Re: FWD: RMS and Debian on his Toshiba
On Fri, Jan 08, 1999 at 03:59:17PM +0000, Jonathan Buzzard wrote:
>
> Not anymore it won't, the frozen pcmcia-cs package will not install
> on Hamm without a glibc upgrade. Which is half of my point anyway.
>
Perhaps it would have been more constructive to ask if anyone had
the pcmcia-cs package from slink compiled with Hamm's glibc, instead
of proposing major changes to the Debian distribution system that could
compromise the integrity of the stable release (making it less stable).
>
> Don't know what laptops you use, but this is trival on a Toshiba,
> I have personally done it on over a dozen machines. However this is
> the most stupid argument I have ever heard, what you are saying is
> that because Microsoft is worse, the poor state of affairs in Debian
> is justified. That's the way to go then.
>
I've installed on Micron, Dell, Compaq and IBM. I'm not saying that
because M$ is worse Debian is justified, I'm just saying that the
status quo is there. Not that it is a good thing.
> I beg to differ, if I can't get a .deb package with the stuff I
> need, then it's not supported in my opinion.
>
You are entitled to your opinion, and I agree that not having a .deb
available is not a good thing, but again Debian is a volunteer effort
and people can only do so much before they have to earn some money for
food.
> > Updating the pcmcia drivers may break other software that then has
> > to be updated, and so it snowballs. I've seen it happen. You pointed
> > out the possibility of glibc moving to 2.1 (granted that is a
> > special case since most software in Linux depends on glibc in some
> > form). You will have the same problems updating any low level support
> > library or driver.
>
> Precisely which applications is updating the pc-card drivers going
> to break, apart from none?
Anything that depends on pcmcia-cs *could* break when it is updated.
Or worse, the version of pcmcia-cs could depend on upgrading other
packages to work properly.
>
> Funny because this copy of SuSE 5.3 I have installs like a dream, no
> problems, pc-card stuff works out the box, need I say more.
>
SuSE is a commercially supported distribution.
> As much as it pains me I think that I will have to but warnings on my
> web pages not to use Debian on Toshiba laptops. This we don't care
> that Debian does not work on one sixth of new machines atitude and
> besides it's Toshiba's fault for daring to include new techologies
> in laptops they stoped manufacturing months ago, and which have
> been supported by Linux for even longer attidude is plainly rediculas.
>
>
As was pointed out 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9. I do care, and it is not Toshiba's
fault. Linux success on new hardware has always depended on people
writing a driver for the hardware and releasing it to the rest of the
Linux world. Distributions depend on the drivers to be written, and
updated. The distributions then have to make sure whatever they put
together works together or no one will use the distribution.
The Debian developer community may or may not agree with my stand, but I
would much rather have to tell someone that Debian does not support their
system with the stable distribution yet (however the unstable distribution
does if you wish to try it), than tell them it does and have an application
quit working due to changes in a driver.
Pat
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