Bug#154950: Thoughts on GNOME 2 transition
Hello
For some weeks you are speaking about GNOME2 transition, and during this
time packages are staying in experimental ... and I think it is not a
good idea to do that!
Why ? Because many users want to run gnome2 instead of gnome1.4 ... for
that they have to add experimental to sources.list.
Well, this method works (I'm unsing experimental for a while, no
problems with the packages and gnome2 is very great), but what about
others packages in experimental ?
I think you will agree with the fact that some packages in experimental
are not for all users (ie: libpam).
But how the users upgrade their gnome2 system ?
Because dist-upgrade don't upgrade gnome2, many of them just use
'apt-get dist-upgrade -t experimental' ... and so upgrade their system
with experimentals packages (and not only gnome2 packages)!
Yes, users have not to do that, but stay in IRC for some days on users
chans, and you will look that many of them do that!
So what doing ?
a/ Just saying that user have not to use experimental (or have to know
what they are doing) and wait they crash their system ?
Because many users don't know what experimental is, they just want to
install gnome2 ... but there are Debian users!
What will you doing if they crash their system because of a failure in
experimental packages ? Just saying that they had not to use
experimental ? Theses people are Debian users ... and I don't think you
want give them reason to swtich to an another distribution just because
they don't know Debian as well as devels !
b/ Switching to gnome2 on unstable.
There is many reasons to do that :
- Packages work fine for a while, there is no problem to use it on a
Debian unstable.
- Most of the users think than gnome2 is great, and prefer it to
gnome1.4 ... just ask them what they want, if you don't agree with that!
- Users who wants give gnome1.4 can use stable or testing.
- And why would you like wait for script to do transition ? GTK+
preferances will stay after upgrading. And place some icons and applets
on a panel, choose a background picture are not very long or difficult
tasks for user. I don't think you are delaying the transition just for
sparing some minutes of user's time ...
So what is the problem with this gnome2 transition in unstable ? You are
waiting for some details whereas most of user will prefer that gnome2
come in unstable now ... and that would be better for that users than
continue to use experimental in theses conditions !
Cheers,
Sebastien Bacher
Reply to: