Debian Wheezy Released

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Yes, you can add non-free firmware during installation. There are netboot images available that have the firmware available, or you can download it from here and place it in the firmware directory on a flash drive to make it available during installation.

I faced this issue while installing Wheezy on my old ThinkPad T61. Pro-tip: Make sure to format the USB drive as FAT32. NTFS-formatted drives aren't recognised.

[cork1958]

I faced this issue while installing Wheezy on my old ThinkPad T61. Pro-tip: Make sure to format the USB drive as FAT32. NTFS-formatted drives aren't recognised.

Hey!

I have one of those crap a** laptops too!! Never had any good luck with an IBM/Lenovo laptop.

@xorangekiller

That flash install worked perfectly!! :)

Thank you very much. Only need that crappy flash program installed in 1 browser anyway and it will be disabled 99% of the time, which is usally the case on any computer and any OS.

Thanks again.

[ViperAFK]

I'm giving wheezy another shot. Tried it a while back on my laptop, but it had constant lockups with my intel graphics. this time I compiled kernel 3.8, hoping that helps because I really like wheezy aside from that issue.

Does anyone know when 3.8 will appear in the backports repo?

[Karl L.]

Does anyone know when 3.8 will appear in the backports repo?

Backports has a strict policy in place: to make distribution upgrades as seamless as possible only packages in Testing may be backported to Stable. Once a package appears in Unstable it will be automatically migrated to Testing after 2 weeks unless a critical bug is filed against it first. Linux 3.8 is currently in Unstable waiting to be migrated to Testing. Once that happens Ben Hutchings (one of the senior Debian Kernel Team members) has already expressed interesting in maintaing Jesse's kernels in Wheezy Backports like he did for Squeeze; so it shouldn't be long.

tl;dr: You should see Linux 3.8 in Wheezy Backports in under 2 weeks.

[tiagosilva29]

Just installed it on my lapop.

There's a (now fixed) bug in the installer that auto toggles the ssh server option.

Anyhow it doesn't load properly:

Volume group "xyz" not found

Skipping volume group xyz

Unable to find LVM volume xyz/root

...

Someone wrote that rootdelay=1 should be set, but I don't know how/where to enable it.

[Karl L.]

Someone wrote that rootdelay=1 should be set, but I don't know how/where to enable it.

That option should be passed on the kernel command line at boot time. Add it to your GRUB configuration file if you want it enabled permanently.

# Become root. Alternatively you can just prepend "sudo" to the beginning of each remaining command below.
sudo -s

# Append your arguments to the end of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in your /etc/default/grub
sed -ri 's|(GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT[ ]*=[ ]*")(.*)(")|\1\2 rootdelay=1\3|g' /etc/default/grub

# Apply the GRUB configuration changes to your /boot/grub/grub.cfg
update-grub

# Reboot your computer to apply the changes.
reboot
[/CODE]

[ShMaunder]

I see the last few pages have been talking more about using it as a desktop, but as a server Wheezy is fantastic with the exception that haproxy is missing from the repo's. I'm in the process of switching out some of my dev Ubuntu 12.04 servers with Wheezy.

Though I did install a Wheezy with LXDE and loved the responsiveness..... though I find Ubuntu far more friendly on the desktop than Debian.

[Karl L.]

I see the last few pages have been talking more about using it as a desktop, but as a server Wheezy is fantastic with the exception that haproxy is missing from the repo's. I'm in the process of switching out some of my dev Ubuntu 12.04 servers with Wheezy.

Unfortunately haproxy did not ship with Wheezy because of bugs on some tier-1 architectures (notably powerpc and sparc). However, the package is still in Sid, and you can install it on Wheezy if you enable the backports repository and are using the amd64, kfreebsd-amd64, or kfreebsd-i386 variants of Wheezy.

Though I did install a Wheezy with LXDE and loved the responsiveness..... though I find Ubuntu far more friendly on the desktop than Debian.

That is definitely true. While Debian tends to be much faster than Ubuntu for most desktop users, it is much more commonly used in a server capacity because it takes more tweaking and configuration to get a "great" desktop experience. While many Debian Developers agree that it should not only be a desktop distribution for advanced users, derivative distributions - such as Ubuntu - have arguably outstripped Debian in desktop ease-of-use.

[Growled Member]

That is definitely true. While Debian tends to be much faster than Ubuntu for most desktop users, it is much more commonly used in a server capacity because it takes more tweaking and configuration to get a "great" desktop experience. While many Debian Developers agree that it should not only be a desktop distribution for advanced users, derivative distributions - such as Ubuntu - have arguably outstripped Debian in desktop ease-of-use.

I've often wondered why Debian haven't stepped up their game and focus more on desktops. They could do it and do it well. Why let Ubuntu and it's offshoots get all the glory?

[Karl L.]

I've often wondered why Debian haven't stepped up their game and focus more on desktops. They could do it and do it well. Why let Ubuntu and it's offshoots get all the glory?

While Ubuntu is focused on creating the best desktop experience possible, Debian is much more concerned with choice and flexibility. The Debian Project prefers the technically excellent solution that allows maximum flexibility, even if that means it takes more work to configure an awesome desktop. While it would be really nice if the project could polish every desktop environment it provides and develop slick installation procedures for them, that is just not practical. Like most other open-source project, Debian has a limited amount of manpower. The project prefers to focus the manpower it does have on technical infrastructure rather than desktop polish.

An opinion I have heard professed by many Debian Developers is that if someone wants to package and polish a particular desktop, they can create a derivative. Derivatives are encouraged in Debian, and most technical decisions made by the project reflect that policy. Since downstreams almost never have the manpower of Debian - including Ubuntu - they are strongly encouraged to submit patches that can benefit everyone back upstream to Debian. Consequently Debian is made better by its derivatives, and each derivative benefits from the Debian Project's manpower maintaining the core packages. It is a symbiotic relationship.

Unfortunately not all derivatives have the high quality standards of Debian, but there are some that provide an excellent experience. Ubuntu has generally (although not always) provided a very polished end-user experience, but they have focused on just one desktop: originally it was GNOME and now it is Unity. Debian could provide a high level of polish if the project was willing to railroad users into a unified experience like most derivatives do (with varying levels of success), but that is not the way the project works. That is the work of derivatives, and the Debian Project is proud of that.

[tiagosilva29]

That option should be passed on the kernel command line at boot time. Add it to your GRUB configuration file if you want it enabled permanently.

# Become root. Alternatively you can just prepend "sudo" to the beginning of each remaining command below.
sudo -s

# Append your arguments to the end of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in your /etc/default/grub
sed -ri 's|(GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT[ ]*=[ ]*")(.*)(")|\1\2 rootdelay=1\3|g' /etc/default/grub

# Apply the GRUB configuration changes to your /boot/grub/grub.cfg
update-grub

# Reboot your computer to apply the changes.
reboot
[/CODE]

Thanks but it wouldn't work because it wouldn't load a terminal (tty). All it provided was a busybox shell.I ended up installing a normal unencrypted GNOME. It has a lot of junk!