The much heralded "Buster"- When? [now!]

[aqk]

"Any day now" ... Yeah I've been hearing this for several months.
The only reason I want Buster is that it has a PHP > 7.1.3

The present Stretch has PHP 7.0 I can't remember if it came with this, or I upgraded it myself
However an app I'm trying to install refuses to use this.
You are running PHP 7.0.33-0+deb9u3, but Grav needs at least PHP 7.1.3 to run.

I've already replaced Apache with Nginx. So should I bother attempting to u/g PHP to 7.2 or 7.3 or wait?
Until when? Should I check with Debian?

[Douglas6]

When and where have you heard "any day now"?

[klricks]

If the RPF follows past history, then expect Raspbian 'Buster' to be released 2-4 months after the Debian 'Buster' release.

Raspbian releases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspbian
Debian releases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_version_history

[hippy]

Buster appears to have been fully frozen, so arrival should be sooner rather than later, but the most Debian will say is "some time mid-2019".

Then there's that potential delay between Debian Buster and Raspbian Buster, and one might choose to wait a while to ensure any unexpected bugs are shaken out before upgrading.

So, I would say, if you want a later version of PHP within the next few months, simply install that, and suck it up with a "ho hum" if Buster arrives sooner than anticipated. Or just sit back and wait until it does arrive.

[LTolledo]

Demanding for free stuff

vs.

Demanding for payable stuff

Me thinks the first one is hard to follow-up.....

".....the majority investor/financier always has his way......"

[hippy]

Demanding for free stuff

vs.

Demanding for payable stuff

I don't see any "demanding" at all.

At best a "plea for clarity", even though there is none to be had. It's not an unfamiliar dilemma; should I buy my milk today though I will actually only need to buy it tomorrow. Will it be cheaper now, or might it be cheaper tomorrow ?

[Heater]

Perhaps not demanding but '"Any day now" ... Yeah I've been hearing this for several months.' sounds like whining that a huge number of volunteers, mostly working for free, has not done the work I expect of them in the time I expect.

How is a new release of Debian like buying anything? It comes when it comes and it's free.

[jamesh]

Perhaps not demanding but '"Any day now" ... Yeah I've been hearing this for several months.' sounds like whining that a huge number of volunteers, mostly working for free, has not done the work I expect of them in the time I expect.

How is a new release of Debian like buying anything? It comes when it comes and it's free.

Indeed. To my knowledge, the Raspberry Team has never announced or said anything about the Buster schedule. Worth noting that Buster has not officially been released by Debian yet...

[fruitoftheloom]

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBuster

[pfletch101]

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBuster

Are you agreeing or disagreeing with jamesh? Your linked page states explicitly that Buster is "the current testing distribution" (my emphasis). The RPF folks are, indeed, testing it. In due course, after the stable version is available, they will release a version of Raspbian based on it. In the interim, if you want to live an exciting life, there are published links to Buster for the Pi, but I think that most of us would prefer to wait for the stable release.

[Andyroo]

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBuster

Are you agreeing or disagreeing with jamesh? Your linked page states explicitly that Buster is "the current testing distribution" (my emphasis). The RPF folks are, indeed, testing it. In due course, after the stable version is available, they will release a version of Raspbian based on it. In the interim, if you want to live an exciting life, there are published links to Buster for the Pi, but I think that most of us would prefer to wait for the stable release.

To be fair its in full freeze state - any more changes are manually reviewed and anything pulled does not go back in.

If I'm reading the docs correct (may be not at this time of night):
Stretch took 4 months
Jessie took 5 months
Wheezy took 6 months

Progressing this we are looking at October for initial release + time for checking by the Foundation et al - maybe a Christmas present for all?

It will come at some point - if its legal for your location / age put money on it with a book maker if you feel confident

[Gavinmc42]

Been a lot of testing and more Pi stuff has been up-streamed into Linux.
Mid year was what I had been hearing last year/start of this year, getting close to that now.

Buster freeze was in March 2019.
So we are about half way though the 6 months the last one took?
Before Xmas anyway?

Making Raspbian more closely aligned to main stream Debian should help speed up the release?
Not sure how developed the Mesa3D and VC4 GPU driver are in Buster?

Buster Gnome uses Wayland, wonder if that will work on Pi's?

Will we get an ARM64 version too?
I suspect if we don't get an official 64bit Raspbian, someone will make a version as some of that has been tested.
Those 32bit hardware VC4 bits like the camera are still issues?

Every new version does seem to get better and more usable
And bigger and more bloated?
We getting RustC as standard?

Let's wait and see or impatient people can test and try it.
Debian is a super stable Distribution which means not bleeding edge so it will be behind other OS's.
Not a big deal for RPF's mission where reliable is more important than fancy.

[hippy]

To my knowledge, the Raspberry Team has never announced or said anything about the Buster schedule. Worth noting that Buster has not officially been released by Debian yet...

