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Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" released


sunrat

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Yes I know there's an "about to be released" thread, but this news deserves a thread all to itself.

 

Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" is released! It's been 27 months since the last release so this is a momentous occasion.

 

More info - http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504

 

May 4th, 2013

After many months of constant development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 7.0 (code name Wheezy).

This new version of Debian includes various interesting features such as multiarch support, several specific tools to deploy private clouds, an improved installer, and a complete set of multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories.

Multiarch support, one of the main release goals for Wheezy, will allow Debian users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. This means that you can now, for the first time, install both 32- and 64-bit software on the same machine and have all the relevant dependencies correctly resolved, automatically. ...

In addition, for the first time, Debian supports installation and booting using UEFI for new 64-bit PCs (amd64), although there is no support for Secure Boot yet.

They managed to keep the install images down to CD size (~648MB) too, quite an achievement.

I'm downloading the LXDE version for my EeePC right now. Will report back....

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Later that same evening...............

Installed Wheezy LXDE on my EeePC 900. Extremely easy install although the Expert Install requires a little knowledge. The only things I had to tweak afterwards were to add the firmware-atheros package from a flash key to get internet working as I had installed without setting up network. Then put my wireless SSID and password into the LX network utility and I was connected! Too easy.

Of course i couldn't leave it there, I had to see if it would run KDE. I didn't have great expectations but installed kde-plasma-netbook, the nice KDE interface specially designed for netbooks. I rebooted and was pleasantly surprised that it felt quite responsive.

Then installed Amarok to really push the friendship. It ran perfectly, although top showed it was using a lot of memory. So I removed it and installed Clementine. Much better.

The little 4GB SSD was now about 90% full so I went through the packages and removed a lot, Libre Office being the biggest. Now down to about 70% full - quite acceptable. The 16GB SSD which I put /home on is only 2% full. It's bootup memory usage is only about 200MB which also surprised me.

So I'm running Debian Wheezy KDE on my little netbook and it's going really well so far. Posting from it now. I'm impressed! :thumbsup: B)

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If you plan to install Debian Wheezy, and particularly if you plan to upgrade from Squeeze, I strongly advise to read the Release Notes and Installer Errata to see if there are any issues or advisories that may affect you.

 

I installed Wheezy LXDE and added KDE with no unforeseen issues at all, but after reading these documents it would be advantageous to be aware of some of the info contained before starting to install or upgrade. There are quite a lot of changes since Squeeze and a few considerations I wasn't previously aware of.

So far I haven't heard of anybody having any issues that aren't covered in the notes.

 

Again, nice work Debian!

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saturnian

If you plan to install Debian Wheezy, and particularly if you plan to upgrade from Squeeze, I strongly advise to read the Release Notes and Installer Errata to see if there are any issues or advisories that may affect you.

 

What? Actually read stuff?

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Guest LilBambi

I will likely do a fresh install with Wheezy once I can get somewhere to spend a few hours downloading it. Or wait for someone who can send it to me.

 

I like to keep my old home partition and reformat the rest of the partitions. Hopefully that will still work well.

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Guest LilBambi

New in Wheezy:

 

 

2.2. What's new in the distribution?

 

This new release of Debian again comes with a lot more software than its predecessor squeeze; the distribution includes over 12800 new packages, for a total of over 37493 packages. Most of the software in the distribution has been updated: over 20160 software packages (this is 70% of all packages in squeeze). Also, a significant number of packages (over 4125, 14% of the packages in squeeze) have for various reasons been removed from the distribution. You will not see any updates for these packages and they will be marked as 'obsolete' in package management front-ends.

 

With this release, Debian updates from X.Org 7.5 to X.Org 7.7.

 

Debian again ships with several desktop applications and environments. Among others it now includes the desktop environments GNOME 3.4, KDE4.8.4, Xfce 4.8, and LXDE.

 

Productivity applications have also been upgraded, including the office suites:

  • LibreOffice 3.5 replaces OpenOffice.org, which is now only a transitional package that can be removed;
  • Calligra 2.4 replaces KOffice, which is now only a transitional package that can be removed;
  • GNUcash is upgraded to 2.4;
  • GNUmeric is upgraded to 1.10;
  • Abiword is upgraded to 2.9.

Updates of other desktop applications include the upgrade to Evolution 3.4 and Pidgin 2.10. The Mozilla suite has also been updated: iceweasel(version 10 ESR) is the unbranded Firefox web browser and icedove (version 10) is the unbranded Thunderbird mail client.

 

More in the release notes - what's new.

Edited by LilBambi
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