sounds like you are using docker to run a complete OS.. not sure if that's the best way to do either thing. (Container: run the app, not the OS. Need a virtual OS? run a vm..)
    - djsumdog 9y ago
      No, I use Docker to run a single process. You still need a base image. Some people use Alpine, some Ubuntu, some Debian and some roll their own. Here are the Debian base images: https://hub.docker.com/_/debian/ https://hub.docker.com/_/debian/
- rkv 9y ago
  Did not know that, thank you. Do you know happen to know how it is done? When I pull the debian tarball for nginx (which has a -dbg package with symbol files) I see: > dh_strip --dbg-package=nginx-$(*)-dbg Which is the exact same command I use in my rules file. But instead of giving me a -dbg package with symbol files debuild gives me a -dbg package with the unstripped binary. Not sure what I am missing. I am following the DebugPackage guide on the Debian Wiki[1]. 1. https://wiki.debian.org/DebugPackage https://wiki.debian.org/DebugPackage

milankragujevic 9y ago

Downloading it, does anyone know how does Debian work on a MacBook Air 7,2?

LeoPanthera 9y ago
Probably best to run it in a VM.
skynode 9y ago
Why not run it on a new box?
- milankragujevic 9y ago
  I don't understand what you're trying to say. I want to use Debian as my daily OS because I don't like how macOS does things, and I got a MacBook because they are good quality and have a good warranty and I can run all 3 platforms (Win+Lin+Mac) on it if I so desire.
  - skynode 9y ago
    You like Apple's hardware but not its OS. I think there are better compromises out there, but of course, feel free to do your thing.
    - milankragujevic 9y ago
      I don't wanna argue, but keep in mind that I'm in Serbia and that I bought the MacBook with a "special financing plan" which the Apple reseller offered but not any of the generic stores that carry such ultrabooks as the XPS 13 or the Spectre...
      - jameskegel 9y ago
        I am not sure I understand

aorth 9y ago

Nice! I see it's already available on Linode.

mysticmode 9y ago
Oh that's nice. I'm about to deploy things to Linode. Will check now.

boondaburrah 9y ago

Well, my Tangerine iMac will be sad to see debian support go.

voltagex_ 9y ago
233mhz PowerPC? How long did you keep it going for? How long did you use it for?
- boondaburrah 9y ago
  Actually a 400 MHz one. Through the help of eBay I upgraded it to 1GB RAM and 160GB HDD. It's currently built into a desktop arcade machine running MAME. I have an awful habit of re-using old tech instead of throwing it out. Hopefully I can eventually get rid of the stuff that still works at the MIT FLEA or something.
jballanc 9y ago
There's always NetBSD! ;-)

tlikonen 9y ago

My favourite change is the transition to GnuPG 2.1 as the default /usr/bin/gpg. Particularly the "trust on first use" (TOFU) trust model is a really good improvement.

AaaaBbbbasas 9y ago
My favourite change is the transition to death of Ian.

rxlim 9y ago

Congratulations. The return of Firefox branding makes me feel nostalgic. I remember using Firefox 1.04 on Debian in the early 00's. This was in the golden age of Firefox, when every new release was an improvement and it was a lean non-bloated alternative to other browsers. In the past Debian was considered to be one of the most stable Linux distributions available. Stability and quality was a priority above anything else. However, around 2014 something changed when systemd was forced into Debian in a way that would never have happened before the new generation of developers took over the project. Maybe this is just something we have to get used to, young developers seems to value ease above quality and stability, this also explains the current flood of Electron apps.

vbernat 9y ago
Half of the technical committee chose systemd. None of them are new comers. The casting vote in favor of systemd was done by Bdale who is a Debian developer since the very beginning.
- rxlim 9y ago
  systemd was just a symptom. Multiple developers that had been working on Debian for many years, left the project in that period for various of reasons.
gcb0 9y ago
wait, there are packed electron "apps" in linux distros??? why? that's like packaging flash games!

wichert 9y ago

As a former Debian Project Leader from many years ago: congratulations on another fine release!

lamby 9y ago
Hey Wichert, nice to see you pop up here!

emilsedgh 9y ago

I'd like to know if the Linux server landscape is changing in favor of Debian due to Docker. It seems most popular packages are based on Debian. Although Alpine Linux is my personal choice.

