Live data from Hacker News

Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

lists.debian.org

61–70 of 93 posts

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#61
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for servers. But it still has plenty of rough edges as a desktop OS. Mint is a much better choice (IMO) for the desktop, that still is somewhat within the Debian ecosystem.

What are your rough edges? I have found Debian Unstable with latest Gnome to be way more stable and productive than I expected.

I'm not sure if they count as rough edges, but most common things I've come across tend to be security related and the limitations on a normal user. From (foggy) memory you can't sudo by default, and you also can't mount as a normal user. These things are probably perfectly reasonable choices to make for a secure server but annoying for a desktop.

This may not count as desktop, but another annoying one is /usr/sbin and some other common directories being missing from the default PATH.

Still, it's way less annoying than ubuntu's constant nagging about updates and trying to shove snap in your face.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#62
post #9

Debian is an amazing project. I love how it's so fundamental but doesn't call attention or hype to itself. It's used by millions but doesn't try to be sexy or glamorous. Even the website is minimal.

Also, it "just works". It's so reliable that I almost forget it's there. 10+ years in production and not once an OS/distro bang-up.

I love to tell that, I forgot to check on a Debian server for a year. I also forgot its physical location in our server room (it's one of the many identical servers amongst the racks).

When I remembered its existence, I logged in and it was just doing its thing happily, with all its security updates applied automatically.

You can set up and forget a well set up Debian Stable installation. It'll just truck along without complaining. With a little bit of work, you can make it tell you if it needs any attention but, it's very unlikely.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#63
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last non-amd64 processor that ran x86 is the Pentium 4E from 2004, a 17-year-old machine. Atom CPUs without x86_64 support were released up until 2013.

Debian Buster LTS is supported until 2024 and then probably ELTS until 2026. Also how many of these 32-bit Atom CPUs are actually in use anymore? It's a pretty edge case.

I run my home automation on atom. Considering that cost of asus eee pc is around $70 it still is a lucrative option of a complete system compared to raspberry.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#64
post #36

Debian is an amazing project. I love how it's so fundamental but doesn't call attention or hype to itself. It's used by millions but doesn't try to be sexy or glamorous. Even the website is minimal.

Hmm, popcon says only 199127 submitters, I wonder how many Debian systems there actually are. https://popcon.debian.org/

I only enable popcon on long-living personal servers to prevent transient noise in the system.

I bet popcon is enabled at most 10% of the systems since its default state is disabled (at least in expert install, anyway).

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#65
post #34

Debian is my favorite distro for web dev, but, MIPS is also near and dear to my heart since I learned its hardware architecture in college. I view MIPS as the simplest possible instruction set that satisfies most of the modern scalability constraints (RISC, short pipeline, etc). It will likely be replaced by something like ARM which also incorporates instruction compression for basically free (since memory latency ma…

MIPS has no SMP memory model. One could be cribbed from POWER or ARM, or even x86, but it is a paste-up.

I don't know about SMP, but back in the day SGI built NUMA machines with hundreds of MIPS cores.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code names make issues with specific versions or eras easy to search

Ubuntu at least does it in alphabetical order of the first letter of the codename. Eg, the release after Ubuntu 20.04 Focal was Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy. This means that hearing the Ubuntu codename "Bionic" provides some information: it was 4 releases before Focal. But Debian codenames are arbitrarily based on characters from the movie Toy Story, so there's no relation to the Debian release. To fix this, I propose for fut…

Since debian both provide version numbers and codenames, I don't think making codename same as the release version makes any sense.

When I google Debian 5, I get results to Debian Lenny (which is 5). Also Debian denotes versions in official notices and it's widespread in internet so, codenames are not hindering anything in practice.

OTOH, codenames play a bigger role in the ecosystem. It adds motivation, fun and sense of originality. I love to have them, I love they're in fact Toy Story characters.

It makes it almost lifelike and masks the burden of maintaining one of the biggest distro projects in the existence.

While I love minimalism and utility, I think Debian should keep these. It's fun, memorable and original.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu at least does it in alphabetical order of the first letter of the codename. Eg, the release after Ubuntu 20.04 Focal was Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy. This means that hearing the Ubuntu codename "Bionic" provides some information: it was 4 releases before Focal. But Debian codenames are arbitrarily based on characters from the movie Toy Story, so there's no relation to the Debian release. To fix this, I propose for fut…

Sure; but (IMHO) I think the code names provide an visible and fun reminder that this operating is a operating system for hackers, and this is a tiny bit of personality from that ethos baked into the system. Debian labels itself the 'universal operating system', and makes no aspirations to cater to the lowest common denominator of users.

>Debian labels itself the 'universal operating system', and makes no aspirations to cater to the lowest common denominator of users.

That's a bit of a contradiction.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#70
post #34

Debian is my favorite distro for web dev, but, MIPS is also near and dear to my heart since I learned its hardware architecture in college. I view MIPS as the simplest possible instruction set that satisfies most of the modern scalability constraints (RISC, short pipeline, etc). It will likely be replaced by something like ARM which also incorporates instruction compression for basically free (since memory latency ma…

MIPS has no SMP memory model. One could be cribbed from POWER or ARM, or even x86, but it is a paste-up.

Well, SGI used to make those huge shared memory NUMA machines based on MIPS (then they switched to IA-64, after that x86-64, and then they got bought by HPE).

But yes, I guess that's far enough back in time that they didn't have any formal model for the behavior. I guess they had some kind of prose specification, and then they just winged it.

Post reply on HN