> I was thinking about the point of Debian-NP. Now that Sarge has a pretty > nice and easy installer and there's Ubuntu Linux is there any point of > building a custom Debian-NP distro? while sarge's installer is definitely much improved, i still wouldn't hand your average person working (paid or otherwise) at a non-profit an official debian cd and tell them to wing it. i'd like to be able to do that with debian-np. and sarge's new installer includes some customizations that will make it much easier for us to do that :) ubuntu linux definitely has some ugly compatibility issues with debian proper, according to their FAQ: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/documentation/faq/helpcenterfaq.2004-09-15.7453904394 making packages that are versioned identically to the official debian packages seems like a really bad idea- it can become very difficult to install some non-ubuntu package, since ubuntu only supports a sub-set of debian packages... i would like for debian-np to be fully debian-compatible, and that doesn't seem to be a commitment for ubuntu. so maybe long-term, working with ubuntu is a great way to go, but right now i don't personally see it. > Wouldn't it be better to make some kind of advocacy for debian among > NGOs, to make a list of useful programs that are already in the Debian > repository or soon will be? that is one of the more useful things debian-np can do- select and highlight a number of debian packages. a part of what the debian-np crew worked on at debconf4(late may/early june) was to make something similar to skolelinux/Debian-Edu (http://skolelinux.org). in short, it's an easy to install sub-set of debian packages geared towards schools. we loosely defined several "profile" types: Workstation (maybe a low-resources and resource-intensive version?) Lan/Intranet Server (terminal-server, file server, groupware, ??) Internet Server (email, web mail, web hosting, mailing lists, ??) there may have been others, i can't recall. so the install would involve asking somewhere in the ballpark of 3-10 questions about the kind of computer they want to install, and *poof* everything basically works. that's one potential goal i'd like to see debian-np achieve. another thing that came out of the debconf4 workparty(a.k.a. bagunca), was that we developed several target user "personas", essentially stereotypical nonprofit identities (as stereotyped as they can get, anyways). the hope is to look at it from each of the persona's perspectives, and get out of our developer-minded boxes. live well, vagrant
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