Debian etch (p)review

Debian is one of the great legends when talking about Linux. One of the oldest distros out there, 100% OSS, no company has control over it, biggest repositories of all distros and possibly the biggest number of developers, too, only for expert users / geeks. Oh... wait... did I say only for geeks?

Years ago, no one would have recommended a Debian installation to anyone new to Linux. Debian was for many people really difficult to install and configure.

- Do a netinstall or grab the first CD, then apt-get the rest from the cli.
- Okay, done... and now?
- Configure the base system so you can install the next packages.
- How?
- Find out yourself. Read manpages and use vi.
- Hey a bit more of help would be nice.
- Hey! This is Debian! If you want a newb-toy, get e.g. Linspire.

Uh-uh. That were the old Debian days (more or less) and a significant number of Debian users were proud Debian users. They have proven to themselves that they are the u83rl33t geeks, that they managed something that only a few chosen managed, that they have found the holy grail.

Debian then created a new installer with minimal graphics (if you want to call it graphics). Installation became easier – and geeks more scared. Will the sacred temple be entered by mere mortals? Not yet. Ubuntu saw the light, those who always wanted to use Debian but who were afraid of Debian went the Ubuntu way and were reasonably happy. And while Ubuntu became more and more user-friendly, the Debian followers were happy that they evaded the migration of nations and remained the geekiest of the geeks.

Some years later. Debian works on a real graphical installer and developers are shocked about the low quality of the upcoming etch release. As Joey Schulze, Debian developer, put it:



So, is Etch really a milestone-release, the release wich transforms Debian into a user-friendly distro, like its little cousin Ubuntu?... I took the test.

Installation

First of all, I trashed my Arch partition (Sorry, tyme), so I have some space for trying out the new etch. For the installation, I downloaded the netinsstall CD, which is some 140 MB big. After I popped the CD in, I am greeted by a simple screen without many information. I hit Enter and off I go. The installer I expected was the new graphical one. The one I got was the default text-based installer. No problem. I know that one, so let's move along.

Partitioning and defining mounting points is easy if you have done installations and partitioning before. When I get to the package selection, I am offered some choices. Desktop system, Laptop-system, mail-server, ftp-server and some more server-choices. I select only the desktop packages apart from the base system package, select the software mirrors from the options I am given (some 20 mirrors are listed for my country) and continue the installation. I must admit: I have no clues which packages etch will grab. I have no control over it, unless I'd do only a base install and apt-get everything else later from the base system. It feels so undebian like...

Etch grabs now the packages from the net and roughly 90 minutes later, it is finished and the final configuration is being done, nothing that scares me or that leaves me puzzled. Except the bootloader. I select grub, try to install it and get an error, unable to install. I don't try lilo. I don't like lilo and prefer to eat a worm than dealing with lilo again. I shrug and decide to continue without a bootloader and chroot into the system later in order to fix it. Said, done. I boot a live-CD, chroot into Debian and set up grub.

setup (hd0)
root (hd0,0)
grub
update-grub

Grub is installed. Fine.

Desktop

Now I boot into the system (quite fast, as it was always the case with Debian) and see that it uses Gnome 2.14 (nice ) and an i486 kernel. I use Semprons, thus I install the k7 kernel. Oh, easy with apt-get /synaptic, as the mirrors are already set up. Then an icon flashes up on my panel... orange... I know that one. Exactly, the same update notifier that Ubuntu uses is there too. Three updates available. One click and installed. Debian will always activate the network by default. This is a plus and a weakness imho. Computers without a network connection will try to start the network uselessly. But then... Debian has always been first and foremost a server distro.

I start exploring the system. What is different to Ubuntu? Not much on the outside. To sum it up: No sudo, no separate application installer in the main menu, no brown-coloring, no „human icons“ that jump on you with a blinding and aggressive orange. No, I get a plain, default Gnome desktop with the typical „Debian“ menu entry, where you find even more apps than Gnome shows by default.

My USB devices work pretty well, my Camera is immediately detected and photo-import works. The font-rendering problems I got some weeks ago with Debian sid are nonexistant in etch. Bravo. The ugly ipv6 problems I had in previous months are history. Etch, just like Mandriva 2007, handles the traffic well and resolves the DNS requests perfectly.

