Where the Heck Is Etch?

Published: Feb 23, 2007
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
1 minute read
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Last September, some of the Debian Linux distributions leadership wanted to make sure that Etch, the next version of Debian, arrived on its Dec. 4 due date. So, the “Dunc-Tank” group decided to experiment with financially supporting some key developers to get Debian out the door on time.

Whoops.

Debian has a reputation for being almost as late as Duke Nukem Forever, the perpetually never-arriving PC first-person shooter game. Not all developers were pleased at this experiment in speeding up Debian development.

In fact, some of developers, according to Andreas Barth, a Debian developer and Etch release manager, felt that the Etch release was getting delayed because “some people who used to do good work reduced their involvement drastically.”

Since then, Barth clarified that what he really meant was that Dunc-Tank had resulted in both “positive and negative effects.” And, he continued, “Im quite happy with the involvement of most developers in the release.”

That said, the Debian Etch code was frozen on Dec. 11, a week after the final operating system was to be released. By operating system release schedule standards thats only a teeny bit off.

/zimages/3/28571.gifRead the full story on DesktopLinux.com: Where the Heck Is Etch?

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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

I'm editor-at-large for Ziff Davis Enterprise. That's a fancy title that means I write about whatever topic strikes my fancy or needs written about across the Ziff Davis Enterprise family of publications. You'll find most of my stories in Linux-Watch, DesktopLinux and eWEEK. Prior to becoming a technology journalist, I worked at NASA and the Department of Defense on numerous major technological projects.

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