Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Instead of the developers learning to treat certain versions as separate packages, the developers taught Portage how to handle and maintain several versions of the same package though the use of SLOTs. It goes on to explain further with an example, basically they have an extra field to differentiate between packages with the same name. rpm does this (using the version as the extra field) and it is a real PITA. If it can be used to shut people up about name mangling, it sounds like a good idea, after all. Or a Realname field, which contains a package name that is unmangled. (which is basically a Provides: field with versions). regards, junichi
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Very nice. Does anyone know how to get apt to give locally compiled packages higher priority than official packages? I've been playing with the release pinnings, but haven't gotten it to work. Also, what apps do you think would make good benchmark cases for showing how much is (or isn't) gained? My experience suggests that recompiling core graphics libraries improves performance of graphic-intensive applications, such as Eterm. regards, junichi
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2002-11-29 10:27]: But I use the website. Here's a questions. Go to eh redhat site and see if you can figure out where to get a complete RedHat CD downloaded from the net? Uhm, should that have been a statement pro or contra to our page? I found it quite easy: -) Download link in the top row, righthand side. -) How to Download Red Hat Linux 8.0 -) Download the files you need -) -- Downloading the ISO Images Or am I thinking too straight? Alfie -- The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. -- unknown pgpSk5t16Mksq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 11:47:52AM +0100, Gerfried Fuchs wrote: But I use the website. Here's a questions. Go to eh redhat site and see if you can figure out where to get a complete RedHat CD downloaded from the net? Uhm, should that have been a statement pro or contra to our page? I found it quite easy: -) Download link in the top row, righthand side. -) How to Download Red Hat Linux 8.0 -) Download the files you need -) -- Downloading the ISO Images Or am I thinking too straight? Heh. Last time I tried it wasn't too hard, this is pretty easy. * Getting Debian near the beginning of the top row * make a CD set yourself in the middle * Fetch full CD images * Official CD images of the stable release - see below So now we're even at least as far as those links are concerned. The last item, OTOH, still needs work both at redhat.com and debian.org. They have a single link to ftp://ftp.redhat.com/ and we have a bunch of links elsewhere; both of these approaches, even without implementation bugs, have inherent problems. -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Gee, it's a pretty bad topic, but anyway... On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:58:51PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: There's a straight 2 click path to a directory with an ISO image on it on the gentoo site. For freebsd, it's 3 obvious clicks to a ftp site directory, then click on arch and version. For netbsd, 5 clicks to a mirror (one hidden far down a page). For debian, it's 4 clicks, _if_ you avoid the unofficial images, and the false path that leads only to them. And _if_ you happen to pick one of the small fraction of listed mirrors that really work. So no, in this case our web site is behind all but netbsd in structure, and behind netbsd in the sory state of our cdrom mirror network. Finding ISOs is possible but a pain in the arse and it should be a lot simpler. jigdo is ok but quite often you just want the damn ISO image and be done with it. - Craig -- Craig Small VK2XLZ GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE 95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5 Eye-Net Consulting http://www.enc.com.au/[EMAIL PROTECTED] MIEEE [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian developer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 06:58:56PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: I'm with Joey on this; last time I tried to find Debian .iso images, it was a nightmare. In fact I couldn't find an official woody iso anywhere. This is the way of mirror operators to tell you that you should really use jigdo or even better the mini-images. If there are to be no .iso images anywhere (which would suck), then it should say in big letters that there are no iso images anywhere. I've also started editing the web pages to remove this confusing compromise and to consistently deprecate full images. -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 05:13:01PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: Maybe the one in Austria, because it's the top of that list of mirrors. (I thought it would be clear that Austria is at the top because the list is sorted alphabetically... I am aware of the problem with people who click the first link they encounter regardless of what the link points to, but I don't believe that this can be fixed to accomodate those. :) But maybe instead, back at debian.org's front page, you picked the Getting Debian link instead. Only to end up on a page that links to cd vendors and downloading over the Internet. Ok, the latter. But it points to a page that only lets one download unnofficial netinst iso images, which are of varying quality, and well, unnoficial. And this second path (or rather, cul-de-sac) to a debian CD is entirely independant of the one described above. The website offers two ways to do the same thing, and neither works at all well. This should now be fixed. Please check the front page's section on Getting Debian again, and the Getting Debian web page itself. http://www.debian.org/ http://www.debian.org/distrib/ -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Josip Rodin: (I thought it would be clear that Austria is at the top because the list is sorted alphabetically... ...in English. The list is still sorted with Austria first in all the other pages, even when it makes little or no sense at all. (my favourite example is of course the Swedish translation, where Austria should sort *last*). -- \\// Peter - http://www.softwolves.pp.se/ I do not read or respond to mail with HTML attachments.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 09:41:23PM +0100, Peter Karlsson wrote: (I thought it would be clear that Austria is at the top because the list is sorted alphabetically... ...in English. The list is still sorted with Austria first in all the other pages, even when it makes little or no sense at all. (my favourite example is of course the Swedish translation, where Austria should sort *last*). That's a separate bug. :) -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:58:51PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: and behind netbsd in the sory state of our cdrom mirror network. I'm with Joey on this; last time I tried to find Debian .iso images, it was a nightmare. In fact I couldn't find an official woody iso anywhere. As he also said, many of the mirrors are hopelessly out-of-date. Joy (or any of the rest of the www team) - where do you get the data to put into the mirror pages on www.d.o? I'd suggest that a simple method for mirror admins to let us know what they plan to mirror, and for us to test its availability on a regular basis, would be a good idea. (In fact I might even just do it). Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 04:58:30PM -0500, David B Harris wrote: On Fri, 29 Nov 2002 15:58:51 -0500 Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The comparison is only fair with organizations that *want* you do do so(so not redhat, probably not openbsd, or mandrake, or others whose principal developers try to sell cds). Strictly speaking, given the ISO mirroring situation, we've never wanted people to use full 640M ISOs when we knew that 99% of people downloading would use a couple hundreds megs, at most. Given the ISO mirroring situation? Care to elucidate? I seem to remember seeing several offers of machines and bandwidth recently. It would seem to make sense to at least make it relatively easy for mirror admins who *do* have the available resources to provide ISO images. Even a single, reliable, possibly rate-limited, source for ISOs would be an improvement on what we currently have. Rate-limiting the source would, if necessary, provide a disincentive to people who would otherwise just jump in and download ISOs rather than using Jigdo. Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fine day for friends. So-so day for you.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 11:23:23PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: Joy (or any of the rest of the www team) - where do you get the data to put into the mirror pages on www.d.o? Well, we get it from the Internet :) Please rephrase the question, I don't understand. I'd suggest that a simple method for mirror admins to let us know what they plan to mirror, and for us to test its availability on a regular basis, would be a good idea. We already have that, but notice how the mirrors of the two archives aren't in the least bit of distress like the problem at hadn: the structure and contents of those is well defined, we have mirror checking scripts and we regularly monitor the output of that for any major problems. (I would suggest that you have a look at http://www.debian.org/mirror/) The CD image mirrors don't even have a primary site -- *cdimage.d.o includes only jigdo files now. Those image mirrors are one big improvization. -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Nick Phillips wrote: I'd suggest that a simple method for mirror admins to let us know what they plan to mirror, and for us to test its availability on a regular basis, would be a good idea. (In fact I might even just do it). I'm in the process of doing that, see the debian-cd list. -- see shy jo pgplp49gJlr8v.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002 23:27:33 +1300 Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Given the ISO mirroring situation? Care to elucidate? There being an order of magnitude more package mirrors than ISO mirrors. Completely ignoring the web site organisation, mind you, it's been common for a long time for people to encourage network-based installs, or anything other than downloading full 640M ISOs. Part of it, of course, is to enhance the user experience - users will rightfully go with full 640M ISOs because it's been their experience in the past that a) it was required, and b) shit broke often enough that they needed to reinstall. Almost everybody I got to do a 'net install never had any problems whatsoever, and they were EXTREMELY delighted. Had they gone wish the full 640M ISO, they'd have been happy, but they wouldn't have had as good an idea as to how things *can* work, when it's done right :) pgpZo7vImmMrN.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
