Re: Thinking about using Debian
Le Mar 26 février 2013 0:35, Mark Filipak a écrit :
> Are you a fan of Shakespeare tragedies? I think Linux is a good subject.
> It's so hard to comment constructively without seeming to bitch. It's a
> tragedy.
I would more say that everything humankind do is a good subject ;)
> I'm an electronics engineer technoweenie with over 3 decades of
> experience with such a wide range of
> mainframes/minicomputers/microcomputers it would make your head spin. If
> ever there was a customer for Linux, I would be it.
Nice. I'm an humble programmer, with a very low grade, and the only thing
I could say about my knowledge is that I am self-learning for 11 years.
Does it means I should be impressed by people with more experience? I do
not think so.
While people claim quickly about impressive wisdom and knowledge, they do
not show it very often.
That's not against you, but for my experience, I have seen many people
claiming having good knowledge in something, claiming they'll help, and
never act.
I has been one of them quite often :D
> and because it's free, complaints and/or suggestions
> seem like bitching and no one likes to listen to someone bitch.
Use Red-Hat, and you will see if free means "gratuit" (in French, we say
something is "gratuit" when you do not need to pay. I do not know the
English word for that. Free, "libre" is reserved to freedom, with the idea
of having rights behind).
Red-Hat is a company specialized in supporting linux users, so, if you
need to pay to feel good, ask them.
The nice stuff with open source softwares, is that you can pay someone to
contribute, too.
> I have a Dell Precision M90.
> ...
> If I invest
> months learning the care and feeding of Debian to the point where I can
> be comfortably secure with it and can advise others, will I be able to
> maintain that level next year when Debian is different?
Debian will not change from a year to another, stable long at least for 2
years, and then, they become old-stable, for 2 other years.
It means that there is "support" for 4 years per version.
For your drivers, the solution is quite easy: use a live CD, if your
hardware works like a charm, then the distro will do.
I bet that this will not be, since there are really few free wifi
firmware, so we often need to install a non-free package.
If you use flash player, you will have the same need. Those exceptions,
plus opera as a browser, are currently the only non-free packages on my
computers (I currently have 3: an old computer (+10 years), an eeepc
(1015pem) and a poor desktop, assembled by myself with cheap hardware
(I'll upgrade when I'll need and have money for that) and all of them
works perfectly.)
> I could just try it and see, but that could eat a lot of my time and I
> don't have the time to waste.
If you have "no time to waste", then, stay with windows XP, but remember:
it's support will stop in few months. And more and more softwares will not
be compatible with it... that is, in microsoft's world. I bet most of
tools I am using will work there for at least few more years :D
> What's Debian going to be like? It's an OS with no GUI-cops at all. No
> one wants to do anything standard ...
FreeDesktop.org should show you that maybe, finally, you does not know the
whole situation.
For other parts of the system, there is also LSB. Both of those
organizations provides guidelines. I do not know for LSB, but for FDo,
major desktops follows them. In fact, they do them.
> it's boring and you can't bore
> volunteer programers and keep them as volunteers. Look at Firefox and
> Thunderbird. They're getting harder and harder to use by the day. Why?
> Because no one is enforcing interface standards. But you can't say
> anything without someone else throwing "What do you want for free?" in
> your face.
Really? As a programmer, my first objective is that my softwares will be
used. Even when I am writing autorealm3, I will not say "contribute or
shut-up". Well, I could anyway say that a special feature is too
hard/complex/low priority to implement it, and that user's contributions
are greatly appreciated.
But is it the same as saying "What do you want for free?" ? I do not think
so.
> Also, my experience with Firebox and Thunderbird may advise against
> Debian.
So, You see that google's browser send your informations to google, so,
you deduce that microsoft windows entirely do that, too. I see.
You are comparing Mozilla and Debian, 2 distinct organizations, like they
were the same. They are not.
> That's why I'm lurking the Debian list ...to see what people's attitudes
> are. To see whether the developers are accessible.
It's debian-user, here, not debian-developer...
> I tried to get involved fixing the PAM authorization stack architecture
> for my server. I got absolutely nowhere because the developers of PAM
> didn't want to talk with anyone who wasn't willing to write and compile
> code. Will Debian be any different?
Debian is composed by humans, I guess. Some might act in a way, other in a
different one.
I guess Debian do some patching on some packages, and I suppose that those
are then sent upstream, but we fall-back in the same problem here: I have
no idea about if you will find someone to quickly fix a problem, that
could be very rare. I have no idea.
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