On Monday 14 November 2005 09:21 am, s. keeling wrote: > Stability is what Debian was trying to produce when Murdock & friends > began. That's still a cornerstone value. Considering all the > downstream distributions based on Debian, that strategy is working well.
I agree. But as a relative newbie myself I'd like to better understand the rationale. A newbie looking at the plethora of distros is one confused and mystified individual. I chose Debian because of its open development model and reputation for stability (and lacked the time to investigate the 100+ so alternatives). The net-install was a quite a pleasure -- living without sound until I bought new hardware was a small price to pay. My use is primarily Java and web development and document writing. I don't need the latest and greatest of everything. What I did find surprising after reading this list for a while was that stable meant not only really stable but also really slow release cycle. Okay, that's the price you pay for "really stable." What seems odd to me is that a stable release is not just the OS and utilities but also all the applications that run on top of them (15,000+ packages total -- that certainly explains the release cycle time). Is the rationale that this is the best way to do testing and configuration management? Is it just a consequence of the way Debian has grown up? Or something else entirely? As a newbie I expected there to be a set of OS/utility packages that were released together (say, for example, like Sun does with Solaris) and various sets of application software that had independent release cycles. The Debian model seems to be that all FLOSS software constitutes a "Debian release" and once that release happens you can pick and choose what you want. Why is that a good thing? Any clarification on the above will be appreciated. I'm not throwing stones here, just trying to figure out what the motivation is so I can better understand the Debian way. Andy