David B Harris wrote: There being an order of magnitude more package mirrors than ISO mirrors. Completely ignoring the web site organisation, mind you, it's been common for a long time for people to encourage network-based installs, or anything other than downloading full 640M ISOs. Part of it, of course, is to enhance the user experience - users will rightfully go with full 640M ISOs because it's been their experience in the past that a) it was required, and b) shit broke often enough that they needed to reinstall. Almost everybody I got to do a 'net install never had any problems whatsoever, and they were EXTREMELY delighted. Had they gone wish the full 640M ISO, they'd have been happy, but they wouldn't have had as good an idea as to how things *can* work, when it's done right :) The problem with the net installs isos is mainly that they are unofficial and there are several varying cd's produced by different folks, and of varying quality (though quality is overall good; I've used them happily in the past). If we really want to promote them more it would be good to set things up so they can be generated from the debian-cd package, and make them official debian isos. Of course debian-installer should support 1.4 mb net install floppies too. But still if someone wants a whole debian CD, for whatever reasons, I'd rather they could easily find it, especially if they are a newcomer to debian. -- see shy jo pgpIsa8jgM5sM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002 16:06:40 -0500 Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The problem with the net installs isos is mainly that they are unofficial and there are several varying cd's produced by different folks, and of varying quality (though quality is overall good; I've used them happily in the past). If we really want to promote them more it would be good to set things up so they can be generated from the debian-cd package, and make them official debian isos. Of course debian-installer should support 1.4 mb net install floppies too. But still if someone wants a whole debian CD, for whatever reasons, I'd rather they could easily find it, especially if they are a newcomer to debian. Agreed, on all counts :) pgpLK5R1aKajL.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 11:56:59AM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote: On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 11:23:23PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: Joy (or any of the rest of the www team) - where do you get the data to put into the mirror pages on www.d.o? Well, we get it from the Internet :) Please rephrase the question, I don't understand. Well, do the admins just send you a mail, do you list any that you happen to come across when randomly surfing around, do you have any more structured way for admins to tell you what they plan to mirror...? We already have that, but notice how the mirrors of the two archives aren't in the least bit of distress like the problem at hadn: the structure and contents of those is well defined, we have mirror checking scripts and we regularly monitor the output of that for any major problems. (I would suggest that you have a look at http://www.debian.org/mirror/) Hmmm... the link to Debian mirrors that include the debian-cd archive actually takes me to a useful-ish list... at least, some of the sites listed do have iso images. It's not terribly helpful if it's not linked to in such a way that it will be found by someone looking for CD images, though. The CD image mirrors don't even have a primary site -- *cdimage.d.o includes only jigdo files now. Those image mirrors are one big improvization. Doesn't matter whether there's a primary site that is only accessible to official mirrors, or whether they all have to get the images in some other way, so long as it is simple for them to automate keep up to date. And so long as the directory structure of all the mirrors is the same, for the parts that they mirror... Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] You will soon forget this.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 11:20:10AM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: Joy (or any of the rest of the www team) - where do you get the data to put into the mirror pages on www.d.o? Well, we get it from the Internet :) Please rephrase the question, I don't understand. Well, do the admins just send you a mail, do you list any that you happen to come across when randomly surfing around, do you have any more structured way for admins to tell you what they plan to mirror...? All three. :) But mostly the third, via http://www.debian.org/mirror/submit Note s/plan to//. We already have that, but notice how the mirrors of the two archives aren't in the least bit of distress like the problem at hadn: the structure and contents of those is well defined, we have mirror checking scripts and we regularly monitor the output of that for any major problems. (I would suggest that you have a look at http://www.debian.org/mirror/) Hmmm... the link to Debian mirrors that include the debian-cd archive actually takes me to a useful-ish list... at least, some of the sites listed do have iso images. It's not terribly helpful if it's not linked to in such a way that it will be found by someone looking for CD images, though. It's the HTTP/FTP link on the CD pages... The CD image mirrors don't even have a primary site -- *cdimage.d.o includes only jigdo files now. Those image mirrors are one big improvization. Doesn't matter whether there's a primary site that is only accessible to official mirrors, or whether they all have to get the images in some other way, so long as it is simple for them to automate keep up to date. When there's nothing official in the US, it's understandable that the secondary mirror maintainers in the US will be reluctant to mirror from elsewhere. And so long as the directory structure of all the mirrors is the same, for the parts that they mirror... There isn't really a site to dictate the standard directory structure, so the best thing we could do is proclaim one of the existing ones standard. Heck, not even the directory name is standardized, there's debian-cd, debian-iso, debian-cdimage, ... -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Joey Hess | Of course debian-installer should support 1.4 mb net install floppies | too. s/should support/supports/ -- Tollef Fog Heen,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `-
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 04:06:40PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: The problem with the net installs isos is mainly that they are unofficial and there are several varying cd's produced by different folks, and of varying quality (though quality is overall good; I've used Yeah. The i386 all work afaik, but the last ppc install I tried with mini-iso's failed horribly because important things (like the appropriate boot kernel) were missing. The official iso's worked great. :) Mike Stone
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Nov 30, Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm with Joey on this; last time I tried to find Debian .iso images, it was a nightmare. In fact I couldn't find an official woody iso anywhere. This is the way of mirror operators to tell you that you should really use jigdo or even better the mini-images. -- ciao, Marco pgpQyjrl63F3k.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 09:23:43PM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote: On Nov 30, Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm with Joey on this; last time I tried to find Debian .iso images, it was a nightmare. In fact I couldn't find an official woody iso anywhere. This is the way of mirror operators to tell you that you should really use jigdo or even better the mini-images. If there are to be no .iso images anywhere (which would suck), then it should say in big letters that there are no iso images anywhere. There are times when a .iso really is what you need, and when those times come, it really sucks badly to force people to search through a whole list of mirrors that are in reality nothing of the sort and most of which don't have what you need (and what our pages say they have). :-/ But joeyh appears to be on the case, so I am confident that the situation will be rectified before too long... :) Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] It may or may not be worthwhile, but it still has to be done.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2002-11-28 17:13]: So maybe you click on the Debian on CD link, right? And from there on the 4th bulletted link (Download CD images using HTTP or FTP), after wading past unofficial minimal CD images, and learning what jigdo is. Because those options are prefered. We still like to help the sensible users instead of doing everything for the DAUs[1] who simply don't care, don't we? And then on scroll way down the list to your country. And then into the current directory on the mirror, oops, that was jigdo only?! back out and to the 3.0r0 directory. Uhm, just a second. When I click a on the links in that list I get to the debian-cd directory on the mirrors where I can choose between jigdo and the 3.0r0 directory. Why do you find yourself in the jigdo directory? What, that was jigdo again?! Hmm, try another mirror. Now it would be _more_ than helpful which link you are refering to. Without knowing it that seemingly broken link can't be fixed, thank you. Maybe the one in Austria, because it's the top of that list of mirrors. Hmm, no, it only has a jigdo directory too. Uhm, you seem to be blind, sorry. Both ftp and http of the austrian mirror has the 3.0r0 directories. Can you please check before accusing? I guess you seem to be puzzled by the layout of the HTML-Page there -- but you can't accuse debian for third party layouts, or do you try to do so? Finally, by picking the FTP site (not the HTTP site) in Austria, and digging two more directories deep, you find an iso. Digging one directory, there are just two and it's the one that is not named jigdo. But maybe instead, back at debian.org's front page, you picked the Getting Debian link instead. Only to end up on a page that links to cd vendors and downloading over the Internet. Ok, the latter. But it points to a page that only lets one download unnofficial netinst iso images, which are of varying quality, and well, unnoficial. You are right, there should be added a link to the $(HOME)/CD/http-ftp/ on that page, too. Thanks for the (quite hidden) suggestion. Joy, do you think that would help, too? (feel free to use me as one data-point; I have never used the debian website to try to download a debian CD before; indeed I have never downloaded a debian CD). But your first approach was correct, only that you seem to have been confused by third party html layouts on which we don't have any influence. So long, Alfie [1] Dumbest Assumable User -- 16:46 Molle sorry fuer die andauernden rejoins 16:46 -!- Molle [EMAIL PROTECTED] has quit [leaving] pgprm91hmbW2S.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Josip Rodin wrote: Yes, there is. The debian-cd mirrors on our list are very diverse: some have 2.2r*, some have 3.0r*, some don't have full ISOs at all. Expecting debian-www team to start making grossly hackish scripts to compensate for whatever the hell people put in debian-cd/ directories on their sites, or maintain separate lists of sites that have debian-cd organized properly, that is just unreal. So you define what a debian cd mirror should have, and mark all incomplete mirrors as such (with a scanning program), and don't use them for this purpose. An inconsistent mirror network can be worse than no mirror network at all. (Especially, I should note, when it's basically going to help not only some honest people who just got confused, but also give a false sense of easyness to a bunch of people who really shouldn't be installing Debian in the first place since they have a total aversion to reading documentation.) Well, no, I have read plenty of documentation in the past, and that was an honest example of me trying to find an iso and how it just doesn't work. Sure, I was skimming the web pages quite fast. Everyone does. To tie back to the thread, maybe one reason we're possibly losing (new) users to gentoo is: - go to gentoo.org - Gentoo Linux/x86 on left hand side - click on link directly to directory on ibiblio.org with an iso on it Another reason might be evidenced by the finger pointing, insults/elitism, and probably lack of any action at all I just got from a developer in response to a valid complaint. -- see shy jo pgpR0vhXJirzA.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
OK, howzabout some useful links that show that although Debian may be losing some users, which is still a shame, it perhaps not as bad as some would think. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=3614 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=24417 The first link shows a poll done a while ago on which OS was used before Debian, and the second one ask specifically if someone has moved from Debian to Gentoo, which is a bit new to be mega useful, but still interesting. BTW, God I wish Debian had forums like this, far easier that email lists (and no I can't set this up before someone suggests it). Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Gerfried Fuchs wrote: And then on scroll way down the list to your country. And then into the current directory on the mirror, oops, that was jigdo only?! back out and to the 3.0r0 directory. Uhm, just a second. When I click a on the links in that list I get to the debian-cd directory on the mirrors where I can choose between jigdo and the 3.0r0 directory. Why do you find yourself in the jigdo directory? I found myself in a directory that had nothing but a jigdo subdirectory. I didn't bother looking in the subdirectory, not wanting jigdo. What, that was jigdo again?! Hmm, try another mirror. Now it would be _more_ than helpful which link you are refering to. Without knowing it that seemingly broken link can't be fixed, thank you. http://aurolinux.mit.edu/debian-cd/ -- no debian 3.0! ftp://carroll.aset.