Re: comment on "User Review of Debian GNU/Linux"
On Tuesday 04 March 2003 12:40 pm, Adam DiCarlo wrote:
> Which materials, at least of the ones on www.debian.org, are you
> referring to? Have you filed bugs for them or sumbitted feedback on
> them?
Well as far as conflicting I haven't found any on Debian.org, more outdated
documents like Dwarf's Guide to Debian (although I haven't contacted the
author) and the Debian History Deb is a little out of date, but nothing too
bad.
> A very subjective pick. Since it's in contrib, and not in main, it is
> not officially part of Debian. Moreover, it wasn't even packaged at
> the time of woody's release. It's hugely complex, so probably even an
> upgrade couldn't be provided without requiring a whole cascading set
> of other packages. Finally, I'm not sure it's even very mature as a
> package. Just glancing at it I noticed a number of problems, such as
> circular dependancies between openoffice.org and
> openoffice.org-debian-files. Personally I use gnumeric/abiword for
> that sort of thing.
True, but I do think do OpenOffice.org is unique is should get special
treatment by any distribution. It does have problems, but I don't think you
can judge applications on "5-9s" criteria. I can understand not including,
but IMHO it's worth an exception since it's the best tool linux has for
Office interoperability.
> Well, I don't know where that statement came from. What became woody
> was certainly the least buggy, most secure set of software we had at
> the time when woody froze. Which was a long long time before release.
Well in my opinion there's an inadvertent implication that comes from
defending older software against newer software that people complain isn't in
Woody (or Debian). See in this exchange you and I are having, you talk about
the immaturity of KDE 3.x or dependency problems in OpenOffice.org, where as
the alternatives that exist in Woody or Sarge have just as many if not more
problems. It's just hard for me to believe that software that's been fine for
all the other major distributions (Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse). What makes this
doubly confusing, to Debian neophytes like myself, is when there are very
functional Woody backports of the big packages so lacking in Sarge.
> I think this reflects the immaturity of the kde rather than the
> brokenness of testing. If folks had found the bug when it was in
> unstable and filed bugs at the correct severity, it would have never
> propogated to testing. Not that that helps you much. Anyhow KDE
> 3.1.0 does seem to be in unstable now.
KDE 3.1 is *mostly* in unstable now. kdenetwork and kdepim are not. I believe
these are due to licensing issues.
> > I agree this is a transient condition, but it doesn't mean it doesn't
> > exist and shouldn't be discussed.
> I not aware that I said it shouldn't be discussed....?
> I'm all for an open critique of Debian. I just feel it might help in
> your critique, in your approach, and if you're interested in helping,
> then understand why it is the way it is, is quite important.
My feeling is the information should be more forthcoming from Debian to help
users and perspective users understand why software isn't moving forward
through the Debian system. If there are issues where Debian is making strides
that will ultimately help the Linux community as a whole (i.e. fighting for
better licensing, working with larger projects on better QA testing, etc.) I
don't think you should be shy about telling anyone.
> > I was also unable to find any information on the Debian desktop
> > project.
> It is rather buried under devel... Here's the URL:
> http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-desktop/
Wow, that's really cool. Too bad the menu rewrite link appears to be dead, I
think that's going to be pretty crucial in all of this.
> > 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
> But Debian developers do very little work along these lines....
True, but potential Debian developers, who clearly understand the Debian
packaging systems end up working on side projects instead of the main project
itself.
> > and packages spanning multiple versions that never get out of Sid.
> I don't follow, "spanning multiple versions" ?
I mean OpenOffice 1.01 never made it out of Sid, now there's 1.02, will that
make into Sarge before a new version comes out? There may have been serious
issues, but I clearly don't understand at what point things are OK for Sarge.
> > 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.
> ??! That's a pretty extreme statement. What do you consider a
> "reasonable amount of time" ?
I think that in time there will be explosive growth in Linux into more areas
of the enterprise and at that point and whatever versions of Linux that are
available with those latest tools will become what people know and what they
install. If Debian remains more than a year behind what other distributions
are shipping at that point, my fear is it will become overwhelmed and won't
be able to sustain the resources necessary to keep the project competitive. I
don't think it will keep Debian from getting the resources necessary to keep
it competitive, which in time will make it irrelevant.
> All this gnashing of teeth and hair-pulling you're doing -- it's
> really unnecessary. We are aware of the problems and working on it.
> The element of hysteria is not required.
Maybe. I don't mean to come off as hysterical, but it's so frustrating to see
something so great being so dysfunctional. If progress depends on the
unreasonable man, I'm just trying to be unreasonable. :)
> Oh, come on. If someone wants to serve up a few Debian pkgs on an
> apt-get'table place, so what's the problem? "Huge bandwidth"? In
> fact, given that we have 8000 packages and RedHat has less than a
> thousand, I would think it would be pretty fair to say that the
> third-party network of Debian package supplier uses orders of
> magnitude less bandwidth than corresponding third-party RPM-providing
> sites.
Well it is true that Debian is more connected and requires more of a network
than any other distribution that I know of. I'm assuming that running a real
Debian mirror involves some sort of security and verification of integrity. I
don't know what your luck is like, but the Debian mirrors I've tried
(wustl.edu and rutguers.edu) are overloaded about half the time I access
them.
> > I wanted to review to focus on my impressions and observations not
> > on Debian's policies and official responses.
> Well, I respect that. A number of places you go beyond just
> impressions and observations and into prognositcations and
> diagnostics, and, I thought, a little wrong-headedly.
I think the review I wrote was the only one that's possible at this point,
since Debian is really in a state of transition. Maybe some of the
editorializing was a bit much but I do feel strongly about Debian.
> Well, I hope I managed to give you some clues about what the past
> held. Understanding where we are relative to 2 or 5 years ago is
> crucial for crystal-gazing on what the future holds, IMHO. And I
> think seeing the long view will help keep that hair in your head and
> not between your fingers.
Well, ultimately my investment in Debian is pretty minimal at this point so
regardless of what happens I'll hopefully keep my hair in my head. :) I guess
time will tell wether my concerns were justified or not.
If you go to Melissa's opening this weekend we can talk more then.
Sander
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