Re: Maybe alpha should be in hamm? (was: Re: Only m68k and i386 in hamm?)
Michael Alan Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [ ... ] ld.so doesn't apply [ ... ] Upgrade your quinn-diff :-) From 0.31's ChangeLog.main :- | Sun Apr 12 21:33:14 1998 James Troup [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | * Packages-arch-specific (ldso): exclude alpha. (Maybe it should also be excluded for the other glibc only architectures too? I always welcome input on Packages-arch-specific as I'm only qualified to speak for m68k (and then only barely)) -- James -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: xfsft deb package
On Sun, 26 Apr 1998, Stephen Carpenter wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- A few days ago (maybe a week or so? I am too lazy to look back and check...and it doesn't REALLY matter) I mentioned an interest in xfstt which is listed as needing a new maintainer and got no reply herebut I was told in a separate discussion (which was the same one which prompted me to post here) I was told that it already has a new maintainer. Then I recived an anynomous message from someone who had read the thread. (I havn't gotten an anonymous message since annon.pennet.fi shut down) Saying that I should look into xfsft ..which is another (suposedly better) True Type font server for X. (BTW a number of days ago I expressed intrest in this on debian-mentors about this but recived no response...nor any other mail from that list which I am almost sure I subscribed to...is that adead list?) I have thought about it a bit more and I woul dlike to give this a try. has anyone else looked into this (or possibly already doing this? it is not listed as being worked on...) Unfortunatly this package is a little weird in one way... the distribution only contains some of the source code... the rest is from other packages (it si distributed as a patch) has anyone run into this situation before? This will require me to get the Freetype source code and the X11 source code (it uses the X11 font server source) how should this be handled (esp when it comes to making the source ditribution with the tar.gz and the diffs and all) If it is a patch to xfs that uses the freetype libs, I'd think it could be incorporated into the xfs that is in the xbase package, but I wouldn't care if it was implemented as a separate font server. Could you contact Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (the XFree86 maintainer) about this? Remco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Intent to package: xitalk
xitalk is a useful program that enters itself into utmp and listens on a pty for talk requests/ write(1)s. It can then be configured to start a ytalk session automatically (taking the username from the talk request) or perform some other action (e.g. play a sound). I thought I'd seen a debian package of this about 6 months ago, but I can't see it anywhere now. -- Christopher Reed, Selwyn College, Cambridge -- E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://dura.sel.cam.ac.uk/ [~cr212/] r2 T1 cSEL dCS hEn/Chi A4 S+ C*$+++L/UdP W+++ y# a VTsj (Cantab) 1.0 I know you don't love that guy cause I can see right through you -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Maybe alpha should be in hamm? (was: Re: Only m68k and i386 in hamm?)
James Troup [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Michael Alan Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [ ... ] ld.so doesn't apply [ ... ] Upgrade your quinn-diff :-) From 0.31's ChangeLog.main :- Yeah, but I've been meaning to feed back my changes in one block rather than in dribs and drabs, no time, etc. (Maybe it should also be excluded for the other glibc only architectures too? I always welcome input on Packages-arch-specific as I'm only qualified to speak for m68k (and then only barely)) Probably? Mike. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Intent to package: xitalk
Chris Reed wrote: xitalk is a useful program that enters itself into utmp and listens on a pty for talk requests/ write(1)s. It can then be configured to start a ytalk session automatically (taking the username from the talk request) or perform some other action (e.g. play a sound). I thought I'd seen a debian package of this about 6 months ago, but I can't see it anywhere now. I tried to package this about 6 months ago and failed utterly getting it to work (libc6 problem maybe? I forget) Good luck.. -- see shy jo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: xfsft deb package
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 01:49:06AM +0200, Remco Blaakmeer wrote: If it is a patch to xfs that uses the freetype libs, I'd think it could be incorporated into the xfs that is in the xbase package, but I wouldn't care if it was implemented as a separate font server. Could you contact Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (the XFree86 maintainer) about this? Why is xfs in xbase at all? It's not required to use X. I would suggest just pulling it out to its own package. pgpLi9IzBNDnF.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: as much business as you can handle
You know, I think I would not mind seeing someone respond to these spams with something that might get the point across that we don't want their garbage. I really think the lists should reject mail from those not subscribed. pgpCNszjWPc1S.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: first proposal for a new maintainer policy
On 29 Apr 1998, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Hi, Dale == Dale Scheetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dale The Policy Statement is a set of rules for the behavior of Dale developers, set down by the ruling body, sometimes referred to Dale as the government. When those rules are viewed as more Dale important than the people participating, that view is a Fascist Dale one. Please elucidate hw the laws of the united states, canada, the united kindom, or indeed, any european union country (pardon for missing your country here) does not fit the same criterion. I'd just like to make a couple of points here: 1) The UK does not have a constitution (we rely on the House of Lords to interpret Roman law, parliamentary law and precedent). Also, the subjects (not citizens) of the UK don't have too many (if any) rights defined in any formal way, so you really are not going to get very far citing this as an example of a set of rules being better than some people deciding. 2) this is going way off topic, and has been quite tedious for some time. Cheers, Phil. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How Debian Linux could be made more secure
Richard Braakman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lintian would have to parse that in order to get a full list, and it doesn't do that (yet). Another possibility would be to run a test install on some machine, with strace examining the calls used during the installation. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New Stable Distribution Maintainer
This message is to inform everyone that Christian Hudon [EMAIL PROTECTED] will be taking over the management of the stable Debian release. He will be responsible for deciding which packages are worthy of stable and when to make a new point release. I think Christian is well suited for the position of Stable Distribution Manager given his past work in Debian and with the issues of security. Brian ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) --- measure with micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with axe, hope like hell -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: first proposal for a new maintainer policy
Hi, Philip == Philip Hands [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Philip 2) this is going way off topic, and has been quite tedious for Philip some time. OK. I give. And, on the principle that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I now agree with Jame Troup and Dale Scheetz and formally declare that Policy does not govern may packages from this point on, and shall close any policy related Bugs ASAP. I shall only use my own judgement from this point, and shall strongly advocate breaking all bounds of policy on debian-mentors. Let someone lese carry the torch for policy then. Good day. manoj -- You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. Beard Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/ Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: xfsft deb package
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- I agree with you on this... xfs probably should be separated... Tho since I posted this I looked into xfstt again and found out that it was indeed free to be taken (or at least thats what the current maintainer led me to believe)... I in fact have already incorperated a new version of the upstream source and have a new version of xfstt ready to go... as soon as I am registered as the package maintainer and have the ability to upload (this is my first package) I will upload it as for xfsft I may look into that again at a later date...once I am settled in with xfstt... untill then...it looks interesting if anyone else wants to persue it - -Steve On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Rev. Joseph Carter wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 01:49:06AM +0200, Remco Blaakmeer wrote: If it is a patch to xfs that uses the freetype libs, I'd think it could be incorporated into the xfs that is in the xbase package, but I wouldn't care if it was implemented as a separate font server. Could you contact Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (the XFree86 maintainer) about this? Why is xfs in xbase at all? It's not required to use X. I would suggest just pulling it out to its own package. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBNUfWynxvn0zebBV9AQGLiAQApnodrSFYdg5/awnBGp9yYL++17CyIjZD A0WvrZS5aN/Fkol7BLRK0Zi3rp8xip909/XQcqSG4cCrdhmXkXK+CsUUwjTEORZS unmman9y//loqnXo7heXNZhUfk3VMlgztwDlR6fA0iAxTQDosOB0PWY43ALyx2Xp 62xTjMbJ1ek= =JdJh -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: X and Window Mangers
Marcelo E. Magallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alternatives, as I understood them, have to be command line compatible because a situation like the one I just described is not desirable. Alternatives have to be command line compatible, but that means you need a defined interface that they all support, not that they're not allowed to have extra functionality available from the command line. Certainly, there's no requirement that emacs have no options beyond those supported by ed, just because they're both available alternatives for editor. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: as much business as you can handle
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 12:36:59AM +, Rev. Joseph Carter wrote: I really think the lists should reject mail from those not subscribed. I really don't. Sometimes it is convenient to post from locations other than where I am subscribed. The email address I use is always valid, but I don't need multiple subscriptions to a bunch of high traffic lists. Unless you have an automated way to add yourself as a posting-only subscriber, or supply additional postable addresses for yourself, I think it should be left alone. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Latest Debian packages at ftp://ftp.rising.com.au/pub/hamish. PGP#EFA6B9D5 CCs of replies from mailing lists are welcome. http://hamish.home.ml.org pgpTFSScPF5LL.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Maybe alpha should be in hamm? (was: Re: Only m68k and i386 in hamm?)
