Re: What's wrong with debian?
Good morning!
Please allow me to withdraw my "straw man" idea of Debian being too big.
It seems that I stated the obvious although exactly how it is too big is
never going to be resolved.
Three statements other posters made are rewritten below:
On Tue, 2005-03-01 at 00:36 +0000, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
> I agree. Debian should be split into a small OS base, desktop base
> (X/gnome/KDE), and "applications". All of these can and should be
> released independently.
>
> It sounds simple but figuring out how to do that exactly is
> probably very very complicated.
>
> Mike.
And Eric Gaumer, the day before wrote:
>Would it be so bad for Debian to become a foundation (an "abstract base
>class" if you will)
>for derivative work? In other words leave its use (in pure form) to the
>elite and just use
>it as a foundation for user distros like Ubuntu, Linspire, Xandros,
>etc...
>I think this would actually be a better route to travel. This way we
>could continue to
>provide tons of packages and rely on outside organizations to refine
>those repositories so
>that a smaller subset could produce quicker release cycles.
And Eric also wrote:
>I don't really understand peoples concern. If Sarge was released
>tomorrow it would be the
>same group of packages sitting there today (relatively speaking).
>My point is if you think Sarge is stable (which it is) then go ahead
>and upgrade/install.
These three points lead me to suggest some things:
1) Why not dump the concept of a "Release", altogether? (I'm referring
to Potato vs Woody vs Sarge vs whoever is next.)
2) What we are actually running is either i) Debian Stable, ii) Debian
Testing or iii) Debian Unstable or iv )a mixture. All are current up to
whatever date we last ran apt-update && apt-upgrade.
3) Debian Stable (up to whatever date we last ran apt-update &&
apt-upgrade) is what (maybe) what Mike was referring to.
Statements such as "I'm waiting for Sarge" become irrelevant.
You can stop reading this now. What follows are just a few analogies
that I think mirror how Debian could be looked upon. They won't be
precise analogies, I acknowledge that up front. But, I think that they
get across what I'm saying above.
My house was "released" in 1955. Later, it upgraded its doors, windows,
paint, and other components. Think I'd convince anyone throughout the
house's duty cycle that it was a new release? Its not relevant...its my
system and it does what it I want it to do.
One of my computers was released in 1990. Later, it upgraded its hard
drive, RAM, monitor, keyboard, etc. Dare I convince anyone it was a new
release while all these upgrades were being put in. Its my system and it
does what I want it to do.
I was released...oh, never mind! Hey, is that kerosene I smell? :)
Rob
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