Debian Lenny was officially released today, almost two years after its previous version.
This release includes several important improvements. The following list highlights just a few of them:
- Linux kernel 2.6.26
- Xen 3.2.1
- Hypervisor independent virtual machine management (supports kvm, xen, qemu, kqemu)
- qemu can now use hardware-based virtualization (KVM)
- Graphical front-end for virtual machine management
- Xorg 7.3 (the X server autoconfigures itself with most hardware)
- LXDE desktop environment
- Full support for the Asus Eee PC
Some people criticize Debian because of the extended period between stable releases. I think that’s unfair. The only time in Debian’s history when there was a truly extended period between releases was during the transition from Woody (July 2002) to Sarge (June 2005). Every Debian version since 1.1 (except for Sarge) was released in less than 24 months from the previous one. [ see Debian release history ]
Although it would be nice to have a shorter release cycle (for example, 18 months), I think that for a distribution like Debian, anything under 24 months is acceptable. Let’s not forget that Debian isn’t just an average distribution: it offers 3 development branches, it supports more than 10 different hardware architectures, it comes with more than 23,000 software packages and it has a reputation of being the most reliable non-commercial distro available. It seems obvious that you cannot release new versions of such a complex product every year and still maintain its reliability. And Debian developers take the word stable pretty seriously.
Continue reading "Debian Lenny is ready for you. Are you ready for Debian?"