jameskegel 9y ago
Alpine is the default iirc
- krzyk 9y ago
  Strange, this is the first time I hear about Alpine, most of the server stuff I work/worked with were either Redhat or Debian.
  - devonkim 9y ago
    A lot of people porting older applications that depend upon base OS assumptions into containers will probably be using more full-featured containers. With greenfield applications I would expect more use of Alpine or even the scratch base image for people trying to deploy truly minimal containers.
jedisct1 9y ago
Pretty much the opposite. Alpine is the recommended base layer, and is progressively replacing Debian and Ubuntu in many images.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago

Don't forget to verify the install medium, which is a little more involved with Debian. If you're already running a trusted Debian system, then install the debian-keyring package. Packages are signed and verified, so those keys don't need further verification. Otherwise, fetch the keys in [0] with gpg: $ gpg --keyserver keyring.debian.org --recv-keys <...> # e.g. 0x6294BE9B Then, verify the key's fingerprint with [0]: $ gpg --fingerprint Unless you don't trust your CA, this is good enough. Finally download the checksum and their signature files, and verify their signatures: $ gpg --verify <...> # e.g. SHA512SUMS.sign $ gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-role-keys.gpg --verify <...> # if using debian-keyring package [0] https://www.debian.org/CD/verify https://www.debian.org/CD/verify

jbverschoor 9y ago
It's not working for me.. # gpg --keyserver keyring.debian.org --recv-keys EF0F382A1A7B6500 gpg: requesting key 1A7B6500 from hkp server keyring.debian.org gpgkeys: key EF0F382A1A7B6500 can't be retrieved gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago
  Where are you getting "EF0F382A1A7B6500" from? The short key ids on the page, at least for me, are: 64E6EA7D 6294BE9B 09EA8AC3
  - jbverschoor 9y ago
    # apt-get update ......... Reading package lists... Done W: There is no public key available for the following key IDs: EF0F382A1A7B6500
    - jbverschoor 9y ago
      apt-get install debian-archive-keyring seems to do the trick
    - deleted 9y ago

stevekemp 9y ago

Nice to see this release; I'd already started upgrading some of my lightly-loaded servers over the past few weeks but the "real" ones will wait a little longer. One thing that is new in this release is the availability of mod_http2, for Apache. I'm looking forward to seeing if that will increase the response-time of my various websites.

hitlin37 9y ago

Thanks a ton to the whole debian team. You do amazing job that keeps the modern computing running day and night.

hitlin37 9y ago

Anyone else tried to get debian running on Macbook pro late 2016?

ensiferum 9y ago

Does it support USB yet? ;-)

sft 9y ago

A lot of the core development packages like Postgresql are already several versions behind. And who even uses DVDs to install any more? Why are they still sticking to that dead medium?

TekMol 9y ago

I have been running a little "Single Server LAMP Lifestyle Business" for 15 years now and it has been happily crunching away on rock solid Debian all the time :) All in all I spend a few hours per week on it and it pays all my bills. Thank you, Debian team! From what I read [1] Debian 8 will be supported until April 2020 and Debian 9 until June 2022. So in 2020 I will have to decide to either switch to Debian 9 or to Debian 10 which probably will be out by then. Is that correct? My feeling is that it might make things easier for me to skip Debian 9 and go directly with Debian 10. I did the same with 7. My server used Debian 6 until I switched to Debian 8. [1]: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

voltagex_ 9y ago
I have to wonder - if it runs your business, have you ever donated to Debian? This isn't having a crack at you, most people haven't donated.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  Code contributions are appreciated as well :)

stephenr 9y ago

As I mentioned yesterday on the "Upcoming" comment thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14574287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14574287), if you're looking to start using Stretch in your Vagrant dev environment, we're uploading AMD64 & i386 boxes for both VirtualBox and Parallels providers to Atlas as I type this. (If you're reading this soon, make sure it's v1.2.0, v1.1.0 is based on RC5 from a few days ago) Edit: the uploads are complete, v1.2.0 of debian9-amd64 and debian9-i386 are released. https://atlas.hashicorp.com/koalephant https://atlas.hashicorp.com/koalephant If there is user demand for it, we can look into vmware boxes, and possibly hyper-v too. Apologies if anyone feels this is off-topic/opportunistic - AFAIK all other Debian 9 boxes on Atlas target Virtualbox only, and while projects like Boxcutter (which we forked from) do support Parallels/etc, they aren't always the quickest to produce new boxes.

tamalsaha001 9y ago

Really looking forward to this release. We run Kubernetes with Debian 8. One of the big pain points has been needing to enable Docker memory accounting. I read that memory accounting will be enabled by default in Debian 9. Is that still the case?

