Re: oh no something is definitly wrong adieu debian.
On Tue, 2013-08-27 at 10:07 -0500, Conrad Nelson wrote:
> On 08/27/2013 07:22 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > On Tue, 2013-08-27 at 11:55 +0000, Curt wrote:
> >> What a traitor (or not)!
> > "arch traitor" ;) since I prefer Arch Linux and my explanations might be
> > a "traitor's kiss", since I referred to the KISS principle.
>
> I am still a big Arch fan myself. But after a couple years I found
> myself drawn to Debian Testing as the Arch developers (ESPECIALLY Allan
> McRae, the current maintainer for Pacman.) have begun to take a fiercely
> arrogant attitude and a "we know better than you, so shut up" tone
> toward anyone who would question some of their decisions.
>
> The last couple major changes in Arch seemed like changes for changes
> sake as well (systemd, while I really do love it a lot, just doesn't
> seem to fit with how I understood Arch was supposed to work. And I still
> believe to this day that the old BSD-like sysv setup they had before was
> loads simpler to configure.) And I still don't understand the point of
> the lib/bin merges they are doing, aside from the fact it's a blatant
> violation of FHS.
>
> I used Gentoo for a bit, but its problem is the opposite of Arch:
> Whereas Arch is making pointless, unnecessary changes, Gentoo seems to
> be pretty stagnant and stuck in its ways. Gentoo actually is a
> distribution I actually think would benefit very well with systemd.
> OpenRC, though its goals are laudable, I've only ever seen it basically
> just become a sysv-init clone that accomplishes next to nothing new. My
> other gripe about Gentoo was it just got to be just too much work just
> for basic system upkeep. The USE flags were incredibly useful and
> powerful for customizing my packages and how my system would globally
> work, but all too often setting them globally would just result in
> Portage griping and refusing to install software, and setting USE flags
> individually per hundreds of packages is way too much work, effectively
> meaning Portage ended up getting in the way of what was supposed to be
> its own most powerful feature.
>
> I think Debian works pretty well. It's not as flexible or powerful as
> Arch or Gentoo, perhaps, but it's definitely better for servers than
> Arch or Gentoo. But it's not without its flaws. I think Debian's
> obsession with free software conformity is, indeed, a weakness. Before
> you blast me, I'm just going to point out I subscribe more to the
> Torvalds school of thought on open source, NOT the Stallman school.
> Richard Stallman over-politicizes/idealizes the idea of open source,
> tries to make it almost a moral/spiritual thing in a context and
> industry where moral/spiritual choice is as a whole, irrelevant and
> actually pretty counterproductive. For a long time (Until recently, in
> fact.), Debian desktop users had to use third party repositories just to
> get decent multimedia support into Debian. Why? Because Debian
> developers questioned whether over half of the codecs most people needed
> were "free" enough.
>
> I think my opinion is made worse by the fact I just plain do not like
> Richard Stallman both as a person or as a representative of the FOSS
> world. And despite all of Debian's good faith efforts to try to conform
> with Richard's idea of what "free" means he still basically regards
> Debian (And pretty much all Linux.) with contempt. This is probably less
> to do with whether or not Debian complies with his "free" ideas and more
> for the fact the guy is pedal-to-the-metal bitter and oh-so-very jealous
> that Linux succeeded in every place GNU failed (Such as actually being
> an operating system.), which is why he insists on the "GNU/Linux"
> moniker, which is utter nonsense (Using the GNU toolchain doesn't
> magically make Linux GNU, and he uses some of the most insane logic to
> try and justify a pretty transparent attempt to take credit for Linux's
> success from those who actually DID make Linux a success. It is a crying
> shame the Debian people, in their futile attempt to get Stallman to like
> Debian, actually comply with the GNU/Linux crap. Linux is not GNU, get
> over it. It only uses the GNU toolchain (And even then, not always, look
> at Android.)). So all Debian got for their effort to be "free" is that
> to make Debian a really good desktop the users have to work a little
> harder than they should.
>
> The Torvalds school of thought is actually based on something with a lot
> more relevance and something far more objective: Software quality. Open
> source ends up being a lot more effective and in a load of cases the
> better option in a software deployment in production environments (The
> Internet basically runs on Linux these days.) provided the open source
> you use isn't worrying about whether its "politically correct" so much
> as makign sure it's the best quality option. "Use what works best."
>
> Debian's other problem is this need to split packages. A lot. Debian
> likes to brag about having a HUGE repository, but when you actually look
> at it, it's actually an AVERAGE repository made "bigger" by the fact
> that when you install software, despite the fact it downloads and
> installs up to 12 packages for the same thing it really is basically
> just ONE package. I don't actually see the purpose in why Debian has to
> split its packages dozens of ways especially when you still end up
> having to install them all anyway. Someone explain this to me.
>
> > You can read on many mailing lists that people often try to explain
> > something with the argument that "we" should be better than the
> > "competitors" or that "we" should follow a radical policy, but there are
> > no "competitors", just other teams and other projects and Linux isn't a
> > political party. I guess users who see the FLOSS communities as
> > "competitors" or who care to much about ethical concepts, misunderstand
> > that Linux aim is to be "lukewarm", to provide something for every
> > human, the passion for Linux usually is to get rid of thinking that
> > something is "superior".
> >
> >
>
> Competition is a healthy thing. I actually tend to feel when someone
> becomes top dog they start getting careless and lazy and stop trying to
> be competitive. Look at Ubuntu, around 2008 it stopped being a quality
> distribution that cared about its community and became pretty much the
> Windows of the Linux world, complete with a company that develops it who
> absolutely refuses to listen to their users.
I agree with quasi most of your reply :). I won't discuss all the
details and where I disagree a little bit. Resume: There are different
ways to handle Linux userspace and that's why different distros are
useful and one isn't really better or worse than another distro.
Too funny, one thing I mentioned off-list is "Btw. startup for Debian is
done by init, for Ubuntu by upstart and for Arch by systemd."
On the Evolution mailing list there's a similar discussion that
hopefully now found an end and hopefully it will find an end on Debian
user too ;).
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