Is there any reason we couldn't do a delayed debian-hamm-alpha release? -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licensing, was elvis package
Mark W. Eichin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The motif code in emacs is relatively new, and totally cosmetic. Hm... in that case, I'm surprised it's there at all. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pronouns (was Re: Proposed Constitution)
Marcus Brinkmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hope you are well aware of the fact that a lot of people will not understand it, and probably will ask you about it. I can tell you that most german readers may be confused. I don't know about other countries, but I assume the situation is not very different there. If this is a problem, we could fix it by supplying a short list of definitions of words which are known problems for people with various backgrounds. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Possible DoS attack with new IPlogger release
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] you wrote:
The new version of IPlogger offers a new feature: when there is a TCP
connection attempt, [EMAIL PROTECTED] is now logged instead of host.
I think this is a non issue. Lots of servers do ident lookups, in particular
the tcp wrapper does so too.
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on forming a new Linux Distribution
Dear Debian Folks, I've been giving serious thought for a while to forming a new Linux distribution. My reason is to fulfill some goals that currently are not addressed by Debian or the commercial distributions. I've posted my first message on this topic to debian-devel, as I think a lot of you have similar goals to the ones below, and those who do have earned the right to be in on the project from the start. I don't currently have a mailing list for this project - I guess I'll have to start one. Thanks Bruce Perens 1. Focus on the User I'd like to have developers who program because they like to see their work in the hands of users, especially _naive_ users. Competition with Microsoft and other proprietary systems is a stated goal of the project. Market share for the system and its derivatives is a stated goal of the project. 2. Maintaining a non-commercial alternative to the commercial Linux distributions. This was one of the most important goals of Debian. A non-commercial alternative helps keep the commercial distributions stay honest by preventing any of them from having a corner on the market. I think Debian's drifted too far from the mainstream of Linux to continue to fulfill this purpose. A non-commercial alternative would address the same markets as the commercial Linux systems, and would be compatible with them wherever possible. I propose for this system binary, _dependency_, and package compatibility with Red Hat, the most popular Linux distribution that has made it to LIBC 6. This would guarantee the availability of commercial applications for the system. Obviously, the easiest way to do that is to derive from Red Hat. 3. Provding shared maintainance on the base system for all Linux distributions. This is another early goal of Debian that we've not ever fulfilled. A system based on what commercial distributions are already deriving from, managed by a non-profit, with shared CVS, might be able to realize this goal. 4. Maintaining the Open Source standard of Linux. We're at the point where we don't really _need_ non-free and contrib directories any longer - all packages in the system should be Open Source - let someone else distribute the rest. 5. Open Development. I am proposing development visible to all, but not a free-for-all. A core group of limited size to maintain the base system and oversee the rest probably _is_ necessary. I am not planning to copy the Debian constitution - I'd rather have the Bazaar-Method management we used for the first few years of the project. 6. Direct Commercial Participation. I would encourage direct commercial participation by other Linux distributions who are interested in compatibility through a standard base system. I know most of these people, and can probably get serious consideration from them. 7. Policy Manual I think a good deal of the Debian policy manual would be usable for this project. It's a good document, and could be generalized to all Linux. 8. Marketing On An Equal Footing with Engineering Marketing is important for getting the user's attention and giving the user what they want. Lack of good marketing is the main reason for the failure of Unix derivitaves to achieve market domination. I would put the marketing team at the same level as engineering, and have them work together constantly. 9. A Random List of Other Goals. RPM as the package system - possibly with an APT port later on (is that what it's called now?). It's necessary to get the other distributions in on the project. We'd have to add a few missing features to RPM, but this would be pretty easy to do. COAS as a system management framework. Non-interactive install. Limited set of interpreters for system tasks and pre-install and post-install scripts. How about ANSI shell (_not_ necessarily Bourne shell), Python, and everything else is a compiled executable? I'm concerned that Perl is a rather messy language compared to Python, and both Red Hat and Caldera seem to be focusing on Python. No obscentity. Avoids legal problems and makes _me_ feel better. There is lots of room for free-speech distribution sites on the net. Pursuit of the 86open goals - an Open Source binary compatibility standard for operating systems, provided in source code form rather than as a paper document (at least at the start). Thanks Bruce Perens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: *** The Upcoming Release of Hamm ***
Make it harder! From now on no new upstream versions to frozen. Cleaning Incoming. 1. May is 'early beta' and 1. June is release time (to have some more time for arch maintainers and testers). Please let's not delay it that long if we can prevent it. I would very much like to be able to get our department's network updated before summer semester begins, since bo is in a somewhat unfortunate state of outdatedness if you will. I second this. Debian's official release is already so much out of date that it is worthwhile for CD-ROM purchasers to rather chosse something else like Redhat or the like. I've actually been hoping to hold a CD with the final Debian-2.0 in my hands at the beginnings of may and i'd really like to update the machines at our institute as well because we could really need some of the newer packages and i can't get everything to compile with libc5. I'm trying to get the beta ready. The testing group has asked for a bit more time to work through the base disks. Then they will start testing all the actual packages. They hoped to have it done earlier, but something about exams getting in the way... Sheesh! Where are their priorities? grin Testing Debian is a monster job!!! The best way to hurry the release is to join the testing group -- mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brian ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) --- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: xfsft deb package
Rev. Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 01:49:06AM +0200, Remco Blaakmeer wrote: Why is xfs in xbase at all? It's not required to use X. I would suggest just pulling it out to its own package. Careful when doing this that you don't break people's configurations who are using xfs. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: xfsft deb package
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 12:22:58AM +, Rev. Joseph Carter wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 01:49:06AM +0200, Remco Blaakmeer wrote: If it is a patch to xfs that uses the freetype libs, I'd think it could be incorporated into the xfs that is in the xbase package, but I wouldn't care if it was implemented as a separate font server. Could you contact Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (the XFree86 maintainer) about this? Why is xfs in xbase at all? It's not required to use X. I would suggest just pulling it out to its own package. I eventually plan to do this. See the X Strike Force page. http://master.debian.org/~branden/xsf.html -- G. Branden Robinson | When I die I want to go peacefully in Purdue University | my sleep like my ol' Grand Dad...not [EMAIL PROTECTED] | screaming in terror like his passengers. http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ | pgpeFBO5F3yRh.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: first proposal for a new maintainer policy
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK. I give. And, on the principle that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I now agree with Jame Troup and Dale Scheetz and formally declare that Policy does not govern may packages from this point on, and shall close any policy related Bugs ASAP. I shall only use my own judgement from this point, and shall strongly advocate breaking all bounds of policy on debian-mentors. This is rather outragous. Please don't. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Conflicts between developers and policy
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Again, this happens not to be the case. I was perfectly happy letting policy be policy until a well respected senior Debian developer made statements to the effect Go right ahead and violate policy. Thats what I do And another respected developer chimed in with how their pacvkage would break if they followed policy, and so they have been happily ignoring it. Where the hell were you then with this stuff about policy being ``generally accepted'' and all? huh? Indeed, I'd forgotten about that. And you're right, in those cases we did need to fix something. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: xfsft deb package
