Re: The Direction of Debian
(I seem to be missing Dima's post. All I have is what Paul quoted.)
On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 03:39:42PM -0700, Paul 'Baloo' Johnson wrote:
| On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Dimitri Maziuk wrote:
|
| > Basically, Debian project seems to be moving towards
| > more feechoorz, more luser-friendly helper apps etc.
| > Most software engineers believe that this exactly the
| > wrong thing to do: more complexity => unforseen
| > interactions between the parts => more bugs, less
| > stability.
|
| And people wonder why I think both KDE and Gnome suck. 8:o)
I like GNOME, but I'm not so sure I like its direction. gconf reminds
me too much of the windows registry, and 'yelp' (the only gnome2 app
I've found in debian so far) doesn't look quite as nice as the old
apps. Anyways, my main apps are gnome-terminal, gvim, and galeon.
gabber is taking place now too. I don't go for much of the
flashiness.
| > 2. Current practice of building packages with "commonly
| > used options" and adding dependencies to packages that
| > provide those options.
|
| I thought it set packages at "recommended" when a particular feature had
| the dependancy.
Well, gettext required an emacs package (at least for a while). As
long as the dependencies remain sane ....
| > 2.1. Who decides what's "common"? Which idiot decided
| > that analog's libgd should depend on X11 libraries?
|
| I've noticed this a lot. It bugs me when I try to install something on
| my older box (that I don't have X on) and it insists on installing xlibs
| and whatever other x stuff it can find, when I know perfectly well it's
| not an X prog.
Take RH 7.2, for example. Build a headless or non-X server with it
and try and include python2. Heh. It needs Mesa which needs XFree86
(the xserver) which needs XFree86-xfs.
| > 3. Potato is too old for many real-life uses. Woody
| > is unsuitable for many production systems -- not only
| > for political (managers have every reason to distrust
| > "officially beta" OS), but also for technical (Woody
| > doesn't get security updates, Woody breaks) reasons.
| > That will change once woody is released, but then the
| > cycle will begin again. On top of that, 2.2. makes
| > Woody unsuitable for certain class systems, and that
| > will not change with Woody's release. The point? --
| > Debian is becoming less versatile with every release.
|
| That's always bugged me about stable: It ages quickly.
This is the key problem, IMO. I can run a testing/unstable mix on my
own system, but a comment I hear too often is "debian is still using
kernel 2.2, aren't they?". Just kick the releases out a lot faster.
Woody has been "soon" for around a year now, and potato was obsolete
even then. Just lower the perfection bar a bit, because woody, Right
Now, is way better than RH (7.2).
| > Oh sure, RPM format was really inferior back then. Now,
| > Woody is still better that Seawolf (RH 7.2, that's the
| > one I had in mind). What I'm afraid of is that Woody+1
| > will not be any better than Seawolf+1 -- it'll suck as
| > much, only in different ways.
|
| RPM *still* puts files in the wrong places, and you *still* have to find
| packages and resolve dependancies by hand.
Yeah. I had to work with RH 7.2 recently. It's a major PITA. Even
worse than it used to be.
The only problems I have with debian's direction is
1) slowness in and lack of release. it puts a real damper on
trying to convince others to use debian
2) creeping in insane dependencies requiring things like X and
emacs for those who don't want them
3) gnome starting to sound more like windows (but that's not
debian's fault)
-D
--
The way of a fool seems right to him,
but a wise man listens to advice.
Proverbs 12:15
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