Re: Good Debian-based distro
On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Andrew Malcolmson wrote:
> The Social Contract states "we will be guided by the needs of our
> users".
You left out "...and the free software community" the Free Software
community is not interested in being locked into architectures any more
than it is interested in being locked into operating systems.
> Has anyone done a poll on how many Debian users still run
> non-i386 systems?
Judging by the the people who came to the Debian booth at Linuxworld in
new York earlier this year, quite a few. For several architectures,
Debian is the only decent choice if you want to run Linux.
>
> Sure portability sounds nice, but what is a "hppa", anyway? How many
> users still run sparcs? Why should I as a user have to spend hours
> fiddling with obscure hardware setup issues and avoid recommending
> Debian to others so that Debian can run identically on every platform
> around. Leave this goal to NetBSD.
>
Why should I as a developer care you have to spend hours fiddling with
hardware? Leave that goal to Mandrake :-)
> Anyway, why do we think that portability is a top priority?
Often times programmers make assumptions that can lead to subtle bugs
which are only revealed when you try and compile in a different
environment. Debians' wide range of architectures mean we can catch many
of these bugs and fix them. This makes the software better overall for
everyone, even people who only use i386.
No one is denying the present Debian installer falls short of first class.
A replacement will be done. But it will be done right rather than quickly.
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/
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