On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 10:14:18PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Why is xfs in xbase at all? It's not required to use X. I would suggest just pulling it out to its own package. I eventually plan to do this. See the X Strike Force page. http://master.debian.org/~branden/xsf.html I like, go for it! pgpG8U7Tgmw0t.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: debian 2.0
Andreas Jellinghaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: from a first look at debian 2.0 i'm disappointed. ok, everything is moved to glibc, and there are lots of new packages. but where is the enhancement ? If I recall correctly, the stated goals of this release where upgrade to glibc 2.0, and various package-specific enhancements. - with installing (n) dictionaries you are asked (n-1) time to select the default one. simlimiar thing with programs who can view graphik format (there are only 2 or 3 programs, but lot's of graphik formats). On my machines, I've dealt with the graphic format issue by eliminating the read (so it always accepts the default). Not pretty, but given the current setup the question is largely meaningless anyways. - windowmanmagers. what about nice looking default configurations ? Define nice looking? [I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that I don't know how to address this one. I consider enlightenment to be nice looking, for example, but I'm also happy with 9wm.] - pam login doesn't use pam. passwd doesn't use pam. telnet doesn't use it. unless most programs are unseing pam, it's useless. Not good. [Sounds like a significant bug, too.] - the default setting isn't very useable. ok, my reference is the new student which heard of linux, and want's to install it side by side with win*. maybe it's useable for sysadmins. but sysadmins can help themself, newbies not. so a config should be fool proof ... I'm not sure what you mean here. - most programs try a whole configuration in postinst method. this is doesn't work in many cases : it's good for the sysadmin. but often a newbie has a problem, and someone sais try xxx. so he installs xxx. but he can't config xxx, first he needs to read the README's and manual, and then he can configure it. even with nice config help, he first needs to read the manuals. maybe xxx doesnt solve his problem at all. or he only needs parts. cvs is an example : many people neither have a local cvsroot, nor are they running a pserver. I think (hope) that as apt gets deployed a lot of this will thrash out. - sure, we know that dselect is not user friendly, but what is with all other places ? one example : asking do you want to make this the default windowmanager is not a good solution, nor is a new windowmanager will become (not) the default wm. the solution has two parts : a) documentation quick start - how to select your wm and b) windowmanager-config (i guess less that 15 lines of bash/dialog will do the job). yes, debian has a lot of good features. but debian has several weak points, and these seem to be exactly the same points already present in bo. this worries me. There are several weaknesses: (1) some improvements require coordinated efforts across multiple packages. (2) the release management problem we're trying to tackle is huge (and at some point we just have to punt, unfortunately). (3) Issues of taste vary from person to person. (4) To some degree, we're not a development effort, but a package management and adminstration effort. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Bruce Perens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been giving serious thought for a while to forming a new Linux distribution. My reason is to fulfill some goals that currently are not addressed by Debian or the commercial distributions. I've posted my first message on this topic to debian-devel, as I think a lot of you have similar goals to the ones below, and those who do have earned the right to be in on the project from the start. I don't currently have a mailing list for this project - I guess I'll have to start one. Hmm... you seem to be inviting comments, so I'll give it a go: (1) we probably don't want to talk about this in much depth on the debian lists, since you've explicitly stated that it's not debian. Please announce an alternative venue as soon as you can. (2) I've never been able to keep up with all the various distributions (free or not) that keep popping up, but I guess I'll assume you're correct that none of them match the needs you see. (3) This could be a very positive thing for debian (call it cross fertilization, competition, or just more attention on the underlying problem). Or, if people get all upset about it, it could be negative. (4) Debian was founded with a we will develop no software statement. Obviously, we've relaxed this (dpkg, apt, ...). It looks like this new project you're proposing will embrace development, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but you're going to need a Linus to lead and coordinate it. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 08:05:00PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: I've been giving serious thought for a while to forming a new Linux distribution. My reason is to fulfill some goals that currently are not addressed by Debian or the commercial distributions. Certainly no distribution can meet the needs of everybody. Debian seems to be the best distribution on technical merit, but it seems to be missing some things from the easy-to-use standpoint. I was thinking about building an unofficial set of installation scripts and the like for Debian to make it easier on a new user but still show some of the power in Linux in general.. My plan was to make a console-only thing that could really install to a 100 meg partition (I'm aiming high and trying to get it in 40 or less) and have it be compatible with Debian enough that you could later show dpkg the main Debian mirrors and have it act like it was a normal installation, if perhaps a little nonstandard as to what was installed and what wasn't, and it should be able to integrate itself with no fuss. Thought even that some of the Debian maintainers might be interested in some of the resulting scripts if they were very useful at all. I've posted my first message on this topic to debian-devel, as I think a lot of you have similar goals to the ones below, and those who do have earned the right to be in on the project from the start. I don't currently have a mailing list for this project - I guess I'll have to start one. I'm not a programmer. I just know what's easy to work with and what's not. I can build a package but am currently doing much of it by hand since I don't yet understand the workings of debhelper. I'll RTFM later and maybe learn how to use it. = You want rpm though. =p I personally think rpm is nasty when you consider that a friend of mine (a newbie) tried to install bitchx today and found that she didn't have libcurses.so.4. Yeah, that she didn't have the FILE. No clues where to get it. No hint as to the package. For libcurses that's a no brainer, but what about some of the less known libs? dpkg would have told her what package and what version she needed. Using apt she could quite easily just run apt-get install package and it would. Some packages like pine and qmail are worth the fact that to make them useful they must be in source packages. We ALL (all of us who thought pine was an important package at all) agreed on that. And you wouldn't get me away from qmail--so don't try. = The older version of ncftp is now GPL, but what of the new version? Would you say there's no need to use that because it was not OpenSource? Not everything is OpenSource and not everything needs to be, really. When OpenSource versions of similar programs appear, that's fine. But until they do, you'll be crippling yourself by not using what's there. Some of them are quite free despite not being quite free enough. With the exception of rpm in place of dpkg, there is very little you want to do with this planned dist that Debian doesn't already in terms of techincal forms.. Debian is not the most user-friendly dist, but that could chanage with a few custom scripts and possibly a few rebuilt packages using different conffiles. pgpSUZk3CVsa0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
From: Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] (1) we probably don't want to talk about this in much depth on the debian lists, since you've explicitly stated that it's not debian. Please announce an alternative venue as soon as you can. Right. It's not my intent to abuse the Debian lists. I'll try to get a list server going through hams.com tomorrow. (2) I've never been able to keep up with all the various distributions (free or not) that keep popping up, but I guess I'll assume you're correct that none of them match the needs you see. About the only other viable volunteer distribution is Stampede, a Slackware derivative. They and Patrick are OK folks, but I don't buy into their technical direction. (3) This could be a very positive thing for debian (call it cross fertilization, competition, or just more attention on the underlying problem). Or, if people get all upset about it, it could be negative. I'll try not to get people upset. As far as I can tell, my stated direction is different enough from Debian that they would not really compete. (4) Debian was founded with a we will develop no software statement. Obviously, we've relaxed this (dpkg, apt, ...). It looks like this new project you're proposing will embrace development, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but you're going to need a Linus to lead and coordinate it. I'm not Linus, but I'll try. Thanks Bruce -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: as much business as you can handle
