Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Fri, 2007-05-18 at 08:17 +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Lennart said Peter said If You and several people claim they haven't met such problems with testing, I can live with that. I also heard people whose experience was different, and my personal one is closer to them. That's all. All it takes is one package that has a dependancy problem to prevent hundreds of other packages from upgrading or installing fully. It looks like everything is broken, when all it really is is just one missing or broken package. When you know how to read what the upgrade system tells you you can usually deal with it or put the right things on hold for a few days while the missing package makes it in to testing. Well, if You actually use the computer for daily work, it's not that easy to put things on hold ;-) You've already said you want the latest and greatest. In this case then, you've already gotten testing installed. You are typically _MUCH_ newer than stable. The things on hold are typically just newer versions of what you already have. Newer by small versions, typically just fixing small issues. And the fact your It looks like everything is broken is far from the truth and in my opinion not genuine. Users should never see this in the first place, especially on a managed machine. They never do on a Windows machine, except when it breaks, which is quite often. Holding these packages is not a sign of BROKEN packages, it is a sign that the package management system is working. It is preventing a *BROKEN* machine. But then the USER never sees that, remember Linux machines are multi-user all the time. The admin should be doing all of this maintenance tasks behind the backs of the user, most updates being handed into testing are going to trivial updates in any case... until (the next paragraph) Now in testing, if some BIG comes along and needs to be hinted into testing, you'll never see that problem, as all the programs needed will drop into testing at once. This the user may see, they may have the machine rebooted on them. Just like Windows, but FAR FAR FAR less often. Even then, most of the time, though, the user only has to log out and then log back in, without rebooting. -- greg, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP key: 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05 Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C Alternate Fingerprint: 09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Steve, The problem is that your history doesn't match the experience of any one else participating in this thread. You keep making assertions about testing being broken, sometimes with hundreds of broken dependencies. Since one of the key criterion of packages entering testing is dependencies are correct and fulfillable, this strikes most of us as unlikely. Yes, and security upgrades never change behaviour of software and never break things. That's the way it OUGHT to be. The reality has its own turbulences. I won't claim testing has never had a broken depends, but it's very rare, and never hundreds of packages. Well, I might have been out of luck. Maybe it hasn't been hudreds, just a full screen of (didn't count them and wouldn't remember anyway). That changes nothing on assertion, that using the testing routinely is not official, nor advisable way for ordinary users. It's a basic point of science that the person making the unusual claims needs to provide the data to back it up. My original intention was not, and still is not, to discuss capabilities of testing. I want to discuss possibilities, how could the stable be more attractive for ordinary user, how to make it usable on hardware newer-than-3-years-old, how could the user be blessed with fresh software rather than 2-years old, how to allow him to easily and effectively participate on bug reporting, and how to avoid the work of backporting security fixes to ancient software. If You and several people claim they haven't met such problems with testing, I can live with that. I also heard people whose experience was different, and my personal one is closer to them. That's all. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Steve, And as others have pointed out, the purpose of stable is to minimize disruptions. For many users, living with known bugs with known workarounds is a *lot* better than identifying new bugs. Yeas. Let the choice to the user. Don't dictate him. Whoever wants to use the old software w/o change, let be it. Whoever wants the new one, noticed about the risks, let's give him an official and supported way to do it. For one thing, it's not just Iceweasel, it's all the plugins and extensions that might be in use, *and* any external software or libraries that those extensions use. AFAIK, all Mozilla's programs take care about plugins their own way and offer upgrades automatically. I don't have enough technical background to opose You at the Debian packages level however, You're knowledge could be better than mine. Not to mention all the other software that uses iceweasel libraries. Is there any? Additionally, any internal webapps have to be validated against the new iceweasel. Internal macros need to be validated against the new OO.org.It's a lot of work. Yes, for the admins that are willing to deploy the software. Repeat, I just want the _official_and_supported_way_ to do it. Let the users choose, whether they want to upgrade. Repeat, let there be easy downgrade option for the case things don't work as expected. Now, that may be of little relevance to the home user. But I know some such users who also *don't* like upgrades, because they're happy with what they have and don't need to change. For example, my father-in-law just this year went from Mac OS9 to OSX, mostly because his hardware was dying. So he hadn't upgraded in 6 *years*, and didn't feel he was missing anything. There's quite a few of those people out there. Not to upgrade, that's perfectely legitimate choice. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 08:20:50AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Steve, And as others have pointed out, the purpose of stable is to minimize disruptions. For many users, living with known bugs with known workarounds is a *lot* better than identifying new bugs. Yeas. Let the choice to the user. Don't dictate him. Well, I really cannot see your point. If you do not like how stable is done at the moment in Debian, but do like how it is done in whatever other distro - use that distro. Nobody forces anything on you. This is all about choice. Whoever wants to use the old software w/o change, let be it. Whoever wants the new one, noticed about the risks, let's give him an official and supported way to do it. Fist of all, there is such a way: use testing, most of the time it is fairly safe to use. Learn how to put packages on hold and how to get back if something goes wrong. [ skipped ] Let the users choose, whether they want to upgrade. =) OMG, I do not think that somebody really forces me when to run apt-get upgrade and what packages to install and from what repository. Repeat, let there be easy downgrade option for the case things don't work as expected. man sources.list man apt_preferences http://snapshot.debian.net/ If you maintain more than one machine - setup a local repository and fill it with the versions of the packages you like. Including backported ones, learn how to backport. -- Stanislav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Steve, I see main problem with testing that broad platform changes are going there. That's why things break sometimes there. That's why I think, that the Stable platform with new desktop software might be the choice -the new software versions with no platform dependecies breakage risk. This is closest to backports and volatile idea. I wouldn't call it backports however, because that reminds porting some very new software to some very old platform, and this is not the case. The stable's basic platform should stay LSB-compliant and moderately-aged (supported by all main software vendors) for the whole length of release cycle. Thus the new versions of desktop software wouldn't be backported; just compiled against ordinary, stable platform. I don't know how real the vision is, however it shouldn't be completely impossible I hope ;-) Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Stanislav, I see Your point, however this is far from user-friendliness. First solution -use other distro. Wow, what a great idea. Looking at statistics and Linux users in neighborhood, You can be _sure_ they discovered that way already :-) Be also sure, that unwilling to do more for desktop users, Debian will not be less, but increasingly more server-oriented distro (I like Debian on server!). I like Debian either. Friendly, Peter Stanislav Maslovski wrote / napísal(a): On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 08:20:50AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Steve, And as others have pointed out, the purpose of stable is to minimize disruptions. For many users, living with known bugs with known workarounds is a *lot* better than identifying new bugs. Yeas. Let the choice to the user. Don't dictate him. Well, I really cannot see your point. If you do not like how stable is done at the moment in Debian, but do like how it is done in whatever other distro - use that distro. Nobody forces anything on you. This is all about choice. Whoever wants to use the old software w/o change, let be it. Whoever wants the new one, noticed about the risks, let's give him an official and supported way to do it. Fist of all, there is such a way: use testing, most of the time it is fairly safe to use. Learn how to put packages on hold and how to get back if something goes wrong. [ skipped ] Let the users choose, whether they want to upgrade. =) OMG, I do not think that somebody really forces me when to run apt-get upgrade and what packages to install and from what repository. Repeat, let there be easy downgrade option for the case things don't work as expected. man sources.list man apt_preferences http://snapshot.debian.net/ If you maintain more than one machine - setup a local repository and fill it with the versions of the packages you like. Including backported ones, learn how to backport. -- Odchádzajúca správa neobsahuje vírusy, nepou¾ívam Windows. === Mgr. Peter Tuhársky Referát informatiky Mesto Banská Bystrica ÈSA 26 975 39 Banská Bystrica Tel: +421 48 4330 118 Fax: +421 48 411 3575 === -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Thu, 17 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: This is closest to backports and volatile idea. I wouldn't call it backports however, because that reminds porting some very new software to some very old platform, and this is not the case. The stable's basic platform should stay LSB-compliant and moderately-aged (supported by all main software vendors) for the whole length of release cycle. Thus the new versions of desktop software wouldn't be backported; just compiled against ordinary, stable platform. That's precisely what a backport is. New versions of a Debian package compiled against stable with whatever changes are required to get them to compile. If the root of the concern is because the term backport is scary or otherwise unpalatable, then suggest an alternative term. Don Armstrong -- The attackers hadn't simply robbed the bank. They had carried off everything portable, including the security cameras, the carpets, the chairs, and the light and plumbing fixtures. The conspirators had deliberately punished the bank, for reasons best known to themselves, or to their unknown controllers. They had superglued doors and shattered windows, severed power and communications cables, poured stinking toxins into the wallspaces, and concreted all of the sinks and drains. In eight minutes, sixty people had ruined the building so thouroughly that it had to be condemed and later demolished. -- Bruce Sterling, _Distraction_ p4 http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yeas. Let the choice to the user. Don't dictate him. Whoever wants to use the old software w/o change, let be it. Whoever wants the new one, noticed about the risks, let's give him an official and supported way to do it. The user has that choice, to the extent that can be reasonably expected. Consider: The Debian project is run by volunteers: all the work done is done because someone sees value to themselves in doing it. Therefore, any official support can only be provided when a sufficient body of volunteers decide to provide it on a continuing basis. We have the Debian security team providing official support for released stable versions of Debian, according to a policy they voluntarily adhere to. Any other official support can only come about by a similar means: a sufficient body of people voluntarily organise themselves and put in the ongoing work to commit to and enact a support policy. You are welcome to help bring this about by any means you see fit, but harping on in this forum about lack of support is unlikely to have that result. This does not leave our users without other options. Anyone who wants support for Debian, beyond what official support is provided by volunteer efforts, need only speak with the many consultants who have listed themselves as providing support services for Debian. They can then negotiate an unofficial, customised support arrangement. I just don't see what more you're