Where the heck is Etch?
Submitted by srlinuxx on Fri, 02/23/2007 - 06:00
Last September, some of the Debian Linux distribution's leadership wanted to make sure that Etch, the next version of Debian, arrived on its December 4th due date. So, the "Dunc-Tank" group decided to experiment with financially supporting some key developers to get Debian out the door on time.
Whoops.
Debian has a reputation for being almost as late as Duke Nukem Forever, the perpetually never-arriving PC first person shooter game. Not all developers were pleased at this experiment in speeding up Debian development.
In fact, some of developers, according to Andreas Barth, a Debian developer and Etch release manager, felt that the Etch release was getting delayed because "Some people who used to do good work reduced their involvement drastically."
Since then,
Jealousy and infighting at Debian ?
What a few lousy dollars created unfairness?
Money does not buy competency. Fate and destiny rules; but I trust organization skill even more. Democracy does not elect competency. Good work and devotion helps to get to the top to rule.
Debian needs an organizer not a good coder. even Linus does not qualify to rule or organize Gnome freelance crowd to take responsibility.
Whoever takes over Debian repository preference, takes over the Debian organization. It might well be Novell with their ambition of establishing repository of all Linux codes. The last word in Debian rules the Debian world? You have to get on the preferred repository to spread your Debian words.
I just installed Etch
I just installed Etch from a weekly build DVD image and it runs fine. There are some things about the reworked Debian installer that could be better, but no serious bugs popped up. So release it already!
What I'm really interested in running is Debian "testing," which usually gets regular infusions of upgraded software, rather than Debian Etch, which will only get security upgrades. But until Etch is out, the testing repositories will be frozen. So the sooner they release it, the better.