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- I would like to agree with this... in fact...I get about 200-500 e-mails a day between 3 debian lists (users, devel, and mentors) and BUGTRAQ and on all of those lists... I get more spam directly to my own personal adress than to any list (course bugtraq is moderated...I think I only once saw a spam slip through) and I at most get 3 spams a day to my personal adress...I see what... 3 a week on the debian lists? I don't see any reason change anythin gyet (should the spam get to be a real problem however...) hell many people here spend more bandwith bickering (and I do mean bickering) back and forth every day than spams to this list take up in a whole month - -Steve On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Hamish Moffatt wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 12:36:59AM +, Rev. Joseph Carter wrote: I really think the lists should reject mail from those not subscribed. I really don't. Sometimes it is convenient to post from locations other than where I am subscribed. The email address I use is always valid, but I don't need multiple subscriptions to a bunch of high traffic lists. Unless you have an automated way to add yourself as a posting-only subscriber, or supply additional postable addresses for yourself, I think it should be left alone. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Latest Debian packages at ftp://ftp.rising.com.au/pub/hamish. PGP#EFA6B9D5 CCs of replies from mailing lists are welcome. http://hamish.home.ml.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBNUgJ1Xxvn0zebBV9AQFTggP/YDf/KQAbwpvrsQAQm1eAo2Vfoyleo9Zg Tc/sR9DmTNan8H0naz2tfzETAZIZ5xrvf3epIWkSThOrG00mHDLA1cBKquu20+Vv fZCL2EN03MCAsavUoezX8Sja/kscLw3YcBne+EPoYUOZ2VLVJgdw2q7k92ypZ/R3 v183a7koNXQ= =jsvZ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Bruce Perens wrote: 9. A Random List of Other Goals. RPM as the package system - possibly with an APT port later on (is that what it's called now?). It's necessary to get the other distributions in on the project. We'd have to add a few missing features to RPM, but this would be pretty easy to do. FYI I took a quick looksy over RedHat's web site, specificly the descriptions of packages bit (I think it was the package finder or something) As I see it there are two major problems that preclude using APT with RPM as it stands, 1 - They don't actually have package dependencies. They have dependencies on files - big difference. 2 - They seem to lack a well formed index file, I couldn't find any rpm index on their ftp site. I took a -VERY- quick look some time ago, at first glance everything else seemed about on par with dpkg. But if they are true, those are two very major problems. It might be smart to fork rpm (call it something else) and re-do the header fields to be more sensible, then use APT to provide understanding of the fields and use librpm for the actuall installing. Then you get all the benifits of Debian's dependency system and the benifits of APT's ordering sequencer, dependency engine, multi-source handing, (and someday it's GUI too). If #1 is really true there is zero point in making APT understand RPM, 90% of it's functionality would have to be disabled. Jason -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 05:10:54AM +, Rev. Joseph Carter wrote: On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 08:05:00PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: I've been giving serious thought for a while to forming a new Linux distribution. My reason is to fulfill some goals that currently are not addressed by Debian or the commercial distributions. Some packages like pine and qmail are worth the fact that to make them useful they must be in source packages. We ALL (all of us who thought pine was an important package at all) agreed on that. And you wouldn't get me away from qmail--so don't try. = The older version of ncftp is now GPL, but what of the new version? Would you say there's no need to use that because it was not OpenSource? Not everything is OpenSource and not everything needs to be, really. When OpenSource versions of similar programs appear, that's fine. But until they do, you'll be crippling yourself by not using what's there. Some of them are quite free despite not being quite free enough. I'm curious how this distribution is supposed to be more 'main stream'. Ok, easy to use, fair enough.. rpm... I guess, but what else? Baseing it strictly on open-source software? I think the 'mainstream' if we are talking about numbers and averages, are the people who go about distancing themselves from Stallman and talking about how they really don't care whether software is really free or not, as long as it works. Hrm.. you really need to set up a different list.. this being Debian, how could you not know that it would start a big long thread?:-) -- David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mkisofs (was: creating hamm cdroms)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andreas Jellinghaus) writes: my experience with new mkisofs (with joilet supprt) is, that -x doesn't work. i found a solution : create a new directory as cd root, and copy everything into that dir useing hardlinks. this doesn't waste a log of disk space, and makes severel things easier. The upstream guy somehow seems to think that the -m option would be sufficient, which IMHO it isn't. I have patched my mkisofs back to support -x, I will mail you a copy of that patch if you're interested. What I would like to see as added functionality is an option that will keep symlink that lead to some file on the CD and replace them with files if they would point off the CD. -- Jens Rosenboom [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Well, admittedly I am rather suprised at this. Although Bruce's post is so calmly worded that it is difficult to find fault, a bird's eye view of his actions produces a scene that really makes me wonder. The most revolting thing to me is that this whole tantrum stems from the fact that Manoj Shrivasta would not allow Bruce to dictate what his motivations for writing free software should be. Bruce could have followed the great Freeware tradition of building concensus by putting togethor a team of Debianites dedicated to creating a newbie-friendly wrapper for the technically excellent Debian distribution. Instead he selected a person almost diametrically opposed with his viewpoint and built an otherwise small and questionable issue into a conflict ultimatly ending in his resignation from the Debian group. Free Software is all about diversity. Any development effort that wants to grow to a significant size needs to understand that. The best way to make a friendly Linux distribution (be it Debian or any other name you should chose) is not to eliminate all the people who are deeply interested in the technical component of the work. The people who want to make something for the new users should cooperate with the die hard hackers to create a system that perserves both sets of needs. Either extreme is lopsided. At a fundamental level I question the proposition that Debian is not concerned with usability. Beyond that I question the fact that RedHat is so much more usable than Debian. It may install easier, but is it easier to run? You spend a few hours installing your system, you spend years running it. In the interest of diversity and competition I support the idea of a Debian faction or even an alternate distribution that is focused on the user. I cannot endorse the extreme (ditch dpkg, go work for RedHat) that Bruce has gone to. My personal feeling is that every man hour that Debian loses to this effort is one man hour too many. I had understood that Bruce had a lot going on personally and the demands of Debian were simply too great. Apparently he is willing to take on the even larger project of rebuilding Debian from scratch. Rather than duplicate a lot of effort I would suggest that Bruce gird up his loins like a man and come back to the Debian effort to establish a usability commitee. On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 08:05:00PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: I've been giving serious thought for a while to forming a new Linux distribution. My reason is to fulfill some goals that currently are not addressed by Debian or the commercial distributions. 1. Focus on the User Who is the real user? An experienced hacker or a person who has no understanding of Linux at all? Perhaps we should get rid of the command line? Create a registry? 2. Maintaining a non-commercial alternative to the commercial Linux distributions. I think Debian's drifted too far from the mainstream of Linux to continue to fulfill this purpose. Totally do not follow this line of reasoning. See the slashdot poll on distribution preference. It shows Debian a close second to Red Hat. 8. Marketing On An Equal Footing with Engineering I don't recall anyone forbidding the development of marketing materials. The only cold blanket I've ever seen marketing wise was the selection of old blue eye as a logo. I could give you the opinions of professionals on that drawing as a logo if you are not interested in mine. RPM as the package system - possibly with an APT port later on (is that what it's called now?). It's necessary to get the other distributions in on the project. We'd have to add a few missing features to RPM, but this would be pretty easy to do. Why? No obscentity. Avoids legal problems and makes _me_ feel better. There is lots of room for free-speech distribution sites on the net. Well, I hope you can get bitchx, Satan and the other daemons on board. E ps. Bah humbug. -- ___ Ean SchuesslerDirector of Strategic Weapons Systems Novare International Inc.A Devices that Kill People company *** WARNING: This signature may contain jokes. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Why is dosemu in contrib?
