Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 02:38:29PM -0500, Mark Mealman wrote:
> >Mark Mealman wrote:
> >
> >>>But Debian's bleeding edge really tends to lag. What's KDE up to on
> >>>testing, version 2.2? Mozilla is 1.0? Java's at 1.1?
> >I'm missing something here... what does the term "bleeding edge" have
> >to do with testing? Unstable + experimental + packages downloaded
> >from developers' web pages (many of which are apt-gettable) is the
> >"bleeding edge" of Debian. Testing isn't even close.
>
> 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.
huh? unstable IS being "used in the wild". so is testing.
some people, including myself, don't use anything but debian unstable
even on production servers.
> In fact if you polled around for the biggest complaint about Debian I
> think you'd see "out of date" as the winner.
if people want bleeding edge debian packages, they should use
'unstable'. that's what it's there for.
if they want well-tested stability then stick with 'stable'.
if they want not-very-well tested and not-very-bleeding-edge stuff then
use 'testing'.
you can't seriously be complaining that debian actually calls our new,
untested, bleeding-edge stuff "unstable" rather than release it without
testing it as the latest "stable", can you?
in case you're having difficulty understanding my point, what you're
complaining about is a matter of perception rather than a matter of
fact. debian unstable has never been significantly behind any other
"bleeding-edge" distro - in fact, it is quite often many months in
advance of them.
> 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.
not in my experience. but then, i don't care if i have to wait an extra
month or so before i get to upgrade mozilla anyway....that would mean
closing down all my browser windows and restarting the app, which i
usually only do once every few months anyway (and that only because some
bastard site has triggered a bug in mozilla which causes it to crash).
ditto for upgrading gnome - i upgrade it from unstable regularly, but i
often don't get the benefit immediately because i don't want to shut
down all my multi-gnome-terminal sessions and restart it. i lose weeks
worth of context (shell history, scroll-back buffers, ssh sessions etc)
on dozens of servers every time i do that.
> (KDE 3.1 final is in Gentoo and I don't think 3.1 has even
> been officially announced yet),
and this is supposed to be a benefit? they've finalised on something
that hasn't even been released yet?
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
-- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
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