Re: amd64 into mainstream
On (20/04/05 10:04), Ed Cogburn wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 April 2005 5:34am, Clive Menzies wrote:
> >
> > Debian and Ubuntu appear to have a symbiotic relationship, at least
>
> well kinda....
>
> > I regard them as complementary rather than competing offerings. Many of
> > the live CDs and desktop distros are debian based and not only expand
> > user choice but extend the reach of debian and free software.
> > Naturally, there is a fear that widespread adoption of alternative
> > distros will be at the expense of debian; on the contrary, all these
> > debian derivatives are strengthening rather than weakening it.
>
>
> Please show us evidence of this. What I suspect is that the alternatives are
> moving so far ahead of Debian, because Debian is having a long and painful
> childbirth of Sarge so all forward looking work is on hold, that very little
> is getting back into Debian. I'm afraid of what happens if Ubuntu gets so
> far ahead, and continues to diverge from Debian base while they do, and
> meanwhile Debian remains mired in its identity crisis, that eventually Ubuntu
> just decides they can't wait for us to catch up any more and they simply fork
> Debian.
I cannot offer quantative analysis but I met some of the Ubuntu developers at a
recent Hoary launch party in London and there seemed to be a lot of
overlap with Debian, ie. some are working on both projects.
Most of the derivatives are based on sid/sarge and except for the recent
hiatus (because of the impending sarge release) sid has been at the
forefront of development rather than being left behind. So whilst the
stable distribution may get stale, sid and consequently, testing (once
sarge is out of the door) should be maintained at the forefront of
developments rather than being left behind. Debian base (as you refer
to it) isn't stable (currently woody) at least as far as the derivatives
are concerned; it is testing/unstable ........ and let's not ignore
experimental ;)
>
>
> > After all modifying and distributing your changes is what free software is
> > all about - so we should embrace it.
>
>
> Except when the changes create incompatibility. It isn't so much code that
> I'm worried about forking, its the standards Debian is built on. What
> happens when Debian can't move fast enough for Ubuntu so Ubuntu starts making
> incompatible improvements to dpkg/apt to improve their customer's experience
> with updating their system? This wouldn't be much of an issue to me if
> Debian were moving forward with a clear vision for the Desktop. However
> Debian doesn't have a clear vision for the Desktop, it doesn't even have a
> clear vision of what it wants to be 10 years from now. Because of this,
> Debian is not moving forward at a decent pace, and that's why I worry about
> the derivatives of Debian moving so far ahead that their symbiotic
> relationship with Debian simply becomes parasitic, with the derivatives
> slowly sucking energy, ideas, developers, and users from Debian itself.
If what I've described above bears scrutiny then this won't happen.
I'm an outsider and these are my observations after working with Debian
for a couple of years.
It would be interesting to hear from the developers themselves,
particularly those who work on Debian and a derivative project.
>From a personal perspective I run sid because I get access to the latest
and greatest without having to wait for the next release. But on
servers I rely on proven trusted software that doesn't need (nor would I
want it) to be .... bleeding edge.
Regards
Clive
--
www.clivemenzies.co.uk ...
...strategies for business
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