Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Thursday 29 March 2007 14:55, Steve Lamb wrote:
> anoop aryal wrote:
> > i'll take etch when it's good and ready and not a day before. i'd rather
> > have a working OS, free of bugs, late than a half baked, bug-ridden POS,
> > on time.
>
> Then you'll be waiting forever because even Debian does not ship stable
> releases "free" of bugs.
touche.
but my main argument is that i value debian prioratizing bug-squashing over
meeting release dates. and that if debian is guilty of being cavalier about
missing release dates, others are guilty of being cavalier about releasing
bug-riddled software (knowingly).
i switched from windows to redhat (around '96), then from redhat to fedora,
then from fedora to debian. now that i'm here, i don't see myself switching
to anything else. and that's *because* debian hasn't given in to the
temptation of always having the latest and the greatest software and
*because* when the new stable is out, i know there'll be minimum surprises.
and that's because debian hasn't given in to meeting artificial release
dates. as a software dev who does sysadmin only to setup an environment to
run the software we develop, i really value the slow/steady releases because
otherwise, we'll be on a hamster wheel of upgrades and have to constantly fix
our apps to work with the newer system the whole time and not have the time
to develop anything new. debian gives us a nice stable target to hit.
i do use testing/unstable on my personal machines where i don't mind the
occasional breakage - i see that as a chance to send in the occasional bug
report to help out. and as a way to prepare for what may be coming down the
pipe in the next release. but debian - the way it is - is exactly why i'm
using it on servers.
so, yeah, given everything else stays the same, i'd take a firmer release
date. but not at the expense of getting software that has critical bugs that
could be fixed if the release date was moved. after all, if i was really
itching for the newer software, all i'd have to do
is 'sed -i "s/sarge/etch/g" /etc/apt/sources.list'. not like debian is
stopping me from getting the software before it's magical "release" date.
just wanted to make sure that the powers that be also hear from people who
appriciate the way things are done in debian.
--
anoop aryal
aaryal@foresightint.com
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