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Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" released

428 points by sciurus 13y ago

pervycreeper 13y ago
Would this be a good time to migrate from Ubuntu?
- dsr_ 13y ago
  Certainly. Wheezy is the new "stable", which will get security support for a year past the introduction of the next stable release. It's an excellent choice for servers, and right now it's not a bad desktop release. In another year or so you might want to move to the testing release for a desktop that needs the latest features.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Debian testing won't have "the latest features" a year from now, though. I guess it'll have "later features", but IME desktops really benefit from tracking unstable. Which, as one might expect, is sometimes...unstable. Enter Ubuntu. There's a pretty good reason to use Debian on servers because of the long support cycles, but on a desktop I feel like most people are going to probably prefer an Ubuntu setup.
    - oinksoft 13y ago
      Once, this was a valid comparison (Ubuntu/Sid). Now Ubuntu is a strange beast, a world apart from other distros in goals and just in the basic desktop experience. aptosid is probably a better choice if you want a more stable Sid these days without the Ubuntu kaleidoscope.
    - dfc 13y ago
      I have used unstable as my main desktop for over a decade now.[1] At first there were occasional issues but these went away as I became more experienced with debian. It has been years since I encountered a bug that caused me to lose more than an hour of productivity. The most recent issue that I have had with unstable was over a year ago and it was simply a matter of pinning a version of libcairo. The only reason I remember this so well is that someone else on HN was having trouble and my comment[2] on how to fix it was my highest rated comment at the time. [1] To be honest I actually run a mixed system with a few packages (not just oneoffs but big things like xmonad/iceweasel/awesome/git/pandoc/git-annex/gitit) from experimental. If it has been a long time (5-7 years) since you tried unstable you can think of experimental as what unstable used to be. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796
    - thristian 13y ago
      Debian has historically run on an approximately 2-year release cycle (and more recent releases have been closer to that cadence). Right now, Testing is kind of old, because it's been frozen in the run-up to the Wheezy release. In a month or two, Testing will probably be mostly current, and will stay that way until about 18 months' time when the Jessie freeze kicks in, and then it'll be a slow wait until the release of Jessie and then the cycle repeats. Ubuntu is too... opinionated for my tastes, and other distros are too conservative (CentOS/RHEL) or too wild (Arch, Gentoo). Debian Testing seems to have a high-quality, comprehensive package archive and keep reasonably up-to-date, and if the price to pay is that for six months every two years you get a stable desktop environment instead... no complaints from me. EDIT: The usual lag between Testing and Unstable is 10 days, except in big, complicated transitions and dependencies (say, when a commonly used shared library is being upgraded to a new, incompatible ABI). Again, I could probably be more up-to-date if I tracked Unstable instead of Testing, but I'd rather wait for Debian to nail down its migration plan in Unstable so I can upgrade smoothly, rather than have the latest and greatest and have to rebuild my own packages occasionally.
  - mverwijs 13y ago
    That really depends on your desktop. For my daily life, I use Firefox (iceweasel), Google Chrome, a terminal, some ruby or python. All of these have a channel for installing the latest version of their software without having to dist-upgrade. XFCE hasn't had a notable UI change in years (at least not discernable to me). KDE and GNOME have only mucked things up over the last decade.
- oinksoft 13y ago
  Just make sure you're not on "testing" if you're doing this for a desktop (note that it is uncommon to run "testing" on a server). This release means that Sid ("unstable") just became "testing". Now, many folks are running Sid fine on their desktops, but historically the Sid -> testing push is volatile in the short term, and you probably would want to wait a couple weeks. Basically, be wary of "testing" after a release.
