Just thought I'd tell everyone...

Yup, hurray and everything, but they couldn't have chosen a worse day to announce it: the same day when Steve Jobs announced Apple will switch to Intel CPUs

Oh, joy! Another platform Debian can develop for!

More seriously, I've ordered it. I'm waiting eagerly, but also a little nervously. There's much to like about Debian, but in practice I was severely disappointed by Woody -- no matter how hard I tried, it was just about impossible to upgrade it significantly without an active internet connection. My hunch is I'm going to find the same is true of Sarge.

I'm running Sarge-and it is.
I have a permanent internet connection, though, so for me it's no problem.

No way to solve this problem. I've been running Sid for a few years now, but that particular aspect isn't going to change. Up-to-date software is only available through the Internet - how should it be done differently? I can't offer any suggestion.

Then again, what does it matter, really? If you have a running system (plus security updates which shouldn't be all that large, really), there's no immediate need for every single upgrade of all those applications.

But I'm a completist!

Then get a decent Internet connection or come up with a revolutionary alternative way to distribute software

I heard sending everyone a free CD in the world every 2 months works out quite well.

Looks like we've got a volunteer there - your update problem is solved, ming!

At least the location is inside of the US

I see several alternative "solutions" to my
problems with updating Debian.

1. I can install Fedora 4, available today.
About as exciting as installing Windows 98,
I know, but is is updated at reasonable
intervals

2. I can install FreeBSD 5.4, which came out
several weeks ago, and update with FB 6.0
"sometime this summer"

3. I can install Debian and persuade myself it's
really a classic old-time game that I don't
want to upgrade.

All "major" OS'es currently require an active internet connection in order to upgrade(within a reasonable time limit).
Even Windows has Windows Update...

With Windows, it's a relatively straightforware job to download a couple of files (or 600 MBytes of files, for that matter), burn them on a CD at someone's machine at work, and install them at home. Windows doesn't make a big to do about dependencies. It doesn't uninstall stuff because it dislikes your version numbers. It doesn't refuse to let you install obsolescent DLLs or things like QuickPlayer 2 or WinAmp 3 even when it knows later versions are available. It doesn't tell me that I now have the latest and greatest NotePad, but Adobe Illustrator will run no more, and then refuse to be un-updated. It doesn't require that I update 2 files, which turn out to have 4 dependencies, each of which has four dependencies, each of which has ...

Debian does. Possibly this is my own damned fault, for using dselect rather than apt.

Statically compiled binaries are so 70s

So judging by you're love of old games, you must really like the statically compiled binaries

Ah, the 70's! That golden age that began so promisingly with Fortran 4 and IBM 1401 Assembler, and ended with BASIC and C and UNIX, with Altair and CP/M.

It's been downhill ever since!

To go slightly back on topic: does anyone know the name for the new debian testing yet?

As far as I know, it's Etch.

I thought Etch was a code-name for a non-free release of Sarge...

According to http://www.debian.org/releases/, 'sarge' is stable, 'etch' is testing and 'sid' is unstable. There is no non-free version of Debian, is there?