Re: Few Simple Question
On Monday 18 February 2002 10:29 pm, Francis Pineda wrote:
> Greetings Debian Community!
>
> I am currently a computer networking student researching different flavours
> of Unix/Linux. From the advice of my instructor, I have shosen to research
> Debian. He says it's, "Really Cool" I find it very appealing and hope to
> install it as soon as my system is set up.
>
> I have a few specific questions I'd like to ask. The information on your
> webpage and FAQ is simply so immense, a simple site search is a bit
> confusing.
>
> 1. What is the user base targeted? Is it simply geared towards the
> home-user looking for a free OS? Or is it geared more towards the
> power-user?
>
> 2. Where is Debian located? I understand there are over 800 distrubuters
> nationwide that communicate via e-mail and message boards. But is there a
> specific "home" to debian?
please. you can't possible have made it here without prior awareness of
debian.org.
>
> 3. What is the latest Kernel version?
>
> 4. What is the default desktop? and what others are included?
>
> 5. What, if any, office suites are included?
>
>
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paste from a post that originally appeared on debian-kde
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1) Who you are, what you do in real life, how you got involved in Debian,
and involved in KDE, what (if anything) you packaged in Debian before this,
what (if anything) you did in KDE before this, why & how you came to the
decision to take on maintainership of the KDE packages.
2) What do you see as the time frame for upcomming Debian/KDE milestones?
Such as:
A) What is the plan/roadmap/future for KDE related things in Debian?
the metapackage (or, what is it called now? Task?) of kde vs of kdebase.
B) What's up w/ KOffice for Debian? Re: Woody or Sid?
C) What's your recommendation regarding: would you advise people who want
to be making productive use of KDE now to run Woody or Sid?
D) What's up w/ KDE 3? - When, and for whom, should persons trying to make
actual daily use of KDE begin to use KDE3? Can KDE2 & KDE3 be put onto
the same system, and switched between? Is it necessary to do a complete
separate Debian install, (one for KDE2 & one for KDE3) on the harddisk
if one wants to be able to try switch between 2 & 3?
I ask these questions since I'd like to make some judgements about what to
put in the KDE HowTo I'm developing. For instance, I'd like to have good
data to base a decision on regarding: should I suggest, (and write it from
the perspective of) persons run Woody, and if necessary pull packages from
Sid? Or, is & will Sid be basically enough free of substantial problems
that it would be better for most people trying to do productive work with
KDE that they run Sid, in order to have the latest features?
(For instance, two areas I'm currently possibly affected by are:
1) Kghostview - does the Sid version fix a major problem?
2) kde vs kdebase - does Sid have a kde package that provides
many more features (& thus involves much less sw installation time/effort)
than Woody?)
It would be much appreciated if you would each free up some of your
valueable time to each answer the above questions for all here who are
interested in the future of KDE on Debian!
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hmmm. sounds like deja vu all over again. yo, francis, you don't mind if i cc
this to chris cheney and daniel stone, do you? in fact, i think i will,
anyway. btw, what part of phoenix do you live in? at which college, where
instructors refer to debian as being really cool, are you a student? or, more
to the point, which part of the salary paying machine do you work for?
your questionnaires totally reek of factory training and, most especially, of
insincerity. a genuine correspondent would hang a while and read the list,
and would, above all, not pretend to be unaware of debian.org.
the reason for my suspicion of you is that, in the past, you've displayed an
inability to accord due respect for those who make debian possible, to those
who actually give up real time in their own lives to support a principle and
an ethic that you have apparently sold to the highest bidder. your contempt
betrays your origin.
the irony is that you will be, nonetheless, welcomed here, and aided in
understanding that there is nothing that your masters can do about free
software. not only will it continue to happen but those who finance your
activities have already conceded its victory by clamoring to acquire patents
on damn near everything that they can steal from here. i don't expect you to
be able to convince your masters of the hopelessness of their desire for
hegemony, but you, at least, given the history of your experience here,
should know by now that the games, as they are played where you come from,
have no significant meaning here. it's free--i.e. it will happen, it is
happening. it will happen, and does happen, organically, in a human fashion,
refelecting the way that free humans, everywhere, interact with each other.
perhaps that's the biggest distinction between where your attitude is rooted
and this place in which you, purportedly, desire to be active. it will always
happen as the consequence of a process of agreement between the participants,
and not, anymore, because of the harsh economic rules that determine the
quality of success where you come from.
if you take the time--just a bit more than the time you needed to know that
debian.org is the fulcrum of what this is about--you'll see that this is all
about the preservation of community, whereas what you come from, wherever, in
fact. you come from, is, apparently, about exclusion. that attitude of "give
me the facts and give me them now" doesn't work here--not because anyone is
unwilling to share what they know but because what they know has already been
represented by their posts. there is nothing you can exact by infusing your
requests with either urgency or flattery that isn't already available through
the archives or through perusal of the list.
are you getting it, yet. it's free. get your head around that.
i realize that becoming one of us might put you in a dodgy position with
respect to the obligations your masters have impressed upon you, but, hey,
that's fundamentally your problem, and not ours. all you have to do here is
be respectful. all you have to lose is the chains of your subservience. you
can even keep the income, as long as you drop the pretence.
ben
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