  - cdjk 13y ago
    Not quite. Sid is always unstable, and the new testing is jessie: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ Otherwise you're right - now it probably not the best time to switch to jessie/testing.
    - tshepang 13y ago
      I would think Testing is pretty much safe, since all the new packages have to live a bit in Sid (10 days by default) before they reach Testing, so they get some testing. The only issue I know with Testing is temporary removals of some packages to help with these transitions.
- eropple 13y ago
  I'm not, because I find Debian's KVM support to be not what I expect, but if you don't like Ubuntu for whatever reason, it's not a bad time to do it. That said, Debian stable means you'd better be happy with what you have for a very long time unless you want to deal with the often-painful stable->testing or stable->unstable migration. (It can be done, I've done it many times, but expect it to break something.) Personally, I just use Ubuntu. It's Debian unstable but shinier. :)
  - kbar13 13y ago
    and with upstart &co
    - mverwijs 13y ago
      I'm unable to determine if you mean upstart to be a Good Thing, or a Bad Thing, or anything in between. To me, switching back from Ubuntu to Debian was a blessing. And I simply cannot understand this need to decrease boottimes. My laptop boots into Debian under 12 seconds. That is pretty fast. Under Ubuntu, I timed it at 10 seconds. 2 seconds boottime? Is that what this upstart/systemd hastle is all about? I just do not get that.
      - ludwigvan 13y ago
        ""Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?" " http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt
        mverwijs 13y ago
        I don't know. I mean, the trend has been hand-held devices and laptops for the past decade or so. They don't get booted every day and will be less and less. All the while, devices are getting faster hardware, making the difference even less. Too me, it still seems not worth breaking a working standard (SysV) over.
- jebblue 13y ago
  If you're running Ubuntu Desktop and want to run modern game systems like Steam then I think you'd want to stay on Ubuntu.
  - lgp171188 13y ago
    https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy
    - psionski 13y ago
      That's what I used for my Debian unstable + Mint "Steam box", it works perfectly. P.S. Mint provides only Firefox.
    - nona 13y ago
      Steam's actually in experimental these days, just apt-get install steam/experimental and be on your way :)
karlmdavis 13y ago
> This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as: > Linux 3.2 For anyone else wondering, Ubuntu 13.04 has the 3.8 kernel and 12.04.2 has the 3.5 kernel (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack).
- oinksoft 13y ago
  For anyone else wondering, RHEL 6.4 has the 2.6.32-358 kernel. Zenwalk 7.2 has the 3.2.5 kernel. What's the point of citing the kernel shipped with another distro here?
  - jckt 13y ago
    It's an interesting fact I suppose. It's interesting to see why certain distros chose certain kernel versions.
    - IanChiles 13y ago
      Debian has a long release cycle and uses the stablest versions available - and I believe that 3.2 is a "long term support" kernel, like 2.6 - getting large numbers of patches, and stability updates backported.
      - jckt 13y ago
        I'm aware of that. Not sure about Zenwalk, though (admittedly, I've never heard of that distro till today).
  - will1000 13y ago
    I was under the impression that a newer kernel ment more hardware support. Am I wrong?
    - oinksoft 13y ago
      Of course. The tone of the top-level comment, I think, is "woah, Debian, you call this kernel updated?" Rock-solid distros like RHEL/CentOS and Debian are deliberately conservative. Some folks don't like that.
mappu 13y ago
Congratulations to everyone involved. I've been running wheezy on my home server for a while now (/var/www moved to /srv, apt diffs package lists...) and i look forward to upgrading the production servers over the coming months. As an aside, it's really interesting that the word 'Linux' is mentioned only once on this page - and only after the kFreeBSD kernel.
- leeoniya 13y ago
