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Re: Themes - do we package them?



On Thu, Feb 18, 1999 at 10:40:36PM -0800, gecko@benham.net wrote:
> > We should probably split them into their own section or sections.
> I'll agree with this.  They should be developed *and* we should create a
> section on the same tier as main, contrib and non-free.  Call it data.
> We can stick debs of certain data.  The census data that Dale has.  The maps
> that are floating around, themes...
This might meet with a lot of opposition, but maybe we should consider
a more general system, breaking up debian into more sections, rather than
just main, contrib, non-free and non-US (and the proposed data).
There are two main reasons for this:

o Whilst the current layout used to be fine, as we get larger and larger we
  are going to face more and more problems. It would probably make life a
  lot more convenient for CD distributors (and I guess distributors in
  general) if we gave finer control.
  Census data, astronomical data (did I read about that earlier?) etc should
  all be available as deb packages if someone offers to maintain them, but it
  is true that they are huge, and only interest a small minority and so
  shouldn't be in the main distribution where they cause bloat.

o Systems like Gnome. I want to be up to date on the latest versions of
  Gnome. To do that I have to use potato (which is OK for me but less
  experienced people I am trying to convert to Debian who can cope with Gnome
  occasionally breaking *can't* cope with larger problems. It seems a little
  silly that you have to accept every unstable package to (automatically)
  update to the latest release of Xfoobar.
  
If we split the distribution up more into (possibly overlapping, possibly
hiearchical) sections then CD burners could get the main debian stuff with
Gnome without KDE or vice versa (for example), and without 600M of
statistical data on the annual migration of various insects. Other could
decide that insect-data was an essential part of their distribution.
And a user could decide that they would source packages from main (possibly
including stable Gnome releases) but not Gnome-unstable.

Ben


-- 
+-----Ben Bell - "A song, a perl script and the occasional silly sig.-----+
  ///      email: bjb@deus.net            www: http://www.deus.net/~bjb/
  bjb         Snail: 20 Guildford Road West, Farnborough, GU14 6PU
  \_/        "I aim to please, but I may need some target practice."




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