That last I recall was -

When the raspberry pi foundation switch their images from stretch to buster is up to them, but I would expect it to be some time around the time buster goes stable which I expect to be something around 4 months from now.

That was in March, so set an expectation for July or so, though that, of course, was never a promise.

For a long time the arrival of Buster has notionally been "mid-2019" so it was only natural that should tilt towards "coming soon" in approaching that time. And it's not unreasonable to ask how on-track things are for that, even if there are no absolute answers.

The only absolute we have is that Raspbian won't likely move to Buster until after Debian release Buster as the stable version.

[hippy]

Perhaps not demanding but '"Any day now" ... Yeah I've been hearing this for several months.'

That's because, for several months, Debian have been saying Buster was imminent, colloquially "any day now".

sounds like whining that a huge number of volunteers, mostly working for free, has not done the work I expect of them in the time I expect.

How is, asking how on track to what the stated expectation was, "whining" ?

It's really just asking for a progress report, asking what the latest expectations are.

[kozman]

July 6th: https://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyBuster

[rpdom]

July 6th: https://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyBuster

That's when it goes live in Debian. Raspbian will run a bit behind that.

I believe most of the Raspbian Buster is ready to use, but there are a few Pi specific bits that the RPF will have to sort out as well. I'm sure that work is well in progress.

[kozman]

July 6th: https://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyBuster

That's when it goes live in Debian. Raspbian will run a bit behind that.

I believe most of the Raspbian Buster is ready to use, but there are a few Pi specific bits that the RPF will have to sort out as well. I'm sure that work is well in progress.

A bit, yes, but not too far behind. I would surmise the RPF has had some degree of development parity with Buster since it's been more or less frozen the past couple months. Like various Ubuntu distros, they come out on or shortly after the official Ubuntu release date. I imagine Raspbian based on Buster will do something similar. It's safe to say the finish line is in site.

[rpdom]

A bit, yes, but not too far behind.

With previous releases it has been a matter of months.

[bensimmo]

x86 RPD is working fine under Buster after a fix they did when I tried.
It all depends how much of a refresh they do to Raspbian with new stuff, tweaks, future capability.
I guess we'll find out.

I wonder if they'll ask for pre-release testers to get rid of a few bugs (iirc there where a few when Raspbian Stretch was released?)
Sorted out quickly though.

Of course you could try now, just switch apt to Buster and find out (it works fine on x86 RPD.. for me).

[rpdom]

I did try switching my x86 system to Buster a month or two back. It didn't work. I can't remember what was wrong at the time. I'll have to back it up and try again. At the moment it's running mostly Stretch with a few bits from Buster. I have Raspberrys that are running everything from Wheezy to Stretch with bits of Buster and one package from Sid. I'd like to get them all running Buster, but there is a lot of work involved. Summer is a better time for working on some of them , as I don't need heating.

[binaryhermit]

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-a ... 00003.html

Buster's currently scheduled to be released July 6

And given that security support's going to happen for stretch for a while longer, the RPF and raspbian developers have time to plan a migration

[bensimmo]

I did try switching my x86 system to Buster a month or two back. It didn't work. I can't remember what was wrong at the time. I'll have to back it up and try again. At the moment it's running mostly Stretch with a few bits from Buster. I have Raspberrys that are running everything from Wheezy to Stretch with bits of Buster and one package from Sid. I'd like to get them all running Buster, but there is a lot of work involved. Summer is a better time for working on some of them , as I don't need heating.

If it was an RPD desktop and you lost the desktop which I did, that was fixed
viewtopic.php?f=116&t=238504&p=1460761#p1460373

Oddly the only real problem I had since was my HPG70 laptop's wifi never worked in Stretch, then near the end it worked after and update. Moving to Buster killed of the WiFi again. I don't use it so never looked into it.
But then HP lock down everything so much, you can't switch wifi internal cards, they are locked in the bios, alter things Linux would really like to play with (I forget what acpi or something it keeps polling and causes teh boot to take ages, but it a common problem from reading around)

For me, my move was to get Python3.7, for some reason pygame /pgzero runs a lot quicker in 3.7 than 3.5 (in both my Windows10 and RPD desktop)


Anyway back onto RPD ARM

[hippy]

For me, my move was to get Python3.7, for some reason pygame /pgzero runs a lot quicker in 3.7 than 3.5 (in both my Windows10 and RPD desktop)

Though the Python team aren't as sympathetic to complaints of the slow performance of Python 3 against 2.7 as I would like them to be, they do seem to have put some effort into improving 3's performance. That should be of benefit to Pi users and others.

[digzuwu]

Ondrej Sury's PHP packages work fine on Raspbian, use those to install PHP 7.3. Debian (and therefore Raspbian) is strongly focused on stability and rigorous testing rather than cutting-edge things which is why you'll generally find a lot of outdated packages and such, though generally security hotfixes and the like are backported to the older version for obvious reasons.

[Gorblimey]

got a copy of Buster x64 from someone calling himself Sakai. Nice guy in my opinion. Was helpful when I posed some questions about the OS.