Re: Should we divide Debian to usable and unusable
Hello,
On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, Bas Zoetekouw wrote:
-->Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 17:07:27 +0200
-->From: Bas Zoetekouw <bas@medeia.dhs.org>
-->To: Debian Developement Mailinglist <debian-devel@lists.debian.org>
-->Subject: Re: Should we divide Debian to usable and unusable
-->Resent-Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 15:07:52 GMT
-->Resent-From: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
-->
-->Thus spake Sami Haahtinen (ressu@uusikaupunki.fi):
-->
-->> as i stated out in the beginning, i'm trying to think of this from
-->> the end users point of view, they don't understand that there can be
-->> two versions that you can download, 'stable' and 'developement'.. they
-->> expect there to be one version that works.
-->
-->I agree half with you on this. Yes, you're right, beginners should not
-->touch development software (except for some exceptions of course).
-->
-->But isn't this one of the reasons why we have an unstable and a stable
-->Debian distribution?
Unfortunately for most end user's (desktop)... the "stable" version is not
very USABLE.
--> The really unstable packages (like evolution) won't
-->make it into the stable distribution until they are usable. Beginners
-->shouldn't touch unstable and just use the stable distros, so I don't
-->think there is a problem at all.
-->
-->
Beginner's end up in unstable or frozen (like many beginner's that are
into potato now) because the "stable" version is so old and out of date
and has very little that is of use [sure it's stable, but it's not
usable if you can't get X to work on your hardware] to a "beginning"
desktop user.
Anyway, just a point of view to take into consideration.
Faster release time's might help. Better comments in the .deb's to be
popped up when installing might persuade people to remove truly alpha
stuff before it gives them a headache or at least they've been warned.
Mostly it's a consistency issue. "End user's" tend to think of all
packages being created with equal stability, quality, and usability for
specific purposes (theirs), which is a major fallacy in the "end user's"
viewpoint. All that can be done is to educate the user as to the
perceived stability, quaility, and usability for EACH package and
sometimes meta packages or sets of packages, and let them decide.
Of course different developer's have different perceptions on each of
those three qualities so hmmmm.....
YMMV
Jeff
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