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/debian-cd/ -- overloaded, cannot check ftp://debian-cd.rutgers.edu/pub/ -- no debian 3.0 ftp://debian.fifi.org/pub/debian-cd/ -- jigdo only ftp://debian.orst.edu/debian-cdimage/ -- jigdo only ftp://debian.tod.net/debian-cd/ -- cannot connect (routing?) ftp://debian.uchicago.edu/debian-cd/ -- stable points to debian 2.2r6 ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/debian-cd/ -- no debian 3.0 ftp://ftp-mirror.internap.com/pub/debian-cd/ -- jigdo only ftp://ftp.cs.stevens-tech.edu/pub/Linux/distributions/debian-cd/ -- no debian 3.0 ftp://ftp.keystealth.org/debian-cd/debian-cd/ -- no debian 3.0 ftp://ftp.egr.msu.edu/debian-cd/ -- 404 ftp://ftp.linux.tucows.com/pub/ISO/Debian/ -- connection refused ftp://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/iso-images/Debian/ -- no debian 3.0 ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu/pub/debian-cd/ -- no debian 3.0 ftp://linux.csua.berkeley.edu/debian-cd/ -- no 3.0 ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/debian-cd/ -- jigdo only ftp://mirror.csit.fsu.edu/debian-cd/ -- has isos, but directory is not readable ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/debian-cd/ -- no 3.0 ftp://mirrors.xmission.com/debian-cd/ -- no 3.0 http://telia.dl.sourceforge.net/mirrors/debian-cd/ -- jigdo only http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/mirrors/debian-cd/ -- jigdo only http://unc.dl.sourceforge.net/mirrors/debian-cd/ -- jigdo only I don't know which one I clicked on, but it was one of these. The above are every one of our listed cd mirrors in the US, none of which have isos, and a full half of which think that 2.2 was our last release. Maybe the one in Austria, because it's the top of that list of mirrors. Hmm, no, it only has a jigdo directory too. Uhm, you seem to be blind, sorry. Both ftp and http of the austrian mirror has the 3.0r0 directories. Can you please check before accusing? I guess you seem to be puzzled by the layout of the HTML-Page there -- but you can't accuse debian for third party layouts, or do you try to do so? Why should we have a bunch of diverse third party web pages on something that's supposed to be a mirror network? -- see shy jo pgpkaj8JZLCF3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Gerfried Fuchs wrote: But maybe instead, back at debian.org's front page, you picked the Getting Debian link instead. Only to end up on a page that links to cd vendors and downloading over the Internet. Ok, the latter. But it points to a page that only lets one download unnofficial netinst iso images, which are of varying quality, and well, unnoficial. You are right, there should be added a link to the $(HOME)/CD/http-ftp/ on that page, too. Thanks for the (quite hidden) suggestion. Joy, do you think that would help, too? Perhaps I was too obscure, because you still missed my point: In user interface design, having two suboptimal ways of doing something is *worse* than have one, even suboptimal, way of doing something. There are currently two paths from the front page to two different pages for downloading debian on iso. The current layout is: front page getting debian | . | | . | |. | | .| v vv debian on cd downloading over the internet | \| |\ | | \ | | \ | v \v / a few inconsistent mirror list `- minimal cd - but useful /| | | | |\ \ and unofficial images / | | | | | \ v v v v v v v oodles of badly maintained and inconsistant mirrors Adding the proposed link shown by the dotted line does not make this one whit easier to use. For a linear task like deciding how to download debian and finding a place to do so, it's a mess. A sane structure would look something like this: front page gimme an i386 iso now! -- .iso | | | v downoad debian | | | v debian on cd | | | | | | | v | unofficial mini isos | v mirror list /| |\ / | | \ v v v v just a few well maintained and consistent mirrors But your first approach was correct, only that you seem to have been confused by third party html layouts on which we don't have any influence. If my first approach was correct, and my second approach therefore, presumably, incorrect, they why do we have a prominent link to the second approach on the debian web site, under the attractive label of Getting Debian? Think about it. -- see shy jo pgpcan5zFGIsF.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: Indeed, the Debian home page is so well organized and so easy to find and get around in, that people don't *need* so many secondary sources of information. Our success at doing our job well has meant that the distrowatch counter is especially inaccurate in our case. Wooh, that's a rich one. Above speaks a man who does not read the debian-www mail I suppose. But I use the website. Here's a questions. Go to eh redhat site and see if you can figure out where to get a complete RedHat CD downloaded from the net? Of course our site has lots of room for improvement. I still submit it's way better than the competitors.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: But I use the website. Here's a questions. Go to eh redhat site and see if you can figure out where to get a complete RedHat CD downloaded from the net? The comparison is only fair with organizations that *want* you do do so (so not redhat, probably not openbsd, or mandrake, or others whose principal developers try to sell cds). Of course our site has lots of room for improvement. I still submit it's way better than the competitors. There's a straight 2 click path to a directory with an ISO image on it on the gentoo site. For freebsd, it's 3 obvious clicks to a ftp site directory, then click on arch and version. For netbsd, 5 clicks to a mirror (one hidden far down a page). For debian, it's 4 clicks, _if_ you avoid the unofficial images, and the false path that leads only to them. And _if_ you happen to pick one of the small fraction of listed mirrors that really work. So no, in this case our web site is behind all but netbsd in structure, and behind netbsd in the sory state of our cdrom mirror network. The debian web site has some nice stuff, but mostly for developers. And it suffers from accreting for years, with no overall vision, and little refactoring. If it were code I'd call it quite crufty and overfeatured and badly designed. -- see shy jo pgpeotMEWMNRk.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Jon Kent wrote: BTW, God I wish Debian had forums like this, far easier that email lists (and no I can't set this up before someone suggests it). debianplanet.org has stuff like this (incidentially and only because I'm stuck on the subject -- it's marginally easier to find a a debian cd image from debianplanet's web site then from debian.org :-P). Interesting polls BTW, they do bear out that a lot of gentoo users are ex-debian users. -- see shy jo pgpzcdLsnsNwW.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
--- Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: debianplanet.org has stuff like this (incidentially and only because I'm yeh I know but not as easy to use as Gentoo's are IMHO. BTW I agree with you regarding CD images. Gave up in the end trying to download and order CDs from Linux Emporium instead. Its was just too bloody painful :-( Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) | But I use the website. Here's a questions. Go to eh redhat site and | see if you can figure out where to get a complete RedHat CD downloaded | from the net? http://www.redhat.com - download - click the download link besides «Red Hat Linux 8.0», and if it weren't for the fact that ftp.redhat.com is a bit busy I'd have half the image on my hard drive already. | Of course our site has lots of room for improvement. I still submit | it's way better than the competitors. It's not, sorry. -- Tollef Fog Heen,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `-
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Fri, 29 Nov 2002 15:58:51 -0500 Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The comparison is only fair with organizations that *want* you do do so(so not redhat, probably not openbsd, or mandrake, or others whose principal developers try to sell cds). Strictly speaking, given the ISO mirroring situation, we've never wanted people to use full 640M ISOs when we knew that 99% of people downloading would use a couple hundreds megs, at most. pgpYSbDdC8lGr.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: Indeed, the Debian home page is so well organized and so easy to find and get around in, that people don't *need* so many secondary sources of information. Our success at doing our job well has meant that the distrowatch counter is especially inaccurate in our case. Wooh, that's a rich one. Above speaks a man who does not read the debian-www mail I suppose. Here's an experiment for you. Go to debian.org, and you want to download a CD image whole from the net (cause you have bandwidth and are in a hurry). So maybe you click on the Debian on CD link, right? And from there on the 4th bulletted link (Download CD images using HTTP or FTP), after wading past unofficial minimal CD images, and learning what jigdo is. And then on scroll way down the list to your country. And then into the current directory on the mirror, oops, that was jigdo only?! back out and to the 3.0r0 directory. What, that was jigdo again?! Hmm, try another mirror. Maybe the one in Austria, because it's the top of that list of mirrors. Hmm, no, it only has a jigdo directory too. Finally, by picking the FTP site (not the HTTP site) in Austria, and digging two more directories deep, you find an iso. But maybe instead, back at debian.org's front page, you picked the Getting Debian link instead. Only to end up on a page that links to cd vendors and downloading over the Internet. Ok, the latter. But it points to a page that only lets one download unnofficial netinst iso images, which are of varying quality, and well, unnoficial. And this second path (or rather, cul-de-sac) to a debian CD is entirely independant of the one described above. The website offers two ways to do the same thing, and neither works at all well. People report this to the web team all the time. Someone complained about it today. I think the obvious things to do to fix it would be to do a little usability study (feel free to use me as one data-point; I have never used the debian website to try to download a debian CD before; indeed I have never downloaded a debian CD). Figure out all the ways that someone can fuck this up, count how many correct choices they have to make the get to the result, and work out how to simplify it. There is no technical reason why the Debian on CD link could not look up the requestor's ip address, a-la-CPAN, and direct them directly to an i386 iso image on a mirror near them; presenting a page with that image in a big bold link, and links to the other architectures iso's after in general order of populatity of those architectures for CD installs. And down at the bottom, the remainder of the stuff from cdimage.debian.org (which is a lot nicer now than it was before, but I think has a long, long way to go before it matches Bushnell's perception). -- see shy jo pgpP0kUSk99l6.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 05:13:01PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: People report this to the web team all the time. And every time they get a negative response, because we cannot fix something that other people broke: the CD images distribution system. When woody was released, the CD images were not released on cdimage.debian.org where the old CD images were. Sure, the jigdo files were released, but as you note yourself, the newbies don't quite fancy that, do they? Of course, there are reasons for this change. But the fact is, the debian-cd people (or whoever -- I just know it's not the web team as the web team has nothing to do with it) chose to stop officially promoting distribution of full CD images. That requires a bunch of explanations to random people, and the random people don't like that. There is no technical reason why the Debian on CD link could not look up the requestor's ip address, a-la-CPAN, and direct them directly to an i386 iso image on a mirror near them; Yes, there is. The debian-cd mirrors on our list are very diverse: some have 2.2r*, some have 3.0r*, some don't have full ISOs at all. Expecting debian-www team to start making grossly hackish scripts to compensate for whatever the hell people put in debian-cd/ directories on their sites, or maintain separate lists of sites that have debian-cd organized properly, that is just unreal. (Especially, I should note, when it's basically going to help not only some honest people who just got confused, but also give a false sense of easyness to a bunch of people who really shouldn't be installing Debian in the first place since they have a total aversion to reading documentation.) Once again, if the CD image situation was clear, the documentation would be clear as well. -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
[ Could you please not CC me? ] On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 22:05, John Goerzen wrote: Are you comparing released version to released version? (Debian stable to NetBSD -STABLE?) If so, I stand corrected. Yes. In any case, we surely have come a long way. Definitely!
