Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Rob Ransbottom]

On 18 Jun 2002, Grant Edwards wrote:

> In muc.lists.debian.user, you wrote:
> 
> then go ahead and get a service contract.  If you're running a
> server than has to have five nines up-time, then you'd better
> pay to have somebody guaranteed on-site in 60 minutes from when
> the phone rings.

And we're down to three nines already.


> For what I do (SW development) I invariably get better/quicker
> results from mailing lists and Usenet than I ever did from
> commercial support.

I've worked in some small businesses where the software support
contracts were priced up to about 5000.00$US per year.
In more than 4.00$US of support I would say I've seen
less than 400.00$US of value.

This is aside from updates and fixes which I won't attempt to
assign a specific value to; but on this Debian is clearly 
outperforming all the proprietary sources I've used.


rob Live the dream.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Grant Edwards]

In muc.lists.debian.user, you wrote:

>> If you're running a server than has to have five nines up-time,
>> then you'd better pay to have somebody guaranteed on-site in 60
>> minutes from when the phone rings.
> 
> Umm... 5 9's = ~5 min/year, so they had better be there a lot faster
> than 60 minutes.

If you're going for 5 9s you'll have plenty of redundancy and
hot-swapable everything.  You may need a CPU/drive/PS replaced,
but it doesn't generally have to be done in 5 minutes.
However, you're at a higher risk until all the redundancy is
restored.

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[David Wright]

> If you're running a server than has to have five nines up-time,
> then you'd better pay to have somebody guaranteed on-site in 60
> minutes from when the phone rings.

Umm... 5 9's = ~5 min/year, so they had better be there a lot faster
than 60 minutes. The way to achieve 5 9's is not via an incident-based
service contract. It is to turn over your system to someone who knows what
they are doing. Close a contract: achive 5 9's or more, and the
consultant gets $200,000; achieve less than 5 9's, and the consultant gets
$0.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Klaus Imgrund]

Think we have a slight misunderstanding here.
I don't have a CEO and I don't like servicecontracts. I advise my own
customers not to make one with me because it isn't worth the money (talk
about shooting yourself in the foot).
But this is the way people do think and have to think today - something
happens somebody will take the fall for it - you better have your bases
covered.
I think in this mailinglist you get by far the best advice anywhere and
debian is best thing since the invention of stainless beer but that wont
change the way business is conducted in the real world.

have fun


> If your CEO insists on spending money on a service contract,
> then go ahead and get a service contract.  If you're running a
> server than has to have five nines up-time, then you'd better
> pay to have somebody guaranteed on-site in 60 minutes from when
> the phone rings.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Grant Edwards]

In muc.lists.debian.user, you wrote:

> I want you see tell a CEO of a company:
> Well Sir we have a little IT problem.
> There are 3000 people sitting in front of a black screen and our
> customers can't reach us.
> Oh, and by the way 50 of our planes are going to crash in about 1 hour.
> But don't worry - I did send a question about it to the mailinglist.

If your CEO insists on spending money on a service contract,
then go ahead and get a service contract.  If you're running a
server than has to have five nines up-time, then you'd better
pay to have somebody guaranteed on-site in 60 minutes from when
the phone rings.

For what I do (SW development) I invariably get better/quicker
results from mailing lists and Usenet than I ever did from
commercial support.

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Klaus Imgrund]

On 18 Jun 2002 15:01:22 -
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Grant Edwards) wrote:

> In muc.lists.debian.user, you wrote:
> 
> > What that whole Servicecontract stuff basically boils down to is
> > that the customer wants somebody he can:
> >
> > a. complain to and scream at and
> 
> While I try to keep the screaming to a minimum, I do sometimes
> complain (and on a particulary bad day even whine) on mailing 
> lists.  People generally explain why my problem is of my own
> making and explain what I can do to solve the problem.
> 
> > b. sue for damages
> 
> HA!  That's a laugh!
>
Not all servicecontracts are being handeled by M$ plus if you got an
issue you almost always get something out of it.

More important is jobsecurity for whoever is responsible. The bigger the
problem the higher up in the corporate foodchain it ends up being
discussed.
Now if you are resposible for a system you know that.
You also know that your boss maybe has some understanding of the issues
involved but the higher it goes the less knowledge is there.
I want you see tell a CEO of a company:
Well Sir we have a little IT problem.
There are 3000 people sitting in front of a black screen and our
customers can't reach us.
Oh, and by the way 50 of our planes are going to crash in about 1 hour.
But don't worry - I did send a question about it to the mailinglist.

Good luck with your new job in a completly different field then.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Grant Edwards]

In muc.lists.debian.user, you wrote:
> Klaus Imgrund writes:
>> a. complain to and scream at
> 
> People frequently complain and scream at this mailing list.

With far more helpful responses that any you'll get from most
commercial operations.

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Grant Edwards]

In muc.lists.debian.user, you wrote:

> What that whole Servicecontract stuff basically boils down to is that
> the customer wants somebody he can:
>
> a. complain to and scream at and

While I try to keep the screaming to a minimum, I do sometimes
complain (and on a particulary bad day even whine) on mailing 
lists.  People generally explain why my problem is of my own
making and explain what I can do to solve the problem.

> b. sue for damages

HA!  That's a laugh!

> Try that with a mailing list

Try suing Microsoft next time your business is down because of
the security-hole-du-jour in OutlookExlporerInformationExchangeServerWhatever.

MS beat the federal government into submission.  You don't
stand a snowball's chance in hell.

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ian D. Stewart]

On 2002.06.17 21:26 Rox de Gabba wrote:



Well, if you look at it from the practical point of view... screaming
and
complainting has never done any good... at leat with computer systems
it
hasn't. Suing... well, have you ever heared of anyone get a penny off
M$ for
the bilions lost on their system being buggy, rashing and losing data?


When was the last time you heard of a suit looking at things from a 
practical point of view?


The entire purpose of the exercise is to give the PHB's and their BoD 
taskmasters a warm and fuzzy feeling.  The service contract is merely a 
means to that end.  The fact that that warm and fuzzy feeling has 
absolutely no grounding in reality is entirely irrelevant.



Ian


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[John Hasler]

Klaus Imgrund writes:
> a. complain to and scream at

People frequently complain and scream at this mailing list.

> b. sue for damages

You might want to read the fine print in that service contract.
-- 
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Elmwood, Wisconsin


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Tom Allison]

Klaus Imgrund wrote:


Well,
I am an IT - dummy but I did deal with technical service for 15 years.
What that whole Servicecontract stuff basically boils down to is that
the customer wants somebody he can:
a. complain to and scream at and
b. sue for damages
Try that with a mailing list





I understand the incentive / reasoning behind your claims.
But have you ever tried to complain/scream/sue one of the Big OS and 
Software companies with any success?
Their EULA makes their company as effective (actually less so) than 
any email list.


--
 21:05:01 up 3 days,  3:19,  1 user,  load average: 1.57, 0.98, 0.47
Linux is the future...


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jameson C. Burt]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 11:44:53AM +0200, Jan Johansson wrote:
> > so contractual, however inresponsive, support from a lame-ass 
> > linux distro 
> > means more to you than actually securing the system? 
> 
> Nope. Read my last paragraph. A system provider which can not also offer a 
> _legally binding_ support contract is simply not allowed on any production / 
> mission critical servers within our organisation. So it doesnt really matter 
> that i prefer Debian and Slack over RedHat, i still wouldnt be allowed to 
> deploy a deb-system.

Analogy to life insurance:
I know people fully comforatable dying because they have life insurance.
By analogy, some managers are fully happy killing a company 
with high costs, because they have insured themselves 
through some expensive contracts.

Within a year, 1994-1995, I went through Slackware, RedHat, and Debian,
when I realized that 
most of my understanding, 
most of my power,
most of my solutions 
were coming from the debian-user email-list.
Perusing Debian's archives for solutions produces 
knowledgeable personel.

A co-worker of mine arranged an expensive contract 
with IBM for AIX solutions.
He calls IBM to even add a username.
Where I work (a government agency), managers have stated that 
they want a contract, so that should problems become insurmountable,
the managers can lay blame with the contractor.
Rather than laying a foundation in personnel, 
they lay a foundation for external blame.

This is the culmination of support contracts:  effete personel.
We should all have taken moral classes as every Japanese must,
with its 5 fundamentals, all intertwined, 3 of which I remember,
   Do the hard thing
   Endure hardships
   Persevere in striving

In 1993, I remember our paying Sun an exorbitant price,
which included letting me see email solutions.
Debian's email solutions are far more extensive than Sun's,
so I sometimes successfully searched Debian's archives for solutions 
to what were really Sun problems.

I have seen nothing as good as Debian's email lists.
No for-profit company can induce users to contribute even 5 percent of
what Debian users/developers contribute to their email lists.
These email-lists have encyclopedic information, 
not thin Boolean information of a contract,
"yes, I bought a contract".

HOW MUCH MUST YOU PAY TO GET ARCHIVED SOLUTIONS 
AT THE LEVEL OF DEBIAN'S?
Request such archives as part of your support.
You cannot buy the level of information found in Debian's archives!
Why seek lesser support?   From tradition?

Only about once a year do I ask a question on the Debian email-list,
because its vast email-list archives 
and bug-archives retain solutions to my other sought problems. 


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Paul E Condon]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 11:44:53AM +0200, Jan Johansson wrote:
> > so contractual, however inresponsive, support from a lame-ass 
> > linux distro 
> > means more to you than actually securing the system? 
> 
> Nope. Read my last paragraph. A system provider which can not also offer a 
> _legally binding_ support contract is simply not allowed on any production / 
> mission critical servers within our organisation. So it doesnt really matter 
> that i prefer Debian and Slack over RedHat, i still wouldnt be allowed to 
> deploy a deb-system.
> 
> 
I understand the existence of such a mind set in management. Goofy attitudes on
the part of suits, empty and ohterwise, are part of the real world.

Perhaps there is a business opportunity for a third party service organization:

Sell official Debian CDs with a fancy label, and privide contract support only
with companies who are customers of record for their particular pressings of 
the Debian CDs. To make the business "credible", it would have to charge at 
least as much for a set of Debian CDs as Microsoft charges for an entry level 
site license. 


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-- 
Paul E Condon   
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ron Johnson]

On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 05:19, Andrew Fowler wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 11:27, ben wrote:
> > On Monday 17 June 2002 12:27 am, Andrew Fowler wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 02:22, Jeronimo Pellegrini wrote:
[snip]
> No intention of retracting it.  But I will expand:  The above was in
> no-way meant to be a measure or comparison of quality, speed etc.
> between contractual support and enthusiasts' mailing lists.  I'd
> personally rather go with mailing lists any day BUT the one who's head
> is for the chop when things go wrong is often not (only) the admin, but
> the IT boss, and in my experience, they'd all rather have the safety net
> below them in the form of a support contract from a nice big company
> that even the board of managers have heard of (e.g. RH) !  

You are right.  However, it's been my experience that, except
for a shining few really good ones, most "help desks" are mediocre
at best.  So that "safety net" usually is an expensive illusion.

-- 
+-+
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| |
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ian D. Stewart]

On 2002.06.17 05:26 Jan Johansson wrote:

> you've got to be new around here. there isn't enough salt in
> the world to
> make your hat tasty enough to retract the last sentence
> above. go directly to
> jail. do not pass go. do not, under any circumstances,
> attempt to collect
> anything at all. bye-bye.

Well, there is a valid point in there. I would never "bet my job" on a
mailing list. I do however "bet my job" on a cpl of redhat systems,
why? Becuase my employer DOES have a support _contract_ with redhat,
making me stay hired even if the box keels over. Would i be able to
sort a deb system out with the help of the list? Heck yes, been doing
unix for a living for some eight years. But i still cant get a
_contract_ on deb support from the list, which is what my employer
requires for a mission critical server.


An alternative you may want to look at if you're serious about 
deploying Debian in a corporate environment is third party support 
services.  Most linux distros, and indeed most free/open source 
software in general, do not provide their own contractual support.  
There are, however, several companies out there that do provide SLA 
contract support as their main business.  LinuxCare and Cygnus before 
they were bought out come to mind.  You may want to shop around, see if 
there are any local companies that might meet your needs as well.


Good luck,
Ian


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Andrew Fowler]

On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 11:27, ben wrote:
> On Monday 17 June 2002 12:27 am, Andrew Fowler wrote:
> > On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 02:22, Jeronimo Pellegrini wrote:
> > IMO there's more to it that just psychology.  There used to be (still is
> > ??) a saying that you wouldn't get fired for buying MS.  Redhat are
> > doing a good job of taking up that position in the Linux world where a
> > support contract acts like a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card since it allows
> > you to pass the buck onto RH if/when things do go wrong.  Mailing lists
> > cannot compete with that.
> >
> 
> you've got to be new around here. there isn't enough salt in the world to 
> make your hat tasty enough to retract the last sentence above. go directly to 
> jail. do not pass go. do not, under any circumstances, attempt to collect 
> anything at all. bye-bye.
> 
> ben
> 

No intention of retracting it.  But I will expand:  The above was in
no-way meant to be a measure or comparison of quality, speed etc.
between contractual support and enthusiasts' mailing lists.  I'd
personally rather go with mailing lists any day BUT the one who's head
is for the chop when things go wrong is often not (only) the admin, but
the IT boss, and in my experience, they'd all rather have the safety net
below them in the form of a support contract from a nice big company
that even the board of managers have heard of (e.g. RH) !  

That's my experience.

Andz


P.S.  Sorry ben, wasn't meant to go to you directly



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RE: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jan Johansson]

> so contractual, however inresponsive, support from a lame-ass 
> linux distro 
> means more to you than actually securing the system? 

