Re: Typo in "A Brief History of Debian"
Andrea Brugiolo wrote:
> I suppose the phrase "May old libraries were removed..." wanted to be
> ""Many old libraries were removed...", at the end of the page
> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-releases.en.html
Agreed. That page could do with some love - I would suggest throwing
out some of the less important facts about Etch and Lenny now that
they're no longer news - but I'll restrict my comments below to the
section for Squeeze.
# Debian 6.0 _Squeeze_ (February 2011): named for the green three-eyed
# aliens in the movie.
Drop "in the movie" now that we're using names from more than one.
# The release was frozen in August 6, 2010, with many of the Debian
# developers gathered at the 10th Debconf at New York City.
This paragraph seems pointless - it's the page's only mention of a
Debconf, and it's a jump backwards in time from 2011 to 2010.
# Changes include the new FreeBSD port, providing a new kernel: KfreeBSD
# which was made available for two architectures (i386 and amd64)
# including the Kernel and userland tools as well as common server
# software but not advanced desktop features yet. This was made
# available as a "technology preview". This was the first time a Linux
# distribution has been extended to also allow use of a non-Linux kernel.
It seems to me that this would read better if the "technology preview"
line came earlier. It would also benefit from a bit of rephrasing.
For a start "the Kernel" doesn't need a capital letter, and in the
HTML markup it's strings like "i386" that deserve to be inside
<code></code> tags, not phrases like "FreeBSD port".
# One arquitecture (alpha) was dropped.
^^
Typo.
# The new release introduced a dependency based boot sequence, which
# allowed for parallel init script processing, speeding system startup.
(This is a bit arguable - startpar was available as an option in
Lenny, and the move to dash as system shell deserves some of the
credit for faster boot times - but I'll leave it.)
# May old libraries were removed such as GTK 1.1
^^
Typo. But how is this newsworthy? All releases involve things being
dropped, and the disappearance of a particular GTK version is hardly
something that is going to leap out at end users as significant
(compared to, for instance, no longer needing an xorg.conf). Also...
was GTK 1.1 ever in Lenny in the first place? The nearest I see in
Oldstable oldlibs is libgtk1.2!
So I would suggest rewriting it all as:
Debian 6.0 _Squeeze_ (February 2011): named for the green three-eyed
aliens.
While one architecture ('alpha') was dropped, two architectures of
the new FreeBSD port ('kfreebsd-i386' and 'kfreebsd-amd64') were
made available as a "technology preview", including the kernel and
userland tools as well as common server software (though not
advanced desktop features yet). This was the first time a Linux
distribution has been extended to also allow the use of a non-Linux
kernel.
The new release introduced a dependency-based boot sequence, which
allowed for parallel init script processing, speeding system startup.
Or here it is with markup:
<p>
Debian 6.0 <em>Squeeze</em> (February 2011): named for the green three-eyed
aliens.
</p>
<p>
While one architecture (<code>alpha</code>) was dropped, two architectures
of the new <a href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/";>FreeBSD</a>
port (<code>kfreebsd-i386</code> and <code>kfreebsd-amd64</code>) were made
available as a "technology preview", including the kernel and
userland tools as well as common server software (though not advanced desktop
features yet). This was the first time a Linux distribution has been extended
to also allow the use of a non-Linux kernel.
</p>
<p>
The new release introduced a dependency-based boot sequence, which allowed
for parallel init script processing, speeding system startup.
</p>
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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