dpkg -s dosemu says: Package: dosemu Status: install ok installed Priority: extra Section: contrib Installed-Size: 1799 Maintainer: Herbert Xu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Version: 0.66.7-10 Depends: libc6, slang0.99.38, xlib6g (= 3.3-5) ... However, the copyright file says: ... This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License with your Debian GNU/Linux system, in /usr/doc/copyright/GPL, or with the Debian GNU/Linux hello source package as the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. Can someone explain that? Michael -- Dr. Michael Meskes, Project-Manager| topsystem Systemhaus GmbH [EMAIL PROTECTED]| Europark A2, Adenauerstr. 20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 52146 Wuerselen Go SF49ers! Go Rhein Fire! | Tel: (+49) 2405/4670-44 Use Debian GNU/Linux! | Fax: (+49) 2405/4670-10 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distributionx
Bruce Perens writes: I think Debian's drifted too far from the mainstream of Linux to continue to fulfill this purpose. A non-commercial I'm sorry, Bruce, but could you give us some details about this. Where has Debian drifted from the mainstream? 4. Maintaining the Open Source standard of Linux. We're at the point where we don't really _need_ non-free and contrib directories any longer - all packages in the system should be Open Source - let someone else distribute the rest. I have to disagree strongly. I just checked my system and found some packages from contrib and non-free that I wonder how to replace: - all graphic packaages with GIF support - some parts of TeX - gs-aladdin (granted there is a free version, but what if you need a fairly new printer driver?) - pgp - all java stuff - lyx - tripwire 5. Open Development. I am proposing development visible to all, but not a free-for-all. A core group of limited size to maintain the base system and oversee the rest probably _is_ necessary. I am not planning to copy the Debian constitution - I'd rather have the Bazaar-Method management we used for the first few years of the project. You propose a lot of the stuff Dominik Kubla proposed quite some time ago. Back then we (and I think this includes you) were against it, which caused Dominik to leave the project. How come you changed your mind? The rest of your ideas, though, look pretty good. Michael -- Dr. Michael Meskes, Project-Manager| topsystem Systemhaus GmbH [EMAIL PROTECTED]| Europark A2, Adenauerstr. 20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 52146 Wuerselen Go SF49ers! Go Rhein Fire! | Tel: (+49) 2405/4670-44 Use Debian GNU/Linux! | Fax: (+49) 2405/4670-10 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Conflicts between developers and policy
Manoj, Was my previous mail really that annoying ? If so, I apologise profusely (I was fairly tired at the time I wrote it, so may have started to be rather more argumentative that I meant to be) I think we actually hold fairly similar opinions about this subject. Did you ever see my previous attempt to calm this discussion down a bit ? No one said policy is all encompassing. It does not have any loopholes. Errors of omission shall always exist. Not errors of commision. I thought you had by implication. I was clearly wrong, sorry. That's probably what gave rise to my extreme characterisation of your arguments. Philip In either case, having a policy statement that claims to be Philip the final authority will gain us nothing, and could be Philip actually harmful. I disagree. It would have stopped at least one person, namely, me. Fair enough, lets put it in then ;-) Anyway, I think you've started being just a little argumentative now, since I don't believe that you, or anyone else for that matter, wants to violate policy in a destructive way. You seemed (to my tired eyes) to be accusing people of objecting to: Policy should be followed, except where a discussion about the clause in question is still ongoing, in which case the maintainer may indulge in a policy violation if they feel it is a technically superior approach. James Troup, Dale Scheetz, or anyone else have a problem with this ? My only objection was that there was no need to include a clause like that in policy, because it is self evident. This discussion has conclusively proved me wrong about that, so lets put such a clause in policy. Cheers, Phil. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 08:05:00PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: Dear Debian Folks, I've been giving serious thought for a while to forming a new Linux distribution. My reason is to fulfill some goals that currently are not addressed by Debian or the commercial distributions. I really don't know what I should think of this. I am speechless. Anthony -- Anthony Fok Tung-LingCivil and Environmental Engineering [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Alberta, Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Keep smiling! *^_^* Come visit Our Lady of Victory Camp -- http://olvc.home.ml.org/ or http://www.ualberta.ca/~foka/OLVC/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] you wrote:
dpkg -s dosemu says:
Package: dosemu
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: contrib
Installed-Size: 1799
Maintainer: Herbert Xu [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Version: 0.66.7-10
Depends: libc6, slang0.99.38, xlib6g (= 3.3-5)
...
Not my fault. I can't even find the word contrib in my debian/ directory.
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Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmVHI~} [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
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Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
Herbert Xu wrote: Not my fault. I can't even find the word contrib in my debian/ directory. I'd assume it's a bad override file, then. Talk to Guy. -- see shy jo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: intent to take mawk and gawk
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hi. Just to make things clearer: If Chris asked you to maintain mawk and gawk for him, I have no objections. I was just a little bit annoyed because I already asked Chris the maintenance of gawk several months ago (at that time I agreed with him to do a non-maintainer release). So in my first post about this issue I was expecting an objection from him, if from anybody. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: latin1 iQCVAgUBNUg4nSqK7IlOjMLFAQEf2wQAq3P0mU0BmEFEdfy7kW4uf0nctsBQjixk VRP9B1rWTl2xWlgnhAau7ZmKZZXGuekxbPqvT5Rh9eLkI7t/i/u7xy/q4iL8Qf9B 02fhIalmiSPdHIyBye8eIVFoXWXpC+/gKopgXu6TpGQb7oTdAkrNMJYRMEvhGyAd XQBL1MViizQ= =r7zU -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
Joey Hess wrote:
Herbert Xu wrote:
Not my fault. I can't even find the word contrib in my debian/ directory.
I'd assume it's a bad override file, then. Talk to Guy.
FWIW, the Packages file and master contains the right info. So I suspect a bad
mirror is to blame here.
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Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmVHI~} [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
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RE: Why is dosemu in contrib?
I did get my info from my status file. So this might be local problem.
Michael
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Dr. Michael Meskes, Project-Manager| topsystem Systemhaus GmbH
[EMAIL PROTECTED]| Europark A2, Adenauerstr. 20
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | 52146 Wuerselen
Go SF49ers! Go Rhein Fire! | Tel: (+49) 2405/4670-44
Use Debian GNU/Linux! | Fax: (+49) 2405/4670-10
-Original Message-
From: Herbert Xu [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 1998 10:42 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
Joey Hess wrote:
Herbert Xu wrote:
Not my fault. I can't even find the word contrib in my debian/
directory.
I'd assume it's a bad override file, then. Talk to Guy.
FWIW, the Packages file and master contains the right info. So I
suspect a bad
mirror is to blame here.
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Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmVHI~} [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
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Re: Conflicts between developers and policy
Hi, Philip == Philip Hands [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Philip Manoj, Was my previous mail really that annoying ? If so, I Philip apologise profusely (I was fairly tired at the time I wrote Philip it, so may have started to be rather more argumentative that I Philip meant to be) Well, it was gfetting frustating, what with being in the middle of two conversations, one with Dale and James, who are of the opinion that policy is a guideline, and not a set of rules adopted by the project, and you and raul, who are of the opinion that no one needs defend policy or say that it should be folllowed, since that is self evident. I may have over reacted to being the lone voice crying in the wilderness bit. Philip I think we actually hold fairly similar opinions about this Philip subject. Did you ever see my previous attempt to calm this Philip discussion down a bit ? I think we all hold views that are pretty close to each others. The de'il is in the details ... Philip Anyway, I think you've started being just a little Philip argumentative now, since I don't believe that you, or anyone Philip else for that matter, wants to violate policy in a destructive Philip way. well, not really. Philip You seemed (to my tired eyes) to be accusing people of Philip objecting to: Philip Policy should be followed, except where a discussion about the Philip clause in question is still ongoing, in which case the Philip maintainer may indulge in a policy violation if they feel it Philip is a technically superior approach. I think this would indeed satisfy all of us. This statement put policy as something we all collectively have agreed to follow, and yet rtecognizes that at time policy may be in error, and allows people leeway to correct policy, and allow it to evolve and converge to correct behaviour. manoj -- Once I was a tadpole, in the beginning of the begin; Then I was a toadfrog with my tail tucked in. Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree; Now I'm a professor with a Ph.D. --Anonymous creationist's view of evolution Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/ Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
packaged blt8.0-unoff for unstable
blt8.0-unoff is a blt version compatible with tk8.0 based on blt2.1. from the blt README: There's a story behind these unofficial releases of BLT: shortly after George released BLT 2.1 back in April '96, he disappeared from the scene, i.e. he didn't show up in comp.lang.tcl anymore, and he also didn't release updates of BLT. Newer releases of Tcl/Tk (7.5/4.1-8.0) broke BLT 2.1, and while Tcl/Tk went multi-platform (Unix, Win32(s), MacOS), BLT was still restricted to Unix/X11. Of course, there were also some bugs in 2.1. Due to BLT's popularity, and because its sources are freely available, several people posted patches which fixed bugs, made BLT compatible with newer versions of Tcl/Tk, and even made it compile under Win32. Unfortunately, these efforts were not coordinated, and therefore some patches clashed with others. To address this less than desirable situation, I've offered (end of February '97) to coordinate the efforts to keep BLT up to date. Since then, I've released several unofficial, yet public versions of BLT. If people run into trouble with these versions, I'm encouraging them to contact me instead of George. Likewise, if someone wants to contribute patches, these should be made against the latest unofficial release and sent to me; I'll then try to incorporate them into my source tree and to release an updated version ASAP. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: first proposal for a new maintainer policy
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: OK. I give. And, on the principle that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I now agree with Jame Troup and Dale Scheetz and formally declare that Policy does not govern may packages from this point on, and shall close any policy related Bugs ASAP. Are you being nasty to me because I FUBARed kernel-package or what? I said I'm sorry about that, and don't know what more I can do. :-( In any event I refer you to: URL:http://www.nl.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-policy-9804/msg00291.html where I said (among other things) ``For the record I don't really think it's a good idea to flout policy and I regret suggesting that.'' -- James -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian 2.0
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
- pam login doesn't use pam. passwd doesn't use pam. telnet doesn't use it.
