Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Aigars Mahinovs]

On Jul 26, 12:30 am, Frank Lin PIAT  wrote:
> ## BANNER {http://www.debian.org/banners/3.1/sarge-ban1-6.png}
>
> Universal operating system #...@!
>
> First of all, let's make it clear, Debian is not THE universal operating
> system. I mean it is definitely not the one and only OS.
>
> Is Debian an universal operating system?

When I think about that slogan, I consider all Debian-derived
distributions to be 'Debian'. With that in mind Debian is a pretty
universal operating system. A few years ago I prepared a Debconf slide
about derived distributions and I found that Debian had more derived
distributions that all other distributions combined. I doubt that has
changed much. Most Linux distributions are based on Debian. Thus
Debian is a lot of things to a lot of people. Very universal and very
adaptable.

The key to that in my mind is feeding back changes and bringing
derivations back into the fold - the more Debian derived distributions
would be able to fully exist inside Debian (as fully official Debian
Pure Blends or whatever), the more Debian universality Debian as a
whole will gain.

In this context in my opinion it would be useful to find out what
things Debian-derived distributions want to do that can not be
currently done inside Debian with Debian resources and try to resolve
that. One great thing that we could copy is the PPA system from
Launchpad - a contributor can sign up, upload a source package and
have it compiled and put into a separate repository fully
automatically. Imagine such a system existing in Debian (with support
for all architectures, compile logs, lintian output, 'push this
version to unstable/experimental' button) and a lot more people would
be able to contribute in new ways. Now imagine a build system where
you could log in, define a Debian Pure Blend (metapackage
dependencies, setting overrides, ...) and have metapackages,
installation images and livecd images generated and hosted for you on
Debian hardware - you one stop shop to creating and hosting a
Debian-derived distribution in a way where you can easily contribute
it back to Debian.

If we have a vision of being an universal operating system, lets
strive for it using the best we have - people who use us to satisfy
their needs.

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Best regards,
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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Ron Johnson]

On 2009-07-27 01:11, George Danchev wrote:

Quoting "Ron Johnson" :


On 2009-07-26 17:00, Miles Bader wrote:

Chris Lamb  writes:

Agreed. IMHO, it is one of those phrases (along with "Our priority is
our users") that actually means extremely little in practice, except 
for

generating lots of hot air with nobody agreeing.


"Our priority is endless surreal flamewars over minor technicalities"
seems about right to me.



Anyone who *really* thinks that Debian actually, seriously claims to
be The One True Universal OS has been in the basement way too long, 
and needs a little sunshine, drink some beer and go where there are 
lots of pretty girls.


However, Debian is unique with its (controlled?) expansion in several 
directions (just like the Universe): it is expanding (fast) as 
developers and users, as packages and bugs, and last but not least as 
kernels and libc's ;-). Surely, that looks quite universal to the pretty 
girls.


If you go all etymological, then I guess you *could* say that Debian 
actually *is* a universal OS.  Just like that pesky BSD, which, 
according to Netcraft, is dead.


Universe \U"ni*verse\, n. [L. universum, from universus
   universal; unus one + vertere, versum, to turn, that is,
   turned into one, combined into one whole; cf. F. univers. See
   {One}, and {Verse}.]

--
Scooty Puff, Sr
The Doom-Bringer


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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[George Danchev]

Quoting "Ron Johnson" :


On 2009-07-26 17:00, Miles Bader wrote:

Chris Lamb  writes:

Agreed. IMHO, it is one of those phrases (along with "Our priority is
our users") that actually means extremely little in practice, except for
generating lots of hot air with nobody agreeing.


"Our priority is endless surreal flamewars over minor technicalities"
seems about right to me.



Anyone who *really* thinks that Debian actually, seriously claims to
be The One True Universal OS has been in the basement way too long,  
and needs a little sunshine, drink some beer and go where there are  
lots of pretty girls.


