

Debian 7.3 is out - duggieawesome
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/

======
jlgaddis
Better link with more info:
[http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20131214](http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20131214)

~~~
rhizome
It truly confuses me that the upgrade instructions are so obfuscated,
bordering on unfindable. Can someone point me to the chapter where an upgrade
from 7.1 to this version is covered?

[http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-
notes/in...](http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-
notes/index.en.html)

~~~
jlgaddis
As others have mentioned:

    
    
        $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
    

In this particular case, from 7.1 to 7.3, "dist-upgrade" is not needed (you
aren't upgrading from one distribution to another (e.g. from 6 to 7)).

~~~
gernotk
This is not Ubuntu.

Better use 'aptitude':

    
    
      sudo aptitude update && aptitude full-upgrade

~~~
mikegriff
Why is it better to use aptitude on debian?

I've been using debian for years and always just used apt-get.

~~~
gernotk
For a start, aptitudes command line options are less confusing and more
powerful.

Furthermore:

[http://superuser.com/questions/93437/aptitude-vs-apt-get-
whi...](http://superuser.com/questions/93437/aptitude-vs-apt-get-which-is-the-
recommended-aka-the-right-tool-to-use)

~~~
mikegriff
There doesn't seem to be anything that jumps out as a reason to use aptitude
over apt-get there. It mentions that the defaults for upgrading the distro are
better for aptitude but doesn't say why or what differences there are.

I can see the search being useful though.

Seeing as my muscle memory is set at apt-get, i'll stick with it for the
moment.

~~~
dlitz
There was a brief time when aptitude was smarter than apt-get (it was smart
enough to remove auto-installed dependencies when you removed a package, for
example). During that time, the advice was to use aptitude instead of apt-get.

Those smarts were later moved to apt itself, but it's still a part of the
folklore.

------
nkuttler
It has already been said, but this is just a point release. If you keep your
Debian system up to date (which you should) you'll only get a few new
packages.

See also
[https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases/PointReleases](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases/PointReleases)

------
RexRollman
I recently gave Debian a try and one thing that surprised me, coming from
Arch, is that the tool to install software, apt-get, can't list what software
has already been installed. You have to use dkpg to get that information.

Even funnier, I found the answer for that on the Arch Wiki page on Pacmac
Rosetta:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta)

~~~
massysett
Sort of makes sense if you consider the history behind it: dpkg installs
software, not apt-get. apt-get, aptitude, etc. are higher-level dependency
resolution tools that simply loop in dpkg to actually install packages.
dselect is an older tool that did dependencies before apt-get came around.

RPM distros are similar, as they use higher-level tools to do dependencies
(yum, zypper, etc.; there was even apt for RPM) and then RPM to actually
install the packages and track them.

Admittedly though Debian's command line tools are stuck in the past in this
regard, as the user shouldn't need to care about all this. Arch gets this
right by putting it all into pacman.

~~~
rcthompson
Debian (and Ubuntu etc.) has a tool available that unifies all the many
different commands required for administrating and querying the package
system. It's called "wajig". I don't believe it's installed by default,
though. I rarely see it suggested, probably because whenever people complain
about the complexity of the command-line tools, the answer they get is "use
the GUI tools".

------
arc_of_descent
Since I do apt-get update && apt-get upgrade almost regularly, I found out
that my system was already running 7.3 (cat /etc/debian_version). So yes, this
is not a major upgrade release just that the Debian team thought that there
were enough changes and bug fixes to label this as a new release.

------
plg
Can anyone point me to a step by step for how to get debian running on a
macbook air? I've googled it and tried at least 4 different approaches, to no
avail. I'm talking about a macbookair3,1 (late 2010 11").

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
Try it on a VM like VirtualBox (free, OS X supported). Among the advantages,
you get vastly superior hardware support, particularly with the trackpad.

Source: Running Debian Wheezy on a 2011 Air.

edit to add: Here's a quick list what running Debian on a VM gives you:

* Seamless full-screen linux with full hardware access (e.g. GPU)

* Advantage of native OS X drivers (particularly the amazing trackpad -- linux drivers crippled it in my experience)

* Instant, lag-free transition between linux/OS X -- e.g. four-finger "swipe" gesture between desktops.

* Shared linux/OS X filesystem ("shared folders")

* Zero hassle with linux wifi, custom bootloader hacks (rEFIt), etc. VirtualBox has first-class support in Debian -- everything's just an apt-get away: [https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox](https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox)

~~~
eyko
However, performance is shite. I ended up going for a native install and you
can appreciate the difference. That is, if you run Gnome 3 (which is a pile of
shite as well). When on other DMs, if you can call xmonad a dm, virtual box
was just awesome, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

~~~
mmgutz
Why would you use gnome if you've used xmonad :)I run crunchbang (debian w/
openbox) and it's awesome.

~~~
72deluxe
So, you're not running "awesome"? So is crunchbang now awesome? Or awesome has
been renamed to crunchbang?

The naming of these is confusing :-)

------
alecco
Anybody knows if the kernel version was bumped?

~~~
swetland
Looks like it's still 3.2 based: [http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/linux-
image-3.2.0-4-amd64](http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/linux-
image-3.2.0-4-amd64)

~~~
vacri
The kernel version isn't going to change in the 'stable' flavour. You can
backport it if you need newer features, or use one of the other flavours.