The rest of the apps is not different to Ubuntu 6.06, so I will not talk about this and that version of Gimp, Xchat or the like. It would be boring.

Conclusion

Etch is expected to be 100% stable and available as official release in December. What I see in this beta release so far is very, very good (except grub not installing, but I guess they work on it already). And with the way things are going, I don't know which big „advantage“ Ubuntu will have over Debian other than a six-month release compared to Debians 12 month release (= some newer packages here and there) and some marketing (Debian and marketing? Nice joke).

Where Debian is clearly better is in the server area. It offers a big choice of server-platforms that can be installed with one checkbox-marking. And then, of course, Debian supports more processor types than Ubuntu. But who uses Sparc processors on a home-system?

Etch is imho a wonderful release. Quite easy to install, very good hardware/configuration detection, it is snappy and not really difficult to administrate when it comes to normal tasks (for advanced tasks you will still need the cli, as in almost any other distro, too).

For whom is it good for

For all those who always wanted to run a proper Debian server/desktop/laptop system (= e.g. no Ubuntu sudo stuff) but who have been scared because of configuration in the past. And it is good for all those who need very flexible and stable releases that can be upgraded (apt-get) to the next evolution easily.

Ubuntu is still a bit easier for newcomers but for those who had a sniff at Linux already, a pure Debian system is now perhaps the better choice.

Or not? Please discuss below, if you want to.

Debian's 12 months release? When did it become 12 months? It used to be years between releases. Debian 3.1 was released in june 2005, if Etch comes out in December, and knowing Debian release cycle that's a big if, then it will be 18 months.

Several months ago, the Debian lead developers decided to implement fixed release dates every 12 months. At least that was reported at distrowatch-weekly and I dont think that Ladislav Bodnar invents such news..

It was also in Debian weekly news months ago.

What about proprietary media codecs (WMA/WMV/mp3) ? Are they easy to get & install ?

Yes, just add the proper repositories to your /etc/apt/sources.list

Open the 'Synaptic Package Manager', or apt-get install what ever you need.

Nice review.
I've been using Etch for about a year now and it has been very stable (a bit rocky early on, but since late Spring very solid). The new installer is great at picking up hardware. Right now I know I can keep upgrading and not have to do a fresh install. Probably after Etch goes "stable" and Lenny is testing I'll wait a few months and change my repositories from Etch to testing and continue the upgrade cycle.

I am seriously impressed with Debian Etch. I'm going to replace Mandriva on my desktop with Debian and probably switch back and forth between it and Gentoo. The community is also a lot different than I'd heard. People have always told me that Debian users like to say RTFM and are quite rude. But the Debian community has been very nice and helpful. Thanks Greg2 for suggesting it!

Well, there are some "RTFM" type guys with any distro. I found the Debian community to be quite okay.

I think it's a myth from the older days.
You'll find idiots on every distros

Well I still hear people say that Gentoo users tend to be elitist snobs. *cough* tyme *cough*

What walks like a duck, talks like a duck, smells like a duck - must be a duck (it's a joke ).

I will probably put etch on a headless machine I'm currently running (ATM its running Slackware). I liked the overall feel of Etch (tried it yesterday on a VM).
For desktop usage, I clearly prefer Sid/Sidux, or what I'm currently using.

Etch went stable as of April 8th.

So, could you be bothered to make a review of that, or put up an updated impression?

(... please )

I could do yes, I've been using Etch for the last month or so. Or at least the sid/unstable variant, since I wanted to ensure I had the latest and greatest

So my somewhat brief review no doubt - as I'm not really that good at writing stuff.

After trying somewhat many distros on my new lappy, I had a lot of problems trying to get distros working. When I finally tried Etch during it's testing phase, it just simply worked. I had to get used to it's workings, what with being used to rpm distros, and it wasn't that difficult. Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder and if you're prepared to be patient

I also have it installed on my desktop machine at work, as well as my desktop machine at home as well. The two systems at work are sid/unstable, and the one at home is stable - reason being is my internet connection is too slow to keep getting regular updates for the system. And it doesn't have to be too bleeding-edge.

