The update, due around the New Year, is the first major release of Debian since July 2002 when the current version, Woody, was released.
David Pashley, a Debian maintainer, said the main feature in Sarge is its installer which has been rewritten from scratch, so that it doesn't require as much user interaction.
"In the past the installer has had a reputation for being hard to use," said Pashley. "It is certainly a lot easier to install Debian now -- you can keep pressing enter and it will pick defaults."
The installer includes defaults options for features such as disk partitions, time-zone and keyboard layout. For example, once a user has selected their country the Debian installer will the select the keyboard layout most commonly used in that country, although the user can still change it, according to Pashley.
The installer is still a text-based rather than graphical installer, but Pashley said developers are currently working on a graphical interface which should be finished by the next version of Debian.
Sarge also includes improved integration and updated versions of various applications including version 3.2 of the KDE desktop, version 2.6 of the GNOME desktop and OpenOffice.org 1.1.
Debian developers started work on Sarge before Woody was released, but work has accelerated since the summer and now a large proportion of the main functionality is completed.
"It has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few months," said Pashley. "The major parts of it are already frozen".
Martin Michlmayr, the Debian project leader, said that Sarge will be available at the end of this year, or the beginning of next year, depending on how quickly the remaining bugs are fixed. "There are a couple of showstoppers that we're working on at the moment," said Michlmayr.
Sarge is already available in what Debian developers term a 'testing' state, which is close to being a release candidate as it can be installed and has fewer critical bugs than the versions currently in testing.
Debian is the base of a new Linux distribution, Ubuntu, which released its first version, 4.10, last month. Pashley said that Ubuntu is similar to Debian but with more of a focus on usability.
"Ubuntu is like Debian but with few tweaks to make it more user friendly," he said, adding that the work that Ubuntu is doing is useful as any improvements tend to filter down to Debian.
Talkback
Sarge Installer supports automation by allowing you to pre-seed a configuration with all the options managed by the debian configuration system DebConf. We use Sarge as our platform for palm-top device development and have fully automated installations for testing and production. Also, having the build and package distribution systems available makes SUCH a difference. You cannot customize Red Hat or SuSE this way because neither distribution makes their automated build and distribution systems available. Go Debian!
After using Red Hat for years, I have been alittle dissapointed with Fedora. Last week , I tried debian with the Sarge installer, except for a minor sound issuse, everything went great. The sound issue was solved by using apt-get for aumix install. Neddless to say Debian is now my main OS.
I just have to say, Debian Sarge is King!
I'm a newbie; I never have installed Linux before. I have NO command line knowledge, and I was able to download the latest Sarge daily, (about 105 Mb), boot with it, then do a network-driven installation of Sarge, including a single Logical Volume partition, even though I'm behind a firewall, was being DHCP served, and didn't know anything about the network I'm on. The new Sarge installer is a delight. If I can now figure out how to always keep my software upgraded, without using the command line, then I will have to say that Linux is as easy to use as Windows. Will there be, or is there, a mechanism for keeping programs current that does this as easily as .exe for updates does?
The easiest way to stay updated is command line. Of course, making it a script and creating an icon for that script would solve your command-line concerns, but here it is:
apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade
That's it. Is that really so hard?
Try synaptic: Type in a XTerm window the following command:
apt-get install synaptic
You need administrator rights to execute this command. You may do a SU and password on the commandline first.