Make Debian better (Re: Two Debian 3.0 reviews at Slashdot)

[Eduard Bloch <edi@gmx.de>]

#include <hallo.h>
Karsten M. Self wrote on Sun Oct 20, 2002 um 07:53:30PM:
> DebianPlanet and LinuxWatch have both posted reviews of Debian 3.0.  As
> might be expected, a lot of whinging about the installation.   Little
> appreciation for true merits, most of which only become apparent on
> actual use and maintenance of the system.

Well, a valid large bug report. Lots of things that are really broken from
User's point of view. Some of them are already mentioned in the Woody's
development, but nobody payed attention (since the typical developer install
only once and does not realize how uncomfortable the thing is for the first
time user). I suggest to create a "debian-usability" Mailing List, moderated,
where users and interested developers can discuss about such issues. I
suggest to give people working on useability tasks give more rights (read:
complain to Tech. Comitee faster) since many maintainers (I won't call the
names but most of you which people I am talking about) just give a fsck on the
needs of newbies. (read: The _bad_ old: GO-AND-RTFM method instead of thinking
about the reason for even coming to the problem and fixing the real reasons
instead of symptoms.) Hm, additional things I just think of:

 - broken home/end keys in bash in xterm (even in Woody)
 - missing apt localisation extensions (who t.f. told we that we are going to
   release in the next few weeks, again and again for almost 6 months?!)
 - centralised "setup" tool which would reconfigure etherconf, pppoeconf, and
   do sth. as gx-debconf does, but be more understandable.

Gruss/Regards,
Eduard.