[Preston] Bad Debian day

[Matthew T. Atkinson]

'ellow,

On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 14:11, Dougie Nisbet wrote:
> Am I right in thinking that they're going to freeze sarge soon and it'll 
> become the new stable? My plan, or resolution, is to stick with stable when 
> it freezes and start looking more into backports as you suggest.

Firstly I am glad you're happy with Postfix as your MTA :-).

I have recently read on DebianPlanet.org that Sarge is now expected
``before summer'' and when it comes out it will have kernel 2.6 by
default (anyone familiar with ``what Debian are like'' will probably be
as shocked as I was to hear this!) and will also feature enhancements
such as those found in the NSA's SELinux (``Security-Enhanced Linux'').

It sounds like the amazing new debian-installer is picking up pace and
is on track for a third beta soon and then release.  There are a few
hundred release-critical bugs at the moment but they're expected to be
fixed in the coming weeks.

I expect that the Debian project will take a lot of flack for
``delaying'' the release even more (though they purposefully never set
release dates).  I for one would love to have Sarge now for my server. 
However, I think that if they play their cards right, it could be a
really amazing release and raise the profile of Linux as a whole if it
works out.  Particular organisations such as schools and governments
could be seriously drawn to a truly Free, secure /and/ easy-to-install
distro :-).

OK, that's enough ranting from me! :-),

bye just now,


P.S. For a desktop, I think you'd do well to use testing or unstable (I
have had very few problems with unstable since I started full-time with
it in Easter 2003).  For servers, I think stable and the (very)
occasional backport makes sense.  However, I would strongly recommend
you be /very/ picky about which backports you use; or you'll end up with
a very messy system.
-- 
Matthew T. Atkinson <matthew at agrip.org.uk>