| Reactions to Debian's v4.0 release |
Apr. 09, 2007
Now that Debian 4.0, Etch, has finally arrived, what do people make of it?
Out in the blogosphere, some users like it. Over at Jed's Sandbox, this Gentoo Linux user finds that "Debian is stable, period."
Other users are also excited about a new and stable Debian. Still others, however, have found that Debian isn't as stable as they'd like.
Scott Finnie, a long-time computer journalist, but not a Linux specialist, found in his first hours of playing with the distribution that, "This one is a big improvement over the 3.1 distro and is working on my Compaq computer."
In particular, early users were excited that Debian Etch already has a version out for the ever more popular 64-bit AMD chips and that Debian finally has a graphical installer.
People who live and work with Linux were not that excited by the release. Gordon Haff, Principal IT Advisor for Illiminata and a close observer of all things Linux said, "Given how software rolls out in the Open Source world, the significance of a "release" is far less than in the historical proprietary world. However, Debian is a widely-used distribution so it's not unimportant either. It also must be some comfort to Debian users that releases can actually still happen given all the noisy internal politics and infighting that have going on within Debian of late.
Eric S. Raymond, the well-known Linux evangelist, dismisses the importance of a new release of Debian. Raymond said, "It doesn't make any perceptible difference to me. I'm using Ubuntu now, so I track those releases closely."
Ian Murdock, one of Debian's founders and now Chief Operating Platforms Officer at Sun Microsystems, said, "This is a hugely important step. Debian is a platform not only for applications, but for other platforms too (think Ubuntu)."
Ubuntu is solidly built on Debian, but Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's backer, simply said, "Congrats to Debian on the release of Etch!" on his personal blog. Officially, neither Ubuntu nor Canonical Ltd., the company behind Ubuntu, mention the new Debian release on either of their websites.
Murdock continued, "The thing about platforms is that roadmap and predictability of release cycle are extremely important. As a developer, you're always leading the target. You need to know where the platform is going to be in 6 months, a year, whatever. That's why the 'we release when it's done' attitude has to end here. Hopefully, Debian's new leader recognizes this, and recognizes that his biggest priority should be to articulate a roadmap of some sort, and to stick to any dates he comes up with."
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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