Nope. Read my last paragraph. A system provider which can not also offer a 
_legally binding_ support contract is simply not allowed on any production / 
mission critical servers within our organisation. So it doesnt really matter 
that i prefer Debian and Slack over RedHat, i still wouldnt be allowed to 
deploy a deb-system.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship? - support

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya

you ( the company ) can get support contracts for any linux
flavor  one just has to understand what is covered
and what is not  and what the turn around time is
for any "incidents" and how much the company gets dinged..

- both ml and "paid support" has its benefits...

if there's anything that's bad is to pay for support that
you never get and the ml answered it faster and correctly for free..

have fun
alvin

-- as always ( semi-joke  ) let the boss chose what he wants to bet his
   job on... and try to make it work for him/her

-- redhat's support fee of $50K/yr is way way too high for
   what they provide... :-)

On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Jan Johansson wrote:

> > you've got to be new around here. there isn't enough salt in 
> > the world to 
> > make your hat tasty enough to retract the last sentence 
> > above. go directly to 
> > jail. do not pass go. do not, under any circumstances, 
> > attempt to collect 
> > anything at all. bye-bye.
> 
> Well, there is a valid point in there. I would never "bet my job" on a 
> mailing list. I do however "bet my job" on a cpl of redhat systems, why? 
> Becuase my employer DOES have a support _contract_ with redhat, making me 
> stay hired even if the box keels over. Would i be able to sort a deb system 
> out with the help of the list? Heck yes, been doing unix for a living for 
> some eight years. But i still cant get a _contract_ on deb support from the 
> list, which is what my employer requires for a mission critical server.
> 


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[ben]

On Monday 17 June 2002 02:26 am, Jan Johansson wrote:
> > you've got to be new around here. there isn't enough salt in
> > the world to
> > make your hat tasty enough to retract the last sentence
> > above. go directly to
> > jail. do not pass go. do not, under any circumstances,
> > attempt to collect
> > anything at all. bye-bye.
>
> Well, there is a valid point in there. I would never "bet my job" on a
> mailing list. I do however "bet my job" on a cpl of redhat systems, why?
> Becuase my employer DOES have a support _contract_ with redhat, making me
> stay hired even if the box keels over. Would i be able to sort a deb system
> out with the help of the list? Heck yes, been doing unix for a living for
> some eight years. But i still cant get a _contract_ on deb support from the
> list, which is what my employer requires for a mission critical server.

so contractual, however inresponsive, support from a lame-ass linux distro 
means more to you than actually securing the system? 

ben


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jan Johansson]

> you've got to be new around here. there isn't enough salt in 
> the world to 
> make your hat tasty enough to retract the last sentence 
> above. go directly to 
> jail. do not pass go. do not, under any circumstances, 
> attempt to collect 
> anything at all. bye-bye.

Well, there is a valid point in there. I would never "bet my job" on a mailing 
list. I do however "bet my job" on a cpl of redhat systems, why? Becuase my 
employer DOES have a support _contract_ with redhat, making me stay hired even 
if the box keels over. Would i be able to sort a deb system out with the help 
of the list? Heck yes, been doing unix for a living for some eight years. But i 
still cant get a _contract_ on deb support from the list, which is what my 
employer requires for a mission critical server.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[ben]

On Monday 17 June 2002 12:27 am, Andrew Fowler wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 02:22, Jeronimo Pellegrini wrote:
> > I think there's also some psychological thing that goes on here. People
> > think that with the help desk, they'll get an answer within a certain
> > time, while nobody guatrantees that they'll get an answer on a mailing
> > list.
>
> IMO there's more to it that just psychology.  There used to be (still is
> ??) a saying that you wouldn't get fired for buying MS.  Redhat are
> doing a good job of taking up that position in the Linux world where a
> support contract acts like a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card since it allows
> you to pass the buck onto RH if/when things do go wrong.  Mailing lists
> cannot compete with that.
>

you've got to be new around here. there isn't enough salt in the world to 
make your hat tasty enough to retract the last sentence above. go directly to 
jail. do not pass go. do not, under any circumstances, attempt to collect 
anything at all. bye-bye.

ben


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

ben wrote:

Ivo Wever wrote:
[snip]


I think everyone agrees that Debians package and security update systems
are better. Red Hats installation procedure is userfriendlier, but that
doesn't explain why professionals use it. I question the claim that Red
Hat provides better support (average helpdesk personel couldn't have
helped me like (the archives of) this list have). I can't
judge the system configuration system though. Consequently, I can't
think of any reason for using Red Hat other than not knowing
Debian (or fellow employees not knowing Debian). Or have I been
brainwashed by Debian propaganda already?


by your logic--the mass of users=quality of o.s.--we should all be using the 
crap that linux enables us to reject. what point are you attempting to make?



I'm not attempting to make any point. I'm trying to understand why so many
people choose to use another distro.

sincerely,
--
Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[ben]

On Sunday 16 June 2002 04:40 pm, Ivo Wever wrote:
[snip]
> I think everyone agrees that Debians package and security update systems
> are better. Red Hats installation procedure is userfriendlier, but that
> doesn't explain why professionals use it. I question the claim that Red
> Hat provides better support (average helpdesk personel couldn't have
> helped me like (the archives of) this list have). I can't
> judge the system configuration system though. Consequently, I can't
> think of any reason for using Red Hat other than not knowing
> Debian (or fellow employees not knowing Debian). Or have I been
> brainwashed by Debian propaganda already?
>
> sincerely

by your logic--the mass of users=quality of o.s.--we should all be using the 
crap that linux enables us to reject. what point are you attempting to make?

ben


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Andrew Fowler]

On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 02:22, Jeronimo Pellegrini wrote:
> I think there's also some psychological thing that goes on here. People
> think that with the help desk, they'll get an answer within a certain
> time, while nobody guatrantees that they'll get an answer on a mailing
> list.

IMO there's more to it that just psychology.  There used to be (still is
??) a saying that you wouldn't get fired for buying MS.  Redhat are
doing a good job of taking up that position in the Linux world where a
support contract acts like a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card since it allows
you to pass the buck onto RH if/when things do go wrong.  Mailing lists
cannot compete with that.

Andz


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jeronimo Pellegrini]

> I think everyone agrees that Debians package and security update systems
> are better. Red Hats installation procedure is userfriendlier, but that
> doesn't explain why professionals use it.

I can think of some reasons...

- Even being professionals, they want everything to be detected and
  configured automatically (and if not automatically, quite quickly
  and easily), because time == money. They can tell some unexperienced
  guy to install the system without worrying too much (the only time I
  tried this with Debian, the guy partitioned the disk exactly as I
  said. Then put all mount points under / -- which had 80Mb).
  Of course, after it's configured and running, Debian requires little
  attention... But then, the same is true for Red Hat (except for the
  security updates, of course!)
  
- Easy-to-use graphical configuration toole. Instead of managing all 
  possible machines, they can just help the user who asks for help on 
  the phone. ("Yes, click here, click there, now type this number")
  The professional may not have a problem with using vi/emacs/awhtever
  editor, but the usre who will need to actually have his hands on the
  keyboard would probably not be able to use them.
  
- Other similar features. "Allows me to focus on my work and forget as
  much as posible about the system internals", etc. Unfortunately, 
  many professionals can't afford to take into consideration if the 
  system is well-organized internally, or if it follows some strict 
  policy, or if it is tested for a long time... They feel ok if it's
  "tested enough", and just wait for the security updates.
  
- Marketing & related stuff. It's a big brand, and famous for being easy
  to use for people who don't want to know a lot about scripts & system
  internals.
  
- The psychological effect of having new versions of their software
  every 6 months. Even professionals are affected, believe me! Also,
  (and this is my personal experience), the professional may not care,
  but there'll be a lot of pressure from the users to get new versions
  of things...

  I installed Debian on several boxes where I worked. In the beginning, 
  all was fine (we even had a local mirror, and a repository for our own 
  debs). After a while, some of the users (and those were developers -- 
  really not the "clueless" type) wanted to move to Red Hat or Conectiva.
  Easier to manage (so they'd focus more on developing the applications 
  they had to develop) and with newer software (docbook-xml,
  spamassassin, which needs new Perl, ssh [1], and other packages -- one 
  guy even complained about the version of Apache in potato).
  

> I question the claim that Red
> Hat provides better support (average helpdesk personel couldn't have
> helped me like (the archives of) this list have).

I think there's also some psychological thing that goes on here. People
think that with the help desk, they'll get an answer within a certain
time, while nobody guatrantees that they'll get an answer on a mailing
list.
Also, you need to be careful when posting to a mailing list.. You're
talking to volunteers who may just not help at all if you forget about
etiquette. On the oher hand, help desk people already know that their
customers may be quite angry when they call (well, the system isn't
working!)

Some people will of course prefer support from a mailing list, and all
characteristics of Debian. Other just don't (or can't).

> I can't
> judge the system configuration system though. Consequently, I can't
> think of any reason for using Red Hat other than not knowing
> Debian (or fellow employees not knowing Debian).

Well, as I said above, my experience is the opposite... Diversity is
good. :-)

J.


[1] Although the version of ssh v1 in Debian is secure (with lots of
patches), it would require other systems that talk to our system to
use protocol version 1. And we can't guarantee that the Red Hat sshv1 is
secure... But they needed to use it to access our network from home
(or from other networks there), where the distro wasn't Debian. So I 
had to backport the version from Woody -- and keep following the security
announces, and compiling it again every now and then.

-- 


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

Glen Lee Edwards wrote:
>Ivo Wever wrote:
>
>>If the other dists are so terrible that they can't even support the
>>internet connection of a small group of people for three hours a day,
>>then why is anyone using them and using them in a commercial
>>environment at that?
>
> Ivo, there is no such thing as "One size fits all."
> [..]
> I was forced to leave Red Hat because of the two low RAM servers.
> And Red Hat's upgrades are too unreliable,
> [..]
> There are many computer professionals and companies who swear by Red
> Hat.
> [..]
> So just because some Linux distributions are
> highly touted and used by very competent people doesn't mean that
> those distributions will work for everyone.

I'm sorry, but I still don't get it. I don't see reasons for using Red 
Hat other than: "I'm used to it and others use it too".


As far as I can gather, the distinguishing characteristics of distros
are the package system, the security update system, the support system,
the installation procedure and the system configuration system.

I think everyone agrees that Debians package and security update systems
are better. Red Hats installation procedure is userfriendlier, but that
doesn't explain why professionals use it. I question the claim that Red
Hat provides better support (average helpdesk personel couldn't have
helped me like (the archives of) this list have). I can't
judge the system configuration system though. Consequently, I can't
think of any reason for using Red Hat other than not knowing
Debian (or fellow employees not knowing Debian). Or have I been
brainwashed by Debian propaganda already?

sincerely
--
Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Glen Lee Edwards]

On Thursday 06 June 2002 11:35 am, Ivo Wever wrote:
> >[snippety] But as a distribution, it's head and shoulders above the
> >competition.
>
> If the other dists are so terrible that they can't even support the
> internet connection of a small group of people for three hours a day,
> then why is anyone using them and using them in a commercial
> environment at that?

Ivo, there is no such thing as "One size fits all."  

For example, Red Hat worked well for me as a server and a desk top 
environment for a time.  My needs have changed.  I now have too many 
services running off of one main computer, and two servers that don't 
have the RAM needed to install Red Hat.  I was forced to leave Red Hat 
because of the two low RAM servers.  And Red Hat's upgrades are too 
unreliable, and I've been hacked when I've not upgraded.  I can't 
afford to keep an extra non-production box lying around just so I can 
upgrade it to the latest and greatest RH dist., and then move all the 
services over to that box, etc.

There are many computer professionals and companies who swear by Red 
Hat.  These people have the money to have high memory servers and 
plenty of extra computers lying around that they can upgrade off line, 
and once they're upgraded then move all the active services to them.  
I'm not in that position.  So just because some Linux distributions are 
highly touted and used by very competent people doesn't mean that those 
distributions will work for everyone.

I am very happy with Debian's approach.  The provide a stable, reliable 
operating system that runs on all my servers.  Thankfully they upgrade 
individual packages on a regular basis, and, from what I gather, only 
do major upgrades (Potato to Woody, etc) every year or two.  This is 
exactly what my non-profit, non-income system needs.

The Debian developers have my sincere appreciation.  I'll take stable 
over cutting edge any day.

Glen


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Re: [mostly-OT] apt-get on RH, is it worth anything? (was Re: Debian: abandon ship?)

[Derrick 'dman' Hudson]

On Sat, Jun 08, 2002 at 09:26:54AM -0400, Arthur H. Johnson II wrote:
| 
| I use apt-get on my Red Hat servers that need auto updating. 

How much memory do they have?  How long does an 'apt-get ' take
to run, compared to debian with equivalent hardware?  (not including
any network latency, just the "reading package lists" part)

| I dont trust RH Network.  It has broken at least a dozen servers
| that I know of, none of them are mine of course.

Last time I tried up2date it was less that worthless.  (admittedly
that was about 2 years ago)  It had almost no packages it could
update, and didn't work half of the time (or more).

| You can get a really great implimentation of apt-get for Red Hat at
| http://www.freshrpms.net.

See my first post in this mini-thread.  That's where I got apt from,
and it was worthless on the box I had available to me.

-D

-- 

The truly righteous man attains life,
but he who pursues evil goes to his death.
Proverbs 11:19
 
GnuPG key : http://dman.ddts.net/~dman/public_key.gpg



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Re: [mostly-OT] apt-get on RH, is it worth anything? (was Re: Debian: abandon ship?)

