(Im starting a new thread, so I can push this off in another direction, without killing off the first thread.) The future of debian is quite certain, if you ask me. Its staying on my harddrive. Even with all the flaws it has (I know it has some, I just havent found any showstopping ones yet), its loads better then our "competition." RPM distros suffer from the fact that most packages built either are built wrong, based on unstable code to begin with (rh's gcc 2.96), have incorrect dependencies, have insane dependancies, etc. With Debian, even with sid, I have to wait months for the larger packages to get done. (Redhat/Mandrake have rpms out much much faster.) The problem is, even with the first revision of the packages, they are done correctly, and have few bugs related to the actual packaging itself. I dont have to worry about upgrading X casuing my computer to burst into flames. Nor do I have to worry about my harddrive taking a walk due to a kernel upgrade. Now, I will admit sid has had problems, but no where near as bad as any redhat/mandrake stable release. If lusers wish to take the abuse from not having clueful developers, an actual bug tracking system that works, correctly packaged software, or a distro that isnt broken on installation, let them run something else. It will be like a virtual beating with a cluebat. Then, hopefully, they will start running a more sane distro like Debian. And such, I dont think we should be wasting huge ammounts of time supporting clueless users who have no concept of rtfm, or are even aware of the existence of said manual, or ones that are abusive to our volunteer tech support staff. We also shouldnt be spending extensive time advertising/evangelizing debian to the mass public, because we might be attracting the wrong people. Debian isnt an exclusive bofh only club, but it isnt populated by morons, either. I also agree that we have alot of maintainers, but there is nothing wrong with having more. I know of several peices of software that I want to be packaged, and I dont have time myself to do. If clueful people want to do the packaging of that software, let them. It improves the quality of Debian overall. But, sadly, I also agree that we dont have enough QA types, or other kinds of non-maint developers. That is something that should be corrected asap, imho. The reason redhat and mandrake (and other distros like that) look so good to newbies, is because they have nice tools like autodetection of hardware, and other nice things. (Stuff that clueful people dont exactly need, but are nice to have around anyhow. Provides a certain ammount of eyecandy Debian doesnt have yet.) -- Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || unknown@panax.com "Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989
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