Re: how many users is enough?
Le Ven 30 novembre 2012 11:49, Ralf Mardorf a écrit :
> On Fri, 2012-11-30 at 16:16 +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
>
>> On 11/30/12, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I would describe the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian like
>>> this:
>>>
>>>
>>> Without Debian there would be no successful Ubuntu, but without
>>> Ubuntu
>>> there still would be a successful Debian.
>>
>> This is true, Debian being what it is, a community based, largely
>> volunteer effort, it shall continue regardless of the profit or not of
>> any particular company.
>>
>> I sure hope to see the day that Ubuntu announces a true profit though,
>> the more companies that survive, which companies also make some
>> contributions to the libre software ecosystem, the better.
>
>
> I started with Suse 9.0, when Suse wasn't Novell. Novell, Red Hat and
> Mark Shuttleworth killed Linux, time to look out for other *NIX or to
> follow them. The variety of Linux already is dead.
Hum...
As far as I know (and as distrowatch say), there are still many linux
distributions. I like variety, or to be more exact, Debian teach me to
like it, but I only like it when I can see and understand the difference
between choices.
I am still a linux newbie, and I still only have really experienced one
distro, but as a newbie I can say that I do not see the difference between
distributions, and so, I do not see why I should try another binary one.
Ah, yes, package's age, package's system (but I do not know the difference
in terms of power between rpm and deb, by example) and graphical
configuration system (someone said me on a developpez.com thread).
So, well, I agree, less choice. But was there real differences between all
of those old distros?
I think less choice is sometimes a requirement to help people doing a true
choice.
Do you know why I firstly choosed Debian? It have the reputation of a hard
to install distro, and at that time I thought I was good with computers. I
managed to install it the first time, without manual or problems. But I
had no graphic interface, and even if I was able to use command-lines (I
was accustomed to DOS) I had no clue about what to do to install Xorg.
Well, I did not even known that it exists :D (strange: now I'm really
better in computer sciences, but I think/claim everywhere that I am a
newbie. Times and people change...)
Some months later, I bought a magazine shipping live ubuntu. I tried it. I
did not liked it's desktop and so returned to my good old xp (or was it
98se?).
But it made me aware that it was possible to have convenient graphical
environment and easy installation systems for a linux-based OS. So, no,
Ubuntu did not killed linux.
And honestly, Ubuntu and Fedora can not choose for Debian or gentoo, by
example. Each distro should follow it's own way, and if there ways
converge, so maybe that's not so useful to have tons of distros.
> Take a look at the thread "Notifications changed in LXDE under wheezy"
> for Xfce an issue too.
>
> FUD? Again, people might chose applications that don't have insane
> dependencies, MUAs without a GUI etc., but we don't have the freedom to use
> what app we want, as it was possible in the past.
With XFCE, at least in 4.08 and 4.10, it is possible when I was using
them. You can install any file manager, window manager, notification
daemon/plug-in you want, if it fills freedesktop's recommendations, it
will integrates well with the DE. If not, you can use it, but I do not
know if it will be comfortable. Never tried.
Of course, you can install the xfce4 meta package, which have hard
dependencies on all major XFCE4 components.
But the truth is that XFCE4 package is not needed. When I was using it, I
was accustomed to say to aptitude to select it, and then in preview, I
removed it, and set the dependencies it have as manually installed.
I always thought it should have no dependencies, only recommendations, but
never reported that idea.
There is also xfce4-core, for minimal meta-package shipping only basic
components.
I perfectly remember that there was a package named xfce-notify or alike.
In XFCE, there is also a configuration system that allow you to change
their appearance quite easily.
However I can not describe how to change the config, because:
_ I did not used xfce since so many time
_ my menus were in French
_ how to describe an icon when themes can be customized? How to describe
how to clic? In French, I use a neologism to describe the kind of
softwares that MS have so much knowledge to do: cliquodrom (from clic and
velodrome ;)). They are easy to use mouse-only softwares, but hard to
teach the use with just text, because their appearance can change
depending on so many parameters. And I do not like them, of course :D
XFCE have a central library set, so there are common dependencies. But
LXDE avoid them, that's their leitmotiv and it explains why I am still
using some of their softwares, instead of DE independent alternatives
(leafpad and lxterminal to be exact).
Maybe in the past, there were more choices. But I wonder how many
softwares sharing the same goal, the same way to think there were? And how
many dev/project? And now?
Reducing the choice sometimes allow people to choose better.
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