  i've always wondered about /var/www vs /srv/www nginx on ubuntu now uses /usr/share/nginx/www i wonder how long these conventions will continue to be all over the place.
  - oinksoft 13y ago
    That's why we have the FHS ;) /srv contains site-specific data which is served by this system. http://www.samba.org/~cyeoh/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVICESPROVIDEDBYSYSTEM http://www.samba.org/~cyeoh/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVI... Unfortunately, /srv/ is often ignored. Good move by Debian to make this change, and hopefully this gets the ball rolling for other distros.
    - pconf 13y ago
      /srv will continue to be ignored just as /opt and other one-offs are ignored. Reason being that they duplicate existing functionality, in this case under /var, /usr, or /usr/local. What /srv/ really stands for is NIH.
      - moe 13y ago
        /opt is justified. /srv is indeed NIH (redundant with /var/whatever).
        jmomo 13y ago
        /opt is basically for 3rd parties to install software, because they can't be trusted to behave and integrate with the regular filesystem. The last thing you want is Oracle farking around with anything under /usr or /var, because they will fuck up your entire OS for their benefit alone. That is why /opt exists, in my understanding. /srv is a bit questionable to me. Basically it's another /var. I always used directories like /var/local and /var/share (sambd and nfs shares). However, I am understanding the FHS crew wants to freeze the /var filesystem because it was getting too crazy with all kinds of stuff being placed under /var, and the likelihood of conflicts was getting high.
derefr 13y ago
So what would people's opinions be on running this vs. Ubuntu LTS on a server? What about one that relies on more recent features (LXC et al)?
- jmillikin 13y ago
  Personally, I would prefer Debian to Ubuntu-LTS on servers. The primary advantage of Ubuntu over Debian is access to more recent package versions, and LTS surrenders most of that advantage in an attempt to approach Debian's reliability. Besides, most use cases for servers don't require bleeding-edge packages as long as the distribution is backporting security fixes. I wouldn't worry about LXC support; it's fairly old tech by now, and even the previous stable version of Debian supports it. LXC in Wheezy should work just fine. The only major issue I can think of with putting servers on Debian is their very very old kernel versions. The kernel in Wheezy is missing a lot of recent optimizations in the networking and filesystem code, and doesn't support user namespaces (important for container-based virtualization).
- FooBarWidget 13y ago
  I prefer Ubuntu LTS nowadays. Debian's support for AppArmor and SELinux is still broken and it doesn't look like they're going to fix it any time soon. On Ubuntu they seem to work fine.
- vacri 13y ago
  We run ubuntu servers, but I'm thinking of changing over to debian. Ubuntu is a moving target with its 6-mo releases - every release has a new method for doing foo. For the 12.04 LTS, it's packages don't get version updates just like debian - meaning if you want something more recent you have to step in and install them yourself. So may as well just run debian in that case. Ubuntu has a stronger desktop community when you run into problems (largely due to scale), but debian has a strong server community. And the Debian Way of doing things usually stays the same way for years for a given subsystem - google providing advice from 2009 is likely to still be helpful. The ubuntu philosophy... not so much. A colleague wanted to turn off thin scrollbars in the ubuntu desktop, and found that for the last four 6-mo releases, there were four separate ways to do this... But, on the other hand, ubuntu LTS is better supported by a lot of vendors (eg AWS has an official ubuntu AMI, but no Debian one). It depends on your use case, I guess.
shared4you 13y ago
My sources.list has the word "testing" all this while. Should I change it to "wheezy" now? I'm asking because I guess new packages (in large numbers!) will start trickling down to testing/jessie and the possibility of breakage is high. What is a reasonable time to expect this "rush" to slowdown or come back to the pace of "normal" testing? I can probably live with my existing "testing" for say 1-2 months, after which I would like newer packages.
