Re: comment on "User Review of Debian GNU/Linux"
On Monday 03 March 2003 1:00 am, Adam DiCarlo wrote:
> I can relieve you right away by saying I agree with that I thought the
> review was pretty balanced, I don't see anything in there that was
> unfair. Some things maybe I think had too much stress placed on them.
I appreciate your feedback and your answers from before were very helpful in
writing my review. As you say Debian is a far reaching project and
unfortunately I could only really scratch the surface in some areas (such as
pinning) but my primary motivation in this was to get more people interested
in using Debian.
Had my brother and the rest of friends not been such proponents of Debian I
doubt I would have tried it all. There is a lot of information available
about Debian, but much of it is out of date and some of it offers
conflicting information. From my experience, most people who want to learn
about Linux install either Red Hat or Mandrake, and I saw Debian as a viable
alternative for those willing to put in a little more effort.
I wanted to write about my experiences, which were overall positive, of how a
relative newcomer to the Linux community can make this expert distribution
work. My primary concerns were whether the packaging was indeed as easy to
use as advertised and the availability of newer software than the listed
packages on Distrowatch, since these were my concerns going in.
> A few comments along the lines of tech support. This probably points
<snip>
> This not-so-well-documented feature will make 'apt-get install foo'
> get foo from stable, but 'apt-get install foo/unstable' get foo from
> unstable. You might have to do 'apt-get install foo/unstatble
> dependency/unstable' as well. There might even be better ways to do
> it, this is just how I do it.
I came to appreciate the subtleties of preferences and pinning, but this was
more of an example of how things can go wrong in a system where things
shouldn't go wrong. I meant this as more of an illustration of the problems
you might encounter more than necessarily a best practice approach to getting
the latest AirSnort.
In my opinion the primary practical reason to use Debian is dpkg-deb,
everything else is like the Pope's second favorite religion, a distant
second. The expectation here is that if you use dpkg-deb you can't break your
system, whereas my example was through user error it can happen. I didn't
touch on pinning, apt-proxy, or compiling source packages, I simply said
later on "There are a number of settings for fine tuning package update
policies, but setting them up is a little trickier than a simple apt-get."
Actually someone said on #debian-kde that they could only get AirSnort to work
after recompiling wireless-tools so that may not have been the answer anyway.
> Well, as a volunteer organization, we set our own priorities. Each
> developer is different, but generally, we don't upload new upstream
> versions (even so-called bug-fix releases) unless we can satisfy
> ourselves that they are as good or better than the previous version.
> Packages like mozilla and xfree86-server and such are very large and
> very complex and often involved significant packaging rework before
> they are ready.
I understand this, which is why I stipulated towards the end of the article
"Obviously one huge caveat in any criticism of Debian is that it is a
volunteer project and should be judged as such." I still haven't contributed
to the project outside of this review (which is of dubious value to many) and
a reporting a dependency problem to Chris Hall, so I still can't complain
that much.
> We do have a policy, in fact, of now new upstream versions go into
> stable after it's released. Even security or bug-fix releases need to
> be back-ported to the version in stable, except for some exceptions
> (kernels and the install system). But this is just a recognition of
> the fact that no (or, at least, very few) Debian developers actively
> target stable. We have our hands full just fixing the bugs, working
> with upstream maintainers, packaging the new upstream versions, etc.
While I can appreciate using limited resources to their fullest potential, my
main issue with the no updates to Woody policy would have to do with
OpenOffice. IMHO OpenOffice is as significant to Linux on the desktop as
Apache is to Linux as a server, and I think making an exception in this one
case would make a great deal of difference for anyone considering using Woody
as a desktop installation. This of course could be another resource issue.
> The real reason is that we're making a major ABI change, similar to
> the transition to glibc6 or from a.out to ELF format. This takes a lot
> of time to get right. I think it's nearing stablity, but I don't
> follow this very closely.
Some sort of statement to this effect or clarification would really help out
Debian community IMHO. My main sources in the artice on the hold up in
Testing were comments on IRC and the February 11th Debian News story starting
with "Freeze Plans".
One of the things I've found unintentionally disingenuous about Debian is the
implication that the software in Woody is the only latest stable, secure
software available, whereas the real issue appears to be one of resources and
the amount of work necessary to make big changes.
> I feel like you put an awful lot of stress on the current lag in
> testing, and it doesn't really feel all that fair. The wider
> perspective is that we put the whole concept of archive "pools", which
> the infrastructure which enables the whole "testing" distribution,
> just over 2 years ago (Dec, 2000 to be exact). Woody is the first
> release where "testing" became "frozen" and then "stable". Right now
> we're experiencing a pretty large desync between testing and unstable,
> but, as I said, it's to be expected considering the circumstances, and
> it's also just a transient condition.
