Will Debian survive the rise of Linux?
I stumbled across this[1] article on the linmagau (Linux Magazine, Australia?) web site. The article claims that "Early 2004 is going to be make-or-break time for Debian... and if If Debian is going to continue to grow and develop, we're going to have to work on more than just technical innovation: we need to work on usability and visibility." Although a little bit repetitive and perhaps overzealous, the author (who is a Debian devloper himself) seems, to me, to make some interesting points. However, I can imagine that many of the Debian users on this list would oppose his views with some hostility. Is Mr Oxer missing the point of the Debian GNU/Linux project altogether or does Debian really need to start appealing more to our well known friend Joe, the "mainstream user"? I'd be interested to hear some views on this. [1] http://articles.linmagau.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index... -- Ben "tola" Francis
In response... Debian is in some ways superior to most other distros - With tools such as apt and synaptic, the package management is smooth and trivial. The stability nad lack of package conflicts is an admirable aspect. However... The installation and configuration of the base system sucks. With Red Hat, Mandrake, etc, you get a nice easy to use GUI front end that detects most hardware reliably. The basic config files get set up either automatically, or only require a few simple boxes to be filled in. Installing and switching to another GUI is also reduced to an almost trivial task. Just my opinion. Regards, Paul. On Saturday 15 November 2003 7:00 pm, Ben Francis wrote:
The article claims that "Early 2004 is going to be make-or-break time for Debian... and if If Debian is going to continue to grow and develop, we're going to have to work on more than just technical innovation: we need to work on usability and visibility."
-- "To err is human...to really f*** things up requires the root password."
On 2003-11-15 19:00:57 +0000 Ben Francis <ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
However, I can imagine that many of the Debian users on this list would oppose his views with some hostility. Is Mr Oxer missing the point of the Debian GNU/Linux project altogether or does Debian really need to start appealing more to our well known friend Joe, the "mainstream user"? I'd be interested to hear some views on this.
Damn that site. Set a foreground colour if you set a background colour, damn it. Thank the fates for the print version. The article also contains the normal sort of errors ("truly Open Source" is just plain wrong) but maybe there's an overzealous copy editor revising his text where it doesn't meet house style. Some of it also seems dated to me, as I think I was at a 10th Debian birthday a while ago. (As is often the case with debian things, my memory is fuzzy.) If he really thinks this, I think Mr Oxer needs to raise it on debian lists rather than posturing in magazines. I searched the archives of the debian-desktop list he mentions from today back to the start of 2001 and found no posts by him there. I did find that he maintains some packages which looked like nothing to do with making Debian popular for mainstream users (A PHP profiler, an apt cache tool and something I forgot already) and saw someone grumbling that he'd filed an Intent To Package (ITP) notice but not acted on it. If he's serious, I hope he'll act on his ideas. I get the impression from Ben's message that he thinks "Mr Oxer" is just trolling like a lot of paid writers. Is that the general impression it gives? -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:00:57 +0000 Ben Francis <ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
I stumbled across this[1] article on the linmagau (Linux Magazine, Australia?) web site.
The article claims that "Early 2004 is going to be make-or-break time for Debian... and if If Debian is going to continue to grow and develop, we're going to have to work on more than just technical innovation: we need to work on usability and visibility."
Interesting article but I think the emergence of Debian based bootable CD versions of GNU/Linux like Knoppix and Morphix completely blow him out of the water. I think that once these have a good HD install they will take off. Just think you already have a fully functional bootable OS on the CD. All you have to do is copy the whole thing onto a HD and bang you have a working system. And with the Debian apt-get mechanism it's pretty easy to keep everything up to date (and occasionally clobber the whole thing as well! :o) ). But with an install that easy who cares? Keith
And with the Debian apt-get mechanism it's pretty easy to keep everything up to date (and occasionally clobber the whole thing as well! :o) ). But with an install that easy who cares?
occasionally clobber the whole thing? I've managed it twice in 2 nights. The first night I managed to (I think) remove KDE from the session options in KDM, although Kmail, KSirc etc. still worked, and in trying to fix that the next night, delete all the rest of KDE. All through doing a simple apt-get -f install :) Well, OK, I suppose that depends on how you define 'clobber' I suppose. Then, since I was in an interesting arguement on IRC I decided to install morphix quickly so I could get back into the frey (no other irc software installed), totally forgot that lilo.conf needs a bit of playing wth to get it booting and turned my 'puter off in disgust when it wouldn't boot. I wonder if there's a program that will prevent me from logging in as root when I've come back from the pub? BenE
On 2003-11-15 21:50:04 +0000 BenEBoy <mail@psychoferret.co.uk> wrote:
I wonder if there's a program that will prevent me from logging in as root when I've come back from the pub?
Sign up for the "slef extra beer" programme today. You'll spend so long in the pub buying me beer that you won't have time to root your boxes (in the Australian sense) before falling asleep.
On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 22:30:53 +0000 Keith Watson <kpwatson@ukfsn.org> wrote:
On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:00:57 +0000 Ben Francis <ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
I stumbled across this[1] article on the linmagau (Linux Magazine, Australia?) web site.
The article claims that "Early 2004 is going to be make-or-break time for Debian... and if If Debian is going to continue to grow and develop, we're going to have to work on more than just technical innovation: we need to work on usability and visibility."
Interesting article but I think the emergence of Debian based bootable CD versions of GNU/Linux like Knoppix and Morphix completely blow him out of the water.
I think that once these have a good HD install they will take off. Just think you already have a fully functional bootable OS on the CD. All you have to do is copy the whole thing onto a HD and bang you have a working system.
And with the Debian apt-get mechanism it's pretty easy to keep everything up to date (and occasionally clobber the whole thing as well! :o) ). But with an install that easy who cares?
Keith
Are you running Stable, Testing or Development? Regards Owen
The article claims that "Early 2004 is going to be make-or-break time for Debian... and if If Debian is going to continue to grow and develop, we're going to have to work on more than just technical innovation: we need to work on usability and visibility."
Does it matter? Debian seems different from many/most other distros. Commercial success is not the only success. Ian Murdoch: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3064611 "At LinuxWorld last week, a number of people asked me what Debian could do to make itself a more viable alternative to the commercial distributions in the enterprise market. That shouldn't be Debian's focus. The focus shouldn't be on following the commercial distributions where they want to lead us, but rather on taking the lead--for example, by working with and strengthening existing vendor-neutral, community-owned standards efforts such as the Linux Standard Base (LSB)." http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/editorials/4959/1/ "People often ask me what I would identify as Debian's most important contribution to the world. I believe it's Debian's decision to adopt a community-based development model. As far as I know, this marks the first time that a project intentionally set out to be developed by the community that used it. This is a central and critical component of the power of the open source movement--after all, if you remove the community from open source software, it's just software." Syd
participants (7)
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Ben Francis -
BenEBoy -
Keith Watson -
MJ Ray -
owen.churchcowley -
Paul -
Syd Hancock