- mverwijs 13y ago
  I'd say switch the sources.list to 'stable' or 'wheezy' for a few weeks. After that, switch back to 'testing' and run "apt-get dist-upgrade --assume-no" and see what Debian is going to upgrade. There is no real proper way to do this, other than testing in a VM, or a chroot.
  - jeltz 13y ago
    I recommend using --simulate instead of --assume-no though so you get to see the specific versions.
- perlgeek 13y ago
  Using release code names ("wheezy") is generally safer, because that way you don't accidentally upgrade. Note that if you have pinning rules, then there you must also change "testing" to "wheezy".
- __david__ 13y ago
  FWIW, I've been running Debian "testing" on my machine since 2001-ish and I've never done anything special near releases. Except maybe rejoice at all the old packages finally getting upgraded. :-)
  - shared4you 13y ago
    Didn't you run into any breakage of packages? I mean there's this mad rush into testing right after a new release. I'm thinking of running wheezy for a couple of months until the storm calms down.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
networked 13y ago
Glad to see Wheezy finally become Stable. I used to run Debian on a PowerPC Mac as my main desktop system and today I still use a "portable server" Palm Pre Plus running Squeeze chroot on a regular basis. In my experience Debian is really great on non-x86 hardware. Too bad the old webOS kernel means I won't be able to upgrade it to Wheezy, at least not easily. That said, I wish Debian would compete with Ubuntu LTS on longer support for OldStable. (Ubuntu LTS releases are now supported for five years [1] while a Debian Stable release is expected to get three years of support [2].) [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases
- mafro 13y ago
  I'm not sure where you got three years support bit from (could you point me?) Linked from the DebianReleases page you listed: Q: How long will security updates be provided? A: The security team tries to support a stable distribution for about one year after the next stable distribution has been released, except when another stable distribution is released within this year. It is not possible to support three distributions; supporting two simultaneously is already difficult enough. [1] http://www.debian.org/security/faq#lifespan http://www.debian.org/security/faq#lifespan
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    The expected duration between stable releases is two years, so "one year after the next stable" is three years.
arc_of_descent 13y ago
Great news. Although I've been running Wheezy on my desktop for quite some time now. Guess its time to update my laptop which is running Squeeze.
westurner 13y ago
http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python2.7.ttl http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python2.7.ttl
drewjaja 13y ago
For those wanting to upgrade from Debian 6.0 squeeze http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch...
st3fan 13y ago
"This release includes numerous updated software packages" ... software packages which are already outdated.
- st3fan 13y ago
  Funny how this is downvoted. Fact is that Debian has always been outdated. For some that is a strength, for most it is a frustration.
  - cschol 13y ago
    The great thing is that most are not forced to use Debian with its "outdated packages". Freedom of choice.
jlgaddis 13y ago
Note: If you're using puppet to manage machines running Debian squeeze, make sure that your puppetmaster is running (at least) v2.7. See also: "Issues to be aware of for wheezy" (http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch...).
dietrichepp 13y ago
It's interesting to see Iceweasel 10 on this list with a renewed perspective. I was doing some web development last week and spent some hours chasing after an audio latency problem when using HTML5 audio on Iceweasel/Firefox 10. It turns out that according to my web server logs, nobody uses versions that old, and when I tried using a newer version I discovered that the bugs simply don't manifest. So I recommend to Debian users who use Iceweasel: install a newer version. You can get it directly from Debian Iceweasel maintainers, and instructions are available at: http://mozilla.debian.net http://mozilla.debian.net

