I think it's mostly about communication
Since everybody is throwing their two cents at the doom-of-debian and related
threads - here are mine:
When I got frustrated with SuSE upgrade-troubles, and started looking at
debian, one of my main concerns was to see, whether KDE 3.x would be
available for Debian. Sometimes users do have good reasons to want software
newer than that available in the stable-distribution, and just to shut up the
comments about "why didn't you just stick with KDE 2.2.2", here are some:
1) Sometimes you really do need some of the new features
2) Sometimes you really do need some software, which unfortunately depends on
KDE 3.x libs
3) If you happen to develop some software for KDE, you'd kind of like to
support 3.x, since that's what everybody else is using
4) I don't think "I want the latest eye-candy" is such a bad argument either.
Now, the good news is, of course, that you actually can have KDE 3.x on debian
(long before it finally entered sid), and same goes for openoffice and a lot
of other stuff that _people simply want to have_. And you can have it without
it being included in official stable. The one problem that remains is to
figure out, _how_ to get it. That's not a big problem, once you are
accustomed to debian, but as a new user (or even as a not-yet-user trying to
figure out, whether debian is the right distribution to chose), it simply is
not that easy.
The solution to this is remarkably easy, and does not even involve changing
anything about the debian-releases at all. Simply put a big fat link right on
debian.org "how to get the latest software for debian". There, list the most
important unofficial repositories on one page. Explain why that software is
not included in the official debian yet. Explain in detail, what actions to
take to get that software. Add short comments about the kind of troubles to
expect, links to further information, the relevant lists. It's not like this
sort of information was not available, it's simply that as a new user you
have a hard time finding it, or even realizing, it does exist somewhere.
That's it. The downside of this is, that somebody will have to maintain this
list, and that there is a big fat link on debian.org, which some will
consider ugly, superfluous, or downright evil. The upside of this is, that it
will save zillions of newbie-mails asking why this or that is not in debian,
how to get it etc. It might even save some of the "Doom of Debian"-threads.
It will likely attract more users (and for all those, who think that debian
doesn't need any more: more users means more testing and more potential new
developers).
Well, I'm not claiming this proposal will lead us straight to univeral
happiness, but I do think it's worth considering.
Thomas
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