expecting to happen by posting to this thread. -- \ I'm a great lover, I'll bet. -- Emo Philips | `\ | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 09:12:18AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Steve, I see main problem with testing that broad platform changes are going there. That's why things break sometimes there. That's why I think, that the Stable platform with new desktop software might be the choice -the new software versions with no platform dependecies breakage risk. This is closest to backports and volatile idea. I wouldn't call it backports however, because that reminds porting some very new software to some very old platform, and this is not the case. The stable's basic platform should stay LSB-compliant and moderately-aged (supported by all main software vendors) for the whole length of release cycle. Thus the new versions of desktop software wouldn't be backported; just compiled against ordinary, stable platform. This sounds more rational. Yes, the megafreeze model that Debian uses at the moment has certain drawbacks. However, my experience shows that currently it is the best one can get out of the free distros at the moment (with regard to stability), IMO. And I choose for stability. A base system (required utils + services + libs, 0 RC bugs) + script based automatic building/backporting system, similar to that used in testing, could be an option. This was discussed, i believe, many times in the past. -- Stanislav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 09:20:48AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Stanislav, I see Your point, however this is far from user-friendliness. First solution -use other distro. Wow, what a great idea. Looking at statistics and Linux users in neighborhood, You can be _sure_ they discovered that way already :-) Well, I think this is for the best. Be also sure, that unwilling to do more for desktop users, Debian will not be less, but increasingly more server-oriented distro (I like Debian on server!). I like Debian either. Debian will remain Debian ;) I really hope for it. Please, do not go for the stupid race over the so-called average (read not willing to learn) user. -- Stanislav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Don recent? current? upstream? fresh? :-) Why the need for volatile then? I admire I'm confused a bit. Whatever, there should be one supported, official, and acknowledged repository for the purpose, I think. Not necessarry ALL desktop software should be upgraded this way, however at least the most demanded mainstream.. The stable cycle should reflect the mainstream course, so that not much additional work should be necessarry to do that. Maybe the cycle should copy the LSB's one somehow. Peter Don Armstrong wrote / napísal(a): On Thu, 17 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: This is closest to backports and volatile idea. I wouldn't call it backports however, because that reminds porting some very new software to some very old platform, and this is not the case. The stable's basic platform should stay LSB-compliant and moderately-aged (supported by all main software vendors) for the whole length of release cycle. Thus the new versions of desktop software wouldn't be backported; just compiled against ordinary, stable platform. That's precisely what a backport is. New versions of a Debian package compiled against stable with whatever changes are required to get them to compile. If the root of the concern is because the term backport is scary or otherwise unpalatable, then suggest an alternative term. Don Armstrong -- Odchádzajúca správa neobsahuje vírusy, nepou¾ívam Windows. === Mgr. Peter Tuhársky Referát informatiky Mesto Banská Bystrica ÈSA 26 975 39 Banská Bystrica Tel: +421 48 4330 118 Fax: +421 48 411 3575 === -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Ben, this is the most constructive advice on the topic I think :-) Thank You. Peter The user has that choice, to the extent that can be reasonably expected. Consider: The Debian project is run by volunteers: all the work done is done because someone sees value to themselves in doing it. Therefore, any official support can only be provided when a sufficient body of volunteers decide to provide it on a continuing basis. We have the Debian security team providing official support for released stable versions of Debian, according to a policy they voluntarily adhere to. Any other official support can only come about by a similar means: a sufficient body of people voluntarily organise themselves and put in the ongoing work to commit to and enact a support policy. You are welcome to help bring this about by any means you see fit, but harping on in this forum about lack of support is unlikely to have that result. This does not leave our users without other options. Anyone who wants support for Debian, beyond what official support is provided by volunteer efforts, need only speak with the many consultants who have listed themselves as providing support services for Debian. They can then negotiate an unofficial, customised support arrangement. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Am Mittwoch 16 Mai 2007 17:17 schrieb Steve Greenland: On 16-May-07, 06:24 (CDT), Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's been in context, meant as many of those problems -a relative part of problems, not absolute number of them. No, it's not worth the time. It's a history. The problem is that your history doesn't match the experience of any one else participating in this thread. You keep making assertions about testing being broken, sometimes with hundreds of broken dependencies. Since one of the key criterion of packages entering testing is dependencies are correct and fulfillable, this strikes most of us as unlikely. I won't claim testing has never had a broken depends, but it's very rare, and never hundreds of packages. Well, last time testing broke for me was the tetex-texlive transition with one texlive package failing in post-inst because of missing files in another. Solution was to take one package from unstable that fixed the issue. It is not very rare the case that such things happen. Another example are incomplete KDE transitions so that some stuff stops working. However, all of those cases are solvable by pinning to testing and sometimes using few packages from unstable. HS pgpE01GH74QFx.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Don, Volatile is for software which is known to be time critical, like virus and spam catching rules. Almost all Debian initiatives start as unofficial measures to demonstrate their efficacy. Eventually if they work and there is sufficient demand for them, they become official. Okay. It currently takes us a somewhere on the order of 100 person-years to release every single version of Debian. Woww. Just waving your hands and saing that not much additional work should be necessary isn't good enough. Right. Are there any real movements to synchronise Debian's cycle with LSB's one slightly? Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Mgr. Peter Tuharsky escribió: Stanislav, I see Your point, however this is far from user-friendliness. First solution -use other distro. Wow, what a great idea. Looking at statistics and Linux users in neighborhood, You can be _sure_ they discovered that way already :-) Be also sure, that unwilling to do more for desktop users, Debian will not be less, but increasingly more server-oriented distro (I like Debian on server!). I like Debian either. What about maintainer/developer-friendly thing? I mean, you want that us change all our infrastructure, but then he gives you as solution to change one line and exec one command and you think that's not user-friendly? There's no magical ways to do this, if you want newer packages then use lenny and if you want even more newer use sid. I use sid because of that and my system is pretty stable. Jose Luis. - -- ghostbar on Linux/Debian 'sid' i686 - #382503 Weblog: http://ghostbar.ath.cx/ - http://linuxtachira.org http://debian.org.ve - irc.debian.org #debian-ve #debian-devel-es San Cristóbal, Venezuela. http://chaslug.org.ve Fingerprint = 3E7D 4267 AFD5 2407 2A37 20AC 38A0 AD5B CACA B118 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGTDSzOKCtW8rKsRgRAv1yAJ9kd5ARNDxEsPct0rIdyyMosRrj2ACfQTRC 7yBRzG5rtH3LptRcnRJ8T7s= =9zdg -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Jose What about maintainer/developer-friendly thing? That'd be great. I think, the more recent is the supported software, and the more LSB-compliant is the base, the less extraordinary work for developers and less concern for end users. This dosen't conflict with either philosophy here. I mean, you want that us change all our infrastructure I think the LSB-compliance and reasonably short (or reasonably long) release cycle are inevitable goals. The sooner achieved (naturally), the better. We discussed here, that backports is the best thing to start with in order to deliver recent desktop software to the end user, so it just needs an official approval and support. Those are the direct infrastructure changes that it is being spoken about. This is not anything that would ruin Debian into chaos ;-) Next thing, quite utopistic one but inevitable in long terms, should be the common infrastructure for bug reporting, so that users would report bugs easily, and the developers would not need to interchange the bug data between users and upstream, but upstream would get them directly instead. This is just an idea, however some beginning of that is being worked on there in Canonical, AFAIK. , but then he gives you as solution to change one line and exec one command and you think that's not user-friendly? There's no magical ways to do this If the option was only obvious, advertised and easily found and done by ordinary end user, without risk of breaking deps.. Friendly, Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 07:56:57AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Yes, I have written it there too. Kernel is, IMO, the best thing to upgrade few times during release cycle, with quite little risk. Upgrading the kernel is quite high risk. Features come and go and change with each new kernel. Drivers break in some releases, although usually only for less common hardware that no one tested during the development of that release, or new features are added that require updated user space tools, etc. For example 2.6.16 and higher tag all netkey ipsec packets with a policy tag of 'ipsec'. Before 2.6.16 they didn't. So going to 2.6.16 or higher broke shorewall in sarge since it didn't know about the new policy, and it required a newer version of iptables since it too had to support this new behaviour. Do you think people with ipsec tunnels would be happy if it stopped working just because of a kernel upgrade added to support all the people who just have to have support for their latest machine in debian's stable release that was made before the hardware in their new machine even existed? Yes, Debian was the last distro using Xfree86 I know. Of course the transition was complex! Sure seems much better with x.org than xfree86 though. That should be changed anyway, since security upgrades occasionally break things too. Downgrades are in general imposible to do, unless you put in a lot of useless code that will never be used except when downgrading, which of course will be used so rarely that it will be full of bugs due to not ever being tested by anyone. Remember upgrades sometimes have to convert files to a new format. A new package can do this because at the time it was made, the maintainer knew about the older versions already made. If you try to install an older package, there is no way at the time that older package was made to know how to convert from a newer file format back to the old one. So to solve this you would now have to add some kind of downgrade feature to the scripts of the new package that could be called before going to an older package. Sometimes data is no longer used and dropped from a file format, or new stuff is added. If stuff was dropped how are you going to restore it on the downgrade? If stuff was added I guess you can just throw it away on a downgrade. But overall supporting downgrades requires a time machine and lots of generally untested support code. I wouldn't want to try to support that. Of course often there is no change to the data or config files, and you can simply install the old package again using whatever package tool you like to use by telling it what version to install. So unofficially downgrading is possible most of the time, but when it isn't, supporting it isn't worth trying. -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 07:56 +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Michelle Konzack said: You forger that DOWNGRADING is officialy NOT SUPPORTED by Debian. That should be changed anyway, since security upgrades occasionally break things too. You keep saying this, I haven't seen this in Sarge at all. Sarge has had HOW MANY security updates that broke things? Etch's security updates including the Kernel upgrade had no noticeable problems... but of course the two *OBSCURE* issues reported affect you, right? You keep trying to HIT these things home, but the more you do this, the more you look foolish. These problems are mainly Woody and before, except for the LONG release time for Sarge. The Woody security updates for Mozilla was REALLY HARD. I am beginning to understand that you