Re: Debian Bug#20445 disagree
>>>>> On Thu, 02 Apr 1998 18:29:30 -0500, Brian White <bcwhite@verisim.com> said:
>> Maybe our Release Manager (Brian C. White) has something to say
>> about this. Brian?
Brian> Okay... I've read over the thread and this is my feelings on
Brian> it:
Brian> CD distributions are most useful to the novice unix user (if
Brian> that isn't a contradiction in terms). Thus, the "stable"
Brian> distribution should be targetted primarily for that user
Brian> group. More advanced users may use the CD as a base, but are
Brian> equally comfortable in pulling packages off of the FTP site.
Brian> In this case, if somebody has the knowledge to build their own
Brian> 2.1 kernel (since one didn't come on the CD), then they have
Brian> the knowledge necessary to get packages from "unstable".
Brian> So, I feel that packages requiring the 2.1 kernel should not
Brian> be in "frozen" or "stable". Please feel free to comment on
Brian> this. It's not a ruling yet.
This seems like a good idea to me. Obviously packages that require
2.1.x kernels and break things with 2.0.x kernels should not be in
stable/frozen, but even those packages that don't hurt anything
installed (my first thought is vold here), but when installed don't do
what the description says shouldn't be in stable/frozen. It would be
confusing to a new user to install something expecting it to work, and
even though it doesn't hurt anything it doesn't work either.
The only suggestion I could make would be to have an extra directory
on the CD that isn't looked at automatically by anything with (but a
user could find it if they went looking) with 2.1.x kernel source and
all the 2.1.x specific packages. AFAIK there aren't many of these
packages, so the space used wouldn't be large, and it'd introduce new
users to some of the new features (though they'd have to go looking
for it).
And for those who would complain that we are dumbing down the
distribution to make new users happier I don't see this as being the
case. What we are doing is providing a _consistent_ set of packages.
According to policy these packages shouldn't be in main anyway since
they should depend on a kernel-image (>= 2.1.x) package.
Dres (who thinks cozing up to new users is a good idea)
--
@James LewisMoss <dres@dimensional.com> | Blessed Be!
@ http://www.dimensional.com/~dres | Linux is cool!
@"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." Bach
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