Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
wlug,
> If unstable/testing isn't even close to the packages being used in the
> wild, then that pretty much validates my point that the Debian archives
> can be pretty stale.
RC critical bugs stop packages from moving into testing. Testing is what
the term means. The package should have nothing wrong with it and it
should function as forseen.
Debian is used for a plethora of different services; server systems
running debian rely on stable being stable. Desktop users should
probably live in testing or unstable, with their apt-conf holding the
main set of packages in testing, and occassionally pulling new packages
from development sites (e.g. pinning and default distribution in
apt.conf)
> In fact if you polled around for the biggest complaint about Debian I
> think you'd see "out of date" as the winner.
No. What's out of date?
Please use concrete examples.
Don't fluff about.
> Although in my experience the above isn't true with smaller apps. Debian
> is often first on the scene with security updates as well. It's the
> larger more complicated packages that lag.
No. I help maintain glibc/gdb/binutils/gcc and unstable tracks upsream
revisions on a daily basis.
> It's not about "better" it's about the differences. Debian has
> stability, but the very nature of how it achieves stability means it
> really lags behind other distributions when it comes packages like KDE.
True. Testing and stable lag because we have a certain quality standard
to meet.
> Gentoo on the other hand uses a build system that allows for rapid
> deployment(KDE 3.1 final is in Gentoo and I don't think 3.1 has even
> been officially announced yet), but it won't ever achieve Debian's
> stability.
debian-kde has KDE 3.1 experimental pacakges which are alread in
beta-2 stage.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/
Sign-up and help-out :)
Debian has bug-tracking, active maintainers, and volunteers. Theses
things alone mean that you can get your cake and eat it too. It's the
debian-developers who are sworn by our manifesto to help out users :)
c.
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