February 19, 2004
Debian apt-get & XFree4.3!
This morning I did my usual, daily apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade on my Debian Sid system, and was greeted with the news that XFree86 4.3 has finally made it into 'unstable'. XFree86 4.3 has been in an 'experimental' apt repository for a while now, but now it's great to finally see it move into 'unstable', and on it's way to 'testing' and finally 'stable' (for those non-Debian folk out there, 'experimental', 'unstable', 'testing', etc are all names of package repositories).
Debian's APT system totally rocks the planet. It's so easy to upgrade a system's packages the latest stand with only a few simple commands, even while the system is running.
On a side note, it looks like Debian has joined the list of Linux distributions that are refusing to distribute XFree86 4.4, alongside Mandrake, RedHat, and others due to the recent XFree86 license change. I hope this gets sorted out soon, as it's only hurting the open source and free software community.