Debian 12 “bookworm” Reaches First Code Freeze

[Member olsztyn]

Looks like as of yesterday Debian 12 Bookworm enters freeze development stages:
http://debugpointnews.com/debian-12-freeze/

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
http://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member user2022]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Debian 12 uses mesa 22.3.3-1
http://packages.debian.org/source/bookworm/mesa

But from mesa 22.0 drop support of many old videocard support
http://docs.mesa3d.org/relnotes/22.0.0.html
classic/r100: Delete driver
classic/r200: Delete driver
classic/nouveau: Remove driver
classic/i915: Remove driver
classic/i965: Remove driver
mesa/dri: remove mega driver stub

What version of mesa will be include antix based of debian-12 ?

[Member sybok]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Comment: The choice may be (partially?) dictated by minimal (viable) requirements of the most popular browsers (Firefox and Chromium-based ones).

[Member marcelocripe]

Helpful

Up

0

::

But from mesa 22.0 drop support of many old videocard support
http://docs.mesa3d.org/relnotes/22.0.0.html
classic/r100: Delete driver
classic/r200: Delete driver
classic/nouveau: Remove driver
classic/i915: Remove driver
classic/i965: Remove driver
mesa/dri: remove mega driver stub

I read this and immediately think about planned obsolescence and how the antiX developers will manage to make the miracle for antiX 23 to be usable on the many computers that will be abandoned by Debian 12 and the other operating systems.

– – – – –

But from mesa 22.0 drop support of many old videocard support
http://docs.mesa3d.org/relnotes/22.0.0.html
classic/r100: Delete driver
classic/r200: Delete driver
classic/nouveau: Remove driver
classic/i915: Remove driver
classic/i965: Remove driver
mesa/dri: remove mega driver stub

Eu leio isso e logo penso na obsolescência programada e em como os desenvolvedores do antiX conseguirão fazer o milagre para o antiX 23 ser utilizável nos diversos computadores que serão abandonados pelo Debian 12 e pelos outros sistemas operacionais.

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

Helpful

Up

0

::

We may not be able to do anything on antiX-23 bookworm re mesa.
If we cannot, at least antiX-21/22 is supported until c 2026.

Added: Usually Debian does keep some if not all drivers

See here what is kept http://packages.debian.org/bookworm/amd64/libgl1-mesa-dri/filelist

• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by anticapitalista. Reason: added more information

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Forum Admin Dave]

Helpful

Up

0

::

user2022 wrote:

Debian 12 uses mesa 22.3.3-1
http://packages.debian.org/source/bookworm/mesa

But from mesa 22.0 drop support of many old videocard support
http://docs.mesa3d.org/relnotes/22.0.0.html
classic/r100: Delete driver
classic/r200: Delete driver
classic/nouveau: Remove driver
classic/i915: Remove driver
classic/i965: Remove driver
mesa/dri: remove mega driver stub

What version of mesa will be include antix based of debian-12 ?

Maybe compile and package the missing drivers from the secondary branch…
http://docs.mesa3d.org/amber.html

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Member user2022]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Dave wrote:

Maybe compile and package the missing drivers from the secondary branch…
http://docs.mesa3d.org/amber.html

Hi, Dave

mesa-amber package does not exist in bookworm repo http://packages.debian.org/search?suite=bookworm&searchon=names&keywords=amber

As I understand mesa-amber it is like fork of old mesa 21 and in one system i can not install mesa 22 and mesa-amber 21…

http://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/mesa-amber/
http://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/mesa/

mesa-amber conflicts with mesa

[Member Xunzi_23]

Helpful

Up

1

::

from http://docs.mesa3d.org/amber.html Building
The Amber branch has some extra logic to be able to coexist with recent Mesa releases without
them stepping on each others toes. In order to enable that logic, you need to pass the
-Damber=true flag to Meson.

If as stated both packages should be able to coexist.

I do worry that the debian and many other devs are living in a bubble, much of the world is getting poorer
at a very rapid rate. Better keep an an older device working than have none at all. And binning old devices
is not at all environment friendly.

[Member blur13]

Helpful

Up

0

::

How “old” videocards are we talking about here? 10 yrs, 15 yrs, 20 yrs? How can I check if my videocard is affected?

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Xunzi_23 wrote:

I do worry that the debian and many other devs are living in a bubble, much of the world is getting poorer
at a very rapid rate. Better keep an an older device working than have none at all. And binning old devices
is not at all environment friendly.

I understand your comment and I appreciate it.

