:Debian Linux is finally - no really! - getting close to release
Debian Linux is finally - no really! - getting close to release Feb 4, 2009, 00 :03 UTC (1 Talkback[s]) (5586 reads) (Other stories by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols)
"First, the good news: Debian 5 really is close to arriving. On January 31st, the Debian developers announced that Lenny's second release candidate was now out. Debian programmers tell me that really should be the last one and that the final version should be out by Valentine's Day.
"So, what took them so long? Lots of things, but, as usual with Debian, mostly arguments.
"The Debian community, which over the years has had more than its fair share of internal battles over open-source/free software ideology, had to endure yet another battle before Lenny could appear. This time around it was whether proprietary firmware in the form of binary blobs could be in the distribution. Debian Social Contract fundamentalists want nothing to do with proprietary firmware. In particular, they didn't want to include binary firmware in the kernel, which would be loaded into hardware at runtime."