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Joel Baker | (I can think of one trivial example--devfs makes it really easy to tell | which disks are available to the partitioning program. Can you describe | a simple method to do that, which is guaranteed to work on any kernel? | Likewise, can you describe a kernel-independent way of parsing the pci | device table and loading relevant drivers?) | | To run with your example... I could care less how it's done on a Linux | kernel, if the API says Calling this routine will return a list of device | names which can be safely handed to the partitioning subsystem. Maybe | that's devfs on Linux, a Perl script on NetBSD, and green cheese on some | other system. *As long as the API does not assume anything about the system | underneath*, it *becomes* the 'simple system to do that on any kernel'. | That's all I'm asking for - careful API design, that tries very hard to | *not* make any assumptions about such things, and breaks things down far | enough that one can safely encapsulate OS-specific ways of doing it such | that they can be replaced. Yes, that's a goal, eventually. We are not there yet. First, get things working, then make then work and look nice. Trying to do two things at a time will make you fumble and not do any of them well. | On the other hand, if it *is* supposed to support non-Linux ports, all I'm | asking for is that people try to be mindful of such assumptions and keep | them hidden as implementation details, rather than core assumptions. The core assumption in d-i is debconf and some implementation of dpkg. Apart from that it is all modules which can be switched at will. Yes, there are linuxisms and i386isms in the code. Yes, they will be fixed. -- Tollef Fog Heen,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `-
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 07:05:31AM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: * Joel Baker | (I can think of one trivial example--devfs makes it really easy to tell | which disks are available to the partitioning program. Can you describe | a simple method to do that, which is guaranteed to work on any kernel? | Likewise, can you describe a kernel-independent way of parsing the pci | device table and loading relevant drivers?) | | To run with your example... I could care less how it's done on a Linux | kernel, if the API says Calling this routine will return a list of device | names which can be safely handed to the partitioning subsystem. Maybe | that's devfs on Linux, a Perl script on NetBSD, and green cheese on some | other system. *As long as the API does not assume anything about the system | underneath*, it *becomes* the 'simple system to do that on any kernel'. | That's all I'm asking for - careful API design, that tries very hard to | *not* make any assumptions about such things, and breaks things down far | enough that one can safely encapsulate OS-specific ways of doing it such | that they can be replaced. Yes, that's a goal, eventually. We are not there yet. First, get things working, then make then work and look nice. Trying to do two things at a time will make you fumble and not do any of them well. I might argue, in the case of APIs, that it is more a case of If you don't have time to do it right, how will you ever have time to do it over - it becomes *very* hard to un-entrench bad API choices, a lot of the time. | On the other hand, if it *is* supposed to support non-Linux ports, all I'm | asking for is that people try to be mindful of such assumptions and keep | them hidden as implementation details, rather than core assumptions. The core assumption in d-i is debconf and some implementation of dpkg. Apart from that it is all modules which can be switched at will. Yes, there are linuxisms and i386isms in the code. Yes, they will be fixed. However, in contrast to the above, it sounds like you have things split out enough that hopefully it won't come back to bite anyone later, too hard. Specific bits of code are far easier to fix than flawed design. I will grant that my perspective may be skewed; I typically do what programming work I do under folks who prefer lightweight processes (XP and things not quite so lightweight, but close), and for whom not having a clear API means you don't write code - because you have no idea what the code should be doing. -- *** Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/ pgprJcKvPjZN0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 01:00:19AM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: I might argue, in the case of APIs, that it is more a case of If you don't have time to do it right, how will you ever have time to do it over - it becomes *very* hard to un-entrench bad API choices, a lot of the time. You might argue, yes. You could, alternatively, stop talking about it, and provide Tollef with patches instead. So far, the question isn't whether there'll be time to do it right now or to redesign it later, the question's whether it'll be possible to do it at all. However, in contrast to the above, it sounds like you have things split out enough that hopefully it won't come back to bite anyone later, too hard. If you're going to debate with the d-i project lead, at least have the courtesy to check out the sources from CVS and try some installs and so forth first so you have _some_ clue what you're talking about, rather than trying to reduce everything to abstracts and platonic ideals. Cheers, a there are more things in debian-boot CVS, Horatio... j -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.'' pgp7lvVkzEX1f.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 09:05:25PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: Just waiting for Debian/VAX... ahem... I have a couple of 100+ MHz machines available for autobuilding when ready.. A 4000/600 and a 4000/700 from memory. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 01:58:25PM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: --- Matt Zimmerman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, it doesn't. It shows that the most frequently viewed distribution pages on distrowatch.com are: I did say they were not great figures, just interesting, but I expect this sort of comment from you. What, you don't like accurate figures? It makes sense that Gentoo gets more web hits than us. They are new and fashionable, while we are old but dependable. Of course this has no connection to what people are actually running on their machines though. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Joel Baker | I might argue, in the case of APIs, that it is more a case of If you don't | have time to do it right, how will you ever have time to do it over - it | becomes *very* hard to un-entrench bad API choices, a lot of the time. people seem to have the misconception that d-i is one big block of code with common APIs inside. It is not. It is a bunch of loosely coupled modules with little common API or code (except for debconf interaction, that is). (Not necessarily pointing at you here.) -- Tollef Fog Heen,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `-
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, 26 Nov 2002 13:59:48 -0500 H. S. Teoh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 01:41:21PM -0500, Matt Zimmerman wrote: [snip] No, it doesn't. It shows that the most frequently viewed distribution pages on distrowatch.com are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian And the sample size is approximately 56000 page views. [snip] And with enough obsessively reloading Debian users, we can easily skew the figures in Debian's favor. But that doesn't mean that Debian has suddenly become more popular. Who says we need users. Python (or hell, even bash), wget and cron would work nicely to the same effect. ;) -- Theodore Reed (rizen/bancus) -==- http://www.surreality.us/ ~OpenPGP Signed/Encrypted Mail Preferred; Finger me for my public key!~ Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. -- Kenich Ohmae pgptp2AljHKzc.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:26:16PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: I must admit to some confusion, here. Should I take this as implying that there is no particular intent to try to make Debian-Installer play nicely on anything but Linux kernels? Intent on whose part? You would need to ask those involved in working on debian-installer directly, and they may not even all have the same opinion. Someone needs to do the work, though, and if you are willing, and your solution is maintainable, I doubt your contribution would be turned away. In my mind, there is some doubt as to whether this can be done without sacrificing maintainability of (and slowing development of) debian-installer. -- - mdz
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Tollef Fog Heen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Joel Baker | I might argue, in the case of APIs, that it is more a case of If you don't | have time to do it right, how will you ever have time to do it over - it | becomes *very* hard to un-entrench bad API choices, a lot of the time. people seem to have the misconception that d-i is one big block of code with common APIs inside. It is not. It is a bunch of loosely coupled modules with little common API or code (except for debconf interaction, that is). (Not necessarily pointing at you here.) I suppose I had something like that misconception. Where can I read about the actaul construction of d-i?
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 08:46:01AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: I suppose I had something like that misconception. Where can I read about the actaul construction of d-i? http://cvs.debian.org/debian-installer/doc/ -- - mdz
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Just for your statistics: I finally come back to beloved and wonderful Debian after having fought for a few weeks with a Gentoo-Desktop system. My conclusion was - or is - that even if Gentoo has newer packages sometimes and is using more modern techniques in some areas (the new dependancy-based runlevel/init-system for example); the stability and wellformedness of Debian (It just never breaks ;) ) is more important than the bleeding-edge version of some packages. That were my 2 cents ;) Regards, Mikael -- Mikael Olenfalk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Netgineers
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Right I'm more awake now, its was late a night went I sent my last mail. A special thanks to Matt for his reply ;-) Right lets make this clear, I'm not here to push Gentoo, I was originally responding to the original question, is Debian losing users to Gentoo? Rather than bother arguing the point again, heres an interesting link: http://www.distrowatch.com/stats.php?1#04 The shows that the top 4 Distributions are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian Whats really interesting in this list in that a source based distribution can make it into the top 5, the others are nowhere near. Anyway 'nuff said really on that point I think. I know its not exactly solid figures, but interesting nevertheless. Whilst its fine to say we don't care about this, and I tend to agree on that point, if Debian slips more this tends to mean less users. Less users means less testing, which means either a longer, God forbid, period between stable releases, or a less stable stable release due to lack of testing. It could also more less developers coming into the fold, which in turn affects releases and packages that can be offered. Now that we have X 4.2.1 in testing, maybe its a good time to do a point release? Get stable up to date, as testing is fairly up to date and seems stable at least on my boxes (x86). Radical thinking I know ;-) Whats really important here is not Gentoo and how its doing today, but Debian and how its starting to be perceived as outdated and outmoded and not the techie's choice anymore. This seems to be forgotten, but is more important than anything else. You may not care about people's perception, but that was due, partically, to UNIX's down fall when MS turning up with Windows. Everyone perceived UNIX to be complex and where quite happy to dump it in favour of NT. Perception, unfortunately, counts for a lot, technical excellance gets forgotten. Its crap I know, but that the way of the world. Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:48:15AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote: But I have performed many debian installs with the boot floppy setup, and I found that it still suffers from problems. One problem faced by all dists is that of teaching people about partitioning and backing up. At least the installer says don't do this unless you're backed up. debian-installer might solve that problem by offering to make all the partitioning decisions. I don't see how automated partitioning avoids the need for a backup. Things can still go wrong. The power could go down at the wrong time and take the partition table with it. The software could be buggy in some circumstances, or the kernel is, or something. You certainly shouldn't assume that nobody wants to partition their disk manually, either. dselect, for all its use once a person gets used to it, is not suitable for a new person. Its interface is hostile in friendly clothes as well You are not forced to use dselect during the boot-floppies installation process. By comparison, boot-floppies looks like kludges atop and beneath other kludges, and I get the impression this is not easy to change without affecting other aspects of the installer. I think that unless boot- That may be a correct impression from the code, but it isn't my experience as a user of the process. I find it quite smooth; predictable, certainly. Easy once you've done a few. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Jon Kent | Now that we have X 4.2.1 in testing, maybe its a good | time to do a point release? Get stable up to date, as | testing is fairly up to date and seems stable at least | on my boxes (x86). Radical thinking I know ;-) we. don't. have. a. working. installer. for. sarge. how hard is that to comprehend? -- Tollef Fog Heen,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `-
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
