Thinking about upgrading to Debian Bullseye? Watch out for changes in Exim and anything using Python 2.x
- Reference: 1627304110
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/26/debian_bullseye_release_set_for/
- Source link:
Debian is an important distribution in its own right, but also influential since it is the basis for many others including Ubuntu, Mint, Devuan, Knoppix, Tails, Raspbian, Pop!_OS, SteamOS and more.
In a post to the developer announcements mailing list, the release team [1]said : "We plan to release on 2021-08-14." This is a little over two years since the release of Debian 10 "Buster," which came out 6 July 2019. The testing release is now "completely frozen" other than to "emergency bug fixes."
[2]
Debian 11 is based on the 5.10 Linux kernel and officially supports the same architectures as Debian 10, though this [3]may be the last with full 32-bit i386 support.
[4]
[5]
According to the [6]docs , Debian 11 has over 13,370 new packages. 62 per cent of the packages in Buster have been updated, and another 13 per cent (7,278) have been removed. This release is also the first to have kernel support for exFAT following Microsoft's publication of the specification in 2019 and Samsung's contribution of the exFAT drivers it uses in Android – though the superior ext4 is the default and the value of exFAT support is mainly for compatibility.
We took a look at Debian 11 [7]here .
[8]Happy 4.20: Latest version of Tails bakes connection wizard into pro-privacy Linux distro
[9]Linux Mint 20.2 is a bit more insistent about updating but not as annoying as Windows or Mac, team promises
[10]CentOS Stream: 'I was slow on the uptake, but I get what they are doing now,' says Rocky Linux founder
[11]There's no 'Skype' in Teams: Microsoft lets signing key for its Debian Skype repository slip gently into the night
The default mail server remains Exim and the maintainers have warned that the upgrade to Exim 4.94 in Bullseye is major as "it introduces the concept of tainted data read from untrusted sources... this will break configurations which are not updated accordingly."
Removed packages include the lilo boot loader, the Python 2-based Mailman 2.1 (Mailman 3 is included), and Chef configuration management. Python 2.7 is still there but "it is not supported for running applications" and was only included for use in a few application build processes. Debian 11 will be the last release to support separate /bin /sbin and /lib directories with equivalents under /usr and the team recommended usrmerge to do the conversion to merged layout if needed.
[12]
Release parties are [13]planned but at the time of writing none were listed; the circumstances are not ideal and the release team acknowledged that they should only be held if "the conditions around you allow for it." Fear not: there will also be a "distributed release celebration" on the DebianPartyLine, a group voice chat system. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2021/07/msg00003.html
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YP7cG5CeJW0mXzoPBVG31AAAAFQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/14/debian_bullseye/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YP7cG5CeJW0mXzoPBVG31AAAAFQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YP7cG5CeJW0mXzoPBVG31AAAAFQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html#newdistro
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/debian_11/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/14/tails_linux_420/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/12/linux_mint_202/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/09/centos_stream_greg_kurtzer/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/skype_gpg_expire/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YP7cG5CeJW0mXzoPBVG31AAAAFQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyBullseye
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Sigh
I've been using Buster for about a year (I usually switch half way through a cycle, when the Testing distribution is getting to be reliable) and it's as solid as usual.
But my personal GIMP plugins bit the dust over the loss of Python 2.7, I'd only ported them from Perl a few years ago. My Scheme (the built-in scripting language) versions are proving a bit buggy.
Oh Dear Me, or words to that effect.
I'll hold on for as long as poss.
Some of my desktop stuff requires Python 2.7 and is pretty much unmaintained but incredibly 'comfortable'. No doubt I'll have to change at some point but it will feel like disposing of a favourite coat.
Re: I'll hold on for as long as poss.
One day our descendants will look back at the Python 2 / 3 schism, and wonder what those ancients had been smoking when they thought of that one...
"the value of exFAT support is mainly"
To access external storage which rarely comes formatted in ext4, especially CF and SD cards.
Re: "the value of exFAT support is mainly"
FAT support has been in the kernel for years, and since FAT32 can support up to 2Tb volumes, exFAT isn't needed for generally available SD cards yet.
However, I did buy a 2TB USB drive, and plugged it in to format as ext4, but found that my system had automounted it as exFAT using FUSE. I was surprised, because it was my own homebrew automount script (in Perl!) and I hadn't even considered FUSE when writing it. I think mount with no options was smart enough to do the right thing.
Like it or not, I have fond memories of Lilo, as I learned the Linux landscape.
So far so good.
I've updated a few non-critical systems from "Buster" 10 to "Bullseye" 11 and installed a few new systems directly as 11 and it's mostly a very dull (in a good sense) process and everything seems to be the same but with incremental improvements across the board. Annoyingly after no changes for several weeks the last minute fixes have been trickling ever day, but it still feels very good and solid.
Buster was very good and worked fine, so far I've not had any issues with migrating to Bullseye, but I've not touched any of my systems with fiddled exim config yet... All the desktops and laptops are vanilla when it comes to exim, so nothing happened, the actual mail server will need to be dealt with carefully. All the other config changes were minor or I rolled back to standard.
Watch out for changes in Exim...
It would also be nice if we could look out for a change in init systems away from the all-encompassing cacodyl that is Poettering's creation.
trac is removed but coming back soon
You may want to wait for 11.1 if you use trac, or upgrade from Buster.