Re: compiling a Debian package

[lee <lee@yun.yagibdah.de>]

Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> writes:

> On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 03:39:04PM +0100, lee wrote:

> I'm not familiar with cinelerra but, according to the BTS([1] and [2]),
> there have been two^Wseveral attempts to package cinelerra that have
> fallen by the wayside. That latter bug seems to suggest that cinelerra
> depends on non-free software (so it could, perhaps, go in contrib).
>
> As ever, if you care about this software, consider helping to fix the
> remaining issues.

If Debian wanted help, they won't make it so difficult for everyone to
help them.  It's not my problem that they make things so
difficult for themselves.

Besides, I was told in an answer to a bug report that 32bit support will
not be available in the next release, so Debian is deprecated now, and
I'm done with it.  Who knows what they screw up next.

> So you have two options, use the NVIDIA driver (with the knowledge that
> it "may access, collect non-personally identifiable information about,
> update, and configure Customer's system in order to properly optimize
> such system for use with the SOFTWARE") or use the open driver.

The open source driver is not an alternative because it doesn't really
work and is ridiculously slow.  The NVIDIA driver is excellent and has
been for the last 15 years or so, and it's frowned upon by developers
and deprecated.  The NVIDIA driver in stable is ancient and you have to
use at least testing, better unstable to get an up to date driver.  I've
been using the NVIDIA one rather than the NVIDIA version that's in
Debian, and the NVIDIA one gave me a lot less problems.  So after about
15 years, there still isn't an alternative.

Sure I would prefer an open source driver.  That doesn't help because
there is none.  Last time I tried the nouveau one it was even too slow
for a plain X-session, so I won't even say they could make it so that we
could switch drivers on the fly because there is no point in doing that.

>> The obsession with free software unfortunately leads to dead ends.
>> Apparently even developers now don't want to stay 20 years behind
>> technology anymore, so they have regressed to deprecate everything
>> that's not free software to force the issue.  That's probably leading to
>> a dead end as well, and I don't want to get stuck there.
>
> What would you have them do otherwise?

They could change their attitude back to "we want things to work".
Debian wouldn't need to have a messed up version and/or ancient version
of the NVIDIA drivers if they just looked at what NVIDIA provides and
made sure that it integrates without causing the problems they claim it
causes.  Developers could acknowledge that there is software they cannot
get their hands on and that this software, as unfortunate as it may be,
is essential, and they could try to make the best out of this situation.

> Nothing (that I'm aware of) in Debian bans you from using non-free
> software. There is only the understanding that support for non-free
> software is the responsibility of that software's provider.

You already can't use it anymore when it's 32bit software.  NVIDIA
continues to provide excellent non-free drivers since 15 years or so.
Dmo doesn't seem to have a problem with non-free software that you say
cinelerra depends upon.  Things become difficult when developers of free
software refuse to accept that there is such a thing as non-free
software which may be important for users.  I can understand that they
get tired of being confronted with non-free software, yet that doesn't
help.  When their attitude leads them into a dead end, that's their
choice, and it's unfortunate because it takes alternatives away users
had.


-- 
Debian testing iad96 brokenarch