want Debian with completely new userland programs. That would be Testing or CUT as Joey Hess has promoted. You could also use Sidux, which is a distro that uses sid as the base and does minor stabilization. http://sidux.com/ -- greg, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP key: 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05 Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C Alternate Fingerprint: 09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 08:10:21AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Yes, and security upgrades never change behaviour of software and never break things. That's the way it OUGHT to be. The reality has its own turbulences. I don't remember security upgrades ever breaking anything in testing. I am sure it must have happened at some point, but the security team appears to take their work very very seriously. Well, I might have been out of luck. Maybe it hasn't been hudreds, just a full screen of (didn't count them and wouldn't remember anyway). That changes nothing on assertion, that using the testing routinely is not official, nor advisable way for ordinary users. See below. My original intention was not, and still is not, to discuss capabilities of testing. I want to discuss possibilities, how could the stable be more attractive for ordinary user, how to make it usable on hardware newer-than-3-years-old, how could the user be blessed with fresh software rather than 2-years old, how to allow him to easily and effectively participate on bug reporting, and how to avoid the work of backporting security fixes to ancient software. The answer to all of those is 'testing'. That is all stuff stable is definitely not meant to do. If You and several people claim they haven't met such problems with testing, I can live with that. I also heard people whose experience was different, and my personal one is closer to them. That's all. All it takes is one package that has a dependancy problem to prevent hundreds of other packages from upgrading or installing fully. It looks like everything is broken, when all it really is is just one missing or broken package. When you know how to read what the upgrade system tells you you can usually deal with it or put the right things on hold for a few days while the missing package makes it in to testing. In unstable there are occationally bad packages uploaded that break things enough that you just have to wonder if the maintainer even tried to install it themselves. :) Usually there will be an answer to how to go back or fix it on the debian irc channel already. -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On 17-May-07, 06:23 (CDT), Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the LSB-compliance and reasonably short (or reasonably long) release cycle are inevitable goals. The sooner achieved (naturally), the better. You know, Debian has been discussing how to speed up releases while supporting many architectures and still maintaining our strong reputation for a technically solid and stable system for oh, about 10 years now. Lots and lots of people have worked on this. We've gotten better. Not perfect, by any means, but not bad. In particular, we've tried to balance the needs of a variety of users, which means that many users are not going to be perfectly satisfied. Some people have seen one of our weaknesses (up-to-date desktop software), and built a buisness out of it. I say good for them. Debian *can't* be all things to all people. Let some other people work on particular problems. We'll learn from them, and they'll learn from us. Isn't that one of the points of free software, that we don't have to duplicate everything? Next thing, quite utopistic one but inevitable in long terms, should be the common infrastructure for bug reporting, so that users would report bugs easily, and the developers would not need to interchange the bug data between users and upstream, but upstream would get them directly instead. That doesn't work. A lot of upstream authors don't want to hear about Debian specific bugs. The user doesn't want to (and often can't) distinguish between Debian and upstream bugs. We make it easy to report bugs to us, and it's our job to work from there. Steve -- Steve Greenland The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. -- seen on the net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Look Greg, in the original post, I referred the security patch introduced breakage jut to point out the existence of such risk, in order to make weighting the risks more realistic. Just like this: There is some degree of risk of breaking functionality connected to upgrading to recent upstream version. There is also some degree of risk connected to backpatching the old version, that is increasing with the age of software. Both are real, both can cause severe damage. The probability of each one, _that_ is the matter of question. That should be changed anyway, since security upgrades occasionally break things too. You keep saying this, That's just because people keep asking for proof and questioning the bare existence of the risk of security patch introduced breakage. I haven't seen this in Sarge at all. Sarge has had HOW MANY security updates that broke things? Etch's security updates including the Kernel upgrade had no noticeable problems... but of course the two *OBSCURE* issues reported affect you, right? Should there be more appropriate word that ocassionally, please suggest one. My english is not perfect. Of course I listed only those issues that affected me. If You want more, go, ask someone else. You keep trying to HIT these things home, but the more you do this, the more you look foolish. These problems are mainly Woody and before, except for the LONG release time for Sarge. The Woody security updates for Mozilla was REALLY HARD. I stated before, bugs are inevitable, either in tested stable software, or upstream stable, or in security upgrades. There is no intention to harm anybody. Just name the facts. I'd say that Mozilla's backpatching was insanity from the start, the software was developing rapidly during the Woody's life. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Raphael Hertzog wrote / napísal(a): On Tue, 15 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Yes, bugs are unavoidable. However, testing is often in situation whole system broken or nearly useless. I see difference here; occassional bug in desktop app is acceptable. Whole system unreliable is not acceptable. Have you facts to assert this? Just a personal experience. I've been an happy user of testing. It happens that some packages are not upgradable during a timeframe however the installed packages are not broken and thus the system is perfectly reliable. You can't just get the latest version and hope that it won't break anything. That should be verified in light of broad experience (I don't have any). Does it happen often that GNOME version change breaks many things? The only my try was to put GNOME 2.0 to Debian Woody (ugly GNOME 1.2), and I was succesful. You can't generalize based on a single experience like that. Yes, I admired that openly. Your restricted yourself to software published by the Gnome project. Check how many applications depend on Gnome and yet are not developed following Gnome's schedule. Those are the applications which have not been tested by upstream with the new Gnome and which are the more likely to break. Could we put more pressure on them to follow some rules? Make it compliant or be not released at all? I'd expect that enterprise is already making pressure on this.. You can't rely on upstream to do this testing for you. We have a purpose, we don't stabilize our distribution just because it sounds nice, it's really needed in many cases. Don't get me wrong however, I'm all in favor of having backports integrated in Debian and make it a viable alternative for many users. But you simply can't drop newer upstream version in what we call stable like you suggest. I respect Your opinion and probably You know what You're speaking about, however the interests should come to some balance (stability vs available labour force vs usability vs bug reporting vs security). Maybe, there could be these levels in release cycle: -stable (security fixes are backported, depending on popularity and demand the packages have) -recent (tested, functional fresh packages, that could stable be upgraded by, w/o breaking deps, officially supported) -testing (stabilisation playground for next libraries platform) -unstable (new software packages) Peter We don't really need more discussion on that topic. We need improvements to make that a realistic goal. Cheers, -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Steve Greenland wrote / napísal(a): On 14-May-07, 07:55 (CDT), Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why is this worse? I wrote worse because for Debian, this is worse. Not that it is damaging it somehow. Of course there naturally will be other distros, cooperating hopefully. It's worse because it implies, that Debian is not as good desktop as it ought to be. Why isn't there room for two similar distributions, with one aimed at being more up-to-date for a limited set of packages and hardware, while the other aims at being rock-solid on a wide variety of hardware for extended periods of time? As I illustreted, rock solid is not automatically guaranteed by oldness of software or by length of pre-release testing. And for the end _desktop_ user, usability matters too. Sometimes even more than the age (I wouldn't tell stability because, again, this is not always the same). That's the first thing I think Debian is doing wrong, if it tries to be desktop distro too. The optimum is somewhere in between. There are certainly ways that Debian can improve, but I'm not convinced that become more like Ubuntu is one of them. Why not let Ubuntu fulfill the desires of that group of users? More like Ubuntu -by some means, we could learn much from them. However I don't suggest to become another Ubuntu. There are partial approaches possible that could itself benefit Debian dekstop much. And in the Debian, other ways of applying changes than step-by-step I don't see even possible, does anybody? ;-) We could start with programs that don't other programs depend on much. For example, what is the purpose of using 2 years old Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and other such stand-alone programs? They could be flawlessly upgraded during stable release life cycle. If extra stability or whatever is the mean, then let them be tested for a while (however, preferrably during _their_ testing phase). Next, the bug reporting is completely flawed for desktop user, and in order to make it functional, the balance must be moved closer to the recent software versions. I don't see other way to do it. Does somebody? There is no choice but keeping Debian desktop user out-of-software-community for next years. Third, bug reporting systems really needs some consolidation, and probably negotiations between distros and software vendors. It took too long to have LSB, and convergention of the bug reporting systems I see as the next step necessarry. And who could offer bigger authority than Debian, the greatest community-driven distro? Peter Steve -- Odchádzajúca správa neobsahuje vírusy, nepou¾ívam Windows. === Mgr. Peter Tuhársky Referát informatiky Mesto Banská Bystrica ÈSA 26 975 39 Banská Bystrica Tel: +421 48 4330 118 Fax: +421 48 411 3575 === -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