--- Tollef Fog Heen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: we. don't. have. a. working. installer. for. sarge. how hard is that to comprehend? Thanks for the witty reply but thats why I suggested a _point_ release, OK, its not the same as a major release, comprehend!!! A point release is. not. sarge. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Tollef Fog Heen [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2002-11-26 11:59]: | Now that we have X 4.2.1 in testing, maybe its a good | time to do a point release? Get stable up to date, as we. don't. have. a. working. installer. for. sarge. * Jon Kent [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2002-11-26 03:20]: Thanks for the witty reply but thats why I suggested a _point_ release, OK, its not the same as a major release, comprehend!!! A point release is. not. sarge. But. testing. is. sarge. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 02:08:54AM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: Rather than bother arguing the point again, heres an interesting link: http://www.distrowatch.com/stats.php?1#04 The shows that the top 4 Distributions are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian Well, here's another link: http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2002/12/award/award.html 1. Debian 2. Knoppix 3. SuSE So what? (oh, and Gentoo was in the list, too[1]. They are even the best newcomer) Now that we have X 4.2.1 in testing, maybe its a good time to do a point release? Get stable up to date, as testing is fairly up to date and seems stable at least on my boxes (x86). Radical thinking I know ;-) You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. There's no problem in other distributions to step up, compile KDE3 with whatever compiler, optimize for i686, use PGI, include X4.2.1 and call it 'Desktop Debian' or whatever. Hell, you could perhaps make a lot of money that way. *We* will release when we are ready[tm]. Whats really important here is not Gentoo and how its doing today, but Debian and how its starting to be perceived as outdated and outmoded and not the techie's choice anymore. And that's news exacttly since when? 1999? Michael -- [1] http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2002/12/award/nominees.html
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:20:38AM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: Thanks for the witty reply but thats why I suggested a _point_ release, OK, its not the same as a major release, comprehend!!! A point release is. not. sarge. A point release is on the way, check the facts dude.[1] Michael -- [1] Of course, it won't include X4.2
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
OK I have enough of this for the moment, do what you feel is right but I'm not convinced that some of the directions things are going are for the benefit of Debian, the blinkers seem to well and truely attached to some people. To the people here who at least replied in a polite manner, thanks, and for those that see some of my points, maybe you have more time than me to follow them up. Looks like an uphill battle mind. I want Debian to be a key player, not an underdog or also ran, which some of you seem to be quite happy with. This annoys the hell out of me, Debian was once looked up to, now its the one with apt. Anyway enough Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
* Jon Kent | --- Tollef Fog Heen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | | we. don't. have. a. working. installer. for. sarge. | | how hard is that to comprehend? | | Thanks for the witty reply but thats why I suggested a | _point_ release, OK, its not the same as a major | release, comprehend!!! 'Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.' (Terry Pratchett, Eric) | A point release is. not. sarge. stable does not gain new versions. (with a few exceptions, such as where backporting security fixes is ~impossible.) -- Tollef Fog Heen,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `-
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
--- Tollef Fog Heen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 'Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.' (Terry Pratchett, Eric) Indeed, or someone who trying to convey that they are annoyed. | A point release is. not. sarge. stable does not gain new versions. (with a few exceptions, such as where backporting security fixes is ~impossible.) Are you sure? I seem to remember 2.2 getting a few releases, called them point or called them R# it means the same thing. Were this security only releases? (I'm can't remember) Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:03:27AM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: I want Debian to be a key player, not an underdog or also ran, which some of you seem to be quite happy with. This annoys the hell out of me, Debian was once looked up to, now its the one with apt. What does that mean, anyway? Does it mean that apt is a disadvantage? Or that apt is our only advantage? Or what? I reckon breadth of software and quality of the overall system are the advantages personally, as well as the free software emphasis. We have thousands of open source programs properly integrated into our system, something I don't believe any of the others have. rpmfind.net doesn't even score a mention. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 06:43:03PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: Certainly it will have a hard time working on any of the BSDs anytime soon, if it relies on devfs more than trivially; they have no concept of it, nor are they really likely to anytime soon. Use of /proc should also, prefferably, be limited to traditional /proc items and not the Linux view of using it as a sysctl area (though there is Another option is for the bsd port to write their own installer module. If something is radically easier to do using devfs or proc I don't think it's reasonable to forbid it because of a hypothetical bsd port. Mike Stone
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 05:20:56PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 02:48:10PM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: Time, I'm afraid, is something I lack. Don't get me wrong the work Branden has done is great, what I'm trying to point out is that 4.2 is not in stable and, currently, will no tbe in stable for a year or more. Thats not good. I think 2.2 is still the default kernel in 3.0 (I could be wrong) and so on. 3.0 also included a 2.4 kernel as an option. Why the conservative default should be cited as a sign that Debian is behind the times, I cannot fathom. Such conservativism has served business users VERY well. This is a very good point. I just installed debian on one of our servers, but cannot for the life of me get 2.4 kernels to run. 2.2 kernels run like a dream though, and the installation went beautifully. What I would like to see is a 2.2 kernel with smp support. Getting this server working got pushed back as a priority, so I haven't built my own yet. Anyway, Gentoo has a much different niche than Debian, so I don't understand why people are arguing about changing Debian because of it. If Gentoo serves their needs better, good. Perhaps Debian can then focus less on those people and more on others? Why duplicate work, right? (BTW, sorry for the anecdote, I know how much they're hated here. ;-) Sean Proctor
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:24:14AM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: | A point release is. not. sarge. stable does not gain new versions. (with a few exceptions, such as where backporting security fixes is ~impossible.) Are you sure? I seem to remember 2.2 getting a few releases, 2.2r1 included a new mozilla, because I was feeling adventurous, because it didn't have any impact on other package, and for a couple of other reasons I can't recall now. It also included a broken libc6 for sparc, and r2 was released a week or two later. 2.2r3 and onwards were managed by Joey (Martin Schulze, as flamed on slashdot!), and only include security updates. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.'' pgp8mC03rdz28.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:07:47PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 07:46:20PM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: Debian's support for so many arches slows down development in other areas as well. For example, getting gcc-3.2 working on all arches has [...] the key issue. We have one outstanding issue with gcc-3.2 at the moment, which is that cmath on sparc doesn't work. Something is seriously wrong, if a single bug that affects a single arch can stop everyone else from forward. We need a way to get packages that are broken on some platform into the distrubution while the developers of the arch sort out the problem. Not the way it is happening currently, that everyone has to wait the platform to fix itself before updated packages get into distribution. Maybe we should start the gcc-3.2 migration now, and just not autocompile c++ apps on sparc until gcc is fixed? -- Riku Voipio|[EMAIL PROTECTED] | kirkkonummentie 33 |+358 40 8476974 --+-- 02140 Espoo| | Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. |
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:41:45PM +0200, Riku Voipio wrote: Something is seriously wrong, if a single bug that affects a single arch can stop everyone else from forward. We need a way to get packages that are broken on some platform into the distrubution while the developers of the arch sort out the problem. Not the way it is happening currently, that everyone has to wait the platform to fix itself before updated packages get into distribution. That brings up a whole different set of problems, none of which are any easier to fix. For example: We would then basically have a separate, potentially out of sync, testing distribution for each platform. If a package is allowed to move in to testing on e.g. i386 without the same package moving to testing on one of the other platforms, then the archive will blow up to unmanagable size. Keeping things coordinated would be really difficult, and we'd probably end up slowing the release cycle even further. noah -- ___ | Web: http://web.morgul.net/~frodo/ | PGP Public Key: http://web.morgul.net/~frodo/mail.html pgpTyaoSWvyWB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:41:45PM +0200, Riku Voipio wrote: Something is seriously wrong, if a single bug that affects a single arch can stop everyone else from forward. We need a way to get packages that are broken on some platform into the distrubution while the developers of the arch sort out the problem. Not the way it is happening currently, that everyone has to wait the platform to fix itself before updated packages get into distribution. i have a very different opinion on that. i don't any box that's not x86 but i still like all the ports, because it gets debian a bigger audience which means more testing, fixes and potential developers. and this audience is not only bigger but also wider spread, which means debian is put to much more different uses and therefore bugs that might slip unnoticed are discovered. on top of that it is a good thing to support other architectures to avoid monopolies. a lot of the bugs that show up on one architecture are a bug on x86 as well, but just don't show up. we can for example be pretty sure that our software is 64-bit clean because of things like the alpha port, which means that supporting x86-64 and ia64 is a breeze (which is a nightmare for proprietary software vendors, that never thought their software has to run on anything but a pc). if we want to support these architectures, then we have to support them together with mainline architectures, and not treat them as second-class spinoffs of x86-linux. if we don't release on all architectures at the same time and thus force the developers to fix bugs on less-used arches as well, we will basically give up on supporting them at all. which is something i definitely would not like. on a bit wider perspective, there are many examples where non-mainline uses lead to improvements for all. a very prominent example is the 2.5 kernel, which brings a lot of scalability improvements for small x86 servers done by people who give shit about computers like these. cu robert
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:41:45PM +0200, Riku Voipio wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:07:47PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 07:46:20PM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: Debian's support for so many arches slows down development in other areas as well. For example, getting gcc-3.2 working on all arches has [...] the key issue. We have one outstanding issue with gcc-3.2 at the moment, which is that cmath on sparc doesn't work. Something is seriously wrong, if a single bug that affects a single arch can stop everyone else from forward. You obviously didn't read all of aj's message. How about you postpone your bitching along these lines until you've helped fix all the RC bugs in gcc 3.2 and glibc 2.3.1 that *do* affect i386? -- G. Branden Robinson| Never underestimate the power of Debian GNU/Linux | human stupidity. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Robert Heinlein http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgp53DaViklnJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Mon, 2002-11-25 at 22:46, Brian Nelson wrote: What I fail to understand is why Debian insists on supporting every single arch itself. Because, somewhat circularly, that's what has emerged as one of Debian's strong points, and we like it. Certainly it makes the releases slower. But it's one thing that really differentiates Debian from the competition. Being the most portable Free OS is worth something, in my opinion. Instead of trying to move Debian, a better approach is probably to make another OS built on Debian, where you ignore everything but ia32 or whatever. In fact, that's exactly what a number of OSes out there do.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 07:46:20PM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: Noah L. Meyerhans [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 08:41:43PM +0200, Riku Voipio wrote: That's an interesting comparison. If you look at NetBSD, you'll see that they have a very similar problem to us: They have a really slow release cycle. I think at some point it really does come down to the size of the OS. At some point, I suspect that the Debian community is going to have to decide what it wants. Will it be frequent, up-to-date releases, or will it be support for every platform we can get our hands on? I don't think we can have both. What I fail to understand is why Debian insists on supporting every single arch itself. Why not pick a handful of arches we do give a flying fuck about, support those, and if some organization wants to port Debian to another arch, then let them fork and support it themselves (like Redhat-Yellow Dog)? We have, there just happen to be 11 architectures we give a flying fuck about. I personally have Debian/sid on 4 1/2( x86, PPC32, SPARC, UltraSPARC, MIPSel) and I enjoy them all. - Nick Lopez [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Besides, a sysadmin without a condescending attitude is like a donut without jam. You can do it, but why bother?
