The ultimate release of Debian Sarge will also serve as to highlight the difference between it and commercial distributions. "When Sarge will be released, it will demonstrate once more that Debian isn't keen on implementing half-hearted solutions or will release without the distribution, the archive and security support in perfect shape," Debian developer Martin "Joey" Schluze said. "This is one of the most important differences to commercial distributions where stuff will be released when the time has come."

"Debian will release the distribution when it is ready and when the infrastructure is in place," he said.

In terms of issues that are potentially holding back Debian Sarge at this point, release manager Andreas Barth said that there was nothing large but that the small issues outstanding still will take some time. "We need to have security support, we need a new release candidate of our installer, and we need to sort out a lot of smaller issues," Barth said.

"But we are expecting it soon. On the small level, I can see progress almost every day."

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