Debian Etch (was: Re: [SLL] Fedora Legacy going away?)

[Glenn Stone]

On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 03:35:41PM -0800, Dan Wilder wrote:

>One quibble with Glenn.  If you're considering commercial-grade use on a
>64-bit server, think about Debian Etch rather than *buntu.  I'm quite 
>disappointed with the number of problems in recent Kubuntu, especially
>64-bit flavors.  OTOH I've had absolutely zero unexpected problems on 
>the (maybe still, haven't looked) pre-release Debian 64-bit support.

Dif'rent strokes.  I haven't followed, I assume the screams after 64-bit was
dropped from Sarge were loud enough that Etch not only has x86_64 but it
works properly?  Firefox was a royal PITA for Stinkypete... 

For the record, Etch is in freeze, and there is a new KDE Disc 1 out for it;
there's also a tidbit on Debian Weekly News as to how, thanks to a new
Linksys product called the NSLU2, ARM is the #3 Debian architecture now.
(Apparently the "slug" as it's called runs Linux and Samba and is suceptible
to the same hackage as the WRT54GL, only it only has one ethernet port and
two USB 2.0 ports.  Nift.  nslu2-linux.org for more...)

There is one caveat to moving to Etch *right now*.  Since it's frozen, only
release-critical updates are getting through.  Security updates may be held
up, for the precise reason that what they're busy doing right now is getting
the security build servers working for this release.  I don't know how long
this will take, but if you're betting the company that nobody will find a
hole while Etch is frozen and not taking updates, bet on Sarge and the
backports libraries instead, I think.  

Again for the record, the freeze for Sarge lasted a little more than a
month; they froze on 5/3/05, and released on 6/6.  Etch froze on 11
December, so I would hazard a SWAG that we have Etchy goodness before
Groundhog Day.... 

Hmmmm.  Andy Barth sayeth that security support will happen *before*
release.... so I suppose the truly relevant tipoff would be to watch
debian-devel-announce or Debian Weeky News, as once security support comes
up you could get away with moving pre-formal-release.... 

-- Glenn