In several mails you claimed testing as broken. This is completely orthognal to my experience. I'm using testing since its existence on most of my boxes. I use it on some boxes too, however, mostly the snapshots from the half-year before-stable period of time. Attempts to use much sooner snapshots were not too successfull for me. Only production servers are running stable and I keep my fingers from running unstable (except of chroots). So were is the proof for you statement. What are the numbers of the bugs you might have reported against packages in testing? Don't remember, not too much. However, if hundred of packages had broken deps, where would You report the bug? I'm not too experienced with apt and I hate hacking around it. Another hand, many problems were well-known by the time I met them, there wasn't need to report them again. I'd say, half of problems with testing were connected to bugs in installer. I know the guys are doing though work around it, however I think installer should get stabilised a while before the testing gets into feature freeze. Etch has been quite better by this means than Sarge btw. Could you please a bit more verbose about your problems in testing because nobody else made it to my radar that testing is that unusable. Perhaps I missed something ... I heared many people on mailing lists saying they would never suggest running testing for other than testing purposes, and they often added typical problems one coan get in with testing.. However, problems with testing are matter of other topic, an't they? ;-) Best regards Peter Kind regards Andreas (writing from a laptop that runs testing. ;-)) -- Odchádzajúca správa neobsahuje vírusy, nepou¾ívam Windows. === Mgr. Peter Tuhársky Referát informatiky Mesto Banská Bystrica ÈSA 26 975 39 Banská Bystrica Tel: +421 48 4330 118 Fax: +421 48 411 3575 === -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Wed, 16 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Don't remember, not too much. However, if hundred of packages had broken deps, This statement is definitely wrong. where would You report the bug? I'm not too experienced with apt and I hate hacking around it. There is no need to hack around it. Another hand, many problems were well-known by the time I met them, there wasn't need to report them again. So if there are really well-known many problems can you do me a favour and list one or two here? I'd say, half of problems with testing were connected to bugs in installer. I I don't know what you mean here. If you want to get a running testing system why not installing stable and then switch to testing? You are right, the installer for testing might become usable for the masses from the RC candidates and thus about half a year before a release. This would perhaps clarify your statements, but this is not a problem of the testing system but a problem of the installer. Perhaps we should document a reasonable way how to get a reasonable testing system setup flawlessly. I heared many people on mailing lists saying they would never suggest running testing for other than testing purposes, and they often added typical problems one coan get in with testing.. Links? Well, testing has its name for purpose and I personally think about to whom I suggest using testing. But the name is choosen quite conservative for a quite stable thing (which is just not rock solid as stable). However, problems with testing are matter of other topic, an't they? ;-) Yes, I do not want to disturb from your main point of your initial mail. But please do not blur it yourself with statements that are just not true if you want that people take you honest (and I really wish they would do). Kind regards Andreas. -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Wednesday 16 May 2007 09:11, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: I'd say, half of problems with testing were connected to bugs in installer. This statement really wants some qualifications... The official releases (beta and RC) of the installer for testing have had no really serious bugs, though there may be errata that can affect specific situations or hardware. They are tested extensively. Also, in most cases it is not the _installer_ that is broken, but that there are bugs in individual packages that are installed during an installation that can cause the installation to fail. Unfortunately such bugs are often only detected after a package migrates to testing because that is the first time someone will try to do an installation that includes the package. I also think that we will see a lot less of such problems for Lenny than we have for Etch. For Etch we've had a few really major changes (kernel, initrd generators, removal of base-config, XOrg transition) that had a high impact on the installer an installations. I doubt we'll have so many for Lenny. Installation problems when using daily built images or weekly snapshots is therefore quite possible, but we always try to get such issues fixed ASAP. However, you are also almost guaranteed to be able to install testing using a full CD/DVD image from the last official D-I release, especially if you choose to use only the CD and not use a network mirror in addition to the CD/DVD. And, as Andreas has already said, you can always install stable and upgrade to testing (though that may get harder as stable gets older, especially as there will be no release notes yet). Even though all this may not really change things from the viewpoint of an end user, it is IMO very relevant when discussing the usability of testing as a whole. Cheers, FJP pgpt3arQMxgEH.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Greg You took it quite actively. As many see, all of them are different in server and in desktop world, and many times Debian chooses to dictate the users we know the best what You need instead of listening to them. Why then are there 28000+ packages in Debian? If Debian only dictates, why then are there *FAR* more packages available for install than in *ANY* other Distribution? How many Window Managers? How many alternative packages to do the same thing, like word processing, editors, music clients, rss feed readers, web-browsers? I could go on for days, but I hope you get my point. Come on, we know the answer, you can say it. Yes, no single other distro offers such a vast choice possibility, if we're speaking about software. The dictate I feel on other levels. Diff the end user approach of Ubuntu and end user approach of Debian and You see a part of it. It's complex to discuss undercover, however with Ubuntu, user get's an _impression_ that this is created especially for _him_ and that Ubuntu _cares_ about what he might need. We could call it marketing, however it's only partially about marketing. Whatever quality the Debian offers, it's harder for user to _interact_ with the community, and harder to get the impression that he actually can have any impact on what's going on. One easily gets impression, that he can move the mountain more easily than affect Debian's course. b, Stable without (too many) crashes Do you realize Debian's stable is classified as this: Stable means stable package list. No changes in API and ABI names or versions. This means no newer versions will ever make it into stable. It is in maintenance mode. This makes a very good setup for those wishing for Rock Solid machines. Doesn't crash. too many comes from the Windows World, does not typically apply to Debian's Linux. No changes, no newer versions = dosen't crash? It's simply not true. For example, the Debian Woody used an ancient version of Mozilla. _Very_ crashy one, compared with newer versions that came few months later. Noone could call that stable one. Generally speaking, there _are_ stability issues in any software. Should they eventually get fixed upstream, then newer version _objectively_ is _more_stable_ than older, providing no new stability bug has been introduced since the old has been fixed. Yes, it's perfectly possible that newer version of software is more stable (less crashy) than old one. (Should it be reversely, then software is more and more crashy and will not be usefull at the end ;-) As I said, old is not automatically equal to stable. c, Applications should work generally Okay, what specifically does not work in Debian? I just listed criteria, didn't blame Debian at this point. d, Applications should work together well Again, if you are using a Desktop environment, they just DO. By the means of usability, not always. For example, Abiword dosen't exchange files ideally with other office suits (Koffice, OpenOffice.org etc) found in Sarge due to different import/export filters. With Etch, it's been improved (due to upstream's work, of course). However, they and other apps are being under development that leads to ODF support. New version will work _much_better_ with each other. Openoffice.org hve had problems with importing it's own files, that have been fixed. Thus newer version is more interoperable with itself than older. Other example is SVG support. We'll (hopefully) get soon new version of OpenOffice.org with SVG support, Firefox with improved SVG support, etc. Applications mature in course of interoperability in FOSS world. Newer almost always meens better. In fact, I use XFCE. If I click on a link in my e-mail client (Evolution) it opens up my preferred Web-browser (Iceweasel). If I open a Word Document in Iceweasel, it opens the doc in OpenOffice.org writer. If I make a mailto link in Writer and click on it, it opens an Evolution new mail interface. So, once again, I don't see your problem here. Well, if You have chosen to use Thunderbird (Icedove) instead of Evolution, You must have installed gnome-support manually, otherwise it dosen't interact with other apps well. In Sarge, I've had many problems regarding file associations with Thunderbird. I just say, that newer versions usually interact better with each other, and thus the oldness is decreasing the usability, not increasing, by means of interoperability. e, The serious security problems should get fixed ASAP Again, just pointing the need, not blaming anyone. Debian's Stable cannot introduce new versions. This complicates things. It makes it tough, the security team has to backport the fixes from the new versions and force the changes to not bump the ABI numbers. This may seem trivial to you, but it is NOT. In fact, Im saying that it is too complicated (if even possible) to put new patch to old
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
I'm glad it works for You. Peter Greg Folkert wrote / napísal(a): On Tue, 2007-05-15 at 21:43 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: On Tue, 15 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: We're going OT, however my experience based on last two Debian releases: testing becomes quite stable in means of usability somewhere half year before it's released as stable. The sooner before the stable, the rapidly increasing is the chance that the snapshot that You have will not be installable at all, will have dependencies severely broken, etc. In several mails you claimed testing as broken. This is completely orthognal to my experience. I'm using testing since its existence on most of my boxes. To that, I run Sid/unstable on 90% of everything I have. Stable on those machines that cannot have problems. Only production servers are running stable and I keep my fingers from running unstable (except of chroots). I haven't seen an unstable problem that was a problem for more than a couple of days... and mostly had workarounds in any case. So were is the proof for you statement. What are the numbers of the bugs you might have reported against packages in testing? Could you please a bit more verbose about your problems in testing because nobody else made it to my radar that testing is that unusable. Perhaps I missed something ... I've asked for specific examples. Kind regards Andreas (writing from a laptop that runs testing. ;-)) Cheers from a Sid+Experimental machine. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
I don't have enough knowledge to do that. Peter David Nusinow wrote / napísal(a): On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 09:41:17AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: The kernel, the X.org So are you volunteering to join the kernel and XSF teams to make this happen? - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Haven't heard how libtruetype security upgrade caused OpenOffice.org, Sorry, should be libfreetype Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Wednesday 16 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Do you realize Debian's stable is classified as this: Stable means stable package list. No changes in API and ABI names or versions. This means no newer versions will ever make it into stable. It is in maintenance mode. This makes a very good setup for those wishing for Rock Solid machines. Doesn't crash. too many comes from the Windows World, does not typically apply to Debian's Linux. No changes, no newer versions = dosen't crash? It's simply not true. For example, the Debian Woody used an ancient version of Mozilla. _Very_ crashy one, compared with newer versions that came few months later. Noone could call that stable one. you're still missing the point here: - the point is _not_ that software in stable isn't buggy - the point is that software in stable doesn't change - this ensures that it won't be buggy in new ways = thus making sure that what works, keeps working = thus making sure that ones you have a workaround, that keeps working to In short stable is about not getting any unexpected surprises/changes in how software behaves. -- Cheers, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) pgpQlXQjQvnll.