
Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" released - sciurus
http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504
======
mappu
Congratulations to everyone involved. I've been running wheezy on my home
server for a while now (/var/www moved to /srv, apt diffs package lists...)
and i look forward to upgrading the production servers over the coming months.

As an aside, it's really interesting that the word 'Linux' is mentioned only
once on this page - and only _after_ the kFreeBSD kernel.

~~~
leeoniya
i've always wondered about /var/www vs /srv/www

nginx on ubuntu now uses /usr/share/nginx/www

i wonder how long these conventions will continue to be all over the place.

~~~
oinksoft
That's why we have the FHS ;)

    
    
      /srv contains site-specific data which is served by this
      system.
    

[http://www.samba.org/~cyeoh/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVI...](http://www.samba.org/~cyeoh/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVICESPROVIDEDBYSYSTEM)

Unfortunately, /srv/ is often ignored. Good move by Debian to make this
change, and hopefully this gets the ball rolling for other distros.

~~~
pconf
/srv will continue to be ignored just as /opt and other one-offs are ignored.
Reason being that they duplicate existing functionality, in this case under
/var, /usr, or /usr/local. What /srv/ really stands for is NIH.

~~~
moe
/opt is justified. /srv is indeed NIH (redundant with /var/ _whatever_ ).

~~~
jmomo
/opt is basically for 3rd parties to install software, because they can't be
trusted to behave and integrate with the regular filesystem. The last thing
you want is Oracle farking around with anything under /usr or /var, because
they will fuck up your entire OS for their benefit alone. That is why /opt
exists, in my understanding.

/srv is a bit questionable to me. Basically it's another /var. I always used
directories like /var/local and /var/share (sambd and nfs shares). However, I
am understanding the FHS crew wants to freeze the /var filesystem because it
was getting too crazy with all kinds of stuff being placed under /var, and the
likelihood of conflicts was getting high.

~~~
FooBarWidget
Because Oracle cannot install to /usr/local/oracle? I don't see the value of
/opt.

~~~
buster
Because, maybe, but only maybe, there might be software that is not split up
into lib, bin, doc directories and that doesn't log into /var/log?! There
actually is quite some software like that and sometimes it even has a
technical reason.

Especially some commercial and proprietary software that runs on Windows, HP-
UX, SCO, AIX, Solaris and Linux tends to go the "easy way" of packaging and
just put stuff in one place on every system.

~~~
FooBarWidget
And how does your point lead to the conclusion that installing such third-
party software to /usr/local/whatever is a bad idea? I can just run 'ls
/usr/local' to see a list of non-conforming software.

~~~
lloeki
/usr/local is the tertiary hierarchy per the FHS, by this naming, there should
be no _whatever_ there other than bin/lib/shared/... just like on the primary
and secondary hierarchies, whereas /opt is the wild wild west, often organised
by software package (/opt/android-sdk), even with side by side versions
(/opt/ree-2012.02), or by vendor (e.g /opt/oracle/java-7-sdk).

This is merely a convention, not set into the 2.3 standard apart from the
naming 'tertiary hierarchy' otherwise implying this, but it's nonetheless a
widespread enough convention — notably in use by every single
configure/make/make install (and more) source distribution out there, whose
default PREFIX is /usr/local — that we can expect it to be standard behavior.

------
karlmdavis

      >  This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as:
      >    Linux 3.2
    

For anyone else wondering, Ubuntu 13.04 has the 3.8 kernel and 12.04.2 has the
3.5 kernel (<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack>).

~~~
oinksoft
For anyone else wondering, RHEL 6.4 has the 2.6.32-358 kernel.

Zenwalk 7.2 has the 3.2.5 kernel.

What's the point of citing the kernel shipped with another distro here?

~~~
verroq
Shows how unbearably slow Debian's release cycle is. Wheezy ships with all the
latest packages from 2 years ago.

~~~
oinksoft
So then run ArchLinux on your servers, and godspeed? Debian is not aimed at
having the latest and greatest, but its packages do tend to be more up-to-date
than RHEL/CentOS, which is its main competition in the "stable server distro
that doesn't get you fired" category.

~~~
petsos
So our options are either bleeding edge versions or prehistoric ones?

~~~
tls
Forgot option 3: roll your own. (e.g apt-pinning, freeze pkgs etc...etc..)

------
networked
Glad to see Wheezy finally become Stable.

I used to run Debian on a PowerPC Mac as my main desktop system and today I
still use a "portable server" Palm Pre Plus running Squeeze chroot on a
regular basis. In my experience Debian is really great on non-x86 hardware.
Too bad the old webOS kernel means I won't be able to upgrade it to Wheezy, at
least not easily.

That said, I wish Debian would compete with Ubuntu LTS on longer support for
OldStable. (Ubuntu LTS releases are now supported for five years [1] while a
Debian Stable release is expected to get three years of support [2].)

