Bug#862980: update homepage
On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 4:10 AM, Laura Arjona Reina wrote:
> I like your proposal.
Likewise, however a couple of things Clara and I forgot when preparing
it are the social contract, the constitution and the code of conduct,
I wonder if we should mention them in the introduction somehow?
https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
https://www.debian.org/social_contract
https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
> The part of the kernel I would change it a bit,
> because we have ports based on other kernels too.
In practice these aren't widely used though.
> Debian is ported to many devices with different computer architectures,
> using the <a href="https://www.kernel.org/";>Linux kernel</a> or others
I think this might be too technical and that it would be very hard to
convey to non-technical people exactly what a Debian "port" is.
Perhaps this would work though:
Debian can be used on many <a href="ports/">types</a> of devices and
is based on the Linux kernel, other kernels and over
<packages_in_stable> other <a href="distrib/packages">packages</a> of
software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your
machine.
I thought about choosing "computers" to de-emphasise things like
tablets/smartphones/watches, which we cannot yet support in any sane
way. OTOH "devices" would be future-proof if the situations around
those or other devices like cars/tractors/fridges/etc change for the
better.
I think the phrase "packages of" makes the sentence more
understandable since it relates the word "packages" to the real-world
non-software use of that word.
In case we don't want to mention other kernels, we could replace "the
Linux kernel, other kernels" with just "Linux" as many people who have
heard of "Linux" will not know what a kernel is or that Linux is a
kernel.
> Notes:
> (1) I'm not sure if it's good to link to the www.d.o/ports page in the
> word "ported" or not, because that link appears later in the page, in
> the "Getting Started" section.
It should be fine to link words in the intro to links that appear
later, for folks who like to click while reading. The list of links is
useful to those who prefer an organised list.
I also think the ports section is very technical and the text needs
some rewriting but maybe it is OK to link to it now and improve it
later.
> (2) While in the beginning of Linux distributions Debian really made a
> difference because of the easiness of installing packages (hence the
> mention "software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on
> your machine"), I think nowadays everybody takes that for granted (both
> in Linux distributions and in other operating systems, look at the app
> stores in mobile OS for example). Maybe it's time to change that
> sentence for another "killer"-feature(s) that we provide, related to
> packages? I'm thinking for example in that we provide source packages
> for... the whole archive? (I'm not sure), or that a major part of our
> archive builds reproducibly. Difficult to shrink those in a sentence,
> but I'd like to know opinions about this, and if we decide that's the
> way to go, later we can try to find the correct wording.
Source packages and reproducible builds are fairly common now though,
at least in the FLOSS world.
Mentioning killer features is also not future proof, we would need to
update it often as Debian takes on new projects and ideas.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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