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 01:12:30PM +0200, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote: On Wednesday 16 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Do you realize Debian's stable is classified as this: Stable means stable package list. No changes in API and ABI names or versions. This means no newer versions will ever make it into stable. It is in maintenance mode. This makes a very good setup for those wishing for Rock Solid machines. Doesn't crash. too many comes from the Windows World, does not typically apply to Debian's Linux. No changes, no newer versions = dosen't crash? It's simply not true. For example, the Debian Woody used an ancient version of Mozilla. _Very_ crashy one, compared with newer versions that came few months later. Noone could call that stable one. you're still missing the point here: - the point is _not_ that software in stable isn't buggy - the point is that software in stable doesn't change - this ensures that it won't be buggy in new ways = thus making sure that what works, keeps working = thus making sure that ones you have a workaround, that keeps working to In short stable is about not getting any unexpected surprises/changes in how software behaves. I'd also say that because there are no unexpected surprises/change for a predictable about of time (about 18 months) ,it is 'supportable' by commercial/non-commercial entities. This is what corporate users, embedded users, etc. want. For single users laptop users, maybe they can choose to have less-than 'stable' aka 'unstable' which has a constant stream of new updates to get support for current/newer hardware. -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal |mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/| | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keyserver: subkeys.pgp.net | my NPO: cfsg.org | |join the new debian-community.org to help Debian! | |___ Unless I ask to be CCd, assume I am subscribed ___| -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Andreas Another hand, many problems were well-known by the time I met them, there wasn't need to report them again. So if there are really well-known many problems can you do me a favour and list one or two here? It's been in context, meant as many of those problems -a relative part of problems, not absolute number of them. No, it's not worth the time. It's a history. If you want to get a running testing system why not installing stable and then switch to testing? You are right, the installer for testing might become usable for the masses from the RC candidates and thus about half a year before a release. This would perhaps clarify your statements, but this is not a problem of the testing system but a problem of the installer. Perhaps we should document a reasonable way how to get a reasonable testing system setup flawlessly. Yes, that could be nice. Upgrading from stable to testing works usually, however I have met problems this way too. If it worked, it worked well. If it didn't work well, then it usually stopped to work completely :-) This is history too, Woody to Sarge. However, problems with testing are matter of other topic, an't they? ;-) Yes, I do not want to disturb from your main point of your initial mail. But please do not blur it yourself with statements that are just not true if you want that people take you honest (and I really wish they would do). I wish too. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Daniel When you talk about desktop users, I think you really mean novice consumers. Is that a fair assessment? In my experience, Debian can work just fine on the desktop in some situations, just not for novice home users. (think, e.g., about desktops for office workers) We have had 50 Debian desktop installations in our organisation, and the users have had some legitimate needs, and were not happy with some usability shortages or bugs in some basic software found in Debian Sarge (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, and so on). Since we use these applications massively, and have to communicate with outside word, and those installations have been pilot project to whole organisation's migration to Linux, it has been important for us to make the work environment as flawless as possible. The issues have beed reported upstream and fixed, however the only way to get the fixes to end user was to abandon distributional versions completely and install generic upstream packages. Thus, I assume that not only novice consumers have the need for improving desktop software and bugs seen fixed. However, Debian dosen't officially support and embrace any way to do this. Watching for new version, You're on Your own. Why would you want this? In a setting where you have people doing productive work using a piece of software, unnecessary changes to the software are *worse* in the short term than a fixed and unchangable set of bugs: not only are changes likely to break the software, but they may require users to retrain or disrupt the processes of your organization. This is true even if the new software is an unqualified improvement (either in terms of bug count or usability) over the old software; look at the backlash over the new Ribbon interface in Microsoft office, for instance. Yes, if software works well, then changes are not wellcome. That's why I suggest the desktop softwares upgrades to be non-mandatory, however officially supported. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Wednesday 16 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Thus, I assume that not only novice consumers have the need for improving desktop software and bugs seen fixed. However, Debian dosen't officially support and embrace any way to do this. Watching for new version, You're on Your own. Yes, if software works well, then changes are not wellcome. That's why I suggest the desktop softwares upgrades to be non-mandatory, however officially supported. Each stable version has the explicit aim of being a platform with as little changes as possible. As you pointed out this sucks when the software you need is not mature enough to meet your needs yet. On the other hand for those users for whom that same software does meet the need this is a boon. As long as progress is made upstream in meeting your needs this problem inevitably fixes itself with time. With each stable version meeting the needs of a bigger group of users. Depending on what software in stable doesn't meet your needs your best option may be one of: 1) use stable with backports/manually compiled software/selected packages from testing 2) use testing (or a snapshot of it) 3) use another distro (e.g. ubuntu/kubuntu/xubuntu, ...) As a project we should aim to make 1 en 2 as easy and problem free as possible, and there's definately room for improvent there. But this is a hard problem lots of people are trying/have tried to improve. (witness things such as volatile, backports, CUT-releases, updated d-i releases, ...) -- Cheers, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) pgpfbMIW75h2c.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Am 2007-05-15 09:29:46, schrieb Mgr. Peter Tuharsky: I think, any new stable version of the desktop software should be automaticaly added to security updates and distributed to end user. There's no need to test the tested and stabilise the stable software. Should the new stable version be broken, let's give the user easy way to downgrade, and help upstream to fix it fast. Oh yeah!!! Push a new OpenOffic.org or iceape into stable and you Enterprise goes down if something is NOT WORKING! I am realy happy with Debian AS IT IS!!! My customers too, since thea HAVE TRIED newer Software using TESTING and UNSTABLE, And yes, I have installed at several customers on ONE machine unstable to be able to converts some strange documents wahich can not be opened in Stable... But this machine was several times unsuable... during upgrades of hell. Version freaks should go with backports.org, Testing, Unstable, Experimental or Hell. Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSN LinuxMichi 0033/6/6192519367100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Am 2007-05-15 11:25:56, schrieb Mgr. Peter Tuharsky: Do You think, that -compiling new upstream version of software against stable platform, building a package and distributing it Containing NEW bugs and the loop goes on... -- No Thanks! -needs more effort than -studying security fixes in upstream, backporting them to ancient version of software (if it's barely possible), compiling it against stable platform, building a package and distributing it? Not much desktop software is really such inter-complex-connected that upgrading version of single software breaks something else. I have Are you happy? OpenOffice.org and Mozilla are ONLY two examples of the bunch I have! routinely used main desktop software's installations from upstream in Debian stable and they have broken _nothing_ for me, being totally out-of-distro packages or compiled from source. I don't see real danger here as long as we can guarentee stable platform that the software would be compiled against. How many Packages do you have installed on your Computer? I maintain currently 2800 Computers (mostly workstations) and I track all required Packages and burn them on my own CCD. -- 1683 Packages! Debian has OVER 19.000 binaries. Do you have tested YOUR from upstream compiled source against the Disti? I can not believe it! I have self-coded software and other not in Debian-included too, but I MUST do the same work as the Debian Developers do. Thest MY EXTERNAL software agains MY DEBIAN partial partal mirror. Otherwise i could break installations of my customers. This is MY job as Debian GNU/Linux Consultant. Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSN LinuxMichi 0033/6/6192519367100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Am 2007-05-15 09:41:17, schrieb Mgr. Peter Tuharsky: The kernel, the X.org I realise, that the kernel and X.org are somewhat delicate things, because they affect both desktop and server. Changing them in the middle of release life, might not sound too well. Sorry, thats not right! I install regulary NEW kernels where Debian had only 2.4.27 I used 2.4.32/33 and thats NOT the same as pushing a NEW Xorg into stable. The Kernels can be installed without any problems parallel, and if one is not working, you boot the last working one. If you install a NEW Xorg, it sucks nearly 60 packages with it and this is not one thing, you can solv with a reboot on a production system. As of X, it's quite complex, however it's less the server and more the desktop thing, that could also get upgraded with some caution. Might also be the concern of volatile. Some server software occasionaly need an upgrade too. Right and upgrading fro, xfree86 to xorg had pushed 280 new packages on my test system and every new package can contain potential new bugs. However the ordinary desktop packages, environments and so on could get upgraded routinely IMO, with easy downgrade option. No need to do the whole stabilisation scrutiny. You forger that DOWNGRADING is officialy NOT SUPPORTED by Debian. And If you have upgraded Xorg to a newer version, good luck, while downgrading 60-200 packages if it fails... Do this in an Office of your customers... They will kill you! Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSN LinuxMichi 0033/6/6192519367100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
(Please don't CC me on list mail.) On 16-May-07, 01:58 (CDT), Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Greenland wrote / nap?sal(a): As I illustreted, rock solid is not automatically guaranteed by oldness of software or by length of pre-release testing. And as others have pointed out, the purpose of stable is to minimize disruptions. For many users, living with known bugs with known workarounds is a *lot* better than identifying new bugs. We could start with programs that don't other programs depend on much. For example, what is the purpose of using 2 years old Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and other such stand-alone programs? They could be flawlessly upgraded during stable release life cycle. Sigh. No, they can't. For one thing, it's not just Iceweasel, it's all the plugins and extensions that might be in use, *and* any external software or libraries that those extensions use. Not to mention all the other software that uses iceweasel libraries. Additionally, any internal webapps have to be validated against the new iceweasel. Internal macros need to be validated against the new OO.org. It's a lot of work. Quite a bit of it cannot be done by Debian, because it's site specific. I had a client for which getting a simple patch (1 or 2 lines of code) installed on their production server took literally month, because of their testing requirements and minimal scheduled downtimes. Getting a completely new version installed took much longer. Now, that may be of little relevance to the home user. But I know some such users who also *don't* like upgrades, because they're happy with what they have and don't need to change. For example, my father-in-law just this year went from Mac OS9 to OSX, mostly because his hardware was dying. So he hadn't upgraded in 6 *years*, and didn't feel he was missing anything. There's quite a few of those people out there. Steve -- Steve Greenland The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. -- seen on the net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I wrote worse because for Debian, this is worse. Not that it is damaging it somehow. Of course there naturally will be other distros, cooperating hopefully. It's worse because it implies, that Debian is not as good desktop as it ought to be. This seems to be the core of your misconception in this thread. Debian doesn't ought to be all things to all people; if another GNU/Linux distribution meets someone's needs better than Debian, that is not necessarily a flaw in Debian. You clearly have many things you'd like to see improved, and hopefully you are filing bugs in the Debian BTS where you find them in Debian packages. However, arguments based on distro Foo meets needs differently, therefore Debian is deficient are fundamentally flawed, and you will do well to abandon them. -- \ When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold to the masses | `\over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and | _o__) its speaker a raving lunatic. -- Dresden James | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