428 points by sciurus 13y ago

pervycreeper 13y ago

Would this be a good time to migrate from Ubuntu?

dsr_ 13y ago
Certainly. Wheezy is the new "stable", which will get security support for a year past the introduction of the next stable release. It's an excellent choice for servers, and right now it's not a bad desktop release. In another year or so you might want to move to the testing release for a desktop that needs the latest features.
- eropple 13y ago
  Debian testing won't have "the latest features" a year from now, though. I guess it'll have "later features", but IME desktops really benefit from tracking unstable. Which, as one might expect, is sometimes...unstable. Enter Ubuntu. There's a pretty good reason to use Debian on servers because of the long support cycles, but on a desktop I feel like most people are going to probably prefer an Ubuntu setup.
  - oinksoft 13y ago
    Once, this was a valid comparison (Ubuntu/Sid). Now Ubuntu is a strange beast, a world apart from other distros in goals and just in the basic desktop experience. aptosid is probably a better choice if you want a more stable Sid these days without the Ubuntu kaleidoscope.
  - dfc 13y ago
    I have used unstable as my main desktop for over a decade now.[1] At first there were occasional issues but these went away as I became more experienced with debian. It has been years since I encountered a bug that caused me to lose more than an hour of productivity. The most recent issue that I have had with unstable was over a year ago and it was simply a matter of pinning a version of libcairo. The only reason I remember this so well is that someone else on HN was having trouble and my comment[2] on how to fix it was my highest rated comment at the time. [1] To be honest I actually run a mixed system with a few packages (not just oneoffs but big things like xmonad/iceweasel/awesome/git/pandoc/git-annex/gitit) from experimental. If it has been a long time (5-7 years) since you tried unstable you can think of experimental as what unstable used to be. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796
  - thristian 13y ago
    Debian has historically run on an approximately 2-year release cycle (and more recent releases have been closer to that cadence). Right now, Testing is kind of old, because it's been frozen in the run-up to the Wheezy release. In a month or two, Testing will probably be mostly current, and will stay that way until about 18 months' time when the Jessie freeze kicks in, and then it'll be a slow wait until the release of Jessie and then the cycle repeats. Ubuntu is too... opinionated for my tastes, and other distros are too conservative (CentOS/RHEL) or too wild (Arch, Gentoo). Debian Testing seems to have a high-quality, comprehensive package archive and keep reasonably up-to-date, and if the price to pay is that for six months every two years you get a stable desktop environment instead... no complaints from me. EDIT: The usual lag between Testing and Unstable is 10 days, except in big, complicated transitions and dependencies (say, when a commonly used shared library is being upgraded to a new, incompatible ABI). Again, I could probably be more up-to-date if I tracked Unstable instead of Testing, but I'd rather wait for Debian to nail down its migration plan in Unstable so I can upgrade smoothly, rather than have the latest and greatest and have to rebuild my own packages occasionally.
- mverwijs 13y ago
  That really depends on your desktop. For my daily life, I use Firefox (iceweasel), Google Chrome, a terminal, some ruby or python. All of these have a channel for installing the latest version of their software without having to dist-upgrade. XFCE hasn't had a notable UI change in years (at least not discernable to me). KDE and GNOME have only mucked things up over the last decade.
oinksoft 13y ago
Just make sure you're not on "testing" if you're doing this for a desktop (note that it is uncommon to run "testing" on a server). This release means that Sid ("unstable") just became "testing". Now, many folks are running Sid fine on their desktops, but historically the Sid -> testing push is volatile in the short term, and you probably would want to wait a couple weeks. Basically, be wary of "testing" after a release.
- cdjk 13y ago
  Not quite. Sid is always unstable, and the new testing is jessie: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ Otherwise you're right - now it probably not the best time to switch to jessie/testing.
  - tshepang 13y ago
    I would think Testing is pretty much safe, since all the new packages have to live a bit in Sid (10 days by default) before they reach Testing, so they get some testing. The only issue I know with Testing is temporary removals of some packages to help with these transitions.
eropple 13y ago
I'm not, because I find Debian's KVM support to be not what I expect, but if you don't like Ubuntu for whatever reason, it's not a bad time to do it. That said, Debian stable means you'd better be happy with what you have for a very long time unless you want to deal with the often-painful stable->testing or stable->unstable migration. (It can be done, I've done it many times, but expect it to break something.) Personally, I just use Ubuntu. It's Debian unstable but shinier. :)
- kbar13 13y ago
  and with upstart &co
  - mverwijs 13y ago
    I'm unable to determine if you mean upstart to be a Good Thing, or a Bad Thing, or anything in between. To me, switching back from Ubuntu to Debian was a blessing. And I simply cannot understand this need to decrease boottimes. My laptop boots into Debian under 12 seconds. That is pretty fast. Under Ubuntu, I timed it at 10 seconds. 2 seconds boottime? Is that what this upstart/systemd hastle is all about? I just do not get that.
    - ludwigvan 13y ago
      ""Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?" " http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt
      - mverwijs 13y ago
        I don't know. I mean, the trend has been hand-held devices and laptops for the past decade or so. They don't get booted every day and will be less and less. All the while, devices are getting faster hardware, making the difference even less. Too me, it still seems not worth breaking a working standard (SysV) over.
jebblue 13y ago
If you're running Ubuntu Desktop and want to run modern game systems like Steam then I think you'd want to stay on Ubuntu.
- lgp171188 13y ago
  https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy
  - psionski 13y ago
    That's what I used for my Debian unstable + Mint "Steam box", it works perfectly. P.S. Mint provides only Firefox.
  - nona 13y ago
    Steam's actually in experimental these days, just apt-get install steam/experimental and be on your way :)

karlmdavis 13y ago

> This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as: > Linux 3.2 For anyone else wondering, Ubuntu 13.04 has the 3.8 kernel and 12.04.2 has the 3.5 kernel (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack).