My stress on the lag in testing was to help people decide what version of
Debian to install since I think this is key to having a better user
experience. From my perspective Sarge, at the current time, is broken. It
doesn't contain newer versions of the larger packages, and doesn't offer the
support, backports or security that Woody does.
For example during the time I upgraded from Woody to Sarge, I found out that
KPackage was broken. It's linked to the wrong library and will not load. The
bug was reported six months ago and will probably not be fixed, since the
maintainer is, rightfully, working on getting KDE 3.1 into Sid. When I read a
sheet like Jaldhar H Vyas's Introducing Debian GNU/Linux which was handed out
at LinuxWorld says Testing "is a good choice for desktop users" I cringe.
I agree this is a transient condition, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist
and shouldn't be discussed. Part of the promise of Debian is one of honesty,
because unlike Red Hat or Mandrake there are no closed door areas. And since
it is not product to be sold, it should be discussed in honest terms as
opposed to quoting some party line.
> In summary, to me, Debian, as the largest and I think most dynamic
> free software group in the world, is on some level an ongoing story of
> scaling issues and infrastructure. Debian generally increase 50% in
> size with every release (every 2 to 3 years, generally).
> Infrastructure is added or improved when the inability to scale up
> Debian with its current infrastructure becomes acute. You could also
> use this perspecttive to look at the evolution of Debian Policy and
> subpolicies (and the tightness of getting things into the core
> policy), the Debian Constitution, the New Maintainer apparatus (still
> needing improvement, I understand), the voting system, etc., etc.
I agree. I would also add that it plays an important part in the Linux
community as the foundation of great things, such as Knoppix, the most
compelling argument for a desktop version of Linux yet.
> I don't mean to pooh pooh Debian's #1 complaint (old versions of
> packages) and the #2 complaint (the install system). As for #2, the
> install system, now in alpha, has been rewritten from the ground up to
> be modular, maintainable, and user-friendly. It might take a while
> for it to quite get there, of course.
I was unable to find any information on this, outside of that it is currently
being done. I was also unable to find any information on the Debian desktop
project.
> As for #1, package versions, in a way that really boils down to
> shortening the release cycles, that I think is probably the hardest
> problem in Debian to solve. I think the package pool system is a vast
> improvement in the scalability of the Debian archive maintenance
> itself, but at least in Woody, it didn't seem to solve the problem of
> very long freeze periods. There's a whole cluster of problems that
> we're going to have to keep working on, including release-critical bug
> turn-around and the interdependancies between the install system, the
> base system, kernels and other critical packages which are required to
> have a functioning, installable, consistent release.
IMHO The main problem is under the current system there just seems to be
massive duplication of effort with the work going into and maintain the Woody
backports and packages spanning multiple versions that never get out of Sid.
These issues and that the scope of the changes in Sarge are just too much to
be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time make me concerned for future
of Debian.
Users are the lifeblood of operating systems, and Debian has to compete for
those users with companies like Red Hat who are willing to support and offer
software like KDE 3.x and OpenOffice. The fact that no version of Debian has
a complete edition of KDE 3.x doesn't make the argument that more people
should use it any easier. Debian is also more vulnerable than other distros
since it requires a great deal of bandwidth from dedicated repositories just
to keep it going.
Ultimately my feeling is that Debian would be a good position to benefit from
the whole symbiotic, rising-tide-lifts-all-boats thing if it were more up to
date. Case in point would is Ralf Nolden who is hired by a company in Germany
to port KDE 3.1 to Woody so they could roll it out. Ideally he would be
contributing directly to overall Debian project, but instead he's working on
a Woody backport. Obviously he's working with Debian maintainers and some of
his work will make into Sid I'm sure, but it's not quite the same thing.
> Our goal, ultimately, is the ability to do releases annually or even
> semi-annually. Until then, our solution for the version problem is to
> run stable and pull from testing or, if you're daring, pull from
> unstable.
I think that goal is the proper one, and it's only because I see it as being
jeopardy that I commented on it in the review.
I should also add that reviewing Debian as a desktop distro was harder since
arguably the "if it ain't broke" rule doesn't apply, because Linux as desktop
is broken from the start by virtue of being a work in progress. I think as
KDE and Gnome mature the importance of updates won't matter as much, but this
is a crucial time for Linux in this area.
> In the future, if you're doing a review, I'd be happy to proof a
> document for things that could be improved or things that I think
> aren't quite right.
I stand by the factual information in the article, if there is indeed a
different reason why Sarge is so out of date (I suspect there are many) I'd
like to address that in another article. If there's someone you can suggest I
interview who could definitively answer this I'd be interested in writing
about it.
I wanted to review to focus on my impressions and observations not on Debian's
policies and official responses. I brought them up only because the review
was focusing on the ongoing use of Debian, not just the usual "I had these
problems with installation, but I've been using it for an hour now." One of
my main considerations of any distribution is what the future holds for this
software.
Thanks for taking the time to write,
Sander
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