[Arthur H. Johnson II]

I use apt-get on my Red Hat servers that need auto updating.  I dont trust
RH Network.  It has broken at least a dozen servers that I know of, none
of them are mine of course.  You can get a really great implimentation of
apt-get for Red Hat at http://www.freshrpms.net.

-- 
Arthur H. Johnson II
Catechist, St John Catholic Church, Davison MI USA
Debian GNU/Linux Advocate, Window Maker Advocate
President, Genesee County Linux Users Group

IRC:  [EMAIL PROTECTED],#windowmaker
IRC:  [EMAIL PROTECTED],#debian
YIM:  arthurjohnson
AIM:  bytor4232
ICQ:  31770438

On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, Glen Lee Edwards wrote:

> On Thu 06 Jun 02 15:45, Derrick 'dman' Hudson wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 12:48:15PM -0600, user list wrote:
> > [snip]
> >
> > | The reasons I like [debian] are:
> > | 1. apt-get
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > | I'll note in passing that the first reason has lost some edge now
> > | that RH 7.3 comes with apt-get and that there are ports to older RH
> > | releases.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >
> > Is apt-get on RH 7.3 actually usable?
>
> Red Hat isn't likely to seriously support apt-get.  They're pushing
> up2date, which updates your computer for you.  It's free for the first
> computer you sign up for, but there's a fee for additional computers.
>
> I tried up2date on one server.  It never worked.  It sometimes
> downloaded the files I needed to update, sometimes died during the
> download, kicking out an error message.  Rarely were any of the new
> packages installed.  The install process usually died due to dependency
> problems.
>
> Based on my experience with Red Hat's automated update process, I would
> never trust it on a production server.
>
> Glen
>
>
>


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Erik Steffl]

Jeronimo Pellegrini wrote:
...
> Windows may be not behave decently at all, but it sells as it is, and
> it's not only marketing. I can see some of the reasons:
> 
> 1 - They do invest in their product, but thy'll target the users and do
> whatever they want.The UI, for example, that most hackers find terrible,
> works well for most "clueless" users. Microsoft gives people what they
...

  as far as I can tell that's not true. it doesn't work well, they
cannot do basic stuff even after years of use - they just repeat few
tasks they learned (talking about clueless users). I see them completely
fooled by windows interface again and again...

> 
> 2 - Development tools. This is how they built the empire. Don't exepct
> all developers to be brilliant. Build tools with graphical
> interfaces and a lot of automated stuff. No complexity -- languages
> like VB are just perfect for the person who just wants to see their
> "Hello world" program working. They won't understand too much about
> the underlying framework. These people will gradually move to making
> useful programs (well, if pople use them they're useful) in VB (or
> ASP, or wahtever).
> The point is: if you target the *good* developer, you won't sell too
> much. And if you don't sell a lot of compilers and devel tools, you
> won't have a lot of applications written for your OS (who's going to
> write the applications? You, alone?) Ironically, Microsoft has used
> the "power of thousands of developers all over the world" to build
> their Empire. Hm, suddenly "Open Source" comes to mind. Wow.
> Subtle. Efficient. People usually don't see this, but it's an
> absolutely important point. Let the clueless develop. They'll build
> an empire for you.

  consider how big the unix-side empire is (I mean the free software
mostly), built using mostly vi/cc/make (with little marketing, compared
to ms win). while people might be willng to code for windows for the
money they don't have to be dragge to unix, in fact volunteers built
unix(-like) environment (=linux, gnu and the rest). perhaps the
underlying quality of system has something to do with it...

> 
> Now... See that quality is not necessarily what people want. Maybe
> ease-of-use is a priority to them.

  most people are simply too passive to resist what's rammed down their
throats. it doesn't have anything to do with properties/features of
windows.

  example - at my job we use win nt workstations to connect to unix
servers, therefore middle mouse button is fairly important (to paste
selection). however I am probably the only person who has three button
mouse, everybody else struggles with emulation, trying to click both
buttons at the same time, loosing selection in the process... (they
didn't even find that shift-ins pastes just like in the windows
programs!) day after day after day... all while worshipping the god of
blinking 12:00

  not that this matters that much, I basically agree with all your
points...

erik


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jeronimo Pellegrini]

On Fri, Jun 07, 2002 at 11:18:01AM -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> Probably.  More significant though, is marketing.  Most of us here agree
> that Windows isn't the best OS around, but it's got the largest userbase
> because of marketing and because it's what comes preinstalled on most PCs.

"Marketing" here means a *lot*, doesn't it?

> Is it much of a stretch to assume that Red Hat is the most-used Linux
> distro because of marketing and being the most-often-preinstalled distro
> on PCs that come with Linux?

I'd like to say marketing shouldn't be seen as just "advertisement,
advocacy", and that sort of thing. Just a few comments about Windows and
Red Hat (and all other companies who manage to make money today).

*** 
See that I'm not a big fan of any of them. I'm just saying that
this is what they do to gain market share -- and it seems to work quite
well.
***

Windows may be not behave decently at all, but it sells as it is, and
it's not only marketing. I can see some of the reasons:

1 - They do invest in their product, but thy'll target the users and do
whatever they want.The UI, for example, that most hackers find terrible,
works well for most "clueless" users. Microsoft gives people what they 
want, and will really not care about what people do not want. They 
didn't have to worry about security until now, for example, because 
their users did not complain about that (I know lots of banks that
absolutely trust Microsoft products).
They get statistics from their Help Desk, see what they may have
missed, ask users about their products, and then do what they want.
If you do what the user wants, you make it more likely that he'll
stick with your product.
Nothing new here -- just standard business procedure. They've just 
been absolutely competent in that.

2 - Development tools. This is how they built the empire. Don't exepct
all developers to be brilliant. Build tools with graphical
interfaces and a lot of automated stuff. No complexity -- languages
like VB are just perfect for the person who just wants to see their
"Hello world" program working. They won't understand too much about
the underlying framework. These people will gradually move to making
useful programs (well, if pople use them they're useful) in VB (or
ASP, or wahtever).
The point is: if you target the *good* developer, you won't sell too
much. And if you don't sell a lot of compilers and devel tools, you
won't have a lot of applications written for your OS (who's going to
write the applications? You, alone?) Ironically, Microsoft has used
the "power of thousands of developers all over the world" to build
their Empire. Hm, suddenly "Open Source" comes to mind. Wow.
Subtle. Efficient. People usually don't see this, but it's an
absolutely important point. Let the clueless develop. They'll build
an empire for you.

Now... See that quality is not necessarily what people want. Maybe
ease-of-use is a priority to them.
That does not mean Microsoft isn't investing in quality. They need this
so they won't get lost in a bunch of crappy and unmaintainable code.
That's why they built NT -- which runs on a microkernel written by Dave
Cutler (this means a lot, trust me). The win32 system on top of it may
be crappy, but the kernel's gotten absolutely better. Did yo unotice
that from NT to XP, Windows got gradually more stable? My bet is:
they're gradually replacing crappy code with new code.
I'd guess that quite soon, "stability" will not be an advantage of BSD 
or Linux over Windows.

Red Hat does something similar to #1. They are obviously better than
Microsoft, but still: they'll give what their users want. They'll give
them graphical config tools, for example. They may not need to give
their users "perfect" packages... Just goo denough so they won't
complain too much.
And one more thing they give to their users is a periodic release.
New software, new versions of software... A reason for people to
upgrade -- and also to be compatible with all their friends, who did
upgrade already.


You see... It all has to do with "quality x quantity". Want lots of
people to ue your product? Well, give up quality. Not pnly because you won't
"be able to ship quality products quick", but also because your users
may show you than they're not interested in your concept of quality.
What they call quality is "something that workd (most of the time) and
is easy to use, and has new things every now and they, so I can
satisfy that little impulse inside me that makes me look for new things".

I do believe, however, that it is possible to have something that does
have some quality, and that lots of people will use. I didn't see
MacOS/X, but it seems to be (although proprietary) something to look at.
Get something that has quality and make it interesting for people.
(Remember Corel, Stormix, etc?)

Just thought I'd share this with you guys. :-)

J.

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Dave Sherohman]

On Fri, Jun 07, 2002 at 12:12:11AM +0200, Ivo Wever wrote:
> That doesn't explain why other dists are used in production environments. It
> doesn't explain why RedHat has such a huge market share. Or am I really
> overestimating the capabilities of the majority of the admins?

Probably.  More significant though, is marketing.  Most of us here agree
that Windows isn't the best OS around, but it's got the largest userbase
because of marketing and because it's what comes preinstalled on most PCs.
Is it much of a stretch to assume that Red Hat is the most-used Linux
distro because of marketing and being the most-often-preinstalled distro
on PCs that come with Linux?

(Not an anti-RH flame, although I personally don't care for any rpm-based
distro I've encountered, just a reminder that, in the modern world,
marketing seems to be a more powerful force than technical merit.)

-- 
When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists
have already won. - reverius

Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Tom Swiss


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Re: [mostly-OT] apt-get on RH, is it worth anything? (was Re: Debian: abandon ship?)

[Jamin W . Collins]

On Thu, 6 Jun 2002 23:55:31 -0500
"Glen Lee Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > Is apt-get on RH 7.3 actually usable?  
> 
> Red Hat isn't likely to seriously support apt-get.  They're pushing 
> up2date, which updates your computer for you.  It's free for the first 
> computer you sign up for, but there's a fee for additional computers.

One reason I left Red Hat for Debian.
 
> I tried up2date on one server.  It never worked.  It sometimes 
> downloaded the files I needed to update, sometimes died during the 
> download, kicking out an error message.  Rarely were any of the new 
> packages installed.  The install process usually died due to dependency 
> problems.

Yet another reason.

> Based on my experience with Red Hat's automated update process, I would 
> never trust it on a production server.

You've very adequately summed up the key reasons for my replacing all my
Red Hat installations (both personal and professional) with Debian.

-- 
Jamin W. Collins


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Sam Varghese]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 02:07:12PM +0100, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:24:27AM +0200, Ivo Wever wrote (slightly
> reformatted):
> > Sam wrote:
> > 
> > >And here's a third - http://www.vicnet.net.au/~rpds/
> > >
> > >There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in
> > >Australia who get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are
> > >members of the Rural Peninsula Disability Support group - they are
> > >provided computers and pay $11 Australian a month for three hours
> > >access per day. This is the kind of charitable project which can
> > >*never* afford costly server hardware or software - were it not for
> > >the Debian project, we would not be able to run something like this,
> >
> > I'm sorry, but this argument isn't valid as a defense for Debian in
> > particular. You could use any other linux distro for this server; I'm
> > certain you could find a similar project somewhere in the world where
> > someone uses Redhat or Suse or ...  
> 
> True. But Sam uses Debian. He (apparantly) chose to. Lots of other
> people have chosen Debian over the other alternatives. The reasons for
> his choice are not necessarily related to elderly people. It could be
> freedom, stability, ease of maintenance, performance, price, openess,
> the nice logo or whatever...

We have a P133 with two one-gig drives as our server. My experiences with Red 
Hat have not
exactly filled me with confidence. Slackware would have been okay but upgrading
even a single package takes a lot of time - which I, as a father of two 
(including 
a teenage daughter) - and a full-time job don't really have. I have to
administer this box remotely on a 56k line (which is all that I can afford).
Debian has done an admirable job for us for nearly three years now. 

> > Frankly I am appalled by someone trying to use an emotional argument,
> > involving elderly disabled people, to support Debian. 
> 
> Using an emotional argument is not necessarily a bad thing (elderly
> people or not). Debian *is* different, *because* of the emotions built
> into the social contract. After all, freedom can very much be considered
> emotional...

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was trying to bring emotion into the
discussion - I was merely stating facts. No matter what motivation the
developers have, at the ground level there are some very human, true stories.

> > I guess we should rethink Debian if it turned out some neo-nazi group
> > used our software on their servers?
> 
> Of course not. And I'm not willing to rethink Debian even when elderly
> people use it.

Quite often these old folk thank me and the other volunteers who help at the
project - and a lot of the credit, frankly, belongs elsewhere. I just thought it
was an appropriate thread to pass along some of the credit to those whom it is 
really due.

Sam
-- 
Sam Varghese
http://www.gnubies.com
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a
life spent doing nothing.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Brian Nelson]

Tom Cook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On  0, Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I would define a major change to be something like the jump to gcc-3.1
>> or a libc6 version change, ie. something the affects nearly everything
>> in the archive.  I wouldn't consider a library that affects 3 or 4 other
>> packages a major change.
>> 
>> Why not just have point releases work in a similar manner to the
>> testing->stable procedure, but on a smaller scale?  For example, a new
>> testing pool based on the stable pool (called proposed-updates or
>> whatever) could be opened for a month or so, during which updates and
>> new packages could be uploaded.  After a month it could be frozen, and
>> then for the next 2 months bugs could be worked out.  If something like
>> the upgrade to libsensors2 broke too many things, it could be backed
>> out.
>> 
>> Then, after 3 months (theoretically, of course), a point release with
>> newer packages could be available.
>
> How will that be better and suffer from less release schedule problems
> than testing?  As soon as the proposed-updates pool is opened, every
> developer will want his/her package in there, because it is, of course,
> important.  Then testing will become neglected, and every new package
> will just go into proposed-updates, which then doesn't get released
> because we're waiting on bug fixes, and security infrastructure...
> what's the difference?