unless most programs are unseing pam, it's useless.
Oh, foo. Integration of pam was dropped as a release goal of 2.0
because it is quite simply not tenable if you want to release hamm
before 1999. You can not simply recompile core applications like
shadow and net{base,std} with pam and hope they work, especially not
a month+ into freeze.
Not good. [Sounds like a significant bug, too.]
The non-use of pam is not a significant bug and I have no idea what
makes you think it is.
--
James
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Re: Conflicts between developers and policy
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, it was gfetting frustating, what with being in the middle of two conversations, one with Dale and James, who are of the opinion that policy is a guideline, and not a set of rules adopted by the project Again, please don't misrepresent my position like this. I made one rash comment which I later retracted (see previous message), and I haven't been actively involved in this ``conversation'' since I posted my retraction on 1998-04-23. -- James -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: installation report of hamm 26.4.
On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 09:22:20PM +0200, Andreas Jellinghaus wrote: g) cvs is in default ! no ! most people don't use it, and it contains a server, that has to be configured. this is work, and for people who don't know cvs its very confuseing. The casual user has no need for cvs, but cvs certainly does not require its pserver. It works best without the pserver, over ssh. I hope you filed these as bugs to the spesific packages? -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - it's a valid address w/o spam -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Ean Schuessler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My personal feeling is that every man hour that Debian loses to this effort is one man hour too many. Er.. Debian is not that kind of effort. Personally, I think every hour of flamage we lose will be paid back in an order of magnitude of better coordination (and development). But (a) personal feelings are just that: personal; (b) Debian doesn't track (nor own) man hours; (c) coordination time is not equivalent to development time, and neither are equivalent to testing time; (d) if what they produce is well designed free software there's no reason we couldn't also use it. I regret having wasted any of my, or your time on the recent flame war about what if policy isn't really policy, by the way. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1 - They don't actually have package dependencies. They have dependencies on files - big difference. Perhaps this could be synthesized from a complete list of all files provided by rpm, and a limited scope which prohibits presenting competing versions of the same file. 2 - They seem to lack a well formed index file, I couldn't find any rpm index on their ftp site. Presumably, this could also be addressed by work. [Since it's not specific to the rpm format, but the rpm site.] -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bruce Perens) wrote on 29.04.98 in [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 1. Focus on the User I'd like to have developers who program because they like to see their work in the hands of users, especially _naive_ users. Well, I must say that while users are nice, naive users ... umm. Well. I deal with enough of these in my day job to not want to deal with them in my free time, too; they tend to be a royal pain in the ass. Now, that doesn't mean that a system shouldn't be easy to use. Of course, I believe that Debian *does* meet that criterion; it sure feels easier than Win95 to me. Competition with Microsoft and other proprietary systems is a stated goal of the project. Market share for the system and its derivatives is a stated goal of the project. That is essentially a question of priorities, of what you're willing to sacrifice to meet that goal. My priority is in technical excellence and usability for those that care to learn about their system. To put it bluntly, I consider software not following these primary goals to be junk. Microsoft is a prime offender. It's nice if it's *also* easy for other people, but that is definitely a secondary goal. Oh, and that's always relative to the context. It sure means different things for a general OS distribution as opposed to, say, some embedded thing to run cash registers. I don't expect cashiers to learn about an OS; I *do* expect them to learn, say, how to cancel entries and stuff. 2. Maintaining a non-commercial alternative to the commercial Linux distributions. This was one of the most important goals of Debian. Still is, of course. I think Debian's drifted too far from the mainstream of Linux I don't think so. to continue to fulfill this purpose. A non-commercial alternative would address the same markets as the commercial Linux systems, and would be compatible with them wherever possible. I propose for this system binary, _dependency_, and package compatibility with Red Hat, the most popular Linux distribution that has made it to LIBC 6. This would guarantee the availability of commercial applications for the system. Obviously, the easiest way to do that is to derive from Red Hat. I am quite certain I do *not* want rpm, or a system that's a Red Hat derivation. From all I see and hear, that would make it quite hard to follow my primary goals above, except if I were Red Hat myself. 3. Provding shared maintainance on the base system for all Linux distributions. This is another early goal of Debian that we've not ever fulfilled. A system based on what commercial distributions are already deriving from, managed by a non-profit, with shared CVS, might be able to realize this goal. This seems fairly orthogonal to Debian. We already share huge amounts of source with most distributions out there, and better coordination of that surely would be good, but if it's to be of use to all distributions, then it's orthogonal to all distributions. Of course, there will be the issue of coordinating with the upstream maintainers, and the difficult problem of not pissing them off. Considering XFree86 seemed offended by the Debian X maintainer offering help, this can get ... umm ... interesting. 4. Maintaining the Open Source standard of Linux. We're at the point where we don't really _need_ non-free and contrib directories any longer - all packages in the system should be Open Source - let someone else distribute the rest. Uh. You the same guy that wrote about commercial applications some paragraphs above? 5. Open Development. I am proposing development visible to all, but not a free-for-all. A core group of limited size to maintain the base system and oversee the rest probably _is_ necessary. I am not planning to copy the Debian constitution - I'd rather have the Bazaar-Method management we used for the first few years of the project. Hmm. The currently debated constitution seems to me to be an attempt to get back to bazaar-style management from too much cathedral under a previous project leader. Some guy named Bruce, IIRC. 6. Direct Commercial Participation. I would encourage direct commercial participation by other Linux distributions who are interested in compatibility through a standard base system. I know most of these people, and can probably get serious consideration from them. That looks like it belongs to the common base efforts. One thing that came up recently would be better coordination of sonames. 8. Marketing On An Equal Footing with Engineering Marketing is important for getting the user's attention and giving the user what they want. Lack of good marketing is the main reason for the failure of Unix derivitaves to achieve market domination.
