from Hacker News

Debian 9.4 released

by merraksh on 3/10/18, 2:17 PM with 116 comments

  • by hyper_reality on 3/10/18, 2:35 PM

    The fact that the vast majority of these bugfixes and CVEs are minor is a testament to the continuing stability and quality of Debian and its ecosystem. I've run Debian on several machines for years and have upgraded confidently without a hitch. A big thank you to the maintainers and developers for making this possible.

  • by teddyh on 3/10/18, 5:33 PM

    Please note: Starting with Debian 7, the minor number is not part of the Debian release number, and numbers with a minor component like 8.7 or 9.4 now indicate a point release. Basically, only security updates and major bug fixes, with new updated installation media images. This, 9.4, is not a new major release of Debian.

  • by mariusmg on 3/10/18, 2:49 PM

    Thumbs up for Debian, the workhorse of the entire Linux ecosystem.

  • by ausjke on 3/10/18, 3:05 PM

    Debian for server, definitely.

    Ubuntu for desktop, which is similar to Debian.

    Openwrt for devices that has limited RAM.

    FreeRTOS for MCUs with real-time needs.

    That covers the universe for me, enjoy them all.

  • by jordigh on 3/10/18, 8:22 PM

    Can someone explain this to me? I've had an issue with Postgres on Debian stable because Postgres had to address a CVE which changed its dump format in a backwards-incompatible way. This meant that my local Debian on my laptop couldn't load a dump I created on a patched Ubuntu server. Postgres 9.6.8 is the one that fixes this CVE in the 9.6 series.

    This says the stable package is still vulnerable:

    https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-1058

    But Postgres doesn't show up here:

    https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s...

    The 9.6.8 version indeed isn't on stable yet. So is the latter link just buggy? Or is Postgres getting filtered out?

    Edit: Never mind, after messing with the filter (guess there's no Debian Security Advisory for this CVE), I was able to get Postgres in the second link:

    https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s...

  • by ergo14 on 3/10/18, 2:23 PM

    How is debian nowdays for setting up things like containers? I've tried lxc in the past few years ago and got it working but it was not a pleasant experience, templates were broken.

    I would love them to gain back more server marketshare.

  • by passthejoe on 3/11/18, 12:09 AM

    Depending on your use case, Debian Stable can be a great thing. If it worked great on a given computer (i.e. everything works), and I was just writing or using programs that were themselves fairly "stable," then it will work.

    If you're a developer and don't mind older packages, or if you install and manage your dev tools from outside the distribution, it can also work for you. This is a lot of people.

    But if you rely on your distribution to provide reasonably up-to-date packages (and for better or worse, that's me right now), then Debian Stable might not be the right choice. When I do development in Linux, I tend to be more comfortable in Fedora, which is much more aggressive when it comes to updating packages during the life of a release. I'm not crazy about major upgrades every 6 months, though you can do it once a year if you wish.

    For better or worse, I think that Ubuntu + PPAs is the path of least resistance -- if you trust the maintainers of your PPAs, that is.

  • by notyourday on 3/11/18, 12:42 AM

    Frankly, I do not understand the fawning over Debian. It became the same kind of "try to be everything and do nothing well" distribution Slackware was.

    Up until 8 it was still good for servers but 8 brought systemd, which maybe has a place on a Desktop, but is definitely not anything useful for servers. Ok, so lets pretend it is a desktop. Oh wait, it is a desktop that does not contain the lastest video drivers? It is a desktop that does not contain seamless switch between free nvidia and proprietary nvidia?

  • by facorreia on 3/10/18, 7:28 PM

    I'm a bit surprised that the Docker image is not released as part of the same release process.

    They seem to be released by a separate project / org called "debuerreotype"[1].

    [1] https://github.com/debuerreotype/debuerreotype

  • by keithpeter on 3/10/18, 5:49 PM

    Debian servers and mirrors still showing 9.3 (UK, 17:45 Saturday 10th March)

    I just downloaded v9.3 DVD1/2 to make an offline installation.

    Anyone know where the 9.4 upgrade iso is?

  • by squarefoot on 3/10/18, 7:21 PM

    Obligatory reference to the list of platforms Debian has been ported to and the "blends" it can be customized to. https://www.debian.org/ports/index.en.html https://www.debian.org/blends/

    BTW, many moons ago I used Red Hat on Alphas, so I know it's not the only one. Still it's impressive.

  • by fosco on 3/10/18, 3:09 PM

    I realize the decision is said and done but can anyone share in easy to understand terms what the big deal is with systemd?