Basically, there would be two package development trees:
unstable/testing and stable/stable-updates.  Unstable/testing would be
for development for the next major Debian release (as in woody, potato,
slink...) with stuff compiled with gcc-3.1, etc.  Stable/stable-updates
would be analogous to the rX releases, as in 2.2r5, but with more
changes than we currently see.  It would be similar to the potato +
unofficial updates (2.4 kernel, XF4.1, etc.) situation we have now, but
with those updates actually being supported.

There's no reason testing would be neglected.  It would contain the
latest software and would be the most interesting distribution for a
developer.  The stable-updates basically be back-ports of testing
packages, when they could be back-ported.  Over time, the stable tree
would become stale and harder to update as it would become harder to add
updates without too much breakage.  According to my original proposal,
stable-updates would only be unfrozen for one month out of every three,
so every package couldn't be added there all the time.

Developers would be encouraged to show some restrain and not make huge
updates to packages in stable-updates.  Furthermore, if packages in
stable-updates were too buggy for release, they would simply be removed
by the release manager and the currently stable version would remain
unchanged.

The security infrastructure would never have to change because no new
arches would be added to a point release.  Since a major stable release
would never be made without an adequate security infrastructure already
in place, this is a non-issue.

-- 
Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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Re: [mostly-OT] apt-get on RH, is it worth anything? (was Re: Debian: abandon ship?)

[Glen Lee Edwards]

On Thu 06 Jun 02 15:45, Derrick 'dman' Hudson wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 12:48:15PM -0600, user list wrote:
> [snip]
>
> | The reasons I like [debian] are:
> | 1. apt-get
>
> [snip]
>
> | I'll note in passing that the first reason has lost some edge now
> | that RH 7.3 comes with apt-get and that there are ports to older RH
> | releases.
>
> [snip]
>
>
> Is apt-get on RH 7.3 actually usable?  

Red Hat isn't likely to seriously support apt-get.  They're pushing 
up2date, which updates your computer for you.  It's free for the first 
computer you sign up for, but there's a fee for additional computers.

I tried up2date on one server.  It never worked.  It sometimes 
downloaded the files I needed to update, sometimes died during the 
download, kicking out an error message.  Rarely were any of the new 
packages installed.  The install process usually died due to dependency 
problems.

Based on my experience with Red Hat's automated update process, I would 
never trust it on a production server.

Glen


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Tom Cook]

On  0, Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> David Z Maze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[snip]
> > (There's also the problem that each of the developers has their own
> > personal pet packages that they'd really like to make the "point
> > release", but it can't happen for everyone's packages, and someone
> > needs to make the decision.  Hypothetically, to pick one of my
> > packages, there could be a new lm-sensors release.  I say, "it's
> > important because it supports 17 new temperature sensor chips!"  But,
> > it includes libsensors2, which replaces libsensors1 and affects three
> > or four other packages; is it a "major change" or not?)
> 
> I would define a major change to be something like the jump to gcc-3.1
> or a libc6 version change, ie. something the affects nearly everything
> in the archive.  I wouldn't consider a library that affects 3 or 4 other
> packages a major change.
> 
> Why not just have point releases work in a similar manner to the
> testing->stable procedure, but on a smaller scale?  For example, a new
> testing pool based on the stable pool (called proposed-updates or
> whatever) could be opened for a month or so, during which updates and
> new packages could be uploaded.  After a month it could be frozen, and
> then for the next 2 months bugs could be worked out.  If something like
> the upgrade to libsensors2 broke too many things, it could be backed
> out.
> 
> Then, after 3 months (theoretically, of course), a point release with
> newer packages could be available.

How will that be better and suffer from less release schedule problems
than testing?  As soon as the proposed-updates pool is opened, every
developer will want his/her package in there, because it is, of course,
important.  Then testing will become neglected, and every new package
will just go into proposed-updates, which then doesn't get released
because we're waiting on bug fixes, and security infrastructure...
what's the difference?

Tom
-- 
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Information Technology Services, The University of Adelaide

"A child of five could understand this.  Fetch me a child of five."
- Groucho Marx

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RE: Debian: abandon ship?

[synthespian]

Em Qua, 2002-06-05 às 18:41, Brooks R. Robinson escreveu:
> | Uh huh.  And get cracked tomorrow because security updates are *not*
> | being made for woody at this time.  There is a list of approximately a
> | dozen *known* security problems with woody that will be dealt with
> | *later*.  Updates are not propogating from sid to woody at all right
> | now, even for security reasons.  Woody is probably at its most insecure
> | point in the development process right now.
> |
> | Do not "Just do an apt-get dist upgrade and get it over with" unless you
> | have no reason to care about security or are willing to do security
> | investigations and fixes on your own.
> 
> It was not my intention to lead users astray, my intention was to enlighten
> people to the fact that testing is, for the most part, not going to change.
> The security fixes are flowing into sid.  It's not a big trick to get notice
> from security-announce and grab a few pacakges from sid in the mean time.
> I'll grant that it's not as easy, but doable.
> 
> Farewell,
> 
> Brooks
> 
Hi-

At a bare * minimum * there should be some policy to * advise * and *
guide * Woody users to do what you propose above.

I've never seen that...No clear * guidance *. And _please_ don't flame
me with the usual: "well, it's your responsibility, etc, etc, Debian is
not for everyone, etc. etc, blah, blah".

But this is what happens when developers only see things from their
standpoint. I mean this in the sense that they're more security savvy
than the usual user. 

BTW, I would like to say here that I'm not "trashing" developers - no
way. But how many are really proficient in security matters? Personally,
I've known developers who are lax in security issues...Let alone common
users...

Henry
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

you wrote:

Ivo Wever wrote:

> If the other dists are so terrible that they can't even support the 
internet

> connection of a small group of people for three hours a day, then why is
> anyone using them and using them in a commercial environment at that?

[Personal story about liking several dists]

Debian can never compete with this but that's alright.  Let the newbies
get their feet wet and we will be their second Linux distro.

That doesn't explain why other dists are used in production environments. It
doesn't explain why RedHat has such a huge market share. Or am I really
overestimating the capabilities of the majority of the admins?

sincerely,

Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Brian Nelson]

David Z Maze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> I agree.  I think stable should be able to get more fixes and updates
>> than just security fixes.  It's well known that much of the software in
>> stable is quite buggy and years behind the upstream source (Mozilla M18,
>> for example) but cannot be fixed until a security hole is found in that
>> software.  I think regular points releases, every month or two,
>> containing new software and updates to older software, would be great.
>> No major changes would be permitted of course, but there's no reason
>> most desktop software couldn't be updated in stable.
>
> This came up on debian-devel not too long ago.  Someone proposed a
> "point release" to woody that would have gcc-3.1, GNOME 2.0, new KDE,
> and "no major changes to the distribution" -- even though this would
> require recompiling everything with a relatively untested compiler,
> and presenting a relatively untested desktop environment to new
> users.  Sure, it's good PR to have a "release" with ooh-new-and-shiny
> components, but it's less clear that it'll actually *work*, which
> should be the point.

I saw that post, but I didn't think it was well thought-out.

> (There's also the problem that each of the developers has their own
> personal pet packages that they'd really like to make the "point
> release", but it can't happen for everyone's packages, and someone
> needs to make the decision.  Hypothetically, to pick one of my
> packages, there could be a new lm-sensors release.  I say, "it's
> important because it supports 17 new temperature sensor chips!"  But,
> it includes libsensors2, which replaces libsensors1 and affects three
> or four other packages; is it a "major change" or not?)

I would define a major change to be something like the jump to gcc-3.1
or a libc6 version change, ie. something the affects nearly everything
in the archive.  I wouldn't consider a library that affects 3 or 4 other
packages a major change.

Why not just have point releases work in a similar manner to the
testing->stable procedure, but on a smaller scale?  For example, a new
testing pool based on the stable pool (called proposed-updates or
whatever) could be opened for a month or so, during which updates and
new packages could be uploaded.  After a month it could be frozen, and
then for the next 2 months bugs could be worked out.  If something like
the upgrade to libsensors2 broke too many things, it could be backed
out.

Then, after 3 months (theoretically, of course), a point release with
newer packages could be available.

-- 
Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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[mostly-OT] apt-get on RH, is it worth anything? (was Re: Debian: abandon ship?)

[Derrick 'dman' Hudson]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 12:48:15PM -0600, user list wrote:
[snip]
| The reasons I like [debian] are:
| 1. apt-get
[snip]
| I'll note in passing that the first reason has lost some edge now that
| RH 7.3 comes with apt-get and that there are ports to older RH releases.
[snip]


Is apt-get on RH 7.3 actually usable?  Not very long ago I had
requirements for using a RH box, so I installed the apt-for-rpm rpm
from http://freshrpms.net/apt/.  The system was a P90 with 96MB RAM
and 10GB disk.  apt was absolutely worthless on that system for two
reasons
1)  RH 7.2 repositories had very few packages (that I needed)
2)  The porters royally screwed up.
3)  it's as out-dated as potato

To expand on #2 -- I have a 486SX with 8MB RAM and 230MB hdd at home.
It is running debian, and apt (both potato's and woody's) works just
fine amidst the thrashing.  The thrashing is wholly expected on such
hardware.  Since the RH 7.2 repositories were lacking I tried the
rawhide ones.  A good idea, right?  Kinda like trying woody or sid
when potato doesn't cut it.  On that machine with 96MB RAM (a 1200%
increase compared to the debian box!) apt-get dies with an
out-of-memory error.  The problem was that apt-for-rpm was trying to
mmap() the Packages file and it couldn't.  Why is that such a big
deal?  I couldn't do anything with apt if the rawhide repository
was in my sources.list.

#3 isn't such a big deal, but after being used to woody's apt, with
Preferences and all, seeing that potato's apt is the best thing to hit
RH since sliced bread ... well, you know what I mean.

Debian still maintains a strong edge over RH even in the apt arena.

Oh, BTW, I just checked the RH 7.3 package list on redhat.com, and apt
isn't mentioned anywhere.

-D

-- 

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to
all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.  But when he
asks he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave
of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[user list]

Hi, 
I just thought I'd add my $.02, or what ever is the appropriate monetary 
conversion, in this inevitable discussion.

First, I am a user. I write in fortran by choice, c and c++, in the past
when I was teaching, by necessity. I am not a systems programmer so my
contribution to Debian would, at best, be an application or two. Currently,
I use Debian everywhere except on my Beowulf for reasons I will get to.

I'm writing because I like Debian a lot, I think it has been a remarkable 
accomplishment, and I worry about its future general utility for me. 
The reasons I like it are:
1. apt-get
2. The remarkable support on this and other lists
3. The file organization
4. Its historic stability

I'll note in passing that the first reason has lost some edge now that
RH 7.3 comes with apt-get and that there are ports to older RH releases.
The reason I worry is currency. I am not really concerned about the roughly
5 week delay since May 1, but the nearly two year cycle between potato and
woody. I'm sure all developers are not only thinking about this but trying
to address this. Indeed, it may be that the infrastructure put in place
will address this wait. I have read some but not all of the messages in this
thread and, boy, there are some strong emotions. I hope that over time some
of the users comments and suggestions will be taken seriously. 
Some developers have pointed out that woody is essentially 
released. For my home computer this is true. However, if the security is not
ready then, for professional uses, where one sits behind a firewall and is 
required to keep up with security, it will soon not be a viable choice. I say
soon because I am assuming, possibly incorrectly, that all security issues
have been addressed up to, say, May 1. This puts all of us about a month 
behind. This is OK but not great. As time goes on, I will have to change. 
What is even more problematic is that Woody is not itself up to date with 
XF86. I have no choice but to move to 4.2 because my graphics card is not
supported in 4.1 . I have tried to use some debian packages from Columbia 
University, but these have several broken pieces wrt the debian gnome packages.
I have compiled 4.2 from source and this works pretty well, although it leads
to problems with Star Office. I continue to tinker to get the system working
well enough. That is not what I do for a living. I'm supposed to do science.
I'm not trying to be a scold. I'm relating what it means to be a pretty 
loyal Debian user at this point. I am also assuming that the Developer 
Community actually wants Debian used everywhere, so, even though some of the
responses could have been on the 'Developer Knows Best' show, I think they
will take the user messages seriously. The Developer Community will have 
to decide whether the delay was an infrastructure issue or whether this
cycle is indemic to a distribution with so many packages and so many 
architectures. If the former is true (as I ardently hope) then this message 
is so much hot air. If not, then, unless you want an ever-shrinking user base,
you will have to make some hard choices. It is true and noteworthy that there 
are so many architectures supported by Debian. I sense an either-or mind set 
about this. Either all of the architectures are released at the same time
or you scrap them. Why not have different release dates for different 
architectures? As it stands, an architecture with a miniscule user base holds
up everyone else. Anthony Towns has already bitten the bullet and thrown
out a number of packages from woody because they were not ready. Why not take
a similarly pragmatic approach on architectures. 

Another way to deal with this problem is to decide that there some crucial
packages (like, for instance XFree86) that have to be up to date in stable.
That is, you actually update stable to keep people from walking away because
their hardware isn't supported. That way you could take you time on some
big development issues and still keep a relatively well-served user community.

As I said above, if infrastructure was the problem, and the succeeding releases
are 6-8 months apart, you can throw these suggestions in the garbage. If is 
isn't then if something like these two suggestions is not implemented you 
could, at the least and of necessity, lose many workplace i86 machines.


Art Edwards

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 02:15:34PM +0200, Kerstin Hoef-Emden wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
> 
> > Debian is run by a few hundred programmers who do this for fun.
> > Not profit.  Because we do this for fun we choose where to spend our
> > time.  For some people the mips architecture and the required
> > hacking is fun.  Others are constrained by the hardware available to
> > them (some of our developers had m68k only access).
> 
> This one point, why Debian is different to other distris, it is not
> as i386-centered. In giving up its multiplatform support, it would loose
> one of its most att

Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, Ivo Wever wrote:

> If the other dists are so terrible that they can't even support the internet
> connection of a small group of people for three hours a day, then why is
> anyone using them and using them in a commercial environment at that?

