Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Will <ay1244@gmail.com> writes:
> 1, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
>> This one always boggles me and makes me wonder if we should present
>> Debian unstable or testing as the "typical" installation. Debian
>> testing (and often Debian unstable) is more stable than the
>> distributions with equivalent up-to-date libraries, and those
>> distributions generally never offer anything remotely like Debian
>> stable. (RHEL is considerably more unstable than Debian stable *and*
>> has even older software, for example.)
> Are you serious?
Yes.
> What about the stability Debian is known for? IMHO, this totally ruins
> the point of Debian. Back when I first started using Linux, I always
> heard that Debian == Stability. And now as a server admin, I like how
> little Debian changes, and how you can expect almost no breakages when
> upgrading stable. I can't get that from most other distros; that's why I
> pick Debian as my server Linux of choice.
That's the point. You have a distribution that works like all the rest
with the latest and greatest software (often even faster than other
distributions in some places) AND if you want you can get a wonderfully
stable distribution that's unlike anything else.
People who say they don't run Debian because the software it provides is
too old have no idea what Debian is actually like, and we don't do a very
good job of educating them. It's both a better fast-changing distribution
like Fedora than Fedora and a better stable distribution like Red Hat
Enterprise than Red Hat Enterprise. You can pick and still be running
Debian.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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