Re: Why Debian
* On 2013 09 Nov 10:49 -0600, Conrad Nelson wrote:
> I like Debian. My only real beef with it is the DFSG. Debian
> developers (And a lot of users.) operate a little too much under the
> assumption end-users actually care about things such as source code
> being available and I do think this is why Debian is kept from being
> as popular as it could be. Great for forking distributions off of,
> however. While certainly, as a programmer, I can appreciate having
> source code for the software I use, I am way more a follower of the
> Torvalds philosophy ("Use what works best for you and your
> hardware." over the Stallman philosophy (The false notion that
> software being open source is some sort of moral issue.). You'll
> often see me on this mailing list ranting at someone who invokes
> "it's closed source, so it's automatically bad." Debian tends to go
> out of its way to appease the Free Software Foundation for zero
> benefit (Or respect from RMS.) whatsoever.
IMO, Debian does a good job providing, or at least staying out of one's
way, support for using non-DFSG software. It may be a bit unfair to say
that "Debian goes out of its way to appease the Free Software Foundation
for zero benefit (Or respect from RMS.) whatsoever." as if that were
true, then various GNU documentation would not be placed in non-free
when it has opted to use certain aspects of the GNU Free Document
License. DFSG is actually closer to the pragmatic Open Source
philosophy than the dogmatic Free Software philosophy, IMO.
> Perhaps my biggest technical gripe is a side effect of the Debian
> philosophy: Good luck ever actually installing Debian over a
> wireless network on their official media, as they shortsightedly
> decided that "philosophy" is more important than "install Debian on
> a laptop." Another gripe is how much they hold back mainstream
> Debian for their pet projects that stand very little chance of
> significant adoption (Debian kfreebsd: BSD is in a decline, and
> (Debian Hurd) I see very little point in Hurd, as the project is
> virtually dead.). This keeps Debian from switching to better stuff
> like systemd (Yes, I know systemd is in the repos.) that could make
> better use of the Linux kernel.
I'll agree that the installer could use some tweaking between the
technical and philosophical regarding wireless drivers. I'm not a
Debian Developer so I don't have any idea what discussions/bug reports
have taken place in this area. I do know that I've had to do the
initial install using the wired connection and then install the proper
kernel package to get the needed firmware. Even with this
inconvenience, Debian doesn't just remove those parts and say, "Good
luck!"
As for the other architectures, so long as someone is willing to work on
keeping them current, I think the upside to having them is that it does
make for a more solid distribution and it helps upstream projects be
more portable and, as with several years ago with the SCO lawsuits,
should the unthinkable occur and the Linux kernel have some legal action
against it, the other kernels represent a fall-back position for Debian
and its community. While that seems like a long shot these days, it may
be important in the future.
- Nate
--
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true."
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