<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:49 PM, john-thomas richards <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jtr@jrichards.org">jtr@jrichards.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:22:24PM -0400, Bob Kline wrote:<br>
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:14 PM, john-thomas richards <<a href="mailto:jtr@jrichards.org">jtr@jrichards.org</a>>wrote:<br>
</div>[snip]<br>
<div class="im">> > > This isn't happening until next month, but Ubuntu will have ext4 as<br>
> > > default in 9.10<br>
> ><br>
> > That's a pretty big endorsement. Since I am running Debian stable I<br>
> > won't be seeing 2.6.28+ for some time. :-)<br>
> > --<br>
> > john-thomas<br>
> ><br>
><br>
> Wasn't the Debian effort being<br>
> criticized for being excessively<br>
> cautious? In the eyes of others<br>
> anyway.<br>
><br>
</div>Debian has long been criticized for being excessively cautious, but<br>
remember, in operating system terms that generally means more stability<br>
since a lot of the bugs that affect stability are fixed before the next<br>
version of Debian goes live.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> I'd thought the releases were going<br>
> to come a little more often now.<br>
><br>
> -- Bob<br>
<br>
</div>Well....sort of. There is general agreement among the developers to<br>
release more frequently, but you will never see anything approaching the<br>
frequency of a Ubuntu (who still continue to benefit from Debian's<br>
approach). If Debian could release every 18 months I'd be happy. The<br>
two- or three-year release (such as with Sarge) are really painful since<br>
change happens so quickly in the FOSS world. As I mentioned, I'm<br>
running Debian Lenny (the current Stable) and I'm rock-solid. For<br>
example, I haven't experienced any instability with xorg that comes from<br>
the new graphics execution manager (GEM) and kernels 2.6.28 and up.<br>
(See <a href="http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090817#feature" target="_blank">http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090817#feature</a> for more<br>
details.) That sort of instability cannot* happen with Debian since<br>
Debian is so far behind the curve.<br>
<br>
*Okay; "cannot" is a strong word—perhaps too strong.<br>
<font color="#888888">--<br>
john-thomas</font><br></blockquote><div><br>There are issues with this. In one sense<br>the Debian effort simply gets to ride the<br>backs of more current distributions, where<br>bug fixes are an ongoing process. In enough<br>
time things are pretty well debugged. The<br>most used things anyway. <br><br>And unless it does all its own testing, it <br>also gets the benefit of legions of testers<br>for the current releases of other distributions.<br>
In many ways the game is to get as many<br>knowledgeable users to use something, and<br>report any bugs, as possible.<br><br>Nothing unfair about all this, but simply to<br>say that in part Debian's distribution is <br>
solid simply because it's old. Old in the<br>software world anyway. <br><br>Is there anything to suggest Debian's <br>distribution is measurably more reliable<br>than, say, an older version of Ubuntu?<br><br>I'm sure there are fight'n words here <br>
somewhere, but I'm just looking at the<br>situation.<br><br> -- Bob<br><br></div></div>