Re: I think it's mostly about communication
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 12:05:31PM +0100, Thomas Friedrichsmeier wrote:
> > The solution to this is remarkably easy, and does not even involve
changing
> > anything about the debian-releases at all. Simply put a big fat link right
on
> > debian.org "how to get the latest software for debian".
>
> "... which will likely break your next dist-upgrade"
Well, I said, there should be comments on what troubles might be coming up.
And I also said, link to further information and relevant lists (which
apt-get.org is currently missing), so you know where to get support. But I
don't think breakage of the next dist-upgrade is such a terrible event, that
we'd have to hide the relevant information from the user. We shouldn't fool
anybody into thinking, installing all those unofficial packages was a
wonderful idea (like some other distributions occasionally do), but we should
not take users for fools that don't know what they're doing, either. Provide
easily accessible information for them to make educated decisions. That's
what it's all about.
dist-upgrade is due once a year or fewer. Since most users will only care
about one or two (sets of) packages to be latest-and-greatest, potential
breakages will even be very easy to resolve. About the worst thing likely to
happen in most cases, would be that you have to remove the unofficial
packages, and potentially lose some settings.
Don't hide those risks, but don't hide the possibilities either. Let the user
make the decision. And since when you're new to a distribution, you're busy
enough reading tons of FMs, make this sort of information, which is obviously
requested rather often, easily available: via a link in the "getting started"
section on www.debian.org.
Thomas
Reply to: