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.
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