Re: ideas....

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 08:43:09PM +0100, John Watson wrote:
> Some fantastic ideas
> 
> 
> First of all I would like to say how great Debian is as a operating system
> and a linux distro. I have tried many distribution but always come back to
> Debian. What I find wrong with these so called  distros is that they always
> artificially alter components, components deleted/missing  and  loads of
> useless bells and whistles that never work.....  I have some ideas which may
> or may not improve the project or least something to  discuss about......
> 
> 
> 1) I just find that releases are being delayed due to the obsession with
> security.

First, that's not actually true. While security surely is one concern,
it certainly isn't the only one under consideration when releasing.

Second, I don't think security is something we should be compromising
on.

> If Microsoft was Debian then Microsoft would only be releasing
> Windows XP now,

Well, they aren't. And just in case you didn't notice, it took Debian
less time to release etch than it took Microsoft to release Vista; and
on top of that, they had to throw out a bunch of planned features in
order to make that happen, which was not the case for us.

I really don't see where your statement is coming from.

[...]
> I would suggest having two releases of Debian, one "really stable" which
> could be released every 2 years, another one "stable" released every 6
> months by taking a freeze of the current "testing" distro and spending a
> month (no more) fixing any major bugs. I personally believe the "testing"
> version is as stable as many of the other distros in the market. I normally
> use the testing version however when it comes to a release of the stable
> version, updates on testing are few with a increase temptation to switch to
> a different distro.

Is there a problem with starting to use testing, say, six months to a
year after the release? If so, what?

> 2)One real issue with Debian is a lack of admin tools, (such as yast is for
> SuSE). Considering starting a project to develop a range of gui based admin
> tools for Debian.
> 
> What are folks view on this and is there any other similar projects?

I don't think there is anyone working on that currently, but there's
nothing wrong with it. Creating an interface that would give one a
"control panel" type of view, allowing to configure packages using
debconf, could surely be a good idea.

[... strange unintelligible question about money snipped ...]

-- 
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
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