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February 3, 2009

Debian has released a second installer for its version 5.0 operating system, codenamed Lenny. But in announcing the news, Debian member Otavio Salvador offered little as to when Lenny might finally ship.

Lenny was originally supposed to be released in September 2008, however. And then there were even more delays.

Historically speaking, Debian has enjoyed some pretty good upgrade tools and Lenny is no different. Most Debian users upgrade constantly, rather than reinstalling, however.

And unlike CD download-oriented Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian is typically installed initially from a USB "stick" or even three floppy disks (don't laugh) as a very basic OS.

The system user then reboots into the new system, and downloads only the software he or she actually needs, along with any updates to the handful of files in their basic system.

This method solves the problem of large post-install network updates, such as Ubuntu would have if they failed to keep the six-month release schedule they've committed to.

While Debian hashes through press-stopping issues such as the always lively binary code debate, Salvador and his installer team are making sure Lenny is ready to ship, except for some RAID software issues which are expected to be fixed before Feb. 28.

For the most part, the only problem with Debian's long release cycles is that Lenny is only maintained for the stable release of the Debian operating system. The more time it takes between stable releases like Lenny, the more likely you are to find yourself with hardware unsupported by the kernel version used in Lenny.

It's rather difficult to do a network install when your NIC isn't recognized, although it can still be done if you just back-port the driver, or look for somebody who has posted a download.

Lenny also will support the Install-from-Live-CD mode as well. The feature works okay though more than six months from now, we suspect the time-honored network install method will be a lot faster, if you count the time it'll take to download 600 Mb the first time you get the upgrade.

Why does Ubuntu continue to favor CD-oriented installs, when Debian-style network installs seem a lot more faster? Well it's simply because installing from a live CD can happen much faster. The OS is simply block-copied wholesale onto the disk, instead of file-copied over the network.

That saves the overhead of building all the inode tables and other file metadata onto the CD or DVD.

For a list of changes since the RC-1 installer release last December, as well as a list of remaining issues, visit the Debian site.

In case you didn't know, last July, Debian actually celebrated its 15th birthday.

Source: Debian Linux.

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