Nice email thanking the stretch release
Hi folks,
After the release announcement, I got a bunch of direct emails.
Plenty of "thank you", "yeah", "finally!" and of course, a few
"UNSUBSCRIBE" ;)
The email below stood out and I thought it would be nice to share it
with the projet. The writer is in bcc in case they wants to add something.
Ana
----
On 06/18/2017 02:22 AM, Ana Guerrero Lopez wrote:
[snipped header]
> After 26 months of development the Debian project is proud to present
> its new stable version 9 (code name "Stretch"), which will be supported
> for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security
> team [1] and of the Debian Long Term Support [2] team.
A *huge* thank you to the Debian team! You guys rock! It was amazing to
see how everyone worked so hard in those last few hours before release
(I was in IRC for the first time in years, watching things unfold).
>
> 1: https://security-team.debian.org/
> 2: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
>
> Debian 9 is dedicated [3] to the project's founder Ian Murdock, who
> passed away on 28 December 2015.
RIP. I don't know if he knew how big an impact he made in the computing
world. But he'll always be a legend in my book.
> 3: http://ftp.debian.org/debian/doc/dedication/dedication-9.0.txt
>
> In "Stretch", the default MySQL variant is now MariaDB. The replacement
> of packages for MySQL 5.5 or 5.6 by the MariaDB 10.1 variant will happen
> automatically upon upgrade.
Going clean-install on my two laptops. I need to learn the differences
between MariaDB and MySQL as the boss at work (we use Ubuntu there)
wants MariaDB.
> Firefox and Thunderbird return to Debian with the release of "Stretch",
> and replace their debranded versions Iceweasel and Icedove, which were
> present in the archive for more than 10 years.
So I can remove that from my script! Cool! I didn't even know that.
> Thanks to the Reproducible Builds project, over 90% of the source
> packages included in Debian 9 will build bit-for-bit identical binary
> packages. This is an important verification feature which protects users
> from malicious attempts to tamper with compilers and build networks.
> Future Debian releases will include tools and metadata so that end-users
> can validate the provenance of packages within the archive.
THIS will be very useful especially for those who compile kernels or
modules, I'm sure. I don't (anymore) and haven't in years. But with all
the malware going around in other OSs, it's only a matter of time before
it gets to be more of a problem in Debian. Luckily things are still safe
and secure for the most part. And good to see it's going to always be
that way.
> Administrators and those in security-sensitive environments can be
> comforted in the knowledge that the X display system no longer requires
> "root" privileges to run.
There were some talk in the chat about KVM and "permission denied" when
using i915 chips. But as far as I can tell, that's an old issue and
might be a kernel issue? I don't have any machines with an i915 type
chip so I can't test it. But they were testing and some still had issues
while someone else on an i386 with the same chip had no issues.
> The "Stretch" release is the first version of Debian to feature the
> "modern" branch of GnuPG in the "gnupg" package. This brings with it
> elliptic curve cryptography, better defaults, a more modular
> architecture, and improved smartcard support. We will continue to supply
> the "classic" branch of GnuPG as gnupg1 for people who need it, but it
> is now deprecated.
>
> Debug packages are easier to obtain and use in Debian 9 "Stretch". A new
> "dbg-sym" repository can be added to the APT source list to provide
> debug symbols automatically for many packages.
> The UEFI ("Unified Extensible Firmware Interface") support first
> introduced in "Wheezy" continues to be greatly improved in "Stretch",
> and also supports installing on 32-bit UEFI firmware with a 64-bit
> kernel. The Debian live images now include support for UEFI booting as a
> new feature, too.
Cool! I just might try this on my main laptop (which has UEFI I think).
My spare laptop is too old for that. :) However, I might forget. I set
my main laptop to "legacy" mode a long time ago.
[snipped a lot of stuff]
> Should you choose to install Debian 9 "Stretch" directly onto your
> computer's hard disk you can choose from a variety of installation media
> such as Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, USB stick, or via internal network.
I've had problems (with the rc4 stretch) with the ThinkPad T61 not
opening the DVD tray, and also it saying install failed (and kept
failing) after installing all the packages needed (after package
selection). But when I used a USB stick and booted that, it worked just
fine. Can't tell if it is the DVD drive or the media or what happened
there. But if anyone has issues, try a USB stick.
[snipped more stuff]
> Upgrades to Debian 9 from the previous release, Debian 8 (codenamed
> "Jessie"), are automatically handled by the apt-get package management
> tool for most configurations. As always, Debian systems may be upgraded
> painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly
> recommended to read the release notes [12] as well as the installation
> guide [13] for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on
> installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and
> translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.
>
> 12: https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/releasenotes
> 13: https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/installmanual
Going to do fresh installs on my two laptops. I usually do that every
major release to clean out an "junk" I ended up accumulating which I
don't want anyway. Easier than the hunt-and-peck method. :)
[snipped the last bit of stuff]
I'm really happy to see Debian 9 released! From what I've seen so far,
it's awesome! Looking forward to my own installs.
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