[The most recent version of this document is always available at http://www.debian.org/releases/woody/mips/release-notes/.
If your version is more than a month old, you might wish to download the latest
version.]
Previously Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 ('potato') supported six computer architectures. In this release those six are joined by four more indicated by a trailing asterisk [*] below. Here is the full list of architectures for this release:
You can read more about port status, and port-specific information for your
architecture at the Debian
port web pages.
Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 for the Mips architecture ships with kernel version 2.4.19.
The new debootstrap tool downloads, unpacks and extracts Debian
GNU/Linux packages for the base system installation. This is an improvement
over the previous installation system which used a tarball containing the base
system. The installation base system can be updated more dynamically with this
system.
The task system has been revamped. Tasks in the previous release consisted of meta packages (packages which are simply collections of other packages). The new system uses special headers within the existing package system to designate any tasks to which each package may belong.
This allows greater selection of tasks and it is much easier to only install selected components of tasks, instead of the whole thing.
Almost all configuration at install time and for later reconfiguration is done using Debconf, which comes in a variety of flavours: a non-interactive method, dialog (curses-based), and a new GNOME frontend. Debconf's engine has also been revamped and improved and is now more flexible than ever. In short, Debconf makes the world go around :)
For full details on the Debian installation system, users are advised to read
the Debian installation guide included on the first CD or at http://www.debian.org/releases/woody/mips/install
The Debian package management tools apt and dpkg have been improved
considerably in this release. Now apt supports "pinning" in which
the user can opt to download certain packages from different distributions,
e.g. testing or unstable, while still keeping the bulk of packages in the
stable distribution. APT will automagically download and install appropriate
dependent packages from the advanced distribution as required. An APT "pinning"
howto is available.
Build dependencies have been added to aid the compilation of source packages. The "build-dep" apt-get method can be used to retrieve all packages needed for a build before compilation is commenced.
To replace the aging, much-maligned, yet still popular dselect,
many apt frontends have been in development during the woody release cycle.
Interested users should investigate the aptitude package.
This release of Debian GNU/Linux contains the much improved XFree86 4.1 release, which includes support for a greater range of hardware, better autodetection support, and improved support for advanced technologies such as Xinerama and 3D acceleration. XFree86 3.3.6 is available as an option, to support older hardware that is not supported by XFree86 4.1.
Debian 3.0 is much more secure than previous releases. The base installation
provides fewer unnecessary services that might be the target of attack. Debian
3.0 includes many more security-oriented applications such as firewall
administration, server hardening, and intrusion detection. The packaging
system has also been improved so it can be configured to automatically check
digital signatures. When configured, it will refuse to install Debian packages
if the digital signature doesn't match. This limits the possibility of trojan
horse installation and makes it easier and safer for systems to automatically
upgrade themselves over the Internet. Lastly, Debian now provides intensive
documentation for the security-aware administrator including the 'Securing
Debian Manual' from the Debian Documentation Project (also available
in the harden-doc package).
Debian 3.0 is also much more internationalized than
previous releases thanks to the ongoing work of free software translation
teams. Debian includes default settings for more languages than previous
releases, and more of its programs are international-ready. This includes the
boot-floppies installation which has been translated to a number of languages.
There is extensive support for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese,
Spanish, Catalan and Danish, and there are more than fifteen active translation
teams.
For the first time, Debian GNU/Linux includes several full featured free graphical web browsers in the form of Mozilla, Galeon and Konqueror. With the inclusion of KDE 2.2 for the first time, as well as the new GNOME 1.4 release, Debian's desktop provision has been radically improved.
The official Debian GNU/Linux distribution now ships on seven binary CDs with a similar number of source CDs, and a DVD version of the distribution is now also available.
Release Notes for Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (`woody'), Mips
$Id: release-notes.sgml,v 1.158 2002/10/20 10:06:11 robster Exp $debian-doc@lists.debian.org