Fwiw, as well as a Debian developer, I am a RHCE, and I really lie
Mandrae.  I even still hae slackware running under vmware.  As far as I'm
concerned a win for one of the other distributins is not a loss for
Debian.  It's all Linux so it's all good.  I believe the main reason is
marketing.  It's getting ridiculously easy to find a Linux distribution.
Last weekend I was going shopping and there in my lcal supermarkets
two-shelf computer section with the "1001 crappy windows shareware
programs" CDs and the latest shoot-e-ups was a Redhat 7.2 box.  In a
supermarket!  As some whose first introduction to Linux many moons ago was
downloading 40 floppies worth of slackware this just knocked me out.

Debian can never compete with this but that's alright.  Let the newbies
get their feet wet and we will be their second Linux distro.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
It's a girl! See the pictures - http://www.braincells.com/shailaja/


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jeronimo Pellegrini]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 12:51:04PM -0400, David Z Maze wrote:
> This came up on debian-devel not too long ago.  Someone proposed a
> "point release" to woody that would have gcc-3.1, GNOME 2.0, new KDE,
> and "no major changes to the distribution" -- even though this would
> require recompiling everything with a relatively untested compiler,
> and presenting a relatively untested desktop environment to new
> users.  Sure, it's good PR to have a "release" with ooh-new-and-shiny
> components, but it's less clear that it'll actually *work*, which
> should be the point.

Not only good PR... I'd say it's also useful. Using potato, we had problems 
using docbook XML (we had to backport the packages from unstable), to compile 
an ICQ jabber transport (needs gcc 3.*), and some other problems that I
do not recollect immediately.

But I do understand that there are packaging problems involved, of
course! I don't think that blindly adding things to stable would work,
and selecting what to add may require time and attention from
developers... But I do think there must exist some solution to this.

J.

-- 


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Francisco Fialho]

After all the postings that I've read...

What I can advice all to do is:

Lets give a route to this "abandoned ship"!
Lets stop the talking and start with some
action... I don't beleive we can gather
every Debian user and ask for his or her opinion...

If we send the image of a desorganized distro, how
does anyone expects it to be usefull?!

Everybody is acting like Debian is having
serious financial problems like the guys at the
Telecom area.

We are not here to judge the use of Debian, but
yes to develop it and make it THE best GNU/LINUX
distribution, and all of us do it for fun, and not for profit.
We do it because it makes us feel good!
If you feel uncomfortable with that... its
your problem! Find something else to do!

If their isn't anybody willing to guide this
ship... I propose we find that person.

Lets work with what we got!
And stop the talking!

regards

Francisco





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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jamin W . Collins]

On Thu, 06 Jun 2002 18:35:28 +0200
"Ivo Wever" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Glen wrote:
> >[snippety] But as a distribution, it's head and shoulders above the
> >competition.
> If the other dists are so terrible that they can't even support the
> internet connection of a small group of people for three hours a day,
> then why is anyone using them and using them in a commercial environment
> at that?

Again, I think you missed the point of this his post.  It has to do with
ease of maintainence and support of his hardware.  Debian appears to (in
the original author's opinion) be one of the few (if only) distribution
that adequately fit the needs of the project.

-- 
Jamin W. Collins


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Michel Loos]

Em Qui, 2002-06-06 às 13:35, Ivo Wever escreveu:
> Glen wrote:
> 
> >Ivo, you're totally missing the point here.
> 
> Yes, you are right. I shouldn't have let my personal crusade against
> arguments from emotion enter this thread.
> 
> >[snippety] But as a distribution, it's head and shoulders above the
> >competition.
> If the other dists are so terrible that they can't even support the internet
> connection of a small group of people for three hours a day, then why is
> anyone using them and using them in a commercial environment at that?
> 

Because a dummy can install them (many so called sysadms comming from
M$world are in fact dummies). 
Most other distros are absolutely not suited for servers and even much
less for remote management, but they are PnP for the domestic user (and
the dummy pseudo sysadm)

Michel.

> sincerely
> 
> Ivo Wever
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
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> 



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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[David Z Maze]

Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I agree.  I think stable should be able to get more fixes and updates
> than just security fixes.  It's well known that much of the software in
> stable is quite buggy and years behind the upstream source (Mozilla M18,
> for example) but cannot be fixed until a security hole is found in that
> software.  I think regular points releases, every month or two,
> containing new software and updates to older software, would be great.
> No major changes would be permitted of course, but there's no reason
> most desktop software couldn't be updated in stable.

This came up on debian-devel not too long ago.  Someone proposed a
"point release" to woody that would have gcc-3.1, GNOME 2.0, new KDE,
and "no major changes to the distribution" -- even though this would
require recompiling everything with a relatively untested compiler,
and presenting a relatively untested desktop environment to new
users.  Sure, it's good PR to have a "release" with ooh-new-and-shiny
components, but it's less clear that it'll actually *work*, which
should be the point.

(There's also the problem that each of the developers has their own
personal pet packages that they'd really like to make the "point
release", but it can't happen for everyone's packages, and someone
needs to make the decision.  Hypothetically, to pick one of my
packages, there could be a new lm-sensors release.  I say, "it's
important because it supports 17 new temperature sensor chips!"  But,
it includes libsensors2, which replaces libsensors1 and affects three
or four other packages; is it a "major change" or not?)

-- 
David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

Glen wrote:


Ivo, you're totally missing the point here.


Yes, you are right. I shouldn't have let my personal crusade against
arguments from emotion enter this thread.


[snippety] But as a distribution, it's head and shoulders above the
competition.

If the other dists are so terrible that they can't even support the internet
connection of a small group of people for three hours a day, then why is
anyone using them and using them in a commercial environment at that?

sincerely

Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

you wrote:

Colin Watson wrote:
> Ivo Wever wrote:
> > involving elderly disabled people, to support Debian. I guess we
> > should rethink Debian if it turned out some neo-nazi group used our
> > software on their servers?

Godwin's Law; end of thread please?

Oh sorry about that, I should have written 'a militant nationalistic group that
wants to kill their political enemies'.

sincerely,

Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship

[Carl Fink]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 11:06:17PM -0700, Jim McCloskey wrote:

> The graduate students and faculty members who use these machines day
> in day out couldn't give a flying fuck, for the most part, whether
> they run `stable', `testing', or `unstable'. They don't know, and they
> have no reason to care, and they will never post to this list. They
> have no reason to, because things just work.

Working is good.  Having relatively current software is, for some of
us, important.  I gather your audience doesn't need, say, GCC 3 or
KDE2 or a current Mozilla?
-- 
Carl Fink   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I-Con's Science and Technology Programming



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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Glen Lee Edwards]

Ivo Wever writes:
>Sam wrote:
>
>>And here's a third - http://www.vicnet.net.au/~rpds/
>>
>>There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in Australia who
>>get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are members of the Rural
>I'm sorry, but this argument isn't valid as a defense for Debian in 
>particular. You
>could use any other linux distro for this server; I'm certain you could 

Ivo, you're totally missing the point here.  You can *not* use any Linux distro
on any server.  Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse won't install on two of my servers,
which have 16 Meg ram.  Debian installed and configured with no problems.  Red
Hat is an absolute nightmare to administer.  I have 4+ years experience with Red
Hat, so don't tell me I'm wrong.  When as a newbie I went with Red Hat I gave up
my personal life. I spent all my free time babysitting the Red Hat servers.
Debian has easily installed on my servers, package upgrades are a snap - I'm not
constantly fighting the dependency problem! -big smile-

The only real weakness that Debian has is that it doesn't have Red Hat's
marketing.  But as a distribution, it's head and shoulders above the
competition.

And God bless those elderly folks who now have Internet access because of
Debian!

Glen


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Rich Rudnick]

On Thu, 2002-06-06 at 05:37, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:24:27AM +0200, Ivo Wever wrote:
> > involving elderly disabled people, to support Debian. I guess we
> > should rethink Debian if it turned out some neo-nazi group used our
> > software on their servers?
> 

Godwin's Law; end of thread please?




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RE: Debian: abandon ship?

[Costa, Todd \(DMH\)]

> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
> 
> 
> At the last meeting of the Linux Workshop Cologne, we had more Debian
> than other users, although some people from this list claim 
> Debian to be
> delayed. Seemingly there are more important things than just being
> up-to-date with the latest software packages.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Kerstin


I agree also that there are more important things besides having the latest
and greatest. Debian Stable is what I use today and it has yet to fail me.

I can wait for the next release of (Woody) Stable because when it is
released I will have no doubt that it will work. Debians reputation of being
rock solid is what I want and how I found it to be great. Try using a half
baked distro that's released with annoying problems like I have had with RH
and MDK because they are trying to beat each other on the Desktop or by some
marketing race. I'll trust DB for my real work over the others any day.

The DB developers, etc, I am certain are doing their best to get things
right. DB separates itself from others by adhering to good standards. Its
that reason why I believe there is a delay because they are taking the time
to do it right the first time. It won't be perfect but it will be solid for
sure.

Todd


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Karl E. Jorgensen]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:24:27AM +0200, Ivo Wever wrote (slightly
reformatted):
> Sam wrote:
> 
> >And here's a third - http://www.vicnet.net.au/~rpds/
> >
> >There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in
> >Australia who get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are
> >members of the Rural Peninsula Disability Support group - they are
> >provided computers and pay $11 Australian a month for three hours
> >access per day. This is the kind of charitable project which can
> >*never* afford costly server hardware or software - were it not for
> >the Debian project, we would not be able to run something like this,
>
> I'm sorry, but this argument isn't valid as a defense for Debian in
> particular. You could use any other linux distro for this server; I'm
> certain you could find a similar project somewhere in the world where
> someone uses Redhat or Suse or ...  

True. But Sam uses Debian. He (apparantly) chose to. Lots of other
people have chosen Debian over the other alternatives. The reasons for
his choice are not necessarily related to elderly people. It could be
freedom, stability, ease of maintenance, performance, price, openess,
the nice logo or whatever...

> Frankly I am appalled by someone trying to use an emotional argument,
> involving elderly disabled people, to support Debian. 

Using an emotional argument is not necessarily a bad thing (elderly
people or not). Debian *is* different, *because* of the emotions built
into the social contract. After all, freedom can very much be considered
emotional...

> I guess we should rethink Debian if it turned out some neo-nazi group
> used our software on their servers?

Of course not. And I'm not willing to rethink Debian even when elderly
people use it.

-- 
Karl E. Jørgensen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.karl.jorgensen.com
I'm currently out trying to find myself. If I should get back before I
return, please keep me here.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Alan Shutko]

Ivo Wever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Completely unrelated to the current topic, could you lobby your email
vendor to support RFC2822 already?  Tell them to read 3.6.4 and fix it
already.  Eudora's broken references headers have been annoying the
crap out of me for years, and they've had over a year since the
standard was released to fix it.  And they've had plenty of complaints
before that.

Since you actually use this misbegotten piece of excrement, maybe
you'll have more pull with them.

-- 
Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - In a variety of flavors!
Everyone talks about apathy, but no one does anything about it.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Colin Watson]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:24:27AM +0200, Ivo Wever wrote:
> Sam wrote:
> >There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in
> >Australia who get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are
> >members of the Rural Peninsula Disability Support group - they are
> >provided computers and pay $11 Australian a month for three hours
> >access per day. This is the kind of charitable project which can
> >*never* afford costly server hardware or software - were it not for
> >the Debian project, we would not be able to run something like this,
[...]
> Frankly I am appalled by someone trying to use an emotional argument,
> involving elderly disabled people, to support Debian. I guess we
> should rethink Debian if it turned out some neo-nazi group used our
> software on their servers?

I think this discussion is getting *well* out of hand.

(There's nothing wrong with success stories, even if Debian wasn't the
only way they could have been achieved ...)

-- 
Colin Watson  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Kerstin Hoef-Emden]

Hi,

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:

> Debian is run by a few hundred programmers who do this for fun.
> Not profit.  Because we do this for fun we choose where to spend our
> time.  For some people the mips architecture and the required
> hacking is fun.  Others are constrained by the hardware available to
> them (some of our developers had m68k only access).

This one point, why Debian is different to other distris, it is not
as i386-centered. In giving up its multiplatform support, it would loose
one of its most attractive and fascinating aspects.

> Cutting back to ia32 (x86) would help, but the cost is not worth it.
> Besides, Debian is one of the few dists out there supporting
> anything other than Sun and ia32.

Without m68k I would possibly never have discovered Debian.

> Removing those arches would leave out many of our users and
> potential users.

This is true for me, my "productive system" is not intel-compatible.

> Maybe this means we lose some users to Red Hat (or SuSE or whoever)
> and their 6 month cd releases.  Everyone has to use what works for
> them.

At the last meeting of the Linux Workshop Cologne, we had more Debian
than other users, although some people from this list claim Debian to be
delayed. Seemingly there are more important things than just being
up-to-date with the latest software packages.



Regards,

Kerstin


-- 

Dr. Kerstin Hoef-Emden  Gyrhofstr. 15
Universität zu Köln 50931 Köln
Botanisches InstitutGermany



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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jeronimo Pellegrini]

> I'm not advocating FreeBSD. In fact, I tried it a couple of times, ran it for 
> a week or two and hated it for a variety of reasons. Debian is the only 
> OS/Distribution that I ever liked (which is no surprise, of course)
> 
> I just wanted to say that maybe changes to "stable" should be more 
> incremental.

