Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Steve Greenland wrote / napísal(a):
On 14-May-07, 07:55 (CDT), "Mgr. Peter Tuharsky" <tuharsky@misbb.sk> wrote:
Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$
refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse,
abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu?
Why is this worse?
I wrote "worse" because for Debian, this is worse. Not that it is
damaging it somehow. Of course there naturally will be other distros,
cooperating hopefully.
It's "worse" because it implies, that Debian is not as good desktop as
it ought to be.
Why isn't there room for two similar distributions,
with one aimed at being more up-to-date for a limited set of packages
and hardware, while the other aims at being rock-solid on a wide variety
of hardware for extended periods of time?
As I illustreted, "rock solid" is not automatically guaranteed by
oldness of software or by length of pre-release testing. And for the end
_desktop_ user, usability matters too. Sometimes even more than the age
(I wouldn't tell "stability" because, again, this is not always the
same). That's the first thing I think Debian is doing wrong, if it tries
to be desktop distro too. The optimum is somewhere in between.
There are certainly ways that Debian can improve, but I'm not convinced
that "become more like Ubuntu" is one of them. Why not let Ubuntu
fulfill the desires of that group of users?
"More like Ubuntu" -by some means, we could learn much from them.
However I don't suggest to become another Ubuntu.
There are partial approaches possible that could itself benefit Debian
dekstop much. And in the Debian, other ways of applying changes than
"step-by-step" I don't see even possible, does anybody? ;-)
We could start with programs that don't other programs depend on much.
For example, what is the purpose of using 2 years old Firefox,
Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and other such stand-alone programs? They
could be flawlessly upgraded during stable release life cycle. If "extra
stability" or whatever is the mean, then let them be tested for a while
(however, preferrably during _their_ testing phase).
Next, the bug reporting is completely flawed for desktop user, and in
order to make it functional, the balance must be moved closer to the
recent software versions. I don't see other way to do it. Does somebody?
There is no choice but keeping Debian desktop user
out-of-software-community for next years.
Third, bug reporting systems really needs some consolidation, and
probably negotiations between distros and software vendors. It took too
long to have LSB, and convergention of the bug reporting systems I see
as the next step necessarry. And who could offer bigger authority than
Debian, the greatest community-driven distro?
Peter
Steve
--
Odchádzajúca správa neobsahuje vírusy, nepou¾ívam Windows.
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Mgr. Peter Tuhársky
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