Debian GNU/Linux 2.0 'Hamm' Released

July 24th, 1998

Debian GNU/Linux 2.0 'Hamm' has officially been released for the i386 and m68k architectures.

It can be obtained in several ways:

Debian 2.0 contains over 1500 precompiled binary packages contributed from over 400 developers, including all of the favorites: web servers, GIMP, gcc, egcs, XFree86, SQL servers and many other tools and utilities. It also marks the move from the older libc5 to the newer libc6.

Debian's powerful package manager 'dpkg' allows for easy installation, maintenance and updating of packages including sophisticated handling of dependencies and configurations. Packages from other distributions can easily be installed using the 'alien' utility.

Debian development distributions for Alpha, Sparc, and PowerPC are also available under the 'unstable' tree from the FTP site. They will likely be released with Debian 2.1 'Slink'. Development is currently in progress for UltraSparc, Netwinder and Hurd based distributions.

Why Debian GNU/Linux?

Upgrade Information

To avoid problems in just upgrading packages via dpkg, dselect, or dftp (due to possible libc5/libc6 conflicts), a specific upgrade procedure is recommended. This document describing this procedure can be found at:

https://www.debian.org/releases/hamm/HOWTO.upgrade

There are several ways to upgrade from an earlier version:

  1. autoup.sh
    This is a script that will upgrade the programs in the correct order, and even download the deb's for you. Because of the continuing changes to the archive, a tar archive of the packages that were available at the time autoup.sh was last released is provided. This is in the developers corner of the Debian web site, but newer versions are at:
    • https://www.debian.org/releases/hamm/autoup/ (dead link)
    • http://ftp.debian.org/debian/hamm/hamm/upgrade-i386/ (dead link)
    • http://www.uk.debian.org/autoup/ (dead link)
    • http://debian.vicnet.net.au/autoup/ (dead link)
    • http://www.taz.net.au/autoup/ (dead link)
  2. apt-get
    This is the command line part of Debian's future package manager. It knows how to order packages and will download them from a local archive, http, and FTP sites. It is able to merge the info from several sites, so you can use a CD, an up to date mirror, and a non-us site for the best mix of speed, variety, and latest versions. Just run 'apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade'. The 'Bo' version is at: http://ftp.debian.org/debian/hamm/hamm/upgrade-i386/ (dead link). The 'Hamm' version is in project/experimental.
  3. By hand
    A HOWTO can be found at https://www.debian.org/releases/hamm/autoup/HOWTO/libc5-libc6-Mini-HOWTO.html (dead link) but as the autoup.sh simply automates this process this is the least convenient option.

About Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who volunteer their time and effort.

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to mailto:press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage at https://www.debian.org/.