Yes, I agree...

> E.g., once it's determined that KDE2 is secure and stable, why 
> not add it?

Well, because the packaging could have serious problems... And because
the version to be added to stable was not tested with the other packages
in stable, so we don't know if it'd work.

Maybe that could be remedied if the notion of "proposed-updates" was
changed... But the developers are already discussing a lot of changes.
I'd wait until Woody is released before duggesting any new ideas...

J.

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

Sam wrote:


And here's a third - http://www.vicnet.net.au/~rpds/

There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in Australia who
get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are members of the Rural
Peninsula Disability Support group - they are provided computers and pay $11
Australian a month for three hours access per day. This is the kind of
charitable project which can *never* afford costly server hardware or 
software - were
it not for the Debian project, we would not be able to run something like 
this,
I'm sorry, but this argument isn't valid as a defense for Debian in 
particular. You
could use any other linux distro for this server; I'm certain you could 
find a similar

project somewhere in the world where someone uses Redhat or Suse or ...
Frankly I am appalled by someone trying to use an emotional argument, 
involving

elderly disabled people, to support Debian. I guess we should rethink Debian if
it turned out some neo-nazi group used our software on their servers?

sincerely

Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Glen Lee Edwards]

If the people in effective control of Debian's
direction no longer have this ability, then
perhaps Debian is no longer useful to most
of us.



Debian is no longer useful to us when they no longer put out a product 
that we can use.  That is hardly the case.




To save the Debian Attack Team the effort
of a search, I'll admit immediately that
(like most Debian users) I've contributed
nothing to Debian except good intentions
and trivial amounts of money. Debian does
not need me. And I need a stable release
with the 2.4 kernel.

Nick Jacobs



Nick, the 2.4 kernel is available for you to apt-get upgrade any time 
you wish.  Or you can do like I did - build it yourself to the 
specifications of your box.  

If you think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, I 
suggest you try it.  I've been there.  I would much rather go with a 
group of developers who err on the cautious side than those who err on 
the reckless side.  Debian provides a setup you can rely on.  They don't 
need to change their philosophy.  

I personally prefer the 2.4 kernel with the ext3 file system.  Even the 
kernel developers admit that this is in the experimental stage.  So far 
it's working great for me.  But to expect the Debian developers to put 
it in Woody and publicly state that it is reliable and secure is a real 
stretch.


I would rather go with developers who are cautious in their approach but 
give me the option of taking chances as I think I can safely do so, than 
to go with developers who put out new and poorly tested software, 
essentially require that I test it for them on production servers.


Glen




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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Sam Varghese]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 10:23:56PM -0700, Terry wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> 
> > Thank you. It is messages like this that make me continue to
> >  put in the time and effort for Debian.
> 
> Well here's another one.

And here's a third - http://www.vicnet.net.au/~rpds/ 

There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in Australia who
get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are members of the Rural
Peninsula Disability Support group - they are provided computers and pay $11
Australian a month for three hours access per day. This is the kind of
charitable project which can *never* afford costly server hardware or software 
- were
it not for the Debian project, we would not be able to run something like this,
which means many of these folk would never have access to email or the web. And 
that's about their only means of access to the world as many of them are
disabled and house-bound.

Thank you for providing free, quality software which is easy to maintain.

Sam
-- 
Sam Varghese
http://www.gnubies.com
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from
it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship

[Jim McCloskey]

Someone wrote:

> perhaps Debian is no longer useful to most of us.

Two years ago I set up a small network of Debian machines for graduate
students and faculty members in my department. There are six machines
in the network and a lot of people depend on them. This effort cost my
university exactly nothing.

Since then, these machines have *never* failed us. There was a point a
couple of months ago when I had a desperate email message from a group
of grad students saying that every single non-Debian machine in the
lab (Mac, Windows) was broken, and unusable to one degree or
another. But the Debian machines have never let us down. They have
never crashed, and they require virtually no maintenance.  One of them
runs woody; the rest run potato. I'll probably upgrade all of them to
woody over the summer.  However, this will be mostly for my own
satisfaction and amusement, since for their users it just doesn't
matter which version they run. The machines just do what needs to be
done, day after day, even though, as physical objects, they come from
the bottom of the heap---cheap antiques, most of them.

The graduate students and faculty members who use these machines day
in day out couldn't give a flying fuck, for the most part, whether
they run `stable', `testing', or `unstable'. They don't know, and they
have no reason to care, and they will never post to this list. They
have no reason to, because things just work.

>From this perspective, the idea that Debian might no longer be useful
seems just bonkers.

Jim


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Oliver Fuchs]

On Wed, 05 Jun 2002, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

>   So my motivation for working on free software (it pleases me,
>  and provides me with a stable box I can use) is condescending?

I am glad that your motivation is to create a stable box you can use ...
because so I can participate in this effort too.
What I see here is that a lot of people's mind is not on ease becuase of
Woody not yet being released ...yes, I have to confess that I am also
waiting ... but I think that it is worth it ... I come from windows,
changed to Linux via Red Hat,then changed to SuSE ... and now ended up
with Debian ... The Debian distro is the best piece of work I have seen
and used ... and it makes so much fun to work with ... 
... but what makes Debian so special is the way it is built, composed
and developed ... I am running at the moment potato 2.2r5 ... somone
before said that it is not up to date (old fashioned) ... but it is stable ... 
something
credible and steady ... I do not want to spend my money every 6 month on
a so called new distro only to have the latest version of kde (give me
60 bucks and you get in our brand new distro Version 100.28 kde 8.0 ...
I tell you you need it ... maybe it is crashing 40% of the time - but it
is brandnew - you cannot have all at the same time) ... For me it is
very important to use and run a system that is trusted by the
developer's own quality scale and not a system designed by the profit of
a marketing management team ... first-class quality needs more time than
fast shots but it stands and continue a longer time ...

>  Am I now obligated to you for using my labour? Am I now to profess a
>  desire to please you just because you use software that I built, even
>  when the goal was never to please end users, but to get a nice
>  software for me and my collaborators? 

I think you are right ... if the aim of development is the quality of a
product and not the selling (the profit of people that are selling a
bunch of lies that so called users want to buy) ... i can identify
myself with this distro ...

Oliver
-- 
... don't touch the bang-bang fruit


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Terry]

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

>   Thank you. It is messages like this that make me continue to
>  put in the time and effort for Debian.

Well here's another one.

I've been using Debian for a long time on all the systems where the
choice has been mine.

Sure it is sometimes frustrating when releases seem slow in coming
but the rewards have been great. In my usage nothing has come close
to Debian for stability and ease of maintanance for multiple systems.
I have benefitted from the voluntary efforts of many who do what I am
either unwilling or unable to do.

I cut my teeth on a much earlier Slackware and as enjoyable as it was it
doesn't hold a candle to what Debian provides by way of package
management and dependancy handling. Timely security updates when the
release becomes 'stable' have also been a blessing. There are many
things I rarely need to think about thus freeing me to do the things I
really want to do.

You provide a quality product and you provide it for free. I for one
hope Debian continues as I have no desire do use the other Linux
alternatives.

I'm finished gushing and going back to lurking.

God bless,


Terry.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Oliver Fuchs]

On Wed, 05 Jun 2002, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

>   So my motivation for working on free software (it pleases me,
>  and provides me with a stable box I can use) is condescending?

I am glad that your motivation is to create a stable box you can use ...
because so I can participate in this effort too.
What I see here is that a lot of people's mind is not on ease becuase of
Woody not yet being released ...yes, I have to confess that I am also
waiting ... but I think that it is worth it ... I come from windows,
changed to Linux via Red Hat,then changed to SuSE ... and now ended up
with Debian ... The Debian distro is the best piece of work I have seen
and used ... and it makes so much fun to work with ... 
... but what makes Debian so special is the way it is built, composed
and developed ... I am running at the moment potato 2.2r5 ... somone
before said that it is not up to date (old fashioned) ... but it is stable ... 
something
credible and steady ... I do not want to spend my money every 6 month on
a so called new distro only to have the latest version of kde (give me
60 bucks and you get in our brand new distro Version 100.28 kde 8.0 ...
I tell you you need it ... maybe it is crashing 40% of the time - but it
is brandnew - you cannot have all at the same time) ... For me it is
very important to use and run a system that is trusted by the
developer's own quality scale and not a system designed by the profit of
a marketing management team ... first-class quality needs more time than
fast shots but it stands and continue a longer time ...

>  Am I now obligated to you for using my labour? Am I now to profess a
>  desire to please you just because you use software that I built, even
>  when the goal was never to please end users, but to get a nice
>  software for me and my collaborators? 

I think you are right ... if the aim of development is the quality of a
product and not the selling (the profit of people that are selling a
bunch of lies that so called users want to buy) ... i can identify
myself with this distro ...

Oliver
-- 
... don't touch the bang-bang fruit


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Brian Nelson]

Oleg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Wednesday 05 June 2002 01:57 pm, Jeronimo Pellegrini wrote:
>> > How does FreeBSD manage to stay reasonably secure and stable, yet modern
>> > (compared to Potato)?
>>
>> I think it's because they don't have a "zero-bugs" release policy like
>> Debian. The base system is stable. The stuff in the ports tree is not, from
>> my experience. I once decided to install gdm on a FreeBSD box... There were
>> *lots* of broken dependencies in the ports tree, and I had to vgrep
>> the missing dependencies in the compile logs.  :-/
>
> I'm not advocating FreeBSD. In fact, I tried it a couple of times, ran it for 
> a week or two and hated it for a variety of reasons. Debian is the only 
> OS/Distribution that I ever liked (which is no surprise, of course)
>
> I just wanted to say that maybe changes to "stable" should be more 
> incremental. E.g., once it's determined that KDE2 is secure and stable, why 
> not add it? We all know that the situation with KDE was easily remedied by 
> adding extra lines to sources.list, but not with other great programs that 
> never made it into Potato. Why should users risk remote root if all they 
> want is some desktop software?

I agree.  I think stable should be able to get more fixes and updates
than just security fixes.  It's well known that much of the software in
stable is quite buggy and years behind the upstream source (Mozilla M18,
for example) but cannot be fixed until a security hole is found in that
software.  I think regular points releases, every month or two,
containing new software and updates to older software, would be great.
No major changes would be permitted of course, but there's no reason
most desktop software couldn't be updated in stable.

If other users believe that their software shouldn't be updated unless
absolutely necessary, then it should be possible to only upgrade
packages that have security advisories.

-- 
Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Carl Fink]

Someone posted that security updates can simply be downloaded from
Sid and used with Woody.

However, at least one package in unstable is already not installable
on my Woody box, because a library has been upgraded in Sid.
-- 
Carl Fink   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Manager, Dueling Modems Computer Forum



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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Noah Meyerhans]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 04:41:39PM -0500, Brooks R. Robinson wrote:
> It was not my intention to lead users astray, my intention was to enlighten
> people to the fact that testing is, for the most part, not going to change.
> The security fixes are flowing into sid.  It's not a big trick to get notice
> from security-announce and grab a few pacakges from sid in the mean time.
> I'll grant that it's not as easy, but doable.

Assuming there *is* a mention of the bug on security-announce.  What if
you're running bind9?  You'll see no mention of the remote DoS recently
announced, yet it will most definitely affect you if you've chosen to
install the package.  That's just one example; there are likely to be
many more.  I think it's harder than you expect.

noah

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Oleg]

On Wednesday 05 June 2002 01:57 pm, Jeronimo Pellegrini wrote:
> > How does FreeBSD manage to stay reasonably secure and stable, yet modern
> > (compared to Potato)?
>
> I think it's because they don't have a "zero-bugs" release policy like
> Debian. The base system is stable. The stuff in the ports tree is not, from
> my experience. I once decided to install gdm on a FreeBSD box... There were
> *lots* of broken dependencies in the ports tree, and I had to vgrep
> the missing dependencies in the compile logs.  :-/

I'm not advocating FreeBSD. In fact, I tried it a couple of times, ran it for 
a week or two and hated it for a variety of reasons. Debian is the only 
OS/Distribution that I ever liked (which is no surprise, of course)

I just wanted to say that maybe changes to "stable" should be more 
incremental. E.g., once it's determined that KDE2 is secure and stable, why 
not add it? We all know that the situation with KDE was easily remedied by 
adding extra lines to sources.list, but not with other great programs that 
never made it into Potato. Why should users risk remote root if all they 
want is some desktop software?

BTW I looked at Slashdot today. Some one-line post calling Debian project 
(not HURD) a failure got moderated up to 4 : Interesting! This may be 
evidence of Debian's bad PR.

Regards,

Oleg


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Alan Shutko]

Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> For the record, the number is currently 1073 (unless I made a mistake in
> my database query). Of course, not all of those are active.

Oh, that's the problem then.  If we had 2000 developers, woody would
have been out in half the time, right?  ;^)

-- 
Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - In a variety of flavors!
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Joey Hess]

Alan Shutko wrote:
> (With 2000 developers, any unqualified statement is likely to be
> false)

I'm unsure where this 2000 developers number that I've seen floating
around this list comes from. At last count, when we were preparing the
release announcement, there were less than 1000, and of course a
significant number were inactive.

OTOH, your statement holds true for any group of more than 3 people,
so.

-- 
see shy jo


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

Manoj wrote:

Are you sure condescending means what you think it means? (Oh,
 BTW, that is me being condescending again).


I don't consider that condescending.


Condescending, in context, implied that I felt superior to the people I
was talking to. There was no suggestion that any one else felt superior right
along side of me.