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:39:41AM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: Because, somewhat circularly, that's what has emerged as one of Debian's strong points, and we like it. Certainly it makes the releases slower. But it's one thing that really differentiates Debian from the competition. Being the most portable Free OS is worth something, in my opinion. I think NetBSD still has us beat on that point. -- John
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
In chiark.mail.debian.devel, you wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:39:41AM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: Because, somewhat circularly, that's what has emerged as one of Debian's strong points, and we like it. Certainly it makes the releases slower. But it's one thing that really differentiates Debian from the competition. Being the most portable Free OS is worth something, in my opinion. I think NetBSD still has us beat on that point. This depends on your definition of portability to some extent. Debian defines platforms in terms of userspace compatibility, whereas NetBSD does so in terms of kernel compatibility. Both support approximately the same number of CPU types, and Linux supports a wider range of platforms within x86 and PPC (excepting the BeBox). On the other hand, NetBSD runs on /way/ more strange old M68k and Alpha things. I think their Vax port is probably further along, too. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 02:08:54AM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: http://www.distrowatch.com/stats.php?1#04 The shows that the top 4 Distributions are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian No, it doesn't. It shows that the most frequently viewed distribution pages on distrowatch.com are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian And the sample size is approximately 56000 page views. Now that we have X 4.2.1 in testing, maybe its a good time to do a point release? Get stable up to date, as testing is fairly up to date and seems stable at least on my boxes (x86). Radical thinking I know ;-) If you had lived through a stable Debian release cycle, you would realize that what you are asking for is not a point release. You may not care about people's perception, but that was due, partically, to UNIX's down fall when MS turning up with Windows. Everyone perceived UNIX to be complex and where quite happy to dump it in favour of NT. Perception, unfortunately, counts for a lot, technical excellance gets forgotten. Its crap I know, but that the way of the world. Your version of computer history is rather twisted. Care to provide a reference? -- - mdz
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 01:41:21PM -0500, Matt Zimmerman wrote: [snip] No, it doesn't. It shows that the most frequently viewed distribution pages on distrowatch.com are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian And the sample size is approximately 56000 page views. [snip] And with enough obsessively reloading Debian users, we can easily skew the figures in Debian's favor. But that doesn't mean that Debian has suddenly become more popular. T -- Doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, 26 Nov 2002 21:30:30 +1100 Hamish Moffatt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:48:15AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote: But I have performed many debian installs with the boot floppy setup, and I found that it still suffers from problems. One problem faced by all dists is that of teaching people about partitioning and backing up. At least the installer says don't do this unless you're backed up. debian-installer might solve that problem by offering to make all the partitioning decisions. I don't see how automated partitioning avoids the need for a backup. It doesn't, of course. What it does do is help the very new user to just do it, so that he can just start installing. Perhaps this should have a warning that the option should only be tried on new drives. The thing is, this represents an alteration of workflow of the install process, and also involves additional software which would know how to make partitioning decisions. I think these changes would be harder to implement in boot-floppies and easier in debian-installer. Things can still go wrong. The power could go down at the wrong time and take the partition table with it. The software could be buggy in some circumstances, or the kernel is, or something. Agreed, but that's universal, and your thought could be continued as and even if the software has no bugs, an individual computer owner's hardware could be flaky. You certainly shouldn't assume that nobody wants to partition their disk manually, either. You're right, one should not assume that. And indeed, when I said OFFER to make partitioning decisions, you can read into that an additional offer to NOT do so. (This could be summarized as you misread my statement; I would have assumed a developer could read into the word offer the possibility of offering to alternatively do something else.) dselect, for all its use once a person gets used to it, is not suitable for a new person. Its interface is hostile in friendly clothes as well You are not forced to use dselect during the boot-floppies installation process. Yes, that is true, but I feel that the interface of dselect is so bad that it should not be even offered as a choice. (And before someone misreads again (that would be third time), I said -interface-, NOT the actual functionality. That of dselect is quite solid, but that's mostly just dpkg. The newer a user is, the greater importance there is on interface, and the more attention paid to its design.) By comparison, boot-floppies looks like kludges atop and beneath other kludges, and I get the impression this is not easy to change without affecting other aspects of the installer. I think that unless boot- That may be a correct impression from the code, but it isn't my experience as a user of the process. I find it quite smooth; predictable, certainly. Easy once you've done a few. Absolutely. It's a snap once you've had some practice and know some things about disks, netcards and other hardware that might be involved in installation of an operating system. My concern is for the people who have never done a debian install, and/or have little or no hardware knowledge. Hamish -Jim
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 08:10:18AM -0500, Sean Proctor wrote: [ snip ] ... Anyway, Gentoo has a much different niche than Debian, so I don't understand why people are arguing about changing Debian because of it. If Gentoo serves their needs better, good. Perhaps Debian can then focus less on those people and more on others? Why duplicate work, right? (BTW, sorry for the anecdote, I know how much they're hated here. ;-) mode=rant No way! Debian has to be all things to all people Specifically, it has to be what I[1] want it to be!! If you don't agree, you must be defective or something!! /mode [1] You know who you are. -- Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] You can have Peace, or you can have Freedom. Don't ever count on having both at the same time. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Matt Zimmerman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 02:08:54AM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: http://www.distrowatch.com/stats.php?1#04 The shows that the top 4 Distributions are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian No, it doesn't. It shows that the most frequently viewed distribution pages on distrowatch.com are: 1) Mandrake 2) Red Hat 3) Gentoo 4) Debian Indeed, the Debian home page is so well organized and so easy to find and get around in, that people don't *need* so many secondary sources of information. Our success at doing our job well has meant that the distrowatch counter is especially inaccurate in our case.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Colin Walters [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Because, somewhat circularly, that's what has emerged as one of Debian's strong points, and we like it. Certainly it makes the releases slower. But it's one thing that really differentiates Debian from the competition. Being the most portable Free OS is worth something, in my opinion. I don't think it's all that clear that it makes the release process very much slower.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
--- Matt Zimmerman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, it doesn't. It shows that the most frequently viewed distribution pages on distrowatch.com are: I did say they were not great figures, just interesting, but I expect this sort of comment from you. If you had lived through a stable Debian release cycle, you would realize that what you are asking for is not a point release. I been using Debian since 2.1, what about you? Your version of computer history is rather twisted. Care to provide a reference? Not really, its too much effect to put in for some one who has a problem with constructive feedback. Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:20:18AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:39:41AM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: Because, somewhat circularly, that's what has emerged as one of Debian's strong points, and we like it. Certainly it makes the releases slower. But it's one thing that really differentiates Debian from the competition. Being the most portable Free OS is worth something, in my opinion. I think NetBSD still has us beat on that point. TINC And thus, our evil plans to subvert it in the name of our cause to RULE THE WORLD! /TINC Er, wait. Did I say that in my out-loud voice? Damn. Now I'll have to feed you all to the sharks with lasers on their heads. -- *** Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/ pgpTkeWohCNJt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:04:48AM -0600, Zed Pobre wrote: Something is seriously wrong, if a single bug that affects a single arch can stop everyone else from forward. You obviously didn't read all of aj's message. How about you postpone your bitching along these lines until you've helped fix all the RC bugs in gcc 3.2 and glibc 2.3.1 that *do* affect i386? Not to defend Riku here, but I would point out that a mechanism to shunt very buggy packages into experimental and replace them with a previous known working version from snapshots would be a very useful thing, and would have severely cut back on the amount of damage caused by things like the recent libc6 transition. And no, I don't have the skill or the time to write such a mechanism. Please don't suggest that that removes any validity or value of the suggestion. This way the version of packges installed will bounce back and forward again. And I'm sure there is more problems I cannot see. AH! If that package is a lib, you must also move all packages that depends on that lib also back. -- Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgpgdQ9kgIyFn.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Hello folks, my answer to the subject: a few! Dear everyone in the Debian community, The question I want to pose today is Are we losing users to Gentoo? I hate to sound like a marketing departmen drone, but I'm becoming more and more disturbed since I'm noticing more and more 'random' outbursts on message boards about how 'cool' Gentoo is. Whatever happened to all the Debian evangelists? I think (even all) Debian evangelists are still on the side of Debian and have not converted themselves into Gentoo evangelists. Whenever someone rants about Gentoo's processor optimisations and states some overinflated performance boost such as 10%-20%, all I can do is make a a feeble rebuttal stating that it's more like (insert low figure without much solid evidence - e.g.. 5%) with exceptions such as glibc, X, multimedia applications, mozilla and OpenOffice. So then they counter that it's still an increase. Ok, so what strengths does Debian have to make a comeback with? Unlike Gentoo, Debian has quality assurance and security teams. We have a strict policy and bug resolution procedures. But they won't listen and still say Gentoo. Hmm, I've tried Gentoo 1.2 (from stage 1) cause of there's no i686 Debian tree. I've tried, nothing more - I'm still using Debian stable for my servers and testing for my workstation. As well as you start from stage 3 - the compile time takes longer as the speedup saves time .. that's my opinion. I mean take X .. it takes 1 hour to compile (guess) on my Athlon 1,4 GHz. In a half year there is a new release and I've to compile again. Does the performance boost of 10%-20% bring in the difference between 4 minutes installation on Debian and 1 Hour with gentoo. Imagine your system is a PIII 500 ... and you only have X! I know that there is a way to build an ISO on your fast machine optimized for your (slow) target machine. But think of a security expoit in any packege of your target machine ... you have to emerge(?) the new fixed sources which takes time. Yes, it's a waste of time more often than not supporting your favourite distribution in web forums, but shouldn't Debian just be good enough on its own that it speaks for itself? Perhaps this is what is making Gentoo so popular of a sudden: /me now points to Gentoo's About page prologue: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml He discovered lots of up-to-date packages that could be auto-built using the optimizations settings and build-time functionality that he wanted, rather than what some distro creator thought would be best for him. All of the sudden, Larry the Cow was in control. And he liked it. Most users changing from SuSE, RedHat or Mandrake to Debian are happy if they can get Debian running and the system is providing the same profit as that provided by their old Distribution. These users are in superior number as users which have the know-how in compiler optimizations and are changing from Debian to Gentoo. Silly, perhaps, but it still conveys the message that the Gentoo user is in control. Do the cutting edge enthusiasts in Debian have the same amount of control? Have we become so complacent at believing that since we have the some of the strictest policies and heaviest bug resolution/testing procedures around that we're the best distribution around that we no longer need to seek improvements? I'm not involved into Debian development but if it would be true it would be sad. I assume that improvements on the policy as well as on the technical side are taking place. I know that there's plenty of logistical/mirroring reasons as to why we shouldn't duplicate a lot of the i386 tree by creating a i686 tree, but could we seriously not consider a partial i686 optimised tree as a compromise to attract some of the Gentoo users back with our strengths in policy and testing? If not, then we need to find something else to offer to attract the cutting-edge enthusiast. The worst thing we could do is dismiss this completely. Remember the days when Slackware and Yggdrasil were the 'elitist's choice'? I certainly don't ever want to see Debian even come close to sinking. I'm working for a mid-range ISP in germany. It would be nice to have binary-i686 but in our case - who cares. Perhaps a shared i686-http-Server can handle 1-n customers more but anytime we have to put up a new machine. The advantages of saving time with provided binary packages, secutity.debian.org (hmm, bad example these days) stability in opposite to cutting edge version numbers will point to Debian. I would say that if we consider Gentoo for our system environment, the answer would be obvious _no_. /me throws in obligatory social contract quote to finish off: http://www.debian.org/social_contract Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 08:03:12AM -0500, Michael Stone wrote: On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 06:43:03PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: Certainly it will have a hard time working on any of the BSDs anytime soon, if it relies on devfs more than trivially; they have no concept of it, nor are they really likely to anytime soon. Use of /proc should also, prefferably, be limited to traditional /proc items and not the Linux view of using it as a sysctl area (though there is Another option is for the bsd port to write their own installer module. If something is radically easier to do using devfs or proc I don't think it's reasonable to forbid it because of a hypothetical bsd port. In principle, agreed. In practice, I find that once such assumptions creep in, it can be very, very hard to remove them without yanking out a lot of entrails to go with. This can be handled, but the worth of being careful to properly keep these things from creeping out beyond where they can be replaced is still there. -- *** Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/ pgpsgaV71ohba.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 01:58:25PM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: I did say they were not great figures, just interesting, I don't see how these figures are interesting for debian development. Could you please enlighten me? Michael -- The very first use of Unix in the 'real business' of Bell Labs was to type and produce patent applications -- Dennis Ritchie