oinksoft 13y ago
For anyone else wondering, RHEL 6.4 has the 2.6.32-358 kernel. Zenwalk 7.2 has the 3.2.5 kernel. What's the point of citing the kernel shipped with another distro here?
- jckt 13y ago
  It's an interesting fact I suppose. It's interesting to see why certain distros chose certain kernel versions.
  - IanChiles 13y ago
    Debian has a long release cycle and uses the stablest versions available - and I believe that 3.2 is a "long term support" kernel, like 2.6 - getting large numbers of patches, and stability updates backported.
    - jckt 13y ago
      I'm aware of that. Not sure about Zenwalk, though (admittedly, I've never heard of that distro till today).
- will1000 13y ago
  I was under the impression that a newer kernel ment more hardware support. Am I wrong?
  - oinksoft 13y ago
    Of course. The tone of the top-level comment, I think, is "woah, Debian, you call this kernel updated?" Rock-solid distros like RHEL/CentOS and Debian are deliberately conservative. Some folks don't like that.

mappu 13y ago

Congratulations to everyone involved. I've been running wheezy on my home server for a while now (/var/www moved to /srv, apt diffs package lists...) and i look forward to upgrading the production servers over the coming months. As an aside, it's really interesting that the word 'Linux' is mentioned only once on this page - and only after the kFreeBSD kernel.

leeoniya 13y ago
i've always wondered about /var/www vs /srv/www nginx on ubuntu now uses /usr/share/nginx/www i wonder how long these conventions will continue to be all over the place.
- oinksoft 13y ago
  That's why we have the FHS ;) /srv contains site-specific data which is served by this system. http://www.samba.org/~cyeoh/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVICESPROVIDEDBYSYSTEM http://www.samba.org/~cyeoh/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVI... Unfortunately, /srv/ is often ignored. Good move by Debian to make this change, and hopefully this gets the ball rolling for other distros.
  - pconf 13y ago
    /srv will continue to be ignored just as /opt and other one-offs are ignored. Reason being that they duplicate existing functionality, in this case under /var, /usr, or /usr/local. What /srv/ really stands for is NIH.
    - moe 13y ago
      /opt is justified. /srv is indeed NIH (redundant with /var/whatever).
      - jmomo 13y ago
        /opt is basically for 3rd parties to install software, because they can't be trusted to behave and integrate with the regular filesystem. The last thing you want is Oracle farking around with anything under /usr or /var, because they will fuck up your entire OS for their benefit alone. That is why /opt exists, in my understanding. /srv is a bit questionable to me. Basically it's another /var. I always used directories like /var/local and /var/share (sambd and nfs shares). However, I am understanding the FHS crew wants to freeze the /var filesystem because it was getting too crazy with all kinds of stuff being placed under /var, and the likelihood of conflicts was getting high.

derefr 13y ago

So what would people's opinions be on running this vs. Ubuntu LTS on a server? What about one that relies on more recent features (LXC et al)?

jmillikin 13y ago
Personally, I would prefer Debian to Ubuntu-LTS on servers. The primary advantage of Ubuntu over Debian is access to more recent package versions, and LTS surrenders most of that advantage in an attempt to approach Debian's reliability. Besides, most use cases for servers don't require bleeding-edge packages as long as the distribution is backporting security fixes. I wouldn't worry about LXC support; it's fairly old tech by now, and even the previous stable version of Debian supports it. LXC in Wheezy should work just fine. The only major issue I can think of with putting servers on Debian is their very very old kernel versions. The kernel in Wheezy is missing a lot of recent optimizations in the networking and filesystem code, and doesn't support user namespaces (important for container-based virtualization).
FooBarWidget 13y ago
I prefer Ubuntu LTS nowadays. Debian's support for AppArmor and SELinux is still broken and it doesn't look like they're going to fix it any time soon. On Ubuntu they seem to work fine.
vacri 13y ago
We run ubuntu servers, but I'm thinking of changing over to debian. Ubuntu is a moving target with its 6-mo releases - every release has a new method for doing foo. For the 12.04 LTS, it's packages don't get version updates just like debian - meaning if you want something more recent you have to step in and install them yourself. So may as well just run debian in that case. Ubuntu has a stronger desktop community when you run into problems (largely due to scale), but debian has a strong server community. And the Debian Way of doing things usually stays the same way for years for a given subsystem - google providing advice from 2009 is likely to still be helpful. The ubuntu philosophy... not so much. A colleague wanted to turn off thin scrollbars in the ubuntu desktop, and found that for the last four 6-mo releases, there were four separate ways to do this... But, on the other hand, ubuntu LTS is better supported by a lot of vendors (eg AWS has an official ubuntu AMI, but no Debian one). It depends on your use case, I guess.