Re: Pronouns (was Re: Proposed Constitution)
I´m did a little research and nobody here at my university I ask (not too many people, and not represantive, but FWIW) did know this use of they. I would really appreciate a list of word explanations, as reading english legal texts is hard. I´m willing to learn new stuff, but I hope that Ian can provide such a list. Marcus On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 10:37:36PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: Marcus Brinkmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hope you are well aware of the fact that a lot of people will not understand it, and probably will ask you about it. I can tell you that most german readers may be confused. I don't know about other countries, but I assume the situation is not very different there. If this is a problem, we could fix it by supplying a short list of definitions of words which are known problems for people with various backgrounds. -- Raul -- Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.Debian GNU/Linuxfinger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann http://www.debian.orgmaster.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 08:05:00PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: 5. Open Development. I am proposing development visible to all, but not a free-for-all. A core group of limited size to maintain the base system and oversee the rest probably _is_ necessary. I am not planning to copy the Debian constitution - I'd rather have the Bazaar-Method management we used for the first few years of the project. It ain't no bazaar if one can't walk into it. Read Eric S. Raymonds /Homesteading the Noosphere/. Re-read it. Think where you went wrong. Just my .02 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pronouns (was Re: Proposed Constitution)
--On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 1:03 pm +0200 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I´m did a little research and nobody here at my university I ask (not too many people, and not represantive, but FWIW) did know this use of they. I would really appreciate a list of word explanations, as reading english legal texts is hard. I´m willing to learn new stuff, but I hope that Ian can provide such a list. I'd just like to reassure you, Marcus, and any other non-English as first language speakers here, that Ian and I are not proposing Debian adopt some obscure antiquated english usage, just for the sake of it. This use of 'they' really is in common use in everyday conversation, in my experience, as well as in print. The idea of a language glossary for non-native-english speakers does sound like a good idea, however. Jules /+---+-\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd| | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED]| TW9 2TF *UK* | ++---+-+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \--/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New Linux distribution
Bruce, I just read your letter to the debian devel list and your name sounded familiar. You were mentioned in a Linux Ham-HowTo as starting a linux distribution for amateur radio. The mentioned web page however does not exist (dns entry not found anyway). I assume that your current letter is a resumption of this desire. I have had my own thoughts along these ideas. There are several Amateur radio programs currently available for dos/windows that *NEED* to be ported to linux. These include contest loggers, satalite trackers, packet radio, RTTY, and SSTV programs. There is very good SSTV program for windows 95, using the sound blaster that I would like to see ported to Linux / X. It is currently shareware. A call to ham software developers! I have installed debian 1.3.1 (several times!) at home and have found that it is NOT easy to install. Many of the utilities are older than versions supplied with Slackware or Redhat. Examples: Man uses More instead of Less as a pager (this can be fixed but debian's man does not support the 'rc file format that slackware uses). LS does not support color (can be added but again debian does not support the same 'rc or enviromental settings found elseware). Getting networking up was a real head scratcher as a network configuration program (such as supplied with slackware and redhat) does not exist and you must edit startup scripts by hand. Yes a true sysadmin should know this stuff, but I had to find the answeres in a book on Slackware and translate to debians script format! I like debians goals and style but it needs polish. A good book on dpkg and dselect (along the read-ability lines of maximum RPM ) would help. If you set up another list for this effort please post it's url here or e-mail me. Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Linux distribution
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 08:27:29AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are several Amateur radio programs currently available for dos/windows that *NEED* to be ported to linux. These include contest loggers, satalite trackers, packet radio, RTTY, and SSTV programs. There is very good SSTV program for windows 95, using the sound blaster that I would like to see ported to Linux / X. It is currently shareware. A call to ham software developers! Sounds good. I want to see more technical software packaged for Debian -- scientific/engineering stuff (see SAL http://sal.kachinatech.com or http://sal.rising.com.au in AU), but also other application software like ham radio stuff. Now I just have to learn the regulations and get around to getting licensed. Q this, Q that.. :-( Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Latest Debian packages at ftp://ftp.rising.com.au/pub/hamish. PGP#EFA6B9D5 CCs of replies from mailing lists are welcome. http://hamish.home.ml.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian 2.0
James Troup [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Oh, foo. Integration of pam was dropped as a release goal of 2.0
because it is quite simply not tenable if you want to release hamm
before 1999. You can not simply recompile core applications like
shadow and net{base,std} with pam and hope they work, especially not
a month+ into freeze.
I didn't realize that pam was this unstable. [As in: it's been around
for a while, and I didn't realize the decision had been made this
recently.]
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Not good. [Sounds like a significant bug, too.]
The non-use of pam is not a significant bug and I have no idea what
makes you think it is.
It's a bug in debian's pam support, because it is a lack of pam
support.
Seems like it would be viable to create a netbase-pam, setstd-pam,
login-pam, etc. and put them somewhere (experimental, slink/extra, ...).
--
Raul
--
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RE: netstd tools in the base system (was Re: What to do with /bi n/perl symlink?)
Don't forget that there are a lot of firewalls (ANS Interlock in particular) out there that require logging in first. Passive mode won't work. That is, you ftp to the firewall, log in, and finally do a user [EMAIL PROTECTED] That gives you a connection to the remote site which then prompts for the password. Yick. -- Dean Carpenter [EMAIL PROTECTED] 94 TT :)[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Rev. Joseph Carter [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 1998 12:52 AM To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: netstd tools in the base system (was Re: What to do with /bin/perl symlink?) On Tue, Apr 28, 1998 at 07:00:48PM -0600, Jason Gunthorpe wrote: What if the person does not want to use dselect? Many people (not me) prefer to download packages themselves, and dpkg -i them. Now that ftp is removed, they would either have to download netstd using something other than linux, or use dselect to download netstd. Given some people's dislike of dselect, this will be a major complaint. Some people can't use dselect's ftp method, firewalls and so on. Unless the firewall doesn't allow ANY ftp at all, the ftp method supports passive mode. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Linux distribution
On Thu, 30 Apr 1998 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have installed debian 1.3.1 (several times!) at home and have found that it is NOT easy to install. Many of the utilities are older than versions supplied with Slackware or Redhat. Examples: Man uses More instead of Less as a pager (this can be fixed but debian's man does not support the 'rc file format that slackware uses). LS does not support color (can be added but again debian does not support the same 'rc or enviromental settings found elseware). Getting networking up was a real head scratcher as a network configuration program (such as supplied with slackware and redhat) does not exist and you must edit startup scripts by hand. Yes a true sysadmin should know this stuff, but I had to find the answeres in a book on Slackware and translate to debians script format! I like debians goals and style but it needs polish. A good book on dpkg and dselect (along the read-ability lines of maximum RPM ) would help. Okay, just a few responses to issues you raised. 1) Of course RedHat has newer programs, it was released when they were available. Debian 1.3.1 is old, but we've been tied up migrating everything to glibc and it's taken longer than expected. Debian releases will happen more frequently after this. 2) Debian 2.0 will automagically select less for the pager when it is available for most packages. Doesn't support slackware's format is not to be considered a bug. 3) alias ls='ls --color=auto --classify' 4) Okay, network config is a pain. Some inroads have been made in that region for Debian 2.0, I understand that we have a vastly improved PPP config. The install disks seem to do a good job of creating the network config files, provided the correct information. -- Scott K. Ellis [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gate.net/~storm/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: New Linux distribution