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 01:58:25PM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: --- Matt Zimmerman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, it doesn't. It shows that the most frequently viewed distribution pages on distrowatch.com are: I did say they were not great figures, just interesting, but I expect this sort of comment from you. No, you simply ignored what the numbers represent, and presented a list to try to paint Debian as relatively unpopular. I don't see what your objective is, other than to start and prolong pointless arguments. I been using Debian since 2.1, what about you? If true, this would mean that you upgraded through all 7 point releases of potato, and then to woody. Given your comments so far, this would indicate that you did not notice the functional difference between the potato point releases and the woody release. Your version of computer history is rather twisted. Care to provide a reference? Not really, its too much effect to put in for some one who has a problem with constructive feedback. It's surely a lot more effect[sic] than inventing history to suit your needs. -- - mdz
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:20:40PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: In practice, I find that once such assumptions creep in, it can be very, very hard to remove them without yanking out a lot of entrails to go with. Which is the price to be paid for using a different kernel. An installer, by its nature, is going to be kernel dependent. It also needs to be small and maintainable. I don't think it's imediately obvious that coming up with a kernel-independent hardware detector and module loader (for example) is worth the trouble. If you want to write one, great--but don't impose that as a requirement on others. Mike Stone
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:18:18PM +0100, Volker Dierks wrote: Silly, perhaps, but it still conveys the message that the Gentoo user is in control. Do the cutting edge enthusiasts in Debian have the same amount of control? Have we become so complacent at believing that since we have the some of the strictest policies and heaviest bug resolution/testing procedures around that we're the best distribution around that we no longer need to seek improvements? I'm not involved into Debian development but if it would be true it would be sad. I assume that improvements on the policy as well as on the technical side are taking place. Yes, this seems to be random, unfocused ranting. If there is a belief that Debian is failing to improve itself technically, no evidence is offered in support of it (except Gentoo does some stuff that we don't, and which some people think is cool). Also, note the progression: there are a thousand Debian developers whose responsibility is to maintain and increase the technical excellence of the Debian distribution (or at least their part of it); Debian is not improving technically, due to developer complacence; therefore, I'll exhort developers to be more interested in things they apparently don't care about, by pointing out to them that they're losing users. Unfortunately for this line of reasoning, the interest of DDs tends to be biased in favor of technical excellence even at the *expense* of userbase; so if DDs are not already motivated to work on these issues of their own accord (which happens to be false -- there *are* DDs working on all of the issues discussed, each according to his interests and priorities), cries of we need to get more users! are not likely to sway. :) In truth, there is no shortage of work to go around in the project. It remains that the best way to ensure that the things *you* want to see worked on get attended to is by working on them. Otherwise, our finite resources guarantee that there will always be room for improvement. If our priorities for improving Debian disagree with yours, your challenge is to make it *your* priority to work on fixing the problems you see, rather than to try making it someone *else's* priority. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpPxVhzs41yY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
--- Matt Zimmerman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 01:58:25PM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: try to paint Debian as relatively unpopular. I don't see what your objective is, other than to start and prolong pointless arguments. What distrowatch tries to achieve is gauging interesting in a distro, anything in the top 5 can be considered to be rather well. I _not_ putting down Debian at all (last time I say that). I supplied in a helpful information, not more. If you want to stressed about it that up to you. I been using Debian since 2.1, what about you? If true, this would mean that you upgraded through all 7 point releases of Sorta yes and no. With 2.2 I moved over to testing after r3 as I needed stuff that was available only in testing. With 3.0 and did the usual dist-upgrade, but as I been really using testing and unstable for quite awhile I can't say I noticed anything major. That said I'll be doing a clean install of 3.0 next week maybe it'll be more obvious then. It's surely a lot more effect[sic] than inventing history to suit your needs. Very quickly then, I worked in a consultancy begin of the 90s doing UNIX stuff (Solaris/SunOS/SCO/SGI) in the City (London). UNIX stuff slowly started to slowly dry up after Win 95 came out and more so when NT arrived properly. There is a reverse trend now thank goodness and Linux is right at the front :-). My history is based around the banking world, yours maybe differant. Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 05:58:06PM -0500, Michael Stone wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:20:40PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: In practice, I find that once such assumptions creep in, it can be very, very hard to remove them without yanking out a lot of entrails to go with. Which is the price to be paid for using a different kernel. An installer, by its nature, is going to be kernel dependent. It also needs to be small and maintainable. I don't think it's imediately obvious that coming up with a kernel-independent hardware detector and module loader (for example) is worth the trouble. If you want to write one, great--but don't impose that as a requirement on others. I must admit to some confusion, here. Should I take this as implying that there is no particular intent to try to make Debian-Installer play nicely on anything but Linux kernels? Whatever the answer is, fine, but it would be nice to know so that those of us involved with the rest can decide to either not waste our time on something that won't benefit us at all, and build something that will, or so that the folks working on it know that making such assumptions *will* cause problems when they become invalid. -- *** Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/ pgpC9xI1ub1lJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:21:27PM -0800, Jon Kent wrote: What distrowatch tries to achieve is gauging interesting in a distro, Wouldn't it be gauging people going to distwatch to find a *different* distro? I mean, why go to distwatch if you're happy with what you're running and don't care about any of the others? Mike Stone
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:26:16PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: I must admit to some confusion, here. Should I take this as implying that there is no particular intent to try to make Debian-Installer play nicely on anything but Linux kernels? I'm saying that some things that an installer does are by their nature specific to a kernel. Others are not. If the people writing the software decide that a particular piece is better written to use /proc or /devfs, then they should use /proc or /devfs without losing a lot of sleep over it. (I can think of one trivial example--devfs makes it really easy to tell which disks are available to the partitioning program. Can you describe a simple method to do that, which is guaranteed to work on any kernel? Likewise, can you describe a kernel-independent way of parsing the pci device table and loading relevant drivers?) If you want to support the same functionality on whatever other kernel you want to use, you'll have to write some (kernel-specific) code to do so. Does that mean you can't leverage the partitioning tool once a device is given? Or that you can't use the network config tool once the network drivers have been loaded? Of course not--so why are you trying to start some sort of kernel jihad? Mike Stone
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 06:37:50PM -0500, Michael Stone wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:26:16PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: I must admit to some confusion, here. Should I take this as implying that there is no particular intent to try to make Debian-Installer play nicely on anything but Linux kernels? I'm saying that some things that an installer does are by their nature specific to a kernel. Others are not. If the people writing the software decide that a particular piece is better written to use /proc or /devfs, then they should use /proc or /devfs without losing a lot of sleep over it. In the origional message, I merely pointed out that keeping such things properly encapsulated is crucial, if you EVER want to be able to run on any other kernel. (I can think of one trivial example--devfs makes it really easy to tell which disks are available to the partitioning program. Can you describe a simple method to do that, which is guaranteed to work on any kernel? Likewise, can you describe a kernel-independent way of parsing the pci device table and loading relevant drivers?) To run with your example... I could care less how it's done on a Linux kernel, if the API says Calling this routine will return a list of device names which can be safely handed to the partitioning subsystem. Maybe that's devfs on Linux, a Perl script on NetBSD, and green cheese on some other system. *As long as the API does not assume anything about the system underneath*, it *becomes* the 'simple system to do that on any kernel'. That's all I'm asking for - careful API design, that tries very hard to *not* make any assumptions about such things, and breaks things down far enough that one can safely encapsulate OS-specific ways of doing it such that they can be replaced. If you want to support the same functionality on whatever other kernel you want to use, you'll have to write some (kernel-specific) code to do so. Does that mean you can't leverage the partitioning tool once a device is given? Or that you can't use the network config tool once the network drivers have been loaded? Of course not--so why are you trying to start some sort of kernel jihad? Have you stopped beating your wife yet? It isn't about a 'kernel jihad', or saying that Linux sucks. It's saying If you want a Linux specific installer, fine, but tell those of us working on non-Linux ports so we can dump Debian-Installer and work on something that will someday actually install our ports. On the other hand, if it *is* supposed to support non-Linux ports, all I'm asking for is that people try to be mindful of such assumptions and keep them hidden as implementation details, rather than core assumptions. Three examples: 1) 'Core' /proc, which appears to be the same on all known ports. Still good to have things that use it be tied behind an API (in case there is ever a port that doesn't have it), but whatever is written for the Linux version will probably work just fine on the rest. 2) Sysctl, which on Linux can be found either via 'sysctl' or /proc/sys, but on other OSes is generally only 'sysctl'. If if was written as /proc/sys, I'd probably just rewrite it when I came to it, and suggest that it was a more portable way to access it all (bringing it back into the realm of example #1). 3) Devices for partitioning, which Linux can find via devfs, and the others may or may not be able to imitate so easily - but which, if bound behind an API, becomes an implementation detail, so we write modules to handle this on other OSes. Don't forget to keep assumptions about what is a valid device name out of this, though; what you call /dev/hda (or /dev/discs/disc0) I might call 'wd0', or even 'wd0a' (partitions within slices, and other quirks). -- *** Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/ pgpXDZZgKw3pz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 12:20, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:39:41AM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: Because, somewhat circularly, that's what has emerged as one of Debian's strong points, and we like it. Certainly it makes the releases slower. But it's one thing that really differentiates Debian from the competition. Being the most portable Free OS is worth something, in my opinion. I think NetBSD still has us beat on that point. Debian runs on 11 distinct CPU architectures; NetBSD runs on 10. As Matthew says though, you can have different views on what defines portability, but those numbers are hard fact.