blfr 9y ago

Chromium 59.0.3071.86 How well is Chromium supported on Debian? I like it as a secondary browser for its excellent support of multiple profiles but I run Ubuntu and had to switch to Chrome because Chromium doesn't seem to be updated promptly.

hansjorg 9y ago
You should check out the new contextual containers feature in Firefox if you haven't. Both more convenient and more powerful than profiles. As someone commented elsewhere in this thread, you can get FF version 52 in the security repo of Stretch, even if the default browser is Firefox ESR. https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/
- blfr 9y ago
  Interesting. Does it also allow different settings/addons per each profile?
  - hansjorg 9y ago
    I don't think so, but some addons support per container settings. For example Cookie AutoDelete where each defined container can have its own whitelist: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
XzetaU8 9y ago
For the latest Chromium builds on Ubuntu you can add the "Canonical Chromium Builds” PPA https://launchpad.net/~canonical-chromium-builds/+archive/ubuntu/stage https://launchpad.net/~canonical-chromium-builds/+archive/ub...
vbernat 9y ago
Chromium has an exception to always keep it up-to-date with the latest version. In Jessie, it was updated in the same week as for unstable.

mlcdf 9y ago

Firefox is back. Me: Yay! In version 45 (released on March 8, 2016) Me: WTF.

thanksgiving 9y ago
I am on Jessie. I am on 52.2.0.
bonyt 9y ago
It's Firefox-esr in the repo, which is the extended support release, https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ I think 52 is in the security repo now, though
- mlcdf 9y ago
  Oh okay. Thank you!
vacri 9y ago
Debian Stable is just that: stable. The default browser is an Extended Support Release (marked as such by the vendor, not Debian), so it'll stick around longer. An ESR is more useful for use cases like education or companies that roll their own SOEs and like to document things for users. Browsers love randomly changing the UI or other behaviour on a whim (and on a 6-week cycle). So, it's a browser's ESR by default, and you can always install another one.
- jancsika 9y ago
  > The default browser is an Extended Support Release (marked as such by the vendor, not Debian), so it'll stick around longer. But Debian Jessie was the "Stable" version for roughly two years. Mozilla's end-of-life for ESR 52 is on June 26, 2018. If Stretch has the same lifetime as Jessie, that leaves roughly one year during which Firefox ESR 52 will be end-of-life. So how will Debian Stretch remain stable during a period when it is shipping an end-of-life Firefox for which-- as Mozilla states-- "no further updates will be offered for that version?" edit: typo

mayhew 9y ago

I've been running Stretch for 6 months and can't remember a single crash or issue. Amazingly stable release, kudos and thanks to everyone involved.

ClashTheBunny 9y ago

It seems you have committed to supporting Python 2.7 for two years longer than official support. Could you comment on that situation?

avar 9y ago
This also applies for the perl version they shipped, perl releases are supported for 3 years, Debian for 5. It's inevitable that you're going to get mismatches between OS support and "official" support for the specific packages that go into that release. Not all projects provide supported releases over a period of years, so distros just do their best to patch any issues that upstream has stopped caring about past that point. In practice the only thing that's going to be a big worry are new security issues, which upstream is usually willing to go out of their way to fix for versions still used in the wild, even for technically "unsupported" releases, at least the Perl project is, I don't know about Python.
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 9y ago
I'd expect most packages to be EOL from the perspective of upstream by then. It's a normal thing for distributions to backport fixes, sometimes even develop them themselves when required.
collinmanderson 9y ago
I think it's pretty normal for Debian (or any distro) to support software beyond the normal upstream support.
RUTHLESS_RUFUS 9y ago
Very glad they're supporting 2.7! Hope we'll stick with it for a while yet. 3.x derailed that language :(

ausjke 9y ago

I use debian mainly for servers. Tried Debian 9 this morning for desktop, do not like the hidden-by-default-activities UI, also D9 does not recognize my dual LCDs(Ubuntu has no issues with that), so it will be the same for me: All servers will be upgraded to Debian 9, Ubuntu LTS for the desktop, and ArchWiki for documentations. Good for now and Thanks for the new release.

wvh 9y ago

Happy to report I updated last week already and even my cubox-i (arm) booted just fine on first attempt. Thanks and congratulations!

AaaaBbbbasas 9y ago

Io penso che se Jobs o Gates fossero morti nelle stesse circostanze, ci sarebbe stata tutta un'altra reazione. Vaffanculo utenti Debian. Di cuore.