Hi, Ad backports importance,I know there is backports.org -however this, and the testing, unstable, stable, volatile, experimental.. So many package versions, so much duplicate work.. Other hand, there's nothing "official" and "recommended" excepting the stable. Using anything else, You're on Your own..
I think, any new stable version of the desktop software should be automaticaly added to security updates and distributed to end user. There's no need to test the tested and stabilise the stable software. Should the new stable version be broken, let's give the user easy way to downgrade, and help upstream to fix it fast.
I can agree with You in some point -Yes, compiling against the, let's call it "stable base", as I suggested before, could also mean real backporting work, especially if the upstream moved to higher libraries versions in the middle of Debian's release cycle. That's why i think the backport's people are _very_important_ in the proposed scheme.
Moreover, I could suggest the backporting work to be "moved" closer to upstream and further from Debian itself. Other distros do lot of backport work too, so working together somewhere in the upstream's playground could bless all together.
PS. I know the text is long. I can work on bulleted version. Is there any interest?
Peter Petter Reinholdtsen wrote / napísal(a):
[Peter Tuharsky]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 do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro?Interesting analysis, with several good points on keeping the stable release working with newer hardware and keeping the software selection relevant. But my first impression after reading your long text is that you are ignoring the work going on at backports.org, and the ideas that has been floating around on making a Debian release based on the stable version for the "base" packages, and include upgraded packages like the kernel, X, Gnome, KDE and other hardware- and user-interacting packages from backports.org. You might want to have a look into those ideas. I've also seen ideas on making releases based on testing, now that we have security fixes for the packages in testing. It could give a snapshot of internally consistent packages (as opposed to unstable). Friendly,
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