Re: Debian, universal operating system?
On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 11:53:55PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> If memory serves correctly, that slogan was added to the web
> site without discussion, and was never ratified by the project,
> though I do remember Bruce being very pleased about it.
>
> It certainly has not been either a goal nor a rallying cry for
> me while I work on Debian.
>
> manoj
In concrete terms: Debian _is_ the universal operating system. I can
take a running Debian system, easily grab the list of packages, and
install essentially the same system onto a completely different
architecture - and pretty much know it will work. [A running Debian
development system on i386 "moved" across town onto a Sparc in about an
hour start to finish, the Apache webserver and X shoehorned into a
Linksys running on 32M of memory for a portable demo for the local LUG
:) ].
I can remember knocking the socks off a nice Sun representative at the
main Linux Expo in London when he saw me running Debian on a Sparc
barely supported by Sun - and the latest software too :)
A work colleague likes tiny embedded development systems. They all come
with Debian out of the box (though the Marvell Sheevaplug has Ubuntu - I
wonder if it needed NDAs initially?).
In personal terms, I repose far greater trust in Debian developers I've
never met than in almost everybody geographically close. I listened to
a paid industry expert give a presentation on FLOSS to a government
audience and the examples he used were of Debian. I then followed him
immediately with the disclaimer that I was a Debian developer :)
So no, I won't die in a ditch over it but it's a worthwhile tag and
Debian sets the quality gold standard for me that other commercial-grade
software manifestly fails to reach.
All the best,
Andy
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