Debian 3.0 “Woody”: cryptography in the main archive
Summary
On 19 July 2002 Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 “Woody” was released for eleven processor architectures, for the first time with KDE and with cryptography directly in the main archive. OpenSSH and GNU Privacy Guard were now part of the default installation, and about 4,000 new packages were added. For admins, the release also brought aptitude, APT pinning and support for kernels 2.2 and 2.4 with the journaling file systems ext3 and ReiserFS.
What was new
Until then Debian kept cryptography in a separate archive outside the USA because of US export regulations. With Woody it moved into the main archive: SSH, GnuPG and strong encryption in browsers, web servers and databases were now part of the normal installation.
New architectures were IA-64, HP PA-RISC, MIPS and S/390. The desktop got KDE 2.2 for the first time, plus GNOME 1.4, XFree86 4.1 and browsers such as Mozilla, Galeon and Konqueror. Woody was the first Debian release compliant with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 2.2.
Ideas
- Encryption belongs in the base installation, not in an extra archive.
- In-place upgrades without downtime were already Debian’s strength in 2002.
- APT pinning allows fetching individual packages from newer branches.
- Maintaining many architectures costs time but secures independence.
Insights
- That SSH only became a natural part of Debian in 2002 shows how strongly export laws slowed the spread of encryption.
- Woody took almost two years after Debian 2.2; the long gaps later prompted fixed release cycles.
Facts
- Released on 19 July 2002 for eleven architectures.
- OpenSSH and GNU Privacy Guard were part of the default installation for the first time.
- About 4,000 new packages were added compared with the previous release.
- Kernels 2.2 and 2.4 were supported, with 2.4 also ext3 and ReiserFS.
References
Remarks
- The announcement now lives in the Debian archive at chronicles.debian.org.
Recommendations
- For an upgrade, read the release notes of the respective Debian version in full; that applied in 2002 as it does today.
- Use APT pinning sparingly; mixed systems are harder to maintain.
Read the original announcement
Links to the original source and the Web Archive open in a new tab.