However, Debian is unique with its (controlled?) expansion in several  
directions (just like the Universe): it is expanding (fast) as  
developers and users, as packages and bugs, and last but not least as  
kernels and libc's ;-). Surely, that looks quite universal to the  
pretty girls.



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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 11:53:55PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> If memory serves correctly, that slogan was added to the web
>  site without discussion, and was never ratified by the project, 
>  though I do remember Bruce being very pleased about it.
> 
> It certainly has not been either a goal nor a rallying cry for
>  me while I work on Debian.
> 
> manoj

In concrete terms: Debian _is_ the universal operating system. I can 
take a running Debian system, easily grab the list of packages, and 
install essentially the same system onto a completely different 
architecture - and pretty much know it will work. [A running Debian 
development system on i386 "moved" across town onto a Sparc in about an 
hour start to finish, the Apache webserver and X shoehorned into a 
Linksys running on 32M of memory for a portable demo for the local LUG 
:) ]. 

I can remember knocking the socks off a nice Sun representative at the 
main Linux Expo in London when he saw me running Debian on a Sparc 
barely supported by Sun - and the latest software too :)  

A work colleague likes tiny embedded development systems. They all come 
with Debian out of the box (though the Marvell Sheevaplug has Ubuntu - I 
wonder if it needed NDAs initially?).

In personal terms, I repose far greater trust in Debian developers I've 
never met than in almost everybody geographically close. I listened to 
a paid industry expert give a presentation on FLOSS to a government 
audience and the examples he used were of Debian. I then followed him
immediately with the disclaimer that I was a Debian developer :) 

So no, I won't die in a ditch over it but it's a worthwhile tag and 
Debian sets the quality gold standard for me that other commercial-grade 
software manifestly fails to reach.

All the best,

Andy


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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sun, Jul 26 2009, Ron Johnson wrote:

> On 2009-07-26 17:00, Miles Bader wrote:
>> Chris Lamb  writes:
>>> Agreed. IMHO, it is one of those phrases (along with "Our priority is
>>> our users") that actually means extremely little in practice, except for
>>> generating lots of hot air with nobody agreeing.
>>
>> "Our priority is endless surreal flamewars over minor technicalities"
>> seems about right to me.
>
> Anyone who *really* thinks that Debian actually, seriously claims to
> be The One True Universal OS has been in the basement way too long,
> and needs a little sunshine, drink some beer and go where there are
> lots of pretty girls.

If memory serves correctly, that slogan was added to the web
 site without discussion, and was never ratified by the project, though
 I do remember Bruce being very pleased about it.

It certainly has not been either a goal nor a rallying cry for
 me while I work on Debian.

manoj
-- 
H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L. Mencken --
 there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.  -- Maxwell Bodenheim
Manoj Srivastava    
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C


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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Ron Johnson]

On 2009-07-26 17:00, Miles Bader wrote:

Chris Lamb  writes:

Agreed. IMHO, it is one of those phrases (along with "Our priority is
our users") that actually means extremely little in practice, except for
generating lots of hot air with nobody agreeing.


"Our priority is endless surreal flamewars over minor technicalities"
seems about right to me.



Anyone who *really* thinks that Debian actually, seriously claims to
be The One True Universal OS has been in the basement way too long, 
and needs a little sunshine, drink some beer and go where there are 
lots of pretty girls.



Anyway... a little good-humored pomposity never hurt anyone.


--
Scooty Puff, Sr
The Doom-Bringer


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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Miles Bader]

Chris Lamb  writes:
> Agreed. IMHO, it is one of those phrases (along with "Our priority is
> our users") that actually means extremely little in practice, except for
> generating lots of hot air with nobody agreeing.

"Our priority is endless surreal flamewars over minor technicalities"
seems about right to me.

-miles

-- 
Defenceless, adj. Unable to attack.


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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Chris Lamb]

Javier Fernandez-Sanguino wrote:

> > First of all, let's make it clear, Debian is not THE universal
> > operating system. I mean it is definitely not the one and only OS.  
> 
> As said in the talk @ Debconf: this is just a slogan.

Agreed. IMHO, it is one of those phrases (along with "Our priority is
our users") that actually means extremely little in practice, except for
generating lots of hot air with nobody agreeing.

I don't see what we will gain from further discussion in this thread.


Regards,

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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Bernhard R. Link]

* Frank Lin PIAT  [090726 00:23]:
> Why many Debian users and Developers are really happy with this Univeral
> OS concept?

To provoke some thought, consider the following calculation:

Assume everything is only made to suite 90% of the people. How many
packages do you need to have a less than 50% chance of still being
suited?

Answer: if chances to be suited by a package are independent, 7 suffice.
(with 99% it would be 69, still less than most have installed).

In other words: each of us is a minority. Not aiming for universal
solutions will bite each of us in the long run.

Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link


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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Javier Fernandez-Sanguino]

2009/7/26 Frank Lin PIAT :
> ## BANNER { http://www.debian.org/banners/3.1/sarge-ban1-6.png }
>
> Universal operating system #...@!
>
> First of all, let's make it clear, Debian is not THE universal operating
> system. I mean it is definitely not the one and only OS.

As said in the talk @ Debconf: this is just a slogan. Maybe before
discussing whether we are (or not) a universal OS and whether we need
(or not) to change the slogan we need to really define what we mean
with "Universal OS" and make that public:

Please notice:

- The search '"universal operating system" site:ww.debian.org' shows
that we do not dwelve into this slogan this much.

- There is an (in my opinion) excellent paper by Andreas Tille
(Debconf 7) which discusses this concept and could be used as a
starting point.

Maybe somebody could write a WML page describing the concept and we
can discuss it, and put that up at the website. As maintainer of the
Debian FAQ (which, I believe, is one of the few places where the
"Universal Operating System" concept is described) [2] I'm open for
patches to improve the definition :)

Regards

Javier


[1] http://people.debian.org/~tille/talks/200706_debconf7_cdd/tuos-paper.pdfr.ps
[2] http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-basic_defs.en.html


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Re: Debian, universal operating system?

[Giacomo Catenazzi]

I have also some thoughs about DPL talk:

Debian is NOT an universal operating system.
Debian is going in direction to be an universal collection
of OSes.


1- One size fits all ?

IMHO the "universal os" seems to imply this. I don't agree.
We need different solutions. IMHO embedian is an example
of this: still in Debian framework, but I think it is a different
OS (but still "Debian"). So Debian is more than one OS.


2- universal is defined by use

I don't care about how any CPUs and architecture we run, but what
use of such machine we do.

Do we run on mobile phone? Yes
"Real" people do this? IMHO not yet

Do we run on mainframes? Yes
Do "real" mainframe people run Debian for their mainframe applications? 
I don't know (but we lack of official support to some mainframe 
applications).


So IMHO we are not yet universal, but in a good shape: we need real
usage not potential usage to be a universal operating system.


3- Missing applications

BTW we totally lack or real-time support (not the RT for multimedia, in
this case we lack only of manpower) (I mean the RT for some kind of 
robots and controllers). According kernel developers, Linux is not

going in such direction and their still discurage use of Linux for
such things. I think it is the same with the BSD family of kernels.

Is this a requirement to be universal?


4- Debian as distribution

I still think that Debian is the "most universal" operating system,
but we are "only" a distribution. We are packers (packagers).

I think some task in direction of universal OSes should be done
upstream, outside Debian. We give programmers a good distribution,
so they can develop quicker and better. We give programmers DFSG,
we maybe give programmers some resources, but IMO the developement
should be done outside Debian.


To conclude: we are not yet the OS for all people/all uses, but
we are surely the better OS/distribution that can do this.


YES!
cate


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