The next major release of Debian GNU/Linux is taking shape – albeit without the explicit direction of a Release Manager and with some significant hurdles to overcome.
Squeeze (named after the three-eyed aliens in Toy Story) will be the first major Debian release since Lenny came out in February of 2009. Unlike other distros like OpenSUSE, Fedora or Ubuntu, the Debian release process has never seemed particularly structured in terms of a fixed timeline for targeting releases.
In fact, I think (and wrote the same back in 2005) that it is Debian’s difficulty with putting out releases that led to the rise of Ubuntu in the first place. The Squeeze release also looks like it will have its share of challenges before it is generally available.
“The situation of the release is not as good as we had hoped, but it looks like we can do the release in a few months if we all work together,” Debian developer Adam Barratt wrote in a mailing list posting.
