Re: Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting
On Sat, Mar 19, 2005 at 01:48:42AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 02:10:47PM -0500, Greg Folkert wrote:
> > I am currently in the process of acquiring rotated out of production
> > machines for 3 of the 5 architectures I support. I make a run to the
> > right-coast of the US once every 2 months and pickup sometimes 10 - 4-16
> > processor machines with disk and typically a dozen of GB of memory and
> > gaggles of disk. I rebuild/recondition most of these machines and
> > distribute them to NPOs that need this kind of horsepower but can't
> > afford current stuff or even used stuff from those same suppliers. I put
> > Debian on them and this makes a huge investment in the long term health
> > of these Orgs.
>
> > If these machines are no longer fully supported by Debian... how can I
> > continue to do this.
Of course I can't speak for Greg, but let me answer these questions how I
think they will have to be answered for most m68k users:
> What does "fully supported" mean to you?
'there is a stable with security updates for the architecture, that is
in sync with the rest of Debian'
> What are the use cases for these machines?
Hobbyists playing with old hardware; people running home servers on
them; people running firewalls on them; possibly also embedded
development.
> Which aspects of stable are required by these users?
The low amount of updates that are produced by an average daily 'apt-get
update; apt-get upgrade'. The fact that you can test and develop your
scripts on your more modern hardware before installing them on the old
machines, without having to modify them to run on the different versions
of the software available for the old hardware.
> > How much is the difference between Debian running on "Humidifier in the
> > Basement" reputation, and a "We release more often than Ubuntu"
> > reputation?
>
> > But, serious, how much do you think Debian will be hurt with:
>
> > Compare these:
> > 1. Debian the "Universal OS"
> > 2. Debian the "Almost-Sorta-Kinda-used-to-be Universal OS"
>
> > 3. "Old as fossilized dinosaur poo, and as stable, but runs on
> > everything including the humidifier in the basement"
> > 4. "Very recent, since it doesn't really support NON-big 4
> > processors anyway, so why not run Fedora Core"
>
> > Personally, I like 1 and 3. They are the 2nd and 3rd most important
> > technical reasons I chose Debian. 1st technical reason is the Debian's
> > maintainability. Please oh please let us not change my mind for me.
>
> I'm assuming your humidifier isn't connected to the public Internet, and
> doesn't need ongoing security support...?
'domotics system'. Some of those /are/ connected to the Internet (but
then again, usually you have a firewall in between).
> We're also constantly hearing from users who are using Debian in settings
> where they *would* benefit from security support, but are running testing
> or unstable because woody's fossilization factor is too high for them. How
> would you suggest that we balance these users' needs for a more frequent
> stable release, against the needs of users like yourself who need broader
> arch coverage?
I'm not yet convinced that the only way to reach a higher release
frequency is to drop support for 80% of our architectures...
--
EARTH
smog | bricks
AIR -- mud -- FIRE
soda water | tequila
WATER
-- with thanks to fortune
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