Debian release update

Wondering about the status of Debian "Sarge," otherwise known as the next stable release of Debian? Andreas Barth has posted an update for the next Debian installer release candidate (RC3), which also gives some clue as to when Sarge might finally show up for duty.

If all goes according to schedule, the RC3 release should hit around March 23rd. Assuming that RC3 is relatively bug-free and feature complete, maybe we can pencil in a Debian stable release sometime around June of this year.

I expect that the speed of the Sarge release is going to be a major topic of discussion leading up to the Debian Project Leader elections. One candidate proposes that Debian adopt the 6-month concept that has worked well for OpenBSD, GNOME, Ubuntu and others. I think Debian would do well to adopt the Ubuntu model: A new release every six months, that's supported for 18 months, with an optional "Enterprise" release with a longer lifespan. A short release cycle is more interesting for developer and desktop users, but a royal pain in the posterior for admins -- as many Fedora Core 1 users are finding out.

This is a question that's not going to go away anytime soon: What's the ideal release cycle for Debian (or any Linux distro), and what's the best way to achieve it?