Bigger and better Woody
Richard Taylor asked...
In closing, I'd like to ask another (related) question. Is there some
particular piece of software that you think Woody is waiting for that
will be here in a years time? GCC 3.0 perhaps?
IA (also) NADD... but I've been making a little list of things that it
would be nice to see in Woody. In no particular order:
(1) Kernel 2.4 (early test versions are in Woody already)
(2) Kernel 2.2.17 and 2.2.18 (perhaps more for Potato 2.2.r3 or r4)
(3) SIAG Office (currently up to version 3.4.6 in the outside world;
this is currently orphaned in Debian, leaving us at version 3.1.22)
(4) Open Office (the open-sourced version of what was to have become
Star Office 6.0, currently in the custody of Sun, at
http://www.openoffice.org)
(5) KDE 2.1 (due out in beta form this month)
(6) Gnome platform 2.0 (using glib 1.4 and gtk+ 1.4, ideally also out
this year)
(7) Xfree86 4.0 (here already)
(8) ALSA 0.6 (0.5.9 is the latest release, already in Woody)
(9) Python 2.0 (released, in the works for Woody)
(10) Perl 6.0 (due out sometime in the summer of 2001)
(11) MIT Scheme (not part of Debian yet, though version 7.5.7 is out,
and the website longingly mentions becoming part of our distribution in
some incarnation)
(12) gcc 3.0 (2.95.3 is the latest official version)
(13) gdb 5.0 (in Woody)
(14) gvd 1.0 (coming.... There's an ITP this week)
(15) PostgreSQL 7.1 (presumably coming, 7.0 is in Woody already)
(16) Xbase 1.8 (an open sourced dBase III, not part of Debian)
(17) Apache 2.0 (a beta is out for testing, Woody has the latest stable
version)
(18) DosEMU 1.0 (in Woody)
(19) Mozilla (milestone 18 is the latest, and in both Woody & Potato)
(20) asmutils 0.1 (assembly programming tools, GPL, still in
development, not yet part of Debian)
(21) xplan, banal, kontor (accounting and project managing programs,
also in development, also under GPL or similar licences, and also not
yet part of Debian)
(22) ????? (YOUR favorite)
Note that much of this is already in Woody, and of that which isn't,
most hasn't been released yet for the developers to work their miracles
upon. I.e., Debian's reputation possibly to the contrary, Woody is
surprisingly up-to-date.
Beyond this however, there are certain issues of policy, procedure, or
politics to deal with:
i. The retention of "non-free" and "contributed" packages in Debian,
much debated these past few months and far from a resolved issue.
ii. Creation of a "data" distribution for non-changing or slowly
changing items: Anarchism web site, KJV Bible and concordance, national
Constitutions, Debian documentation, etc. (I'd personally like to see
this include some GPL-ed MS-DOS "legacy" software, such as DJGPP and the
recently open sourced Watcom C and Fortran compilers-they'd run under
DosEMU, wouldn't they? But that's probably just my own ideosyncracy.)
iii. Placement of encryption software in "Non-US" directories
iv. FHS compliance and other Linux standardization efforts (are we
REALLY going to see a convergence of deb, rpm, and tar-ball packages?)
v. IP v6 modifications in countless comm programs
vi. Ongoing improvements in installation and upgrade methods (diety,
dselect, dpkg, etc.)
vii. New ports to IA-64 (ongoing), S390 (ongoing) and perhaps
forthcoming AMD chips (the 64-bit "Sledgehammer" and P4-like
"Clawhammer" architectures presumably appearing late next year)
viii. At some point, I think we're going to have to decide whether
standard x386 binaries really ought to be compiled for 386-based
systems. Yes, I'm aware of an effort to create a Linux distribution for
286-based systems, but surely by now even in third world nations most
computer users have access to cheap pentium machines?
Straightening up the Florida election results would seem a simpler
task....
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