News About Debian and Its Derivatives
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-08 09:36:17 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-08 09:36:17 UTC
Package Managers
Synaptic is a graphical package management program for apt. It provides the same features as the apt-get command-line utility with a GUI front-end based on GTK+. Most importantly, users can install, remove, upgrade and downgrade single and multiple packages.
16 years old and still ever changing: Not even the name remains stable. What used to be called "deity" was announced as "Apt", first released as "APT" [1], shipped as "apt-get" and "apt-cache", interpreted as "A Package Tool" and "Advanced Package Tool" and is now also available as "apt" … But the initial wisdom holds: "it's still a good word in its own right". And this word has surely influenced the way we manage our software on phones, servers and space stations.
“We need ensure that we cater to our users, and there's millions of them. From those running the latest software in unstable, to people who simply want a rock solid core release. The size of Debian is increasing, and will reach a point where we're unable to guarantee basic compatibility with other packages, or the length of time it takes to do so becomes exponentially longer, unless something changes,” said Neil McGovern.
Software
Mutter can replace Openbox in LXDE, and bring a modern, elegant look to your desktop. To experiment with it, install the software package and start it...
Comparison
Threehosts.com compares Mint, Ubuntu and Debian to show which is the best Linux Distribution.
All benchmarking for this article was done from the same Intel Core i7 4770K "Haswell" system with HD Graphics 4600, 16GB of RAM, and 120GB Samsung SSD 840. No hardware or settings changed between the clean installs of the different Linux distributions. The operating systems tested from this Intel Core i7 desktop were:
- Debian 7.4 "Wheezy" stable with the Linux 3.2 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.4.2.1, Mesa 8.0.5, and GCC 4.7.
- Debian 8.0 "Jessie" testing with the Linux 3.12 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.8.4, Mesa 9.2.2, and GCC 4.8.2.
- Debian "Sid" unstable with the Linux 3.13 kernel on top of the Jessie changes.
- Ubuntu 14.04 with the Linux 3.13 kernel, Unity 7.1.2 desktop, and Mesa 10.1-rc3.
Init Systems
Branches Debate
So there you have it. There is a simple summary for all of this:
Debian Stable if your first priority is a rock-solid system, and you don't necessarily need to support the very latest hardware. This is often the case if you are setting up a server of some sort, but it may also be true if you are going to use a bit older .system as a desktop workstation,
Debian Testing if you want or need to have the latest hardware support, kernel dvelopments and advanced filesystems
Derivative distributions if you want a lot of additional packages included in the base distribution, thus saving you the time and effort of installing and configuring them.
Installer
The Debian Installer team has just announced that the first Alpha build of the Debian 8 "Jessie" version is now available for download and testing.
Wheezy
The Debian project has just released the Live CD version of the recently launched Debian 7.4 in several separate images with various flavors.
“At the moment it seems likely that an extended security support timespan for squeeze is possible. The plan is to go ahead, sort out the details as as it happens, and see how this works out and whether it is going to be continued with wheezy. The rough draft is that updates will be delivered via a separate suite (e.g. squeeze-lts), where everyone in the Debian keyring can upload in order to minimise bottlenecks and allow contributions by all interested parties," said Moritz Muehlenhoff in the official mailing list.
Derivatives
Parsix GNU/Linux, a live and installation DVD based on Debian, aiming to provide a ready-to-use, easy-to-install desktop and laptop-optimized operating system, is now at version 6.0 Test 3 and is ready for testing.
Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.23, is out.
Clonezilla Live is a Linux distribution that is designed to do bare metal backup and recovery on a wide variety of file systems and operating systems. It's very similar to other older cloning software, such as True Image or Norton Ghost.
The distribution is based on Debian and, as usual, the developers have upgraded the underlying GNU/Linux operating system and the release is now based on the Debian Sid repository, as of March 31, 2014.
Grml is not a regular Linux distribution for regular users. It’s packed with a sysadmin's favorite tools and allows admins with packages for installation, deployment and system rescue. This latest version has been dubbed Ponywagon and it comes with a couple of interesting features.
LMDE
-
Only the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint Debian Edition 201403 were released. If there’s going to be a KDE edition, it probably will be released in about a month. Prominent features of this release are support (in the installer) for computers with UEFI firmware and for GPT partitions. But the installer, as you will read in the next section, is the weakest part of this distribution, a problem it shares with most distributions that are based on Debian. And the cause of that weakness is that it does not use the Debian Installer. Rather, the installer is a custom application that does not belong on a modern desktop operating system.
When I wrote about the Linux Mint Debian Edition Release Candidate last week, I promised to look at it in more detail when the final release was made.
Knoppix
Version 7.3.0 of Knoppix is based on the usual picks from Debian stable (wheezy) and newer Desktop packages from Debian/testing and Debian/unstable (jessie). It uses kernel 3.13.0 and xorg 7.7 (core 1.15.0) for supporting current computer hardware.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Social Control Media Relies on Advertisers, So It'll Always Be Hostile Towards Free Software
- Sales, sales, sales
- Fragmentation of Data
- Life is too short to "hoard" data
-
- Links 21/07/2025: Hardware, Health, and Imperialism
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/07/2025: "When Buying Isn't Owning" and "CMS Special Edition"
- Links for the day
- Links 21/07/2025: Indie Web and Toxic Politics
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Microsoft Lawyers Throwing Stones in Glass Houses
- threatened me with bankruptcy
- Google "AI Overview" is Not AI and Not Overview
- do not be misled; what Google does isn't smart, it's just ripping off the sites it already crawled for as long as 27 years
- Making the Case to Dump Microsoft and GAFAM for National and Digital Sovereignty
- "Sovereignty is difficult"
- The Tactics of the Opposition (Microsoft Lunduke): Associate With K00ks, Throw in Vaccines to Muddy the Water
- Who stands to gain from this?
- Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) and Largest Patent Monopoly Office Needs More Transparency, Not Less Transparency
- In the EPO, what good are elections when one candidate literally bribes all the voters?
- How Not to Report News About Microsoft
- This pattern of misreporting is so widespread that it's hard to believe it's not intentional
- Computer Science is Under Attack, They Want Everyone to be a Consumer
- If people can no longer acquire Computer Science education and real Computer Science experience, they will not know how to control their own digital destiny or emancipate the very same universities that now control the syllabus and instead of teaching Computer Science encourage the outsourcing of systems
- The Best Tools Are the Simplest Tools
- There's a hidden message here about the merits of sticking with X
- Ofcom Online Safety Group Speaks of Protecting Women Online, Will Brett Wilson LLP Ever Listen?
- They've essentially became like the Taliban's "burka police"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 20, 2025
- In Defence of "Spinning Rust"
- Just because something is "old" (or older) doesn't mean it ought to become extinct
- Using Free Software to Prepare Legal Documents
- LibreOffice is openly complaining about OOXML as an obstacle
- Tech and Technology Are Not the Same Anymore
- "Are you into tech, Sir?"
- Our Articles About SLAPPs Receive Recognition and Interest
- This week we shall continue writing about the 3 lawsuits we filed
- Are You Served?
- For many people, advocacy of Free software and GPL enforcement are assumed to be happening
- Conspiracy or grooming? Alex Jurado, Voice of Reason compared to Outreachy
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 20/07/2025: Security Breaches and Former 'Open' 'AI' Engineer on Hype and Culture Issues
- Links for the day
- Links 20/07/2025: Fending Off BRICS and US Government Attacks Its Own Media (Like China and Russia)
- Links for the day
- Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 20/07/2025: Summertime and OCC25 Wrap-up
- Links for the day
- Jamie Zawinski Complained About Wayland, Then Decided to Give It a Go, Now Complains Again About Wayland
- Ask IBM (Red Hat) why it's worth throwing so much away just for Wayland fanaticism
- Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu, LinuxSecurity, and More
- former "Linux" blogs which basically became slopfarms
- Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
- If WhatsApp is made to "leave", that means Facebook or "Meta".
- Links 20/07/2025: More GAFAM Lawsuits, Layoffs, and SLAPPs
- Links for the day
- Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
- We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
- Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
- PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
- More Microsoft Shutdowns That Mostly Slipped Under the Radar
- Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
- Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
- There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
- The History of Daily Links and Politics
- "I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
- Ageism in Tech
- Your protocol is "old"...
- Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
- Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
- "The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
- There are far more layoffs at Microsoft than at Intel, but you would not get this impression based on Wall Street media
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025
- Gemini Links 19/07/2025: Git For Authors and Filtered Antenna
- Links for the day
- UEFI 'Secure' Boot Abuses by Microsoft to be Brought Up in the UK High Court in 3 Months
- we'll seek compensation
- Next Year It'll Be Half a Decade Since the Fall of Freenode (and IRC is Still Doing OK)
- Our IRC network is still accessible using the exact same software that ran in Windows 3.x
- Lupa Will Soon Know of 3,100+ Active Gemini Capsules
- And some people in the "Small Web" try to tell us that Gemini is dying?
- The Slopfarms Are Taking Real News Articles and Replacing Them With Lies Generated by Machines
- Bluntly speaking, Fagioli is nothing short of an online scammer
- Links 19/07/2025: Techtarget to Cull 10% of Staff, New Threats to Free Press in the US (Home of Dangerous and Violent Stranglers From Microsoft)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 19/07/2025: "Climate Justice” and Forking Programs
- Links for the day
- What Wayland and Microsoft/IBM systemd Have in Common
- focus on what IBM (Red Hat) is pushing while running over critics.
- Linux Already Has About 60% of the "Market"
- "When mentioning the client side," opines an associate, "it is essential to recite the list of other markets where Microsoft is negligible or a no-show. It is repetitive to do so, but it needs saying -- often."
- In Norway, Android/Linux Has Just Hit All-Time High (First Time Since 2020), GNU/Linux Already Very Prevalent
- Despite its small population size, Norway gave us Qt and many other things
- Finland (and NATO) Must Move to GNU/Linux and Dump Microsoft Even Faster
- "Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a staffing problem."
- Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Very Wide-Ranging, Media Focused on Gaming Though Microsoft Mass-Firing Lawyers and "AI" Staff (Contradicting Its Supposed "Investment" in "AI")
- Microsoft plans to fire almost half a thousand people in legal roles
- 2012 Article About the Free Software Foundation Blasting Canonical/Ubuntu Over Adoption of "Secure" Boot (Microsoft's Remote Control Over GNU/Linux Since PCs' Power-on)
- By Katherine Noyes (article has since then became 404, not found)
- The Microsofters We Sued Helped Microsoft Make GNU/Linux 'Expire' This Year
- "Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration"
- linuxconfig.org Joins linuxtechlab.com and Others, Becomes a Slopfarm With Fake Linux 'Articles' (LLM Slop)
- They contain "linux" in their domain names, but they are just slopfarms
- Links 19/07/2025: Microsoft Cuts in China and Wall Street Journal Sued for Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein
- Links for the day
- Debian Can Dump Blind Users Because I am Not Blind
- the sort of mentality we're up against
- Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
- Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
- The European Patent Office Cannot Attract Proficient Patent Examiners Who Master Their Domain
- They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
- Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
- Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
- The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
- Morale at Microsoft is really bad
- Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
- Not bad for this "Fosschild"
- Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
- Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
- Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
