Hi, question: were you grading debian or Infomagic? Care to consider a few revissions? :)
Hi,
I'm a debian developer, so I have some interest in this... however,
I intend to show that some of these grades should actually go to
Infomagic. The overall reason for that is that Infomagic decides what
goes in their pkg. Debian has nothing to do with the making of that
decision. So that others may comment, I have crossposted this to
the debian-devel list. You can post there; if you want replies but
you don't want to subscribe, you can ask to have relative posts carbon-
copied to you.
I am not subscribed to -devel myself, so I make that request for myself.
I only speak for myself. I am one person among about 500 developers, and
among many users of linux. While I am a developer, I speak here only
as a person.
First and foremost, the "Value for money" grade is improperly assigned,
you obtained debian from Infomagic who you paid. You could have
downloaded
it yourself for free, either by package or by CD image. It would be nice
if you made it clear that your grade in that area is primarily relative
to
Infomagic. After all, they decided the price and content.
Among other things, you state: "Debian is packaged in an oversized CD
jewel
case; without any printed documentation whatsoever." I propose that this
sentence should read: "The offering of the official Debian CDs from
Infomagic is packaged in an oversized CD jewel case without any printed
documentation whatsoever."
There are lots of "distributions" of linux, and within each, there are
lots
of ways to obtain and install their software. Debian does not charge for
software that it distributes. It does ask for donations, but that is
-not-
mandatory.
Would it be possible in the future you could go over some of the
different
ways of getting linux, and research a bit more for Debian's case? Your
readers would appreciate knowing what more of their choices are:
Download
themselves (there are numerous forms of this one), LSL, CheapBytes,
Infomagic (which you cover), get free CDs at a show in which debian has
a
booth, the New Riders book includes a CD in their printed book, etc.
Second, the "Documentation" grade. Could you clarify at least to me
the exact criteria for that grade? It is true that the installation
goes as you say; I would like to point, however, out that there are
at least two books in print that cover use and installation of Debian.
One of those is free software. I will refer to that one here (one of
my biases (in favor of free software) reveals itself...); other Debian
references can be found at http://www.debian.org/.
The book "Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage", written by
John Goerzen and Ossama Othman (who are themselves also Debian
developers),
Copyrighted by "Software in the Public Interest, Inc." and published by
New Riders, is available in at least three forms which are all available
at the New Riders site. The reference is
http://www.newriders.com/0914-9.htm
where you can order the printed book, browse it with or without frames
or get the source (and maybe print it yourself.) Again, "more than one
way to do/get it".
I will note in addition that there is the "Linux Installation and
Getting
Started Guide", available at any Linux Documentation Project mirror
site, also GPLed, also available in many forms.
The point I'm trying to get across, is that debian (like most other
distributions of linux) allow far more than one way to obtain and
install it on your machine. That's the benefit of choice.
In at least the cases of your "Value for money" and "Documentation"
grades, it seems like you're grading what actually comes with one of
many packagings of debian. Infomagic made all decisions as to what went
into their package. Debian has had official CDs for several years; I
would like to thank Infomagic for finally adopting them. Debian is free,
so
the value for your money is potentially infinite. :)
Most of these things are in common to most or all distributions, some
are not. Check it out.
---
Jim Lynch Finger for pgp key
as Laney College CIS admin: jim@laney.edu http://www.laney.edu/~jim/
as Debian developer: jwl@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~jwl/
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