I haven't really done anything special with it, simply use it as a desktop system. The native IBM Lotus Notes client works under Etch, providing you know the dependencies

Has anything really annoyed me as of yet? Nope not really. I have all the functionality I need. The packages are available that I need, including proprietary drivers without having to go direct to nvidia for them and manually installing them.

I've not had to compile anything as of yet, it's all available through apt/aptitude. So it kinda keeps things nice and simple for me. Which is what I like

I've only encountered one problem so far, and that has been with my desktop system at home. I can be typing away on my system, and then for some reason, the X server stops, and restarts itself. I have to login again, and continue where I left off. Luckily I was in Firefox, so means that I can restart my session, and continue what I was typing. I have to look into this more at some point. It hasn't happened recently as of yet, and I've only experienced it twice. So maybe an update has fixed it, but I'll have to see for sure.

Thanks

Bonus question: how is speed on Etch? I mean, does it boot fast, how much RAM does it use, do apps launch quickly etc. ?

I've never timed it, but it seems pretty damn speedy enough to me

Well, should be good, since so many distros are based on it right ?

For me Debian didn't load as fast as Mandriva. But my laptop is in serious need of more RAM, at least another 512 mbs since it only has 256 right now. Ouch, I know!

The true test will be when I install it on my desktop and compare it to gentoo. Now if only my new DVD-rw will get here so I can install it.

One other thing I forgot - Debian isn't supporting WPA for wireless encryption. So you are kinda just left with WEP.

I had to change my access point and all other machines to using WEP, so that my Debian machine would be OK using WEP too.

I believe that depends on your wireless device? I'm left with WEP because of my Broadcom card.

Depending on your device, have you read and tried this:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-wpa/wpasupp...;rev=0&sc=0

From the wiki:
http://wiki.debian.org/WPA

Speed on etch is quite okay. It is a bit slower than Mandriva but only a few seconds in bootup and miliseconds when launching apps, so it doesn't really matter.
RAM is similar to Ubuntu (no surprise there). But it really depends on the DE/WM you use and the services you keep running/shut down.

Just blew off my fresh Ubuntu install and replaced it with Etch. Haven't had much time with it yet.

Stumbled on this at a Fedora forum of all places. lol

http://code.google.com/p/hakix/

Debian version of Automatix. Haven't tried it yet but will tomorrow.

I'm still impresed with Debian Etch. I'm still having some occassional wireless issues but so far I've been able to get it working again. I don't think anything will ever replace gentoo but if the day does come then it will be Debian.

Excluding my bog standard Arch Linux, Etch is hands down the best Linux flavour available today: Easy, solid, lighweight, tons of rolled packages, everything tried so far working right out of the box. After Etch, testing Feisty had the feel of a failed experiment.
Hats off to Debian devs- they have done a terrific job.

I know I am happy with it.......... whenever I can get on the gamer and not gaming with the XP side..... to use it. lol

I'm currently using Lenny at the minute. Or sid at least until Lenny is released in the future as stable.

Been using lenny (testing) for a week or so on one of my older PC's & must say it's quite nippy. I'm now setting the same up on a spare drive on my main PC. If all goes well I 'may' start to use this instead of Mandriva but that's a big may cos my Mandriva install is rock solid - I think aptitude will be the clincher though.

Does lenny have Gnome 2.18 in it?

I'll have to check when I'm back in the office tomorrow. When I did some updates today, it removed practically all of gnome and so had to reinstall it. Nautilus has stopped working incidently, and no idea why so presume just wait until an update is released in the next day or so.

The fun of unstable/sid.

nope 2.16 here - not sure but I don't even think it's made sid yet?

Gnome version: 1:2.14.3.6
http://packages.debian.org/testing/gnome/gnome

Lenny (Sid/Unstable) has 2.18 as I just checked this morning. In fact 2.18.1

oh well it's in sid then

Aye, I updated this morning to make sure I had all latest packages. Except dist-upgrade, else I risk breaking Gnome again.

Thanks, the last time I checked I was running a beta of 4.0 with gnome packages from experimental repo and they didn't work so well

I just did my updates in Debian and one of them was a kernel update. It showed me a progress dialog and then told me to reboot. That was it!

If you want more verbosity you can just reconfigure dpkg.... then it will give more questions and prompts...
dpgk-reconfigure dpkg