I also appreciate the position of Debian and their development team. For a long time they’ve supported
many architectures and platforms. For countless years the Debian project has been notorious for being
well behind the curve in having their current version anywhere close to the current generation of Linux
software.

Over the past couple of years they’ve tried to do better in this regard. They took a look at the
statistics of the number of downloads, installations and updates for each of their supported platforms,
and after a lot of review, discussion (probably arguments too), they decided to purge a few of their
rarely used releases because the amount of work needed to support them was far greater than the number
of observed systems actually using those releases.

Regarding these latest changes, well it’s obvious that some of us do still use certain platforms.
For us, systems from distributions like antiX, various Puppy Linux versions, and possibly something
like Absolute Linux might serve us.

As far as the next Debian release dropping support for some of the hardware that our antiX users
DO use, anticapitalista has already stated “We may not be able to do anything on antiX-23 bookworm re mesa.
If we cannot, at least antiX-21/22 is supported until c 2026.”

Moreover, I also know that a few people have had to resort to using older versions of antiX to support
their systems. That’s certainly not ideal, but it may provide an additional option for those who
simply cannot find any versions that work any more.

I do have a collection of CD and DVD images that go back quite a few years. They contain software
that’s no longer in active development, but in an absolutely worst case scenario, that could also
provide a potential source of code that would at least be possible to use on some really old
equipment before giving up on it entirely.

My suggestion is to make sure you have at least one copy of our antiX Version 21 or 22 available.
That will keep a supported system available until calendar year 2026.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

Helpful

Up

0

::

blur13 wrote:

How “old” videocards are we talking about here? 10 yrs, 15 yrs, 20 yrs? How can I check if my videocard is affected?

I am running antiX 22 on Debian 12 Bookworm/SID with Mesa 22.3.3 full time now and so far all my laptops with variety of displays seem to work fine:

X61 – Intel – about 2008
T410 – nVidia 3100NVS – about 2010
T520 – nVidia 4200NVS – about 2012

Later update:
Tested a few more laptops for antiX 22 on Debian 12 Bookworm/SID:

– Thinkpad Z61P – Video AMD Radeon OpenGL -1920×1200 – About 2009
– Thinkpad X220 – Intel video – 2012
– Thinkpad T410 with Intel video – about 2010

All the above work fine.

But again, need to test older hardware as mentioned before:
Perhaps it is a good opportunity to ask about experience of members with much older hardware though…

As I am running antiX 22 runit on Debian 12 Bookworm full time now on variety of hardware my experience is quite positive so far. But I consider 2008+ hardware not ‘old’ as yet, though…

• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by olsztyn.
• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by olsztyn.
• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
http://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member blur13]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I think my oldest videocard is from 2008 so I guess that will work. Thanks for your testing efforts!

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

1

::

olsztyn wrote:

Looks like as of yesterday Debian 12 Bookworm enters freeze development stages:
http://debugpointnews.com/debian-12-freeze/

According to this page, “At the core, Debian 12 bookworm features Linux Kernel 5.19, which was released on August 2022. A significant version upgrade since Debian 11. And it’s pretty recent and supports all the major manufacturers’ modern hardware lineups (CPU, GPU, SoC). The current development version is Linux Kernel 6.2, which is just two versions behind considering the three/four months Kernel release cycle.”

On the other hand, at the http://backports.debian.org/bullseye-backports/overview/ site, the table lists:

Package 	bullseye-backports 	bookworm 	Changed by 	Signed by
linux 	        6.0.12-1~bpo11+1 	6.1.4-1 	Ben Hutchings   <benh@deb...> 	Ben Hutchings

So if all goes well, we should have a long term stable kernel 5.19 to support current modern hardware.
We will also have a 6.1,4-1 and a 6.2 kernel that should also be available.

For Debian users who have pretty old gear, I’d advise saving the kernels and their libraries that work with your current hardware; be sure to save BOTH environments. the stuff in /boot and the stuff in /lib to ensure support.

For example, when I wanted to obtain NEWER hardware support, I had to bring not only the new kernel along, I also had to bring with me the contents
of /lib/modules and /lib/kernel, and in my case, the modules for my wireless card too. Those with older hardware will want to retain old contents; I suggest it would be wise to save the same directories in case they will be needed. If not, you can dispose of them once you are complete with your installation and configuration. It’s wiser and safer to save anything you may want or need. Perhaps the easiest way of all would be to perform a full backup of your system. It would take much more time, but in the event of issues you will have an entire system you can go back to, as long as you are certain that your backup copy can also be accurately restored.

Backups and restores are always a good practice, though few individuals actually use them or think of them until it’s too late.

--
Brian Masinick

[Author]

Posts