shared4you 13y ago

My sources.list has the word "testing" all this while. Should I change it to "wheezy" now? I'm asking because I guess new packages (in large numbers!) will start trickling down to testing/jessie and the possibility of breakage is high. What is a reasonable time to expect this "rush" to slowdown or come back to the pace of "normal" testing? I can probably live with my existing "testing" for say 1-2 months, after which I would like newer packages.

mverwijs 13y ago
I'd say switch the sources.list to 'stable' or 'wheezy' for a few weeks. After that, switch back to 'testing' and run "apt-get dist-upgrade --assume-no" and see what Debian is going to upgrade. There is no real proper way to do this, other than testing in a VM, or a chroot.
- jeltz 13y ago
  I recommend using --simulate instead of --assume-no though so you get to see the specific versions.
perlgeek 13y ago
Using release code names ("wheezy") is generally safer, because that way you don't accidentally upgrade. Note that if you have pinning rules, then there you must also change "testing" to "wheezy".
__david__ 13y ago
FWIW, I've been running Debian "testing" on my machine since 2001-ish and I've never done anything special near releases. Except maybe rejoice at all the old packages finally getting upgraded. :-)
- shared4you 13y ago
  Didn't you run into any breakage of packages? I mean there's this mad rush into testing right after a new release. I'm thinking of running wheezy for a couple of months until the storm calms down.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

networked 13y ago

Glad to see Wheezy finally become Stable. I used to run Debian on a PowerPC Mac as my main desktop system and today I still use a "portable server" Palm Pre Plus running Squeeze chroot on a regular basis. In my experience Debian is really great on non-x86 hardware. Too bad the old webOS kernel means I won't be able to upgrade it to Wheezy, at least not easily. That said, I wish Debian would compete with Ubuntu LTS on longer support for OldStable. (Ubuntu LTS releases are now supported for five years [1] while a Debian Stable release is expected to get three years of support [2].) [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases

mafro 13y ago
I'm not sure where you got three years support bit from (could you point me?) Linked from the DebianReleases page you listed: Q: How long will security updates be provided? A: The security team tries to support a stable distribution for about one year after the next stable distribution has been released, except when another stable distribution is released within this year. It is not possible to support three distributions; supporting two simultaneously is already difficult enough. [1] http://www.debian.org/security/faq#lifespan http://www.debian.org/security/faq#lifespan
- jmillikin 13y ago
  The expected duration between stable releases is two years, so "one year after the next stable" is three years.

arc_of_descent 13y ago

Great news. Although I've been running Wheezy on my desktop for quite some time now. Guess its time to update my laptop which is running Squeeze.

westurner 13y ago

http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python2.7.ttl http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python2.7.ttl

drewjaja 13y ago

For those wanting to upgrade from Debian 6.0 squeeze http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch...

st3fan 13y ago

"This release includes numerous updated software packages" ... software packages which are already outdated.

st3fan 13y ago
Funny how this is downvoted. Fact is that Debian has always been outdated. For some that is a strength, for most it is a frustration.
- cschol 13y ago
  The great thing is that most are not forced to use Debian with its "outdated packages". Freedom of choice.

jlgaddis 13y ago

Note: If you're using puppet to manage machines running Debian squeeze, make sure that your puppetmaster is running (at least) v2.7. See also: "Issues to be aware of for wheezy" (http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch...).

dietrichepp 13y ago

It's interesting to see Iceweasel 10 on this list with a renewed perspective. I was doing some web development last week and spent some hours chasing after an audio latency problem when using HTML5 audio on Iceweasel/Firefox 10. It turns out that according to my web server logs, nobody uses versions that old, and when I tried using a newer version I discovered that the bugs simply don't manifest. So I recommend to Debian users who use Iceweasel: install a newer version. You can get it directly from Debian Iceweasel maintainers, and instructions are available at: http://mozilla.debian.net http://mozilla.debian.net