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 05:07:51PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: In the origional message, I merely pointed out that keeping such things properly encapsulated is crucial, if you EVER want to be able to run on any other kernel. Which original message? The one I saw said Certainly it will have a hard time working on any of the BSDs anytime soon, if it relies on devfs more than trivially and Use of /proc should also, prefferably, be limited to traditional /proc items and not the Linux view. You didn't say anything about encapsulating them, or using them only where appropriate, you just said to avoid them. That's all I'm asking for - careful API design, that tries very hard to That's what you're asking for now, and it doesn't seem nearly as controversial as what you asked for the first time. (Seems pretty close to what I said when I suggested you'd have to plug in some kernel-specific code for certain functions.) Mike Stone
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 08:54:29PM -0500, Michael Stone wrote: On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 05:07:51PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: In the origional message, I merely pointed out that keeping such things properly encapsulated is crucial, if you EVER want to be able to run on any other kernel. Which original message? The one I saw said Certainly it will have a hard time working on any of the BSDs anytime soon, if it relies on devfs more than trivially and Use of /proc should also, prefferably, be limited to traditional /proc items and not the Linux view. You didn't say anything about encapsulating them, or using them only where appropriate, you just said to avoid them. I suppose it boils down to what you consider relies on to mean. If things are hidden behind a module that can easily be replaced so that it never touches devfs, then I don't consider it rely on devfs. I said to avoid *relying on* them, not to avoid *using* them when possible. That's all I'm asking for - careful API design, that tries very hard to That's what you're asking for now, and it doesn't seem nearly as controversial as what you asked for the first time. (Seems pretty close to what I said when I suggested you'd have to plug in some kernel-specific code for certain functions.) Which came later. But I suggest that, at this point, we write it off as a failure of communication; it would appear that we both want more or less the same result, and just picked different words for it. Which is unfortunate, but it happens. Sorry. -- *** Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/ pgpXsan2MxJkr.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 07:22:53PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote: But it's one thing that really differentiates Debian from the competition. Being the most portable Free OS is worth something, in my opinion. I think NetBSD still has us beat on that point. Debian runs on 11 distinct CPU architectures; NetBSD runs on 10. As Matthew says though, you can have different views on what defines portability, but those numbers are hard fact. Are you comparing released version to released version? (Debian stable to NetBSD -STABLE?) If so, I stand corrected. In any case, we surely have come a long way. Just waiting for Debian/VAX... ahem...
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 07:45:09PM -0500, Clint Adams wrote: Yeah, it's really a pity that we failed to convert mid-end ethernet cards and mid-end machines into high-end harddisks, and it's so trivial, isn't it? I seem to remember at least two occasions where offers of the use of machine, rackspace, and bandwidth were turned down. I think in most cases, the machines had hard drives in them, but I could be assuming too much. Well there are several pending offers for decent bandwidth/rackspace but you need decent machines to put in these spaces. If there are decent machines that need to get placed (which I don't know to be the case), then it's a inter-Debian communication issue. If there are people who have decent machines they'd like to donate, I'm sure we can arrange a fast home. :) As I mentioned elsewhere, since Bdale created a hardware donation delegate, we've rarely turned away even the mid and low-end hardware! I can't speak for the way they were handled in the past but things have been going pretty smoothly recently. I'm working on the mid-end hardware to high-end harddisk conversion process. Almost there. :) -- Benj. Mako Hill | Debian Hardware Donations Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Project Quartermaster http://people.debian.org/~mako/ | [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgpsyz7bHqLt0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday 20 November 2002 9:50 am, Andrew Lau wrote: [snip] Whenever someone rants about Gentoo's processor optimisations and states some overinflated performance boost such as 10%-20%, all I can do is make a a feeble rebuttal stating that it's more like (insert low figure without much solid evidence - e.g.. 5%) with exceptions such as glibc, X, multimedia applications, mozilla and OpenOffice. So then they counter that it's still an increase. Ok, so what strengths does Debian have to make a comeback with? Unlike Gentoo, Debian has quality assurance and security teams. We have a strict policy and bug resolution procedures. But they won't listen and still say Gentoo. [snip] I know that there's plenty of logistical/mirroring reasons as to why we shouldn't duplicate a lot of the i386 tree by creating a i686 tree, but could we seriously not consider a partial i686 optimised tree as a compromise to attract some of the Gentoo users back with our strengths in policy and testing? If not, then we need to find something else to offer to attract the cutting-edge enthusiast. The worst thing we could do is dismiss this completely. Remember the days when Slackware and Yggdrasil were the 'elitist's choice'? I certainly don't ever want to see Debian even come close to sinking. [snip] Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but my answer to this would be pentium-builder and apt-src or apt-build. Debian already has the infrastructure to be a source-based distribution, just that no-one uses it. - -- David Pashley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE94fSsYsCKa6wDNXYRAhn0AJ9zjbh74AO1vPiWhRGcreMgZQGrYQCcDby6 XdcbwAbIEmlXz1/1TvZRBmg= =83uO -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 02:20:04AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote: The fact I posted that Andrew Lau should see someone about his disturbances comes about because of prior experience with that particular person, and seeing that he seems to like stirring things up and watching the result. He's done it before, and is doing it now: notice he hasn't participated in the discussion he started? Hey Jim, Being a bit harsh there. I am in the middle of an exam period at UNSW (honestly!). I do not deliberately enjoy troll-baiting and can find much better things to do with my spare time. Last few days has been a bit hectic and I did manage to package Film Gimp (it's in incoming at the moment) as well. So let me justify why I posed the question. I've been using Debian for about 4 years now, and have always been passionate about it and helping out a lot in #debian as you well remember. I applied for NM last year, and have been waiting for DAM approval since 31 December 2001. After such a long time with the distribution, and putting in some much effort in trying to become a Debian-developer, I do not want to see this great distribution collapse in on itself through complacency and over-politicising issues to the extent where nothing gets done in the first place. Yours sincerely, Andrew Netsnipe Lau -- --- * Andrew Netsnipe LauComputer Science Student Representaive, UNSW * * # apt-get into it Debian GNU/Linux Package Maintainer * * netsnipe(+)debianplanet.org\0 alau(+)cse.unsw.edu.au\0 * * GnuPG 1024D/2E8B68BD 0B77 73D0 4F3B F286 63F1 9F4A 9B24 C07D 2E8B 68BD * --- pgpkue3D7BQs6.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 03:25:26AM -0800, Jim Lynch wrote: Other comments in that thread include comments like Hey, here's my CFLAGS, ... ... why won't half my apps work now (including even gcc now)? ... it might help you, george (and george says no, I have a m68k and your CFLAGS has pentium options) ... now you can all try it out, etc, etc. So there are people who don't understand optimization issues yet. They are not deserving of epithets unless they refuse to help themselves grow. If we were to improve our current user-build mechanisms, would it be feasible for Debian source packages or a mirror to keep track of what flags are known to break what packages on what $ARCHs? It'd certainly make life easier for the compulsive builder. Yours sincerely, Andrew Netsnipe Lau -- --- * Andrew Netsnipe LauComputer Science Student Representaive, UNSW * * # apt-get into it Debian GNU/Linux Package Maintainer * * netsnipe(+)debianplanet.org\0 alau(+)cse.unsw.edu.au\0 * * GnuPG 1024D/2E8B68BD 0B77 73D0 4F3B F286 63F1 9F4A 9B24 C07D 2E8B 68BD * --- pgpLmaaF1DH5m.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
OK, I think I can add something to this little chain mail as I use both Debian and Gentoo. Why do I do that? Well, Debian is great and all and I use it on servers etc, but on my workstation I want alot more control that Debian can, or probably ever can, give me. As an example, I don't want or use KDE so I do not want KDE libs installed just because some package maintainer decided to enable the KDE support option on app xyz. With Debian I have not choice with Gentoo I do, I disable KDE support using the USE variable. Very easy to do. Performance enhancements, well I seen a few, but nothing to shout about, it more about getting a higher degree of control over my workstation. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Chaps, Another thing I must say is that I object in the highest order some the mail sent out regarding this topic which basically say good riddance to the users who have switch to Gentoo as they caused loads problems etc etc. This is short sighted and I hope the people (idiots??) who said this have no leadership real role within the Debian developer community. What we need to accept is there is a (percieved??) problem, or problems, with Debian as it stands today, these being (mainly) Hard to install (rubbish obviously) Out of date (this _is_ true) Slow to update (this _is_ true) Hard to configure (depends upon your view-point) The reasons I see people switch to Gentoo are : Its more fun Alot more up to date Easier to customise, down to which libraries you want to support Gentoo is still hard to configure if you are only used to Red Hat or Mandrake, easy if you used to Debian, Slackware etc. IMHO Debian is too slow to put out new releases. I run testing to ages with no problems, ever. Sure on my unstable box things went south at times but I expect that and can fix it, but testing is very solid, as solid as, say, Red Hat. I'm tempted to say that Debian has gotten too big, has too many bosses (to coin a phrase) and is hampered at times by its own policy. I've been using Debian for years and have seen it grown alot over time. However, it seems to me that the only _big_ thing Debian has on its side these days is dpkg/apt. Everything else is out of date, a nightmare to setup and, to be honest, not fun anymore. I want this to change, but to achieve that I think big changes are required from the ground up otherwise Debian _will_ go the way of Slackware. That all said, it will be interesting to see how Gentoo copes when it gets larger. I think it will cope better than we have purely because it source only and that makes life slightly easier. We'll have to see. My pennys worth Jon __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
Jon Kent [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] What we need to accept is there is a (percieved??) problem, or problems, with Debian as it stands today, these being (mainly) Hard to install (rubbish obviously) Out of date (this _is_ true) Slow to update (this _is_ true) Hard to configure (depends upon your view-point) Releases tend to be out of date. But that's a feature: releases need to be composed of well tested stable packages. testing and unstable have pretty up to date packages. So Debian is as up to date as you want; the caveat being that for newer software, you'll need to put up with some instability. The reasons I see people switch to Gentoo are : Its more fun Alot more up to date Easier to customise, down to which libraries you want to support Presumably its up to dateness comes at the cost of less stability? So probably people should compare Gentoo not with Debian releases (stable), but with testing (or perhaps even unstable)? How do they compare then? Gentoo is still hard to configure if you are only used to Red Hat or Mandrake, easy if you used to Debian, Slackware etc. IMHO Debian is too slow to put out new releases. I run testing to ages with no problems, ever. Sure on my unstable box things went south at times but I expect that and can fix it, but testing is very solid, as solid as, say, Red Hat. Yes, possibly. Quite a bit of the problem seems to come with preparing boot floppies, of all things. Maybe there's some case for making a regular (once every couple of months or so) State of Testing announcement, describing the major features of testing, together with how to install it (either install stable release, then change /etc/apt/sources.list thusly, then do apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade, or perhaps actually preparing a Knoppix ISO containing testing). On the other hand, maybe this wouldn't be much use to anyone. [...]
