Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Wed, 20 Nov 2002 20:50:32 +1100
Andrew Lau <netsnipe@debianplanet.org> wrote:
> Dear everyone in the Debian community,
[snip]
> ...I'm becoming more and more disturbed...
[snip]
You should see someone about that... was it you who said about yourself
"I am a flamewarrior"? If so, you should see someone about that too...
Right. Like we need a "flamewarrior" in an advocacy position.
Debian stands on its merits. Gentoo does as well. If you want to not
waste your exam time, study for exams. After they're done and you're
rested, find bugs (and evidence that what you find is in fact a bug)
and submit fixes for those bugs, again, with evidence that the fix
does counteract the bug without introducing other problems.
It is IN THIS WAY that debian will gain quality and therefore users.
However this will be limited by the number of users that can install
debian, that can install linux, that can install any operating
system. Slowly, the installation process for debian is getting easier,
but this is not seen by most debian developers as a priority; they
see debian's flavor of linux as an advanced flavor, meant for those
who already know. (from the outside looking in, this will resemble
a smart-people club, but again, this is not seen as all that relevent.)
If I were to suggest debian to someone and they decide (the key words
here are "THEY DECIDE") to go with another operating system, if I
then try to continue convincing them that "debian is the way" or
whatever, I place myself in a permanent servatude position, which I
don't want; I don't even want it to look anything like that or to
have the other person feel I somehow owe him ongoing service because
of his perception that I made the choice.
On the other hand, if they say "I'm interested in linux... which
flavor should I get?" and I say "try a few of them... as far as
I know, the main flavors are redhat, suse and debian, with redhat
being easiest to install and debian being hardest to install but
easiest to maintain if you stick with their packaging system" and
then I say "here's a document called the Distribution-HOWTO that
is a short comparitive survey on distributions; read it and see
which short description you like the best", I have put the choice
where it belongs: IN THE HANDS OF THE OWNER OF THE COMPUTER.
-Jim
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