Re: Should we divide Debian to usable and unusable
On Sun, Jun 04, 2000 at 03:09:05AM -0700, Paulo Henrique Baptista de Oliveira wrote:
> > I've seen many unusable programs be announced as ITP, what use is it
> > for the normal user to have something that you cannot use.
> >
> A normal user can only download the programms that he likes (less than
> 1.0 or not)
the point of my mail was that those who like to have unstable software on
theyre computers should have different different sources than the ones
who have just began to use Linux, it is a BIG disappontment if first 50
programs that you isntall aren't usable.
> > Yes, i use Mozilla, which is considered mostly unusable, and many other
> > developement softwares.
> >
> If none test Mozilla, Mozilla will not go to 1.0.
> Gimp (today at 1.1.23) was tested for three years before 1.0.
but they were known to be usable.
i've seen a few times when someone makes an ITP, and the upstream author
thinks that it's not ready for packaging.
actually xfrisk which i'm packaging is waiting for two things at the
moment, other of those is that the upstream doesn't think it should be
distributed yet. i for one, respect that.
(for those who wait for the package, there is an package available at
my homepage http://www.uusikaupunki.fi/~ressu)
the main reason is that they are doing some major changes and for it to
be good enough for distribution, they have to be finished.
> > although..
> > we have 1371 pre 1.0 packages, against 5309 packages total..
> > (approx 25%)
> >
> This the beauty of Free Software and Debian in particuular we cn
> download and install alpha and beta software for test, improve or know what is
> happening in terms of programms.
i'm with you here, but you think of it as a developer, user, tester or
whatever. i'm trying to think of it as an end user, that hasn't got a
clue about beta alpha or the term unstable.
> I like this way. Imagine Evolution 0.1 (Outlook like gnome program). I
> want to test it and sugest improvemmenents. If it's packaged it much better to
> do this. It's only apt-get install evolution.
i agree with you here, i like to get involved, make suggestions,
corrections and improvements. but a basic user doesn't...
as i stated out in the beginning, i'm trying to think of this from
the end users point of view, they don't understand that there can be
two versions that you can download, 'stable' and 'developement'.. they
expect there to be one version that works.
for so many times i've seen an beginner to complain that it's not stable,
it's not usable and so on. mostly because they don't understand that if
they download developement versions, they can expect crashes, but still
they complain.
i only hope that if the package pool ever gets to action, it would solve
even a bit of these problems.
Regards, Sami Haahtinen
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