Re: How would I get debian unstable?
On 6/5/08, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Lennart Sorensen
> <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 04:48:48PM +0200, Heikki Levanto wrote:
> >> Sorry if I over react, but I am a bit allergic to anyone claiming something
> >> is "fundamentally the wrong way to do" almost anything. I guess most of the
> >> ways have their justifications for some situations.
> >
> > It's inefficient, and the vast majority of arguments for the design are
> > incorrect since it doesn't actually accomplish what people claim it is
> > supposed to accomplish. You end up with less well tested software,
> > (due to lots of variation in configurations and compile options), lots
> > of potential for bugs (due to people playing with compiler options they
> > don't understand), and the rather vocal (although probable minority of)
> > users who believe that because they compiled it themselves on their CPU
> > it must automatically run faster than if someone else compiled it for
> > the same CPU.
> >
> > I am an opinionated bastard (although I believe I have valid reasons for
> > my opinions) and I think gentoo is a stupid waste of time with zero
> > purpose for existing and all you learn from it is how much time you can
> > waste compiling software, and you only learn that lesson when you stop
> > using gentoo. Everything else you could have learned quicker and better
> > using something like Debian if you really had an interest in learning
> > how to mange compilation and optimization of software and the overall
> > system. I imagine most gentoo users will think I am wrong, at least
> > until the day they move on and realize their mistake.
>
> In my (also opinionated!) view, what would have been the Real Better
> Thing would be if Slackware (which always had some affinity for
> BSD-like approaches to things such as init) had, instead of staying
> with Patrick Volkerding managing packages as a proprietor (he is
> dubbed, after all, the "Slackware Benevolent Dictator for Life"),
> adopted, DIRECTLY, the BSD Ports mechanism for managing packages.
>
> Had that happened, then those with an affinity for building from
> source would have The Same System that is being managed (quite
> competently) by the BSD folk, and, in my (opinionated!) view,
> Slackware would be of MUCH more significant public interest today, as
> its upgrade and deployment mechanisms would have progressed along with
> BSD, and provided a much better bridge between the communities.
>
> In that context, there would have been no need for Gentoo to emerge at all.
>
> Note that I haven't said anything about "recompiling everything
> everywhere all the time;" note that Ports happily lives alongside
> pkg_add, which allows deploying binary packages too. (Which I believe
> get built using Ports.)
>
> >> I learned a lot from the year I installed and run Gentoo on my desktop. That
> >> experience was the direct cause that I dared to to a Debian install over the
> >> net, with not much help from the local people... Just stick in a CD (I think
> >> it wasn't even Debian, possibly Knoppix), enable me to ssh in, and I took it
> >> from there. Bit scary to tell it to reboot, but it did come up, and was a
> >> functional system... I guess a Debian wizard would have done it with just
> >> Debian background, but walking through the Gentoo installation was a good
> >> learning experience. (and maintaining the system for a while too, although
> >> that was what convinced me to switch back to Debian).
> >
> > I learned a lot moving to Debian about how to do things right (or at
> > least better than any other system I have used).
>
> I learned quite a bit the time I upgraded Slackware from a.out to ELF.
Me too I learn to use Debian (dselect times) ;-)
>
> There's a certain kind of learning that falls out of doing some
> similarly intrusive system upgrade by hand; after having done that
> once, somewhat badly, and finding that Slackware didn't cope with the
> change terribly well, I migrated to Red Hat, which coped with that
> migration better (albeit via a complete reinstall), and that was, in
> effect the cause for people leaving Slackware in droves, and adopting
> Red Hat in even greater quantity.
>
> It's not something I'd want to do by hand ever again - there are
> plenty enough problems *that interest me* that I am perfectly happy to
> let the "Debian aggregate consciousness" cope with many of the
> problems that *don't* interest me.
>
> Fighting with compiler flags, the "Gentoo Ricer" thing, doesn't
> interest me in the slightest...
> --
> http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
> "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
> expecting different results." -- assortedly attributed to Albert
> Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Rita Mae Brown, and Rudyard Kipling
>
>
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>
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