Debian Etch Released

[bryansmith]

Hell has frozen over!

For those of you interested, Debian 4.0 (Etch) has finally been released. I usually don't post about this kind of thing but for things that only happen what seems like every few years, it deserves a notice.

Release announcement

Enjoy!

[devils casper]

ahaa.. thats a pretty good news. Etch is Officially stable atlast.

[j0nb]

So does this mean that "etch" is the new "stable", and all the others just move up? So if my repositories were specified as "testing" rather than "etch" in my /etc/apt/sources.list and I ran a dist-upgrade today, would all my packages be replaced with the packages from what was "experimental"?

I've been running an etch/testing system since I first switched to linux, and I'm wondering whether I should stick with etch for now and then in a few months upgrade to the new testing?

I guess I don't understand why packages don't just continue to trickle down as they're proven to be stable, and instead there is an official point when etch is considered stable.

Could someone enlighten me as to how this all works?

[bryansmith]

If your sources.list has testing repos listed, you will continue to stay with the testing branch. So, running a dist-upgrade would yield no upgrades to a new version.

Yes, etch is the new stable version of Debian.

[jens]

If your sources.list has testing repos listed, you will continue to stay with the testing branch. So, running a dist-upgrade would yield no upgrades to a new version.

Yes, etch is the new stable version of Debian.

Yes and no.
You already had the option to use etch instead of stable in your sources.list.
If you used "etch", it will become and stay stable.
If you're using "testing" it will become Lenny.

Just make sure all your repos list stable or etch

[bryansmith]

Yes and no.
You already had the option to use etch instead of stable in your sources.list.
If you used "etch", it will become and stay stable.
If you're using "testing" it will become Lenny.

Just make sure all your repos list stable or etch

I guess I should have clarified what I said - by testing repos in the sources.list I meant having testing instead of etch.

Thanks jens for clarifying that.

[j0nb]

After doing some reading , it appears that the new testing "Lenny" starts out as a "copy of etch", so does that mean if I change my repos to "testing" that I will basically have the same system, which will be gradually updated with apt-get upgrade, just as I'm used to? ... Anyway I guess I should just test this out, instead of asking all these questions

from here: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/

This release started as a copy of etch, and is currently in a state called testing. That means that things should not break as badly as in unstable or experimental distributions, because packages are allowed to enter this distribution only after a certain period of time has passed, and when they don't have any release-critical bugs filed against them.

edit: After changing my sources.list, replacing "etch" with "testing" I have around 150 packages to update. Is that because there has been a gradual freeze in etch packages as they were preparing to release it as "stable", and if not then what do they mean by the above, that Lenny started out as a copy of etch?

[jens]

After doing some reading , it appears that the new testing "Lenny" starts out as a "copy of etch", so does that mean if I change my repos to "testing" that I will basically have the same system, which will be gradually updated with apt-get upgrade, just as I'm used to? ... Anyway I guess I should just test this out, instead of asking all these questions

from here: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/



edit: After changing my sources.list, replacing "etch" with "testing" I have around 150 packages to update. Is that because there has been a gradual freeze in etch packages as they were preparing to release it as "stable", and if not then what do they mean by the above, that Lenny started out as a copy of etch?

It always starts as copy from stable, but the updates are not gradually at all.
Almost 2000 packages were added in testing the first day after the release of Etch.
If you want cutting edge, Sid might be an easier choice.
After any new release, it usually takes some time before testing is "usable" again.

[Dabuel]

All i can say is well done to the devs of etch.

I have been using sarge for a while and as such have configured it to run only KDE with minimal mods loading at startup (only what i need really). I decided to blow away sarge all together and start fresh with etch.

Installing from the GUI would make life easy for the new users out there, the 'install ssh and continue installation via ssh' didn't seem to work for me, i could connect to the box but couldn't work out what user/pass to use, as none had been set by me yet (maybe this is only possible on the non gui install?).

Anyway after downloading all the packages i needed and booting to the desktop i notice there was no KDE. Being Debian ofcourse this is an easy problem to overcome 'apt-get install kde-core kde kdm' walla KDE for me. Once i got into KDE it just seemed right. So nice, smooth, it just seems to flow. Once i installed my nvidia drivers things stepped up slightly. So after an hour or so of adding in my little karambas, themes and splash screens i decided to reboot.

The major thing i noticed was the shutdown/reboot time. I had my sarge going down and coming back up pretty quick with some tweaking. I hadn't altered etch for system performance in any other way than the nvidia drivers and it took all of about 30sec to shutdown and 45sec to boot to kdm. Im pretty impressed by this. Now im not running debian on a s**t hot computer, just an XP2100+, 512mb, FX5900.

Anyways im very very impressed where debian has gone and where it is headed. Just my thoughts