I install regulary NEW kernels where Debian had only 2.4.27 I used 2.4.32/33 and thats NOT the same as pushing a NEW Xorg into stable. The Kernels can be installed without any problems parallel, and if one is not working, you boot the last working one. Yes, I have written it there too. Kernel is, IMO, the best thing to upgrade few times during release cycle, with quite little risk. Right and upgrading fro, xfree86 to xorg had pushed 280 new packages on my test system and every new package can contain potential new bugs. Yes, Debian was the last distro using Xfree86 I know. Of course the transition was complex! You forger that DOWNGRADING is officialy NOT SUPPORTED by Debian. That should be changed anyway, since security upgrades occasionally break things too. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Ad backports importance, I know there is backports.org -however this, and the testing, unstable, stable, volatile, experimental.. So many package versions, so much duplicate work.. Other hand, there's nothing official and recommended excepting the stable. Using anything else, You're on Your own.. I think, any new stable version of the desktop software should be automaticaly added to security updates and distributed to end user. There's no need to test the tested and stabilise the stable software. Should the new stable version be broken, let's give the user easy way to downgrade, and help upstream to fix it fast. I can agree with You in some point -Yes, compiling against the, let's call it stable base, as I suggested before, could also mean real backporting work, especially if the upstream moved to higher libraries versions in the middle of Debian's release cycle. That's why i think the backport's people are _very_important_ in the proposed scheme. Moreover, I could suggest the backporting work to be moved closer to upstream and further from Debian itself. Other distros do lot of backport work too, so working together somewhere in the upstream's playground could bless all together. PS. I know the text is long. I can work on bulleted version. Is there any interest? Peter Petter Reinholdtsen wrote / napísal(a): [Peter Tuharsky] Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro? Interesting analysis, with several good points on keeping the stable release working with newer hardware and keeping the software selection relevant. But my first impression after reading your long text is that you are ignoring the work going on at backports.org, and the ideas that has been floating around on making a Debian release based on the stable version for the base packages, and include upgraded packages like the kernel, X, Gnome, KDE and other hardware- and user-interacting packages from backports.org. You might want to have a look into those ideas. I've also seen ideas on making releases based on testing, now that we have security fixes for the packages in testing. It could give a snapshot of internally consistent packages (as opposed to unstable). Friendly, -- Odchádzajúca správa neobsahuje vírusy, nepou¾ívam Windows. === Mgr. Peter Tuhársky Referát informatiky Mesto Banská Bystrica ÈSA 26 975 39 Banská Bystrica Tel: +421 48 4330 118 Fax: +421 48 411 3575 === -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
The kernel, the X.org I realise, that the kernel and X.org are somewhat delicate things, because they affect both desktop and server. Changing them in the middle of release life, might not sound too well. However, at least by the means of the kernel, the server world also needs new hardware support. Putting Debian on the server could get hard in the second half of release cycle. Fortunately, upgrading the kernel dosen't break anything usually, as long as there is not some nasty bug in there. I suggest the kernel to follow the stable tree at kernel.org, with caution of course. If the kernel version upgrade was available eq 2 times inside stable release life, those willing to upgrade could use it, and those unvilling can stay with old version. The kernel upgrade could fit the volatile philosophy IMO. As of X, it's quite complex, however it's less the server and more the desktop thing, that could also get upgraded with some caution. Might also be the concern of volatile. Some server software occasionaly need an upgrade too. However the ordinary desktop packages, environments and so on could get upgraded routinely IMO, with easy downgrade option. No need to do the whole stabilisation scrutiny. If some developer wishes to test the package before putting it to the repositories, he can join the upstream's beta testing to help catch the bugs before the software is stabilised upstram. Peter Petter Reinholdtsen wrote / napísal(a): [Peter Tuharsky] Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro? Interesting analysis, with several good points on keeping the stable release working with newer hardware and keeping the software selection relevant. But my first impression after reading your long text is that you are ignoring the work going on at backports.org, and the ideas that has been floating around on making a Debian release based on the stable version for the base packages, and include upgraded packages like the kernel, X, Gnome, KDE and other hardware- and user-interacting packages from backports.org. You might want to have a look into those ideas. I've also seen ideas on making releases based on testing, now that we have security fixes for the packages in testing. It could give a snapshot of internally consistent packages (as opposed to unstable). Friendly, -- Odchádzajúca správa neobsahuje vírusy, nepou¾ívam Windows. === Mgr. Peter Tuhársky Referát informatiky Mesto Banská Bystrica ÈSA 26 975 39 Banská Bystrica Tel: +421 48 4330 118 Fax: +421 48 411 3575 === -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Thank you for sharing your point of view. But you draw too many conclusions. You speak out of rumors and experience and you fail to understand that Debian is not a Desktop-only distribution. Get involved and learn our development process, you'll discover that you can't rely on many assumptions that you made. On Tue, 15 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: in my experience, testing is not really good option for real work. There are _platform_ changes going in testing, that leads to broken dependencies and sometimes completely nonfunctional snapshots. Testing is usable. I used it through the whole development cycle of etch. Bugs are unavoidable, you said it yourself. It's a matter of how many problems you can accept. Therefore, I suggest _the_platform_ (libraries and so on) to remain stable, just upgrade the software that runs on top of that. Thus we can both avoid broken deps problems, and have new software available. In the Debian context, Gnome is a platform. It's not only software that runs on top of libc6. Gnome represent dozens of libraries that are used by hundreds of applications. You can't just get the latest version and hope that it won't break anything. If You mean to use the software from testing -You must first make it run on stable without need for library upgrades. That is more similar to backports job, than to testing. You can't backport everything if you don't want to upgrade libraries. It's simply not doable without rewriting the application. Testing should simply be the place where _platform_ changes are shaken out, not the input buffer for the new software. Actually sid is where the platform changes are done. And once they're OK, they get moved to testing in a coherent manner. So testing should stay usable. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Premier livre français sur Debian GNU/Linux : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hi, Raphael Testing is usable. I used it through the whole development cycle of etch. Bugs are unavoidable, you said it yourself. It's a matter of how many problems you can accept. Yes, bugs are unavoidable. However, testing is often in situation whole system broken or nearly useless. I see difference here; occassional bug in desktop app is acceptable. Whole system unreliable is not acceptable. In the Debian context, Gnome is a platform. It's not only software that runs on top of libc6. Gnome represent dozens of libraries that are used by hundreds of applications. That's true. You can't just get the latest version and hope that it won't break anything. That should be verified in light of broad experience (I don't have any). Does it happen often that GNOME version change breaks many things? The only my try was to put GNOME 2.0 to Debian Woody (ugly GNOME 1.2), and I was succesful. If You mean to use the software from testing -You must first make it run on stable without need for library upgrades. That is more similar to backports job, than to testing. You can't backport everything if you don't want to upgrade libraries. It's simply not doable without rewriting the application. I think majority of software _should_ build w/o problem with ordinary libraries of maximum 2 years age. In my experience, apps are generally happy if libraries are not older than that. Of course, shorter release cycle could remove remaining problems in this order. Next stable release of Debian will of course upgrade the whole platform, including the versions, thus software would be happy for next 18 months. Testing should simply be the place where _platform_ changes are shaken out, not the input buffer for the new software. Actually sid is where the platform changes are done. And once they're OK, they get moved to testing in a coherent manner. So testing should stay usable. This is just a wish, not a common experience. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Hello, On Le Tuesday 15 May 2007, à 14:01:28, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Testing should simply be the place where _platform_ changes are shaken out, not the input buffer for the new software. Actually sid is where the platform changes are done. And once they're OK, they get moved to testing in a coherent manner. So testing should stay usable. And you can also look at [CUT][] which seems a project to fit well desktop user's needs. [CUT]: http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/debian/cut/ Constantly Usable Testing François Post Scriptum : [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2007/04/msg00427.html CUT was exactly what testing was supposed to be, in the beginning. Period. It hasn't become that. It has gotten to the point that sometimes testing is borkdened for long periods of time... in small areas mind you, but still broken. which I agree even in a lot of case testing is really usable -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Tuesday 15 May 2007 14:44, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Yes, bugs are unavoidable. However, testing is often in situation whole system broken or nearly useless. I see difference here; occassional bug in desktop app is acceptable. Whole system unreliable is not acceptable. Can you substantiate that? In my experience it is not true. And even unstable is almost always usable if you know how to avoid temporary uninstability of packages and how to downgrade a package occasionally. Though I'd not advice running unstable to end users, I would happily suggest testing. Cheers, FJP pgpNJ1U7ciwY0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Tue, 15 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Yes, bugs are unavoidable. However, testing is often in situation whole system broken or nearly useless. I see difference here; occassional bug in desktop app is acceptable. Whole system unreliable is not acceptable. Have you facts to assert this? I've been an happy user of testing. It happens that some packages are not upgradable during a timeframe however the installed packages are not broken and thus the system is perfectly reliable. You can't just get the latest version and hope that it won't break anything. That should be verified in light of broad experience (I don't have any). Does it happen often that GNOME version change breaks many things? The only my try was to put GNOME 2.0 to Debian Woody (ugly GNOME 1.2), and I was succesful. You can't generalize based on a single experience like that. Your restricted yourself to software published by the Gnome project. Check how many applications depend on Gnome and yet are not developed following Gnome's schedule. Those are the applications which have not been tested by upstream with the new Gnome and which are the more likely to break. You can't rely on upstream to do this testing for you. We have a purpose, we don't stabilize our distribution just because it sounds nice, it's really needed in many cases. Don't get me wrong however, I'm all in favor of having backports integrated in Debian and make it a viable alternative for many users. But you simply can't drop newer upstream version in what we call stable like you suggest. We don't really need more discussion on that topic. We need improvements to make that a realistic goal. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Premier livre français sur Debian GNU/Linux : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
