On 21/04/10 06:15, surreal wrote:
Because it's not Windows? To sell a new version of Windows, which MS must do every few years or die, like most sharks and swimming, the user interface must keep changing.I wanted to buy a book about Debian, I found that the last book written was way back in 2005 by Martin F. Krafft<http://www.amazon.com/Martin-F.-Krafft/e/B001K892PK/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1271826559&sr=8-1> After 2005, Etch and Lenny were released. In 5 years its surprising no one thought to write a book specially for debian lenny or etch ?? Why? Check out this amazon link - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debian&x=0&y=0 Dear Debian managers - I know you guys work hard and have got lots of wikis (enough to confuse new comers), you must realize that a printed manual helps users in many ways..esp when it comes to have a quick reference.. On the other hand, take a look at number of Ubuntu related titles - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ubuntu&x=0&y=0 Why is this happening? We need more printed books, manuals, guides, howtos on Debian. Enough reading those confusing and half constructed wikis!
Certainly, that happens to a lesser degree with Gnome and KDE, but neither are specific to Debian. What is specific is dpkg and its children apt and aptitude, and their mode of operation has changed only slightly over many years. There's not really that much else that is pure Debian.
My Lenny server does much the same work as the Etch, Sarge and Woody installations before it. Martin's book isn't that far out of date. I haven't needed to learn much more about the OS itself over that time, just about packages I hadn't used before. I've learned much more from Sid, much of it the hard way. No book will ever track Sid.
Ubuntu is intended to appeal to Windows users, and needs to mimic the rapid apparent change in user environment. Debian isn't and doesn't. It does evolve in functionality: sysvinit has gone from Sid, though considerable compatibility remains, and must continue for some time.
That will require a mention in future books, but again it isn't specific to Debian, and indeed Ubuntu features quite prominently in this particular story. The change came to Ubuntu (and Fedora) before it came to Sid, and Canonical was the major developer of Upstart, the sysvinit replacement. But if you need to understand Upstart, you're not a user, you're at least a hacker, if not a developer (posh word for hacker) and you're less reliant on the dead trees.
-- Joe