I didn't mean to imply that. I was trying to make clear that I think you
have the right to act in a way that might be considered condescending by
users that think they have the right to demand things from developers.
I wanted to say that, because the tone of the message calling you conscending
implied that considering what you said condescending is 'normal'.

sincerely,

Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Colin Watson]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 06:00:23PM -0400, Alan Shutko wrote:
> (With 2000 developers, any unqualified statement is likely to be
> false)

For the record, the number is currently 1073 (unless I made a mistake in
my database query). Of course, not all of those are active.

-- 
Colin Watson  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Ivo" == Ivo Wever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
 Ivo> It is an unqualified statement indeed. I'm just exagerating
 Ivo> Manojs point and claim I understand it (because calling it
 Ivo> 'condescending' supposes that the majority of the society feels
 Ivo> that way and I want to make clear that at least one person
 Ivo> thinks otherwise).

Are you sure condescending means what you think it means? (Oh,
 BTW, that is me being condescending again). Condescending, in
 context, implied that I felt superior to the people I was talking
 to. There was no suggestion that any one else felt superior right
 along side of me. 

manoj

  Condescend \Con`de*scend"\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Condescended};
 p. pr. & vb. n. {Condescending}.] [F. condescendre, LL.
 condescendere, fr. L. con- + descendere. See {Descend}.]
 1. To stoop or descend; to let one's self down; to submit; to
waive the privilege of rank or dignity; to accommodate
one's self to an inferior. ``Condescend to men of low
estate.'' --Rom. xii. 16.
[1913 Webster]

 Note: Often used ironically, implying an assumption of
   superiority.

  condescending \condescending\ adj.
 exhibiting an attitude of superiority; patronizing; -- used
 of behavior or attitude.
  
>From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:

  condescending
   adj : (used of behavior or attitude) characteristic of those who
 treat others with condescension [syn: {arch}, {patronizing},
  {patronising}]

-- 
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Alan Shutko]

ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> please stop propogating the rumor that manoj said that he didn't care about 
> the users. read the full thread.

I wasn't.  I was responding to the post I quoted.  Apologies if it was
too subtle.

-- 
Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - In a variety of flavors!
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Alan" == Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Alan> Maybe the developers should amend the Social Contract to make this
 Alan> more explicit?  At least in the vote, it would become clear to what
 Alan> degree that statement is true or untrue.


Ah, yes, the social contract argument. I said jump, so hop
 around, since your social contract says you shall.  This is aking to
 arguments like: My taxes pay for the gummint. So the gummint works
 for me. You work for the gummint, so you work for me. So I order you,
 mr police man, not to write that ticket for speeding. Doesn't quite
 work that way, does it now?

What works collectively, in the abstract, does not work in the 
 specific; and unlike an elected governement, in Debian people who are
 not part of the project really have no franchise. Even Debian
 leadership cannot tell a developer what to work on -- and that has
 ever been the case.

There is no way one can satisfy all the people all the
 time. There is no way one may cater to every voluble set of people --
 indeed, if we did this mindlessly, this would be used by ill wishers
 to damage Debian, and thus reduce the benefit we offer everyone else
 -- all the _other_ users. 

Guess what. The social contract is not meant to be applied
 mindlessly. A modicum of common sense is meant to be applied (if you
 think I would rescue a user from a burning building in preference to
 my wife, because of the social contract, you are out of your
 mind). This is a thinking (hu)mans contract.

I do not speak for all developers - indeed, I speak for no one
 but myself. I have a feeling though, that my viewpoint is shared by
 quite a few of my fellow developers. Who am I doing this for? for
 myself, of course, (and no, this is not flame bait). I want a stable
 linux box for myself. However, I can not do it alone, so i seek a
 bunch of collaborators (note: i did not say developers here) to
 cooperatively develop this stable OS - and some on=f these
 collaborators are people who help find bugs, tell me when my man page
 is hard to understand, suggest alternative wording, etc -not users
 and vendors, but fellow community members who are helping make this a
 better box for all of us to use (and thus I get my nice Linux box)

The primary target for me is still me, and my collaborators,
 but outside this free software community does user satisfaction
 affect me? not the least whit. This is a collaboration, not the
 developers giving and the users taking. 

My interpretation of the social contract is that the people
 who are collaboratively helping to improve the software are the
 constituency we must cater to. 

All if Debian is done just because we wanna. And, once we are
 doing this, we do put concern for the users as an goal (an abstract
 user, instead of any individual or group). We do not say that we
 shall favour any group of users because of their number; and we
 prefer doing what we think is right, for us, and the users, despite
 popularity contests and opinion polls. We strongly believe, at this
 point, that releasing woody is a disservice to the users.

Popularity does not figure in this. And if it is a matter of
 selecting between two sets of users, the discretion lies with those
 doing the work. People who work on porting are doing so of their own
 free will, People who do chose to work so can't be reassigned merely
 for the benefit of users on an architecture that maintainer does not
 want to work on.

manoj
-- 
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

Alan Shutko wrote:

Ivo Wever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> And, as he said: he doesn't care. Doesn't care because no
> developers will leave and the users leaving doesn't endanger
> the existance of Debian; in essence the developers are making
> it for themselves.

Maybe the developers should amend the Social Contract to make this
more explicit?  At least in the vote, it would become clear to what
degree that statement is true or untrue.

(With 2000 developers, any unqualified statement is likely to be
false)

It is an unqualified statement indeed. I'm just exagerating Manojs point
and claim I understand it (because calling it 'condescending' supposes
that the majority of the society feels that way and I want to make clear that
at least one person thinks otherwise). I thought the bit you snipped would
nuance it and make clear that I don't actually suppose this is the _main_
reason for _all_  developers to develop.

sincerely

Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[ben]

On Wednesday 05 June 2002 03:00 pm, Alan Shutko wrote:
> Ivo Wever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > And, as he said: he doesn't care. Doesn't care because no
> > developers will leave and the users leaving doesn't endanger
> > the existance of Debian; in essence the developers are making
> > it for themselves.
>
> Maybe the developers should amend the Social Contract to make this
> more explicit?  At least in the vote, it would become clear to what
> degree that statement is true or untrue.
>
> (With 2000 developers, any unqualified statement is likely to be
> false)

please stop propogating the rumor that manoj said that he didn't care about 
the users. read the full thread.

ben


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Alan Shutko]

Ivo Wever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> And, as he said: he doesn't care. Doesn't care because no
> developers will leave and the users leaving doesn't endanger
> the existance of Debian; in essence the developers are making
> it for themselves. 

Maybe the developers should amend the Social Contract to make this
more explicit?  At least in the vote, it would become clear to what
degree that statement is true or untrue.

(With 2000 developers, any unqualified statement is likely to be
false)

-- 
Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - In a variety of flavors!
Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ivo Wever]

Ian D. Stewart wrote:


While stating that you don't give a rip about  the users may be
intelectually honest, one should not be surprised when
such statements endanger userbase loyalty.

And, as he said: he doesn't care. Doesn't care because no
developers will leave and the users leaving doesn't endanger
the existance of Debian; in essence the developers are making
it for themselves. You should be thankful for being allowed to use
it at all. I understand him not caring (though one could guess that
having users is one of the reasons for developers to do what they do,
so actually they do care, just not about users the consider to be whining).

That everyone decided we should constantly hide our true feelings
towards other persons isn't his problem. I value honesty more than trying
to prevent some long-toed people from being insulted.

sincerely,

Ivo Wever
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: Debian: abandon ship?

[Brooks R. Robinson]

| Uh huh.  And get cracked tomorrow because security updates are *not*
| being made for woody at this time.  There is a list of approximately a
| dozen *known* security problems with woody that will be dealt with
| *later*.  Updates are not propogating from sid to woody at all right
| now, even for security reasons.  Woody is probably at its most insecure
| point in the development process right now.
|
| Do not "Just do an apt-get dist upgrade and get it over with" unless you
| have no reason to care about security or are willing to do security
| investigations and fixes on your own.

It was not my intention to lead users astray, my intention was to enlighten
people to the fact that testing is, for the most part, not going to change.
The security fixes are flowing into sid.  It's not a big trick to get notice
from security-announce and grab a few pacakges from sid in the mean time.
I'll grant that it's not as easy, but doable.

Farewell,

Brooks



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RE: Debian: abandon ship?

[Brooks R. Robinson]

| Are you really named "Brooks Robinson" or is that a nom du net?

Yes this is my true and given name.  Long story short: my brother was a fan,
my mom agreed to something she never thought would happen

| > My conclusion is that Woody is effectively released already.
|
| So, Woody changed to a 2.4 kernel?  At last report it was still using
| 2.2x.

Yes, the official kernel of Woody for the i386 environment is 2.2.x (IIRC
other environments will default to a 2.4.x kernel).  I don't recall the
particulars of the decision to make i386 Woody a default 2.2 (probably to
deal with low end hardware), but someone had a reason (although I've seen it
argued).  However, 2.4.x is supported fully under Woody and works fine for
i386.  It's easy enough to compile your own or use a predefined one, but
they are definitely available on woody.

Farewell,

Brooks


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Derrick 'dman' Hudson]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 02:14:14PM -0300, Michel Loos wrote:

| You have 2 stable releases which are up-to-date:
|   woody and sid
| They are perfectly stable, but the distribution is changing 
| just like the RedHat distribution is changing every few weeks,
| the only difference is that they call it stable even when if it is
| broken, while debian is called unstable even when every thing works
| fine.

I like this rather apt description.  Nice wording.

-D

-- 

For society, it's probably a good thing that engineers value function
over appearance.  For example, you wouldn't want engineers to build
nuclear power plants that only _look_ like they would keep all the
radiation inside.
(Scott Adams - The Dilbert principle)
 
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Re: Debian: abandon ship? Not me!

[B. L. Jilek]

Hi Stephen!

On Wed, 05 Jun 2002, Stephen Ryan wrote:

> On Wed, 2002-06-05 at 13:32, John Schmidt wrote:
> 
> > I certainly appreciate the multiple architecture support of Debian.  I 
> > have it installed on a powerpc, m68k, and x86 box.  I initially 
> > installed it on my m68k box, since Debian was the only distribution 
> > that supported it.  I made the switch to my other boxes because I liked 
> > the consistency of one distribution and hated the dependency mess of 
> > rpm.  I have advocated Debian to others in my work place and will 
> > continue to do so.  
> 
[snip]
> 
> Debian is hard to install, and I don't care - I install one time per
> machine.  Debian is easy to upgrade, and I like it - I upgrade and
> install new software on some machine or other every week.
> 
> The developers all get a huge Thank You! from me.
> 

I have to add to this also :).

While I only use x86 boxes I am still very happy with the Debian
distro.  While potato is outdated I still use it on my server and
never have problems with it.  I am content to wait for woody to become
stable to upgrade the server.  It does everything that I need and if
it don't I will usually install newer packages from source.  I'm a
firm believer in "If you don't NEED to upgrade, don't".

On my workstations I run woody/unstable and rarely have problems with it.
Again, I install from source or make my own deb if I need newer
versions of software.

I made the switch to Debian about a year ago from SuSE and before that
RedHat.  Those distros have rapid releases but I don't think it's
worth it for all the problems that arise with them.  I've had much
fewer problems with Debian.

Personally I wouldn't change anything about this distro.  And I want
to thank the developers also.  Someday I want to become one but I'm
still learning.

Keep up the good work.  I'd much rather wait than be face with the
hell I had with other distro's.

-- 
B. L. Jilek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
PGP keys on my website --> http://crowbyte.dnsalias.com/~tcrow
Linux user: 163800 | Debian Rules! | Slackware Rocks!
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Noah" == Noah Meyerhans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Noah> On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 02:47:59PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 >> Indeed, the security team indicated that potato support would
 >> have to be dropped summarily when woody was released _unless_ changes
 >> were made (or a decision would have to be made to only support some
 >> arches, but not all, even from the mainstream ones). This was
 >> obviously unacceptable.

 Noah> Obviously unacceptable?  It's how stuff has been done in the past.  How
 Noah> long was it after potato's release that we dropped support for slink?
 Noah> IIRC it was little more than a month.

I beg your pardon. I should have said I find it obviously
 unacceptable, and a number of people, users, develoers, etc, would
 have liked more than 30 days to upgrade or lose security fixes. The
 RM apparently agrees with me.

manoj
-- 
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Re: Debian: abandon ship? Not me!

[Stephen Ryan]

On Wed, 2002-06-05 at 13:32, John Schmidt wrote:

> I certainly appreciate the multiple architecture support of Debian.  I 
> have it installed on a powerpc, m68k, and x86 box.  I initially 
> installed it on my m68k box, since Debian was the only distribution 
> that supported it.  I made the switch to my other boxes because I liked 
> the consistency of one distribution and hated the dependency mess of 
> rpm.  I have advocated Debian to others in my work place and will 
> continue to do so.  

I've thought about responding to other posts in this thread, but can't
think of any way to respond to irrational posts without adding fuel to
the flames, but this one deserves a big "Me, too!".  It was a huge
selling point to be able to run the exact same software on both a dual
PIII and a G4 - and to be able to tell my boss so; he was afraid we'd
have to buy another high-end workstation for a new employee, when we
could actually just recycle an existing, unused system, and use remote
logins for the odd piece of proprietary software that doesn't work on
other platforms.  The portability and maintainability of Debian has
contributed greatly to the recent decision to remove as many pieces of
proprietary software as possible in favor of those built in to Debian.

Debian is hard to install, and I don't care - I install one time per
machine.  Debian is easy to upgrade, and I like it - I upgrade and
install new software on some machine or other every week.