We're going OT, however my experience based on last two Debian releases: testing becomes quite stable in means of usability somewhere half year before it's released as stable. The sooner before the stable, the rapidly increasing is the chance that the snapshot that You have will not be installable at all, will have dependencies severely broken, etc. That's why I suggest: focus on base platform, stabilise it, polish the dependencies. Then compile software against it and release it, compile newer version and release it, etc.. Desktop software itself shouldn't break dependencies. Peter Frans Pop wrote / napísal(a): On Tuesday 15 May 2007 14:44, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Yes, bugs are unavoidable. However, testing is often in situation whole system broken or nearly useless. I see difference here; occassional bug in desktop app is acceptable. Whole system unreliable is not acceptable. Can you substantiate that? In my experience it is not true. And even unstable is almost always usable if you know how to avoid temporary uninstability of packages and how to downgrade a package occasionally. Though I'd not advice running unstable to end users, I would happily suggest testing. Cheers, FJP -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Tue, 15 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: We're going OT, however my experience based on last two Debian releases: testing becomes quite stable in means of usability somewhere half year before it's released as stable. The sooner before the stable, the rapidly increasing is the chance that the snapshot that You have will not be installable at all, will have dependencies severely broken, etc. The goal of testing is to be continuously installable with as few RC bugs as we can manage. In general, it approaches this goal closely enough to be usable almost constantly. That's why I suggest: focus on base platform, stabilise it, polish the dependencies. Then compile software against it and release it, compile newer version and release it, etc.. Desktop software itself shouldn't break dependencies. If only that were the case. Most of the bugs and pain in transition that we run into are not in the base system itself, but in everything else that people actually want to use on their Debian system. While I am glad that you are interested in making Debian better, you need to pitch in and become conversant with the problems that we actually have; only then will you be able to present solutions to those problems. Don Armstrong -- Any excuse will serve a tyrant. -- Aesop http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 02:55:40PM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: Debian developers often see Ubuntu the enemy and are mocking it as inferior technology. However, they fail to see, what does the Debian really offer to desktop users eventually. They fail to understand, why are they using Ubuntu happily and reference it to novices. It seems, that desktop users don't see Debian fitting their needs. What are the means? When you talk about desktop users, I think you really mean novice consumers. Is that a fair assessment? In my experience, Debian can work just fine on the desktop in some situations, just not for novice home users. (think, e.g., about desktops for office workers) b, Stability It simply depends on, well, luck on choosing the particulary good version of software. With stable upstream versions of software, there should not be major stability issues anyhow. Debian proclaims to offer excellent stability. However, if some application does have stability issues, users must wait at least 2 years for next stable version of Debian to see the fix. The stability is not automatically guaranteed by oldness of software and lack of upgrades in Debian. The word stable with regard to Debian's repositories doesn't mean works without bugs. Every piece of software has bugs, and in general, if a newer version of the software appears to have less bugs, that's a reflection of the fact that there's been less time for people to report the bugs it contains. Debian stable is stable in the sense of solid rock versus shifting sands: we ensure that the behavior of the system won't change during a stable cycle. There might be bugs in it, but they'll be the same bugs throughout stable's lifetime. Why would you want this? In a setting where you have people doing productive work using a piece of software, unnecessary changes to the software are *worse* in the short term than a fixed and unchangable set of bugs: not only are changes likely to break the software, but they may require users to retrain or disrupt the processes of your organization. This is true even if the new software is an unqualified improvement (either in terms of bug count or usability) over the old software; look at the backlash over the new Ribbon interface in Microsoft office, for instance. Having briefly overseen a small network of Debian systems for a research group, my sense is that an 18-month cycle would work well in this setting; anything shorter than a year would be too disruptive. I await correction from more experienced members of this list who can tell me I'm full of it. :) Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On 15-May-07, 04:25 (CDT), Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do You think, that -compiling new upstream version of software against stable platform, building a package and distributing it -needs more effort than -studying security fixes in upstream, backporting them to ancient version of software (if it's barely possible), compiling it against stable platform, building a package and distributing it? It's not a matter of effort, it's a matter of stability. A new upstream version is a *much* higher risk of breaking other packages than backporting a security fix. Steve -- Steve Greenland The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. -- seen on the net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On 15-May-07, 08:27 (CDT), Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We're going OT, however my experience based on last two Debian releases: testing becomes quite stable in means of usability somewhere half year before it's released as stable. The sooner before the stable, the rapidly increasing is the chance that the snapshot that You have will not be installable at all, will have dependencies severely broken, etc. That does not match my experience with testing. Steve -- Steve Greenland The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. -- seen on the net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On 14-May-07, 07:55 (CDT), Mgr. Peter Tuharsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why is this worse? Why isn't there room for two similar distributions, with one aimed at being more up-to-date for a limited set of packages and hardware, while the other aims at being rock-solid on a wide variety of hardware for extended periods of time? There are certainly ways that Debian can improve, but I'm not convinced that become more like Ubuntu is one of them. Why not let Ubuntu fulfill the desires of that group of users? Steve -- Steve Greenland The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. -- seen on the net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Tue, 15 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: We're going OT, however my experience based on last two Debian releases: testing becomes quite stable in means of usability somewhere half year before it's released as stable. The sooner before the stable, the rapidly increasing is the chance that the snapshot that You have will not be installable at all, will have dependencies severely broken, etc. In several mails you claimed testing as broken. This is completely orthognal to my experience. I'm using testing since its existence on most of my boxes. Only production servers are running stable and I keep my fingers from running unstable (except of chroots). So were is the proof for you statement. What are the numbers of the bugs you might have reported against packages in testing? Could you please a bit more verbose about your problems in testing because nobody else made it to my radar that testing is that unusable. Perhaps I missed something ... Kind regards Andreas (writing from a laptop that runs testing. ;-)) -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Mon, 2007-05-14 at 14:55 +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? For me the choice is clear. I use Debian for myself. I choose to support Ubuntu for people that do not want as many choices. This is what M$ refugees think they want. Ubuntu is channelized into a few platforms as you put it. It has: Ubuntu == GNOME Desktop Environment (platform) Kubuntu == KDE Desktop Environment (platform) Xubuntu == XFCE Desktop Environment (platform) Each is release accordingly to the GNOME release schedule, as that is the driving force behind Ubuntu's release schedule. This release schedule is 6 months. Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? The same reason many people choose Fedora Core or Mandriva or Gentoo or insert other distro because they can. I abandon Debian for other people, only because it has a (as you put it) more friendly support system. Why do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro? It is a misnomer that Debian is all about elitism or that it is hard to install or that the developers/mailing lists don't speak newbie-ese or that it doesn't support new hardware really well. I have to tell you the only thing in that list that *might* be right is the hardware thing for stable. Stable... more on the stable/ testing/ unstable/ thing in a bit. Debian developers often see Ubuntu the enemy and are mocking it as inferior technology. However, they fail to see, what does the Debian really offer to desktop users eventually. Sure, there is a bit of friction. Not Ubuntu is TEH 3N3MY, 7HR0W R0XX 47 7H3M! D13! D13! D13! or Argh, there mateys, we be sailing up the port side of the Ubuntu, prepare the starboard side cannons! Nothing of the sort. Ubuntu and Debian have a tremendously different set of motivators for releases and development. Debian, is all about volunteers, free and Free software and policy to implement them without much ado. This also has to occur across 10 or so Hardware architectures at the same time. Ubuntu, is all about volunteers, free and Free software, except where is interferes with the release schedule and the quality of the user experience. And it only supports three hardware architectures. And apparently soon, only 2 as Apple dropped PowerPC as an architecture. AND it is supported by a commercial entity. They fail to understand, why are they using Ubuntu happily and reference it to novices. It seems, that desktop users don't see Debian fitting their needs. What are the means? It is more about the fact that Ubuntu is indeed a niche OS. Debian runs on a plethora of Hardware Architectures and is consistent across those architectures. The answers: 1, needs 2, release cycle philosophy 3, community 4, priorities As many see, all of them are different in server and in desktop world, and many times Debian chooses to dictate the users we know the best what You need instead of listening to them. Why then are there 28000+ packages in Debian? If Debian only dictates, why then are there *FAR* more packages available for install than in *ANY* other Distribution? How many Window Managers? How many alternative packages to do the same thing, like word processing, editors, music clients, rss feed readers, web-browsers? I could go on for days, but I hope you get my point. Come on, we know the answer, you can say it. Let's think a while about the current situation. First define, what I need from my _desktop_, being an ordinary power user: a, The system must work well with available hardware, automatically and naturally This depends on *MANY* things. Primarily the Kernel. But also side projects to deal with vendors that produce *WINDOWS ONLY* device drivers. Case in point Wireless drivers. NDIS wrapper is a very good attempt to cover this. There are other device manufactures that only develop Windows drivers only. This is a case of Why bother, Windows cover 90%+ of the field b, Stable without (too many) crashes Do you realize Debian's stable is classified as this: Stable means stable package list. No changes in API and ABI names or versions. This means no newer versions will ever make it into stable. It is in maintenance mode. This makes a very good setup for those wishing for Rock Solid machines. Doesn't crash. too many comes from the Windows World, does not typically apply to Debian's Linux. c, Applications should work generally Okay, what specifically does not work in Debian? I have a few obscure problems, but they are obscure. Currently in Sid, I have an xnest problem, but it was only just introduced, will be fixed very shortly. I don't see your should work generally, mine just *DO* work. d, Applications should work together well
