Re: Is Linux Unix?

[Brian Nelson <pyro@debian.org>]

Carl Fink <carl@fink.to> writes:

> On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 07:30:24AM -0700, Ryo Furue wrote:
>
>> 1) The current stable version (which I use) is "old";
>> 2) You thought I was using an obsolete version (potate or earlier).
>> I don't know which is the correct interpretation, although
>> your reference to "unstable" seems to suggest (1).
>> 
>> I'm using the "newest" stable version. :)
>
> In Debian-speak, "Stable" sometimes means "obsolete to the point that it
> isn't actually useful."  This is because stable in this case is "unchanging
> (except for security fixes)" and years go by between releases. 
>
> People will argue that their server is running Stable, but I disagree, since
> in every such case I'm aware of it's running mostly stable, but with several
> programs either compiled from source or backported from Unstable.
>
> There's no way around this unless Debian moves to more frequent releases,
> which there is enormous (and perhaps justified) resistance to.

There's very little resistance from developers to increase the release
frequency.  Nearly everyone agrees the current cycles are too long.

I think the problem mostly stems from Debian not scaling well.  The
distribution keeps growing in both size and complexity (more packages,
more architectures, larger programs with more dependencies, etc.) but
we're still using roughly the same release process we used back when
Debian was a fraction of its current size.

-- 
You win again, gravity!