Re: Debian has turned unusable.
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Trollcollect wrote:
> I want to start with saying that i was a strong
> advocate of debian compared to distributions such as
> RedHat and SuSE.
Please don't advocate things you don't understand. You are doing neither
yourself or the people you are trying to give advice to.
Now follows an attempt to provide some quick answers. Every single issue
you raise has been brought up and answered ad nauseum on this list and
elsewhere.
> Being a UNIX admin professionally
> (Solaris mainly), i felt home on a debian system
> pretty quick, and the packaging method was unique
> among all linux deriatives i have seen. Also i used to
> like debians approach of stability before
> bleeding-edge stuff.
>
> However as i have to install a small network now (7
> WS's and one server), i have to reconsider this
> assessment. I downloaded woody (2 failed attempts to
> get an installation CD with the new jigdo method).
Jigdo is the ideal method and seems to work for most people however the
same page that describes jigdo (http://www.debian.org/distrib/cd) also has
pointers to where to get the full iso images.
> What i got after installation was
> - a 2.2 Kernel without ext3 support
> - a KDE 2.0
> overall totally outdated and useless versions of
> libraries and software.
>
This is the result of "stability before bleeding edge stuff." The woody
cds and boot floppies do support kernel 2.4 which you can use by typing
bf24 at the initial prompt.
> I then tried to figure out how to update those
> packages i need in recent versions.
> As i know KDE from
> Solaris, i trust enough in their own QA procedure to
> consider their 3.2.1 stable enough for usage. Why
> debian believes KDE 2.0 is more stable, or even usable
> at all, is beyond my understanding.
>
You misunderstand the meaning of stable in the debian context.
It is not a comment on the stability of individual packages but the
distribution as a whole.
> However it turned out that i could not update only
> selected packages easily. In fact neither of dselect
> or apt-get seemed to have a method to do this in a
> sensible way.
>
apt-get install apt-howto-en (or apt-howto-de if you prefer) and read
about apt pinning and adding additional apt sources.
See http://www.backports.org/ for a source of woody packages for the
latest KDE, Gnome, kernel 2.6, Apache 2, etc.
> Now it MAY well be that i am just an idiot who is not
> capable of doing this, however i asked in a few linux
> related channels and also at work, noone could tell me
> how to set up a half-way decent debian without
> compromising the pkg system. Sure many told me to
> build it all by hand but then, without the packaging
> system what good is debian?
>
Don't take advice from random people in random places. Spend 15 minutes
on google first.
> I hope that whoever is responsible for the direction
> debian is steering to currently thinks about the
> target of the whole distribution, which is to provide
> users with a decent linux system that comes stable,
> yet with all neccessary parts to be competetive among
> other distributions.
>
Nobody is responsible for the direction Debian is steering (or rather 900
people are steering it in different directions!) The nearest thing we
have to a target is the Debian social contract and free software
guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract)
Definitely there are parts of the Debian process that need improvement but
learn about what's already possible before criticizing.
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/
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