Debian 8 released

Debian 8 Jesse released

Many Linux users have been waiting patiently for the next version of Debian. Well, the wait is over, Debian 8 Jesse has been released. You can download Debian 8 right now for various platforms.

The Debian site has full details about Debian 8 Jesse:

After almost 24 months of constant development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 8 (code name “Jessie”), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and of the Debian Long Term Support team.

“Jessie” ships with a new default init system, systemd. The systemd suite provides many exciting features such as faster boot times, cgroups for services, and the possibility of isolating part of the services. The sysvinit init system is still available in “Jessie”.

The UEFI (“Unified Extensible Firmware Interface”) support introduced in “Wheezy” has also been greatly improved in Jessie. This includes workarounds for many known firmware bugs, support for UEFI on 32-bit systems, and support for 64-bit kernels with 32-bit UEFI firmware (with the latter being included only on our amd64/i386 “multi-arch” installation media).

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as:

Apache 2.4.10 Asterisk 11.13.1 GIMP 2.8.14 an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 3.14 GNU Compiler Collection 4.9.2 Icedove 31.6.0 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird) Iceweasel 31.6.0esr (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox) KDE Plasma Workspaces and KDE Applications 4.11.13 LibreOffice 4.3.3 Linux 3.16.7-ckt9 MariaDB 10.0.16 and MySQL 5.5.42 Nagios 3.5.1 OpenJDK 7u75 Perl 5.20.2 PHP 5.6.7 PostgreSQL 9.4.1 Python 2.7.9 and 3.4.2 Samba 4.1.17 Tomcat 7.0.56 and 8.0.14 Xen Hypervisor 4.4.1 the Xfce 4.10 desktop environment more than 43,000 other ready-to-use software packages, built from nearly 20,100 source packages.

More at Debian

Linux redditors shared their thoughts about Debian 8:

Pred: “Ugh, just dist-upgraded; apparently support of legacy Radeon cards (HD4870 in this case) is far enough behind to cause major problems. You know a day is going to be good if it starts off in xorg.conf.”

Pmsm1100: “It’s such a shame that LibreOffice 4.4 couldn’t get on this release. :(“

Tekmo: “…if you are like me and wondering why the updates don’t show up after apt-get update, you may have your /etc/apt/sources.list file pinned to wheezy. You either have to update it to replace all occurrences of “wheezy” with “jessie” or you can use “stable” to keep tracking the stable distribution.”

Tiver: “I swapped a few weeks ago to Jessie but unfortunately ran into an issue with my server then proceeding to crash once a day. I’ve since verified it occurs in upstream kernel too, but since i found I could drop back to the Wheezy kernel and machine is stable again I’ve been lazy on gathering the data to submit a kernel bug.

Seems to be related to ATA devices. unsurprising since this machine’s primary purpose is a fileserver.”

Sapiophile: “…But with 78 Release Critical bugs still unresolved, unfortunately. To me, that seems a little hasty – has there ever before been a Debian release that still had outstanding RC bugs?

I can understand that everyone’s eager (and so am I!), but some of those bugs are the type of stuff I’d expect from an Ubuntu release, and am surprised to see in Debian Stable. Is there anything I’m missing, here? I thought the whole point of the Debian release model was that the release date is the day that we hit 0 RC bugs, and not an arbitrary deadline.

Regardless, undying love and appreciation for all the DDs and other folks who make this wonderful distribution possible, and may Jessie be a credit to software everywhere (as I’m sure it will)!”

More at Reddit

Did open source principles matter when Linux was created?

Linux has been around for a long time now, but one writer at The VAR Guy has an interesting take on the origin of Linux. His thoughts about open source principles not being all that important in the founding of Linux might provoke some controversy among readers.

Christopher Tozzi writes for The VAR Guy:

What Linus Torvalds, along with plenty of other hackers in the 1980s and early 1990s, wanted was a Unix-like operating system that was free to use on the affordable personal computers they owned. Access to source code was not the issue, because that was already available—through platforms such as Minix or, if they really had cash to shell out, by obtaining a source license for AT&T Unix. Therefore, the notion that early Linux programmers were motivated primarily by the ideology that software source code should be open because that is a better way to write it, or because it is simply the right thing to do, is false.

That, at least, is the conclusion I have reached, based on research with primary sources that date to the time period in question—as opposed to essays such as Raymond’s, which were written after the fact, by authors who were inclined to perceive the narrative in particular ways. If you think I’m wrong—which happens a lot, actually—I’d love for you to point out why in the comments below, or to contact me privately.

But, since I am in the business of writing fact-based history, I’d just ask you to do one thing: Show me the (primary) source that proves your point (to paraphrase Richard Stallman).

More at The VAR Guy

Chromebox computers and casual gaming

Chromebooks have gotten a lot of attention in the media, but Chromebox desktop computers are also a great option if portability doesn’t matter. Amazon sells various Chromebox computers and they might be well worth considering as an alternative to Windows or OS X machines. Most of the Chromebox computers on Amazon’s site have gotten very high owner ratings, with many being 4.5 stars out of 5.

But how well do Chromebox computers work for gaming? One redditor asked that very question in the Chrome OS subreddit.

Donkeykong95 needs to find a Chromebox computer that can run games at home:

SO my desire is to get rid of my ASUS c200 chromebook because I use a macbook pro for my computer on the go. I want to have a desktop again for a couple of reasons. Firstly I am going to install Ubuntu so I can have steam, and Dolphin emulator.

I was looking to a chromebox with good enough specs to run games that I can play at home. I saw that Acer is the only company (that I found) that has a chromebox with 8gbs of RAM, and an i3. I was wondering if anyone here knew if this was good enough to run Wii games, or ps1/gba games?

I also would try to use it for photoshop, and write papers on it for college! What does everyone here think of their chromebox? How does it handle compared to chromebooks?

More at Reddit

His fellow Chrome OS redditors responded:

Bewarethecagers: “I’d be very surprised if any Chromebox with an Intel processor couldn’t run PS1/GBA games. I don’t have experience with Wii games though. I was able to emulate PS1/GBA on my netbook with an Intel Atom N270 many years ago.”

Cjonesjr69: “I7 Processors are the strongest that you can get so ya of course its good for gaming lol both dell and hp have i3-i7 choices.”

MisfitMagic: “ASUS has an i3-i7 version, with expandable memory.”

RoombaCultist: “Are you interested in chromeOS at all? maybe you’d be just as well off with an intel NUC or a gigabyte brix computer?”

Zulu: “There’s no benefit to a chromebox over a custom pc for gaming. If that’s one of your desired uses, you’d be better off going to /r/buildapc or /r/buildapcforme and asking around there. You can make a PC that will demolish even the most recent consoles for $400.

More at Reddit

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