[1] <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS>

[2] <http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases>

~~~
mafro
I'm not sure where you got three years support bit from (could you point me?)
Linked from the DebianReleases page you listed:

    
    
        Q: How long will security updates be provided?
    
        A: The security team tries to support a stable distribution 
        for about one year after the next stable distribution has been 
        released, except when another stable distribution is released 
        within this year. It is not possible to support three 
        distributions; supporting two simultaneously is already 
        difficult enough.
    

[1] <http://www.debian.org/security/faq#lifespan>

~~~
jmillikin
The expected duration between stable releases is two years, so "one year after
the next stable" is three years.

------
jlgaddis
Note: If you're using puppet to manage machines running Debian squeeze, make
sure that your puppetmaster is running (at least) v2.7.

See also: "Issues to be aware of for wheezy"
([http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-
notes/ch...](http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-
information.en.html)).

------
shared4you
My sources.list has the word "testing" all this while. Should I change it to
"wheezy" now? I'm asking because I guess new packages (in _large_ numbers!)
will start trickling down to testing/jessie and the possibility of breakage is
high. What is a reasonable time to expect this "rush" to slowdown or come back
to the pace of "normal" testing?

I can probably live with my existing "testing" for say 1-2 months, after which
I would like newer packages.

~~~
mverwijs
I'd say switch the sources.list to 'stable' or 'wheezy' for a few weeks. After
that, switch back to 'testing' and run "apt-get dist-upgrade --assume-no" and
see what Debian is going to upgrade.

There is no real proper way to do this, other than testing in a VM, or a
chroot.

~~~
jeltz
I recommend using --simulate instead of --assume-no though so you get to see
the specific versions.

------
drewjaja
For those wanting to upgrade from Debian 6.0 squeeze

[http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-
notes/ch...](http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/release-notes/ch-
upgrading.en.html)

------
pervycreeper
Would this be a good time to migrate from Ubuntu?

~~~
eropple
I'm not, because I find Debian's KVM support to be not what I expect, but if
you don't like Ubuntu for whatever reason, it's not a bad time to do it. That
said, Debian stable means you'd better be happy with what you have for a _very
long time_ unless you want to deal with the often-painful stable->testing or
stable->unstable migration. (It can be done, I've done it many times, but
expect it to break something.)

Personally, I just use Ubuntu. It's Debian unstable but shinier. :)

~~~
kbar13
and with upstart &co

~~~
mverwijs
I'm unable to determine if you mean upstart to be a Good Thing, or a Bad
Thing, or anything in between.

To me, switching back from Ubuntu to Debian was a blessing. And I simply
cannot understand this need to decrease boottimes. My laptop boots into Debian
under 12 seconds. That is pretty fast. Under Ubuntu, I timed it at 10 seconds.

2 seconds boottime? Is that what this upstart/systemd hastle is all about? I
just do not get that.

~~~
ludwigvan
""Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that
by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a
year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds
faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?"
"

<http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt>

~~~
mverwijs
I don't know. I mean, the trend has been hand-held devices and laptops for the
past decade or so. They don't get booted every day and will be less and less.
All the while, devices are getting faster hardware, making the difference even
less.

Too me, it still seems not worth breaking a working standard (SysV) over.

------
derefr
So what would people's opinions be on running this vs. Ubuntu LTS on a server?
What about one that relies on more recent features (LXC et al)?

~~~
jmillikin
Personally, I would prefer Debian to Ubuntu-LTS on servers. The primary
advantage of Ubuntu over Debian is access to more recent package versions, and
LTS surrenders most of that advantage in an attempt to approach Debian's
reliability. Besides, most use cases for servers don't require bleeding-edge
packages as long as the distribution is backporting security fixes.

I wouldn't worry about LXC support; it's fairly old tech by now, and even the
previous stable version of Debian supports it. LXC in Wheezy should work just
fine.

The only major issue I can think of with putting servers on Debian is their
very very old kernel versions. The kernel in Wheezy is missing a lot of recent
optimizations in the networking and filesystem code, and doesn't support user
namespaces (important for container-based virtualization).

------
dietrichepp
It's interesting to see Iceweasel 10 on this list with a renewed perspective.
I was doing some web development last week and spent some hours chasing after
an audio latency problem when using HTML5 audio on Iceweasel/Firefox 10. It
turns out that according to my web server logs, nobody uses versions that old,
and when I tried using a newer version I discovered that the bugs simply don't
manifest.

So I recommend to Debian users who use Iceweasel: install a newer version. You
can get it directly from Debian Iceweasel maintainers, and instructions are
available at: <http://mozilla.debian.net>

------
arc_of_descent
Great news. Although I've been running Wheezy on my desktop for quite some
time now. Guess its time to update my laptop which is running Squeeze.

------
westurner
<http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python2.7.ttl>

------
st3fan
"This release includes numerous updated software packages"

... software packages which are already outdated.

~~~
st3fan
Funny how this is downvoted. Fact is that Debian has always been outdated. For
some that is a strength, for most it is a frustration.

~~~
cschol
The great thing is that most are not forced to use Debian with its "outdated
packages". Freedom of choice.