The developers all get a huge Thank You! from me.

--  
Stephen RyanDebian GNU/Linux
Technology Coordinator
Center for Educational Outcomes
at Dartmouth College


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Ian" == Ian D Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Ian> And yes, I do find it condescending.  Particularly the reference to
 Ian> 'unwashed masses' and the general attitude of 'I have done this thing
 Ian> because it pleases me.  You should be content that I allow you to
 Ian> benefit from my labor.'

So my motivation for working on free software (it pleases me,
 and provides me with a stable box I can use) is condescending? Am I
 now obligated to you for using my labour? Am I now to profess a
 desire to please you just because you use software that I built, even
 when the goal was never to please end users, but to get a nice
 software for me and my collaborators? 

If the choice is between condescension and false
 obsequiousness, I guess I shall indeed chose the former.

manoj   
-- 
 ... proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and
 the downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate,
 spirited awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he
 conspired to erect. David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The
 History of Manned Space Flight"
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Noah Meyerhans]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 03:59:41PM -0400, Carl Fink wrote:
> I'm using 2.4.18 myself, but that isn't relevant to the original
> poster's request for a stable distribution using (meaning something
> like "coming with") a 2.4.x kernel.


But woody does come with kernel 2.4.x.  Just because it's not installed
by default doesn't mean it's not there or not supported.  It's fully
supported and part of the distribution.  Not only that, but if you need
some feature of 2.4 during installation, you can use the bf2.4
installation disks.

I don't think there should be any issue with the kernel version included
with woody.

noah

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[David Wright]

> I doubt that this would be a useful metric, given that people
> tracking less-stable versions are likely to be updating more
> frequently.

It is possible to count unique IPs, rather than bytes. Another poster
pointed out the problem of local archives, but there is no reason to
assume that stable users are more or less likely to use local arhives that
unstable users, so that shouldn't skew the ratios.

Yes, even this would not be a perfect measure. But I bet it would be quite
good. And it would be possible to quantify how good by doing a bootstrap.

I for one would be interested in the total number of unique IPs that
accessed each official archive in the last, say, 3 months. (If someone
will send me the logs, I'll compile the statistics myself -- but I imagine
that would raise privacy concerns.)


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"David" == David Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 >> It's not really at all clear that this was where the mistake lay.
 David> I never thought I would be advocating more management, but here goes...

 David> Debian, as another poster pointed out, has grown from ~50 to
 David> ~2000 developers. And those developers, being "geeks" rather
 David> than "suits", respond to problems by working harder on their
 David> jobs (as I believe Collin pointed out), rather than by
 David> strategic re-alignments. Other engineer-centered organizations
 David> (HP and Boeing are famous examples) have run into this problem
 David> before.

Do you have any data for this, or are you just making things
 up? The new pool system is not a reorg? The buildd and rbuilder? the
 automated BTS tracking tools? Do you actually know what is being done
 internally to deal with the issues? 

 David> I haven't experienced first-hand the styles of the previous
 David> and current RMs, but at least looking from the outside, it
 David> would seem that the current RM has been much more effective
 David> (aside from failing to take into account the security
 David> infrastructure problems) than the previous one in driving
 David> woody to release. This would seem to indicate that management
 David> can make a difference.

Perhaps the new pools and testing mechanism has something to
 do with this, hmm? 

 David> What about increasing the "management overhead" for Debian?
 David> Instead of just having DPL and RM, the RM could be given some
 David> minions, there could be PMs for different areas, etc. They
 David> would make tactical and strategic decisions regarding
 David> releases, and advertise needs as they arise.

We have the boot floppy team, the debian web pages team, the
 perl team, java people, the policy group, the debian cd people, the
 new maintainer people, the press release folks, the security team,
 the admin folks, the list masters, the ftp archive folks, the
 project secretary, the ..

All with team leaders and delegates of the DPL.

Have you even looked before you start coming in firing off
 proposals without even knowing what the problems are?

 David> There, the idea is out there; wail away at it.

Yes. Random ideas, fired off with no concept of problem
 details, no idea of the culture, and no work done researching
 anything. Guess how much this is worth?

manoj
-- 
 Instead of whining to the net about it, why don't you talk to the
 news admins at Berkeley?  If they won't trash sci.skeptic there, pass
 around a petition. Threaten to set their dog on fire.  Whatever.  If
 nothing works, you can, as a last resort, unsubscribe. Dave Mack,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED], responds to a flame in news.groups
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Ian" == Ian D Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Ian> But to answer your question, there are several projects I have
 Ian> an interest in.  I have even started writing code for eventual
 Ian> contribution to one of them.  You, or anybody else for that
 Ian> matter, are perfectly welcome to provide feedback regarding any
 Ian> of those projects.  Indeed most actively encourage user
 Ian> feedback.  If the feedback is in reference to an aspect I have
 Ian> in interest in or responsibility for, I will take it into
 Ian> consideration.  If I feel it is inappropriate, for what ever
 Ian> reason, I will let you know.  And I will not accuse you of
 Ian> telling me what to do.

Constructive doalogue is one thing. Telling us we made a
 mistake, and we better own up, and that debian has started to, umm,
 suck, does not strike me as constructive. As to my responses to
 feedback, look at the responses I make to people filing bugs on my
 packages. That is feed back.

manoj
-- 
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 everything as if it were a nail." Abraham Maslow
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"John" == John Schmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


 John> I certainly appreciate the multiple architecture support of Debian.  I 
 John> have it installed on a powerpc, m68k, and x86 box.  I initially 
 John> installed it on my m68k box, since Debian was the only distribution 
 John> that supported it.  I made the switch to my other boxes because I liked 
 John> the consistency of one distribution and hated the dependency mess of 
 John> rpm.  I have advocated Debian to others in my work place and will 
 John> continue to do so.  

Thank you. It is messages like this that make me continue to
 put in the time and effort for Debian.

manoj
ps: the reson I moniotr this high volume list, while most of the
developers no longer bother, is to help with question about my
packages. It is hard to maintain motivation, most of the time, were it
not for posts like this one.
-- 
 The only difference in the game of love over the last few thousand
 years is that they've changed trumps from clubs to diamonds. The
 Indianapolis Star
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Carl Fink]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 06:43:57PM +0100, Anthony Campbell wrote:

> Surely you can use any kernel you like. I've been using 2.4.18 since it
> came out and will upgrade to 2.4.19 as soon as it's released.

I'm using 2.4.18 myself, but that isn't relevant to the original
poster's request for a stable distribution using (meaning something
like "coming with") a 2.4.x kernel.
-- 
Carl Fink   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Manager, Dueling Modems Computer Forum



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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Noah Meyerhans]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 02:47:59PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>   Indeed, the security team indicated that potato support would
>  have to be dropped summarily when woody was released _unless_ changes
>  were made (or a decision would have to be made to only support some
>  arches, but not all, even from the mainstream ones). This was
>  obviously unacceptable.

Obviously unacceptable?  It's how stuff has been done in the past.  How
long was it after potato's release that we dropped support for slink?
IIRC it was little more than a month.

noah

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Manoj Srivastava]

>>"Noah" == Noah Meyerhans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Noah> The 11 architecures *are* what's holding up the release.  The
 Noah> whole reason the security team needs the new build
 Noah> infrastructure is that it's not a reasonable expectation for
 Noah> them to be able to manually build updated packages for all 11
 Noah> architectures in a timely fashion.  With pototo, we were able
 Noah> to release because we didn't require such a large-scale
 Noah> automated build process for the security team since we
 Noah> supported fewer architectures.

I shall get my knuckles rapped for releasing information out
 of debian-private, but the security team expressed an inability to
 simultaneously support potato and woody (just confirmed this on IRC,
 talking with a security team member), and especially given the
 explosion of packages for woody.

Indeed, the security team indicated that potato support would
 have to be dropped summarily when woody was released _unless_ changes
 were made (or a decision would have to be made to only support some
 arches, but not all, even from the mainstream ones). This was
 obviously unacceptable.

manoj
 
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 have to laugh, well, I think of my sex life. Glenda Jackson
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Ian D. Stewart]

On 2002.06.05 13:47 Manoj Srivastava wrote:

>>"Ian" == Ian D Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


 Ian> Speaking only for myself, it was the condescending tone adopted
 Ian> by one of the developers (don't remember the fellow's name; he
 Ian> was the one ranting about about his $250,00/hr fee) more than
 Ian> the actual content that I found offensive.  While stating that
 Ian> you don't give a rip about the users may be intelectually
 Ian> honest, one should not be surprised when such statements
 Ian> endanger userbase loyalty.

That would be me. To bring in the context that you have
elided,
 this is exactly what I said:

 Manoj> Telling me how to spend my time comes with the obligation of
 Manoj> helping me pay my mortgage. My posted rates are $250 an hour.


No, this is what was said:


What you are missing is even a modicum of understanding of the
motivation for the people who put in the effort and do the work for
Debian -- I certainly do not do this (working 20 hours a week, over
and above the 50-60 I do for work, and trying to keep the house and
lawn in shape, etc (I also happen to run an active D&D campaign, but
well)) for the unwashed masses. Do you know what motivates the
developers? Developers most certainly do _not_ live to serve.

  As far as I have been aware, the majority of people working
for free software work because it pleases their muse (or scratches
their own particular itch). The user base helps by helping make the
software better; in return for getting to use it. Anyone can
participate -- by helping with bug reports and fizxes, patches, etc;
and even getting a say in how debian works by committing themselves
to Debian; no one tells any other volunteer how to spend their
time. All that is needed is essentially "Show us the code" (or help
us improve it). People are not excluded because we are the holiest of
the holy and outsiders are dirt. There is no core Debian team. And
users certainly are not in control; and popularity has never been a
Debian goal.  
The ``community participation'' does have limitations. Telling

me how to spend my time comes with the obligation of helping me pay
my mortgage. My posted rates are $250 an hour. Anyone telling me how
to spend my time has to pony up the moolah.


And yes, I do find it condescending.  Particularly the reference to 
'unwashed masses' and the general attitude of 'I have done this thing 
because it pleases me.  You should be content that I allow you to 
benefit from my labor.'




You have a strange definition of condescending.



So it would seem.  However, based on previous postings to the list, I 
am not alone in my unusual definitions.



Are you, then, opposed to this sentiment? Can we call on you
 and tell you how to spend your time?


I don't recall anyone telling you to do anything.  One gentleman raised 
a complaint regarding the release schedule of Woody.  Apparently, you 
interpreted this as a direct order.


But to answer your question, there are several projects I have an 
interest in.  I have even started writing code for eventual 
contribution to one of them.  You, or anybody else for that matter, are 
perfectly welcome to provide feedback regarding any of those projects.  
Indeed most actively encourage user feedback.  If the feedback is in 
reference to an aspect I have in interest in or responsibility for, I 
will take it into consideration.  If I feel it is inappropriate, for 
what ever reason, I will let you know.  And I will not accuse you of 
telling me what to do.



Regards,
Ian


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Pete Harlan]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 12:47:17PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Ian" == Ian D Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> 
>  Ian> Speaking only for myself, it was the condescending tone adopted
>  Ian> by one of the developers (don't remember the fellow's name; he
>  Ian> was the one ranting about about his $250,00/hr fee) more than
>  Ian> the actual content that I found offensive.  While stating that
>  Ian> you don't give a rip about the users may be intelectually
>  Ian> honest, one should not be surprised when such statements
>  Ian> endanger userbase loyalty.
> 
>   That would be me. To bring in the context that you have elided,
>  this is exactly what I said:
> 
>  Manoj> Telling me how to spend my time comes with the obligation of
>  Manoj> helping me pay my mortgage. My posted rates are $250 an hour.
> 
>   You have a strange definition of condescending. 
> 
>   Are you, then, opposed to this sentiment? Can we call on you
>  and tell you how to spend your time? 
> 
>   manoj

He didn't say he was opposed to the sentiment.  He was saying that by
stating the obvious, you were talking down to the other person.

Granted, in an exchange in which both parties think the other side
isn't seeing plain logic, it's a fuzzy line between making yourself
crystal clear and condescension.

--Pete


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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Noah Meyerhans]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 11:30:12AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>   Well, this is only partially true. All architectuures for
>  Woody are ready. They are not delaying the release. What is not ready
>  is the ability to support security for woody and potato for even the
>  architectures that we have now -- not with the increased number of
>  packlages that the security team has to support.

The 11 architecures *are* what's holding up the release.  The whole
reason the security team needs the new build infrastructure is that it's
not a reasonable expectation for them to be able to manually build
updated packages for all 11 architectures in a timely fashion.  With
pototo, we were able to release because we didn't require such a
large-scale automated build process for the security team since we
supported fewer architectures.

noah

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Re: Debian: abandon ship?

[Jamin W . Collins]

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 13:47:27 -0500
"Dave Sherohman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 11:18:29AM -0700, David Wright wrote:
> > in the interest of Debian getting to
> > know the needs of its customers (a phrase calculated to annoy Manoj
> > :-), what are the percentage users of potato, woody, and sid? I assume
> > this could be estimated from average daily activity for each archive.
> 
> I doubt that this would be a useful metric, given that people
> tracking less-stable versions are likely to be updating more
> frequently.  (I'll periodically apt-get upgrade my testing/unstable
> systems just to see what's new, but I only touch apt on my stable
> boxes when a security update is announced.)

Beyond that it would fail to account for users of local mirrors.  I for
one have 18 systems in my household that update off one central internal 
mirror. In addition, my mirror pulls for stable, testing, and unstable for
both i386 and PPC.  So, now tell me, how many systems I have are running
which releases.

-- 
Jamin W. Collins


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