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Tue, 2007-05-15 at 21:43 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: On Tue, 15 May 2007, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: We're going OT, however my experience based on last two Debian releases: testing becomes quite stable in means of usability somewhere half year before it's released as stable. The sooner before the stable, the rapidly increasing is the chance that the snapshot that You have will not be installable at all, will have dependencies severely broken, etc. In several mails you claimed testing as broken. This is completely orthognal to my experience. I'm using testing since its existence on most of my boxes. To that, I run Sid/unstable on 90% of everything I have. Stable on those machines that cannot have problems. Only production servers are running stable and I keep my fingers from running unstable (except of chroots). I haven't seen an unstable problem that was a problem for more than a couple of days... and mostly had workarounds in any case. So were is the proof for you statement. What are the numbers of the bugs you might have reported against packages in testing? Could you please a bit more verbose about your problems in testing because nobody else made it to my radar that testing is that unusable. Perhaps I missed something ... I've asked for specific examples. Kind regards Andreas (writing from a laptop that runs testing. ;-)) Cheers from a Sid+Experimental machine. -- greg, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP key: 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05 Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C Alternate Fingerprint: 09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 09:41:17AM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: The kernel, the X.org So are you volunteering to join the kernel and XSF teams to make this happen? - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro? Debian developers often see Ubuntu the enemy and are mocking it as inferior technology. However, they fail to see, what does the Debian really offer to desktop users eventually. They fail to understand, why are they using Ubuntu happily and reference it to novices. It seems, that desktop users don't see Debian fitting their needs. What are the means? The answers: 1, needs 2, release cycle philosophy 3, community 4, priorities As many see, all of them are different in server and in desktop world, and many times Debian chooses to dictate the users we know the best what You need instead of listening to them. Let's think a while about the current situation. First define, what I need from my _desktop_, being an ordinary power user: a, The system must work well with available hardware, automatically and naturally b, Stable without (too many) crashes c, Applications should work generally d, Applications should work together well e, The serious security problems should get fixed ASAP f, Usability problems, wishes and bugs should get fixed too. I should be able to report a problem, participate on it's solution and see fruits of that. g, I _need_ the new features of some applications -for example improved import/export filters and so on, and I need them now, because yesterday it has been already late h, I wish to profit from Linux desktop progress -improvements on usability, features, design, performance and so on. I wish to show the Linux to friends with pride. We must make clear that: 1, Any distro is only as good as the software it offers. 2, Any software does, and will have, bugs. * How does the Debian reallity look like *** a, Hardware support It depends mostly on version of kernel, X.org and some specialised libraries and programs (wpasupplicant, libgphoto, and so on). Generally, the newer is the said software, the better support. Some installation and autodetection tools are necesarry too -for example, if notebook is detected, then the desktop should automatically reflect that in order of power management, battery and sensor monitoring etc. In fact, the basic power management and sensor monitoring is getting traction on ordinary PC's and servers too, so there is no real need to separate the ntbk/pc/server platforms. Just the battery management is a special case. Debian is poor in both directions. The versions are old at start and ancient at the end of release cycle. The fast evolving hardware don't make much use of 2+ years old drivers (even if 3+ years old hardware is considered). b, Stability It simply depends on, well, luck on choosing the particulary good version of software. With stable upstream versions of software, there should not be major stability issues anyhow. Debian proclaims to offer excellent stability. However, if some application does have stability issues, users must wait at least 2 years for next stable version of Debian to see the fix. The stability is not automatically guaranteed by oldness of software and lack of upgrades in Debian. c, Software should work generaly. As the software is kept in repositories for loong time, it should have been tested thoroughly when it gets in to stable. Then it remains at the same version for years. However, the security upgrades repeatedly caused software to stop working well in Debian, so the software version's rigidity dosen't really help much. It simply dosen't prevent software from breaking. Current stable upstream versions of any software should not have major usability issues anyhow. However, if there are major usability issues in software in Debian, should they have been fixed upstream, user must wait for next stable anyhow to see the fix. d, Software should work together As the software is kept in repositories for loong time, it should have been tested thoroughly when it gets in to stable. However, if the newer version of software offers new features that increase the interoperability with other software, user must wait for next stable to see it working. e, Security issues They are, and will be, found in any piece of software. Debian does endless work with backporting the patches to the software that is old and often unsupported upstream already. Patch is sometimes impossible to apply to such an old piece of software. Rumors say (accordingly to common sense), that some security bugs are never fixed inside release cycle of Debian because of that, even if the fix is available in newer upstream version of software. Any security patch can affect the usability of software, either by backpatching an ancient stable version, or by installing the new fixed upstream version. I personally would
Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro? Debian developers often see Ubuntu the enemy and are mocking it as inferior technology. However, they fail to see, what does the Debian really offer to desktop users eventually. They fail to understand, why are they using Ubuntu happily and reference it to novices. It seems, that desktop users don't see Debian fitting their needs. What are the means? The answers: 1, needs 2, release cycle philosophy 3, community 4, priorities As many see, all of them are different in server and in desktop world, and many times Debian chooses to dictate the users we know the best what You need instead of listening to them. Let's think a while about the current situation. First define, what I need from my _desktop_, being an ordinary power user: a, The system must work well with available hardware, automatically and naturally b, Stable without (too many) crashes c, Applications should work generally d, Applications should work together well e, The serious security problems should get fixed ASAP f, Usability problems, wishes and bugs should get fixed too. I should be able to report a problem, participate on it's solution and see fruits of that. g, I _need_ the new features of some applications -for example improved import/export filters and so on, and I need them now, because yesterday it has been already late h, I wish to profit from Linux desktop progress -improvements on usability, features, design, performance and so on. I wish to show the Linux to friends with pride. We must make clear that: 1, Any distro is only as good as the software it offers. 2, Any software does, and will have, bugs. * How does the Debian reallity look like *** a, Hardware support It depends mostly on version of kernel, X.org and some specialised libraries and programs (wpasupplicant, libgphoto, and so on). Generally, the newer is the said software, the better support. Some installation and autodetection tools are necesarry too -for example, if notebook is detected, then the desktop should automatically reflect that in order of power management, battery and sensor monitoring etc. In fact, the basic power management and sensor monitoring is getting traction on ordinary PC's and servers too, so there is no real need to separate the ntbk/pc/server platforms. Just the battery management is a special case. Debian is poor in both directions. The versions are old at start and ancient at the end of release cycle. The fast evolving hardware don't make much use of 2+ years old drivers (even if 3+ years old hardware is considered). b, Stability It simply depends on, well, luck on choosing the particulary good version of software. With stable upstream versions of software, there should not be major stability issues anyhow. Debian proclaims to offer excellent stability. However, if some application does have stability issues, users must wait at least 2 years for next stable version of Debian to see the fix. The stability is not automatically guaranteed by oldness of software and lack of upgrades in Debian. c, Software should work generaly. As the software is kept in repositories for loong time, it should have been tested thoroughly when it gets in to stable. Then it remains at the same version for years. However, the security upgrades repeatedly caused software to stop working well in Debian, so the software version's rigidity dosen't really help much. It simply dosen't prevent software from breaking. Current stable upstream versions of any software should not have major usability issues anyhow. However, if there are major usability issues in software in Debian, should they have been fixed upstream, user must wait for next stable anyhow to see the fix. d, Software should work together As the software is kept in repositories for loong time, it should have been tested thoroughly when it gets in to stable. However, if the newer version of software offers new features that increase the interoperability with other software, user must wait for next stable to see it working. e, Security issues They are, and will be, found in any piece of software. Debian does endless work with backporting the patches to the software that is old and often unsupported upstream already. Patch is sometimes impossible to apply to such an old piece of software. Rumors say (accordingly to common sense), that some security bugs are never fixed inside release cycle of Debian because of that, even if the fix is available in newer upstream version of software. Any security patch can affect the usability of software, either by backpatching an ancient stable version, or by installing the new fixed upstream version. I personally would
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 02:55:40PM +0200, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote: Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro? other things to be read when I have time Debian wants to be used on many architectures and uses. Ubuntu does not, it largely focuses on desktop/laptop support. With more resources on desktop issues and shorter release cycles, Ubuntu will contribute to Debian's desktop support, although I cant say to what extent because of the uneven and inconsistent relationship between the two projects, which is 'a good thing' for both Debian, Ubuntu and all users. -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal |mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/| | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keyserver: subkeys.pgp.net | my NPO: cfsg.org | |join the new debian-community.org to help Debian! | |___ Unless I ask to be CCd, assume I am subscribed ___| -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
[Peter Tuharsky] Ask somebody, what distro would he install at desktop for novice or M$ refugee? Why many are choosing Ubuntu instead of Debian, and even worse, abandon Debian in favor of Ubuntu? Why do most people consider Debian to be user-unfriendly and server-oriented distro? Interesting analysis, with several good points on keeping the stable release working with newer hardware and keeping the software selection relevant. But my first impression after reading your long text is that you are ignoring the work going on at backports.org, and the ideas that has been floating around on making a Debian release based on the stable version for the base packages, and include upgraded packages like the kernel, X, Gnome, KDE and other hardware- and user-interacting packages from backports.org. You might want to have a look into those ideas. I've also seen ideas on making releases based on testing, now that we have security fixes for the packages in testing. It could give a snapshot of internally consistent packages (as opposed to unstable). Friendly, -- Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian desktop -situation, proposals for discussion and change. Users point of view.
Seg, 2007-05-14 às 17:03 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen escreveu: Interesting analysis, with several good points on keeping the stable release working with newer hardware and keeping the software selection relevant. But my first impression after reading your long text is that you are ignoring the work going on at backports.org, and the ideas that has been floating around on making a Debian release based on the stable version for the base packages, and include upgraded packages like the kernel, X, Gnome, KDE and other hardware- and user-interacting packages from backports.org. You might want to have a look into those ideas. One good point would be to include tested backports into stable release cycle. I don't mean base backports, but mainly user interfaces and so on. i'll give one simple example: - with network-manager-gnome, every time i connect to a radius network i have to put username, password and certificate. A newer version now saves this info. do i have to spend 2 years (at least) doing so to have a debian stable distribution? I've also seen ideas on making releases based on testing, now that we have security fixes for the packages in testing. It could give a snapshot of internally consistent packages (as opposed to unstable). There are people that use testing. In my work computer i only upgrade from stable to testing more or less at 3/4 of stable's release cycle. i don't think this is a way out ... maybe a better one is the one stated above. best regards Luis Matos -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