If you have sensitive skin you may wish to push the delete button now -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 30, 1998 8:27 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: New Linux distribution Bruce, I just read your letter to the debian devel list and your name sounded familiar. You were mentioned in a Linux Ham-HowTo as starting a linux distribution for amateur radio. The mentioned web page however does not exist (dns entry not found anyway). I learned of Debian from this goal too. Never saw the Ham distribution, but found what I needed in Debian. I assume that your current letter is a resumption of this desire. I have had my own thoughts along these ideas. There are several Amateur radio programs currently available for dos/windows that *NEED* to be ported to linux. These include contest loggers, satalite trackers, packet radio, RTTY, and SSTV programs. There is very good SSTV program for windows 95, using the sound blaster that I would like to see ported to Linux / X. It is currently shareware. A call to ham software developers! Yep, lots of apps need to be ported - are you volunteering? I have installed debian 1.3.1 (several times!) at home and have found that it is NOT easy to install. Many of the utilities are older than versions supplied with Slackware or Redhat. Examples: Man uses More instead of Less as a pager (this can be fixed but debian's man does not support the 'rc file format that slackware uses). LS does not support color (can be added but again debian does not support the same 'rc or enviromental settings found elseware). Getting networking up was a real head scratcher as a network configuration program (such as supplied with slackware and redhat) does not exist and you must edit startup scripts by hand. Yes a true sysadmin should know this stuff, but I had to find the answeres in a book on Slackware and translate to debians script format! I like debians goals and style but it needs polish. A good book on dpkg and dselect (along the read-ability lines of maximum RPM ) would help. If you set up another list for this effort please post it's url here or e-mail me. Thanks. Most of the items listed are in FAQs or documentation on the system. As I recall from Debian 0.93 (I think that was the revision when I started using it) the configuration of a network was part of the post-inst script. PPP needed tweaking, but nothing that wasn't in the documentation. If someone has the desire to install an operating system on a computer that is created, supported, and distributed by volunteers they should expect to have to do some amount of reading to configure the system to their liking. When someone does the install and then proceeds to cry because the system doesn't do what their friend's does, without being willing to read and follow the documentation I quickly lose patience. It is a different issue if the person reads the documentation and doesn't understand it, or the solution is not in the documentation. At least the person has *tried* to help themselves. As with most free things, you get out what you put in. If you want a system that is easy for the casual user, you need to develop that and be willing to hold the hand of all the casual users when they don't understand why the system is doing what they told it to, not what they think it should be doing. I applaud Bruce for attempting to follow this goal, and wish him the best of luck in the endeavor. I hope it meets with better success than the Linux for Hams project. Pat Pat Ouellette Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Amateur Radio (voice): KB8PYM on KB8YVY repeater (52.650 / 146.835 / 444.650) Amateur Radio (packet): [EMAIL PROTECTED] Running down the hall: Hey you! You can ping your node, you can ping you neighbor, but you can't ping your neighborÂ’s node. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 02:33:54AM -0500, Ean Schuessler wrote: [..] Bruce could have followed the great Freeware tradition of building concensus by putting togethor a team of Debianites dedicated to creating a newbie-friendly wrapper for the technically excellent Debian distribution. [..] If there are a group of people interested in doing this still, I am very much interested in seeing this done and contributing what I can to the project. The demo I would want to create for such a thing to show how much Linux can do without even touching X (mostly for the HD space issue) would probably not fit Official status very well because I would almost certainly include pine-src and qmail-src packages in the defaults-to-be-installed area simply because it's a demo designed to be as easy as possible. NO editor is as easy (read: mindless) as pico and pine is a user favorite. And the most config qmail requires after package installation is control/me, which I'd have a script edit for you.. =p Free Software is all about diversity. Any development effort that wants to grow to a significant size needs to understand that. The best way to make a friendly Linux distribution (be it Debian or any other name you should chose) is not to eliminate all the people who are deeply interested in the technical component of the work. The people who want to make something for the new users should cooperate with the die hard hackers to create a system that perserves both sets of needs. Either extreme is lopsided. I agree. Debian is a great dist on technical merit, even though it doesn't have some of the niceties needed for a home-user who wants to try Linux on their machine and is willing to learn--but can't really afford a lot of time to figure out how to handle the common tasks we take for granted. At a fundamental level I question the proposition that Debian is not concerned with usability. Beyond that I question the fact that RedHat is so much more usable than Debian. It may install easier, but is it easier to run? You spend a few hours installing your system, you spend years running it. See Crystal's horror story once she got everything installed. rpm is a file-based dependancy, not a package based. She knew she needed a file, not where to get it. This is the kind of thing dpkg does well IMO.. In the interest of diversity and competition I support the idea of a Debian faction or even an alternate distribution that is focused on the user. I cannot endorse the extreme (ditch dpkg, go work for RedHat) that Bruce has gone to. User-friendly SCREAMS dpkg to me. Not really Debian, but dpkg. rpm is not nice to new users, though it is more flexable with installing combinations of tarballs and packages. Still, with as many packages as Debian has, this is a non-issue really. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Bruce Perens wrote: As I see it there are two major problems that preclude using APT with RPM as it stands, 1 - They don't actually have package dependencies. They have dependencies on files - big difference. 2 - They seem to lack a well formed index file, I couldn't find any rpm index on their ftp site. They have _both_ package dependencies and file dependencies. In fact, earlier versions of RPM only had the package dependencies (e.g. Red Hat 4.2). I know, I've recently made .rpms of texk which had package dependencies. (I wanted pdftex.) The file dependencies are automatically generated, and they are used for shared libraries and binaries needed by install scripts. I took a -VERY- quick look some time ago, at first glance everything else seemed about on par with dpkg. But if they are true, those are two very major problems. The only real problems that I see are: 1. no alternatives or diversions mechanism 2. some problems with default configuration file handling I believe I know how #2 can be handled with a small patch to RPM (changing one constant), and for other problems the developers are very active and open to suggestions. It might be smart to fork rpm (call it something else) and re-do the header fields to be more sensible, then use APT to provide understanding This would be bad. Especially since RPM is a cross platform standard: people are using rpm to install packages on Solaris machines and many other commercial Unix platforms. of the fields and use librpm for the actuall installing. Then you get all the benifits of Debian's dependency system and the benifits of APT's ordering sequencer, dependency engine, multi-source handing, (and someday it's GUI too). If #1 is really true there is zero point in making APT understand RPM, 90% of it's functionality would have to be disabled. It's not true. Steve [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian 2.0
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Oh, foo. Integration of pam was dropped as a release goal of 2.0
because it is quite simply not tenable if you want to release hamm
before 1999. You can not simply recompile core applications like
shadow and net{base,std} with pam and hope they work, especially
not a month+ into freeze.
I didn't realize that pam was this unstable.
I never said it was unstable and it isn't. But we haven't used it
before and I don't care how stable it is, we should not and will not
start recompiling core applications with a previously unused (*in
Debian*) library, one month into a freeze. The decision to postpone
PAM integration till 2.1 was made a long time ago (see the list
archives).
--
James
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Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2 - They seem to lack a well formed index file, I couldn't find any rpm index on their ftp site. Presumably, this could also be addressed by work. [Since it's not specific to the rpm format, but the rpm site.] There is an index file in the installation tree (RedHat/base/hdlist), and a program to generate it. The file format is concatenated headers, which is very easy to load into librpm for dependency processing, etc. This format could also easily be used for contrib trees, etc. And it is much cheaper to generate than the Debian Packages files currently are. (Last I checked, this required a md5sum of every package.) But this should be discussed on rpm-list, not debian-devel. Steve [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 10:06:00AM -0400, Steve Dunham wrote: It might be smart to fork rpm (call it something else) and re-do the header fields to be more sensible, then use APT to provide understanding This would be bad. Especially since RPM is a cross platform standard: people are using rpm to install packages on Solaris machines and many other commercial Unix platforms. .deb files are perhaps more so.. While dpkg doesn't exist for everything, the file format of .deb is just an ar file with a few tarballs inside. pgp52mvuuyXA5.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Hi! What I read from Bruce here recalls a discussion on linux-kernel where Linus made the following statement: Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something jcompletely new. -- Linus Torvalds At the time Bruce left nearly nobody has understood why he thinks that Debian does not focus on the end user and can't be improved that way. I don't recall a statement that sounded appropriate to me where it shows that Debian doesn't focus on the end user _and_ that we're unable to resolve this. It makes me feel very sad that our former project leader - co-founder of Debian or at least early co-worker - wants to start something completely new instead of improving our work that is also his work. It is true that a lot of mechanisms, Debian has at the moment, can and should be improved in some ways. I have to admit that there are quite some people working on such issues. On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 08:05:00PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: Dear Debian Folks, 1. Focus on the User I'd like to have developers who program because they like to see their work in the hands of users, especially _naive_ users. This is the case for a lot of debian developers, not for all of them, I have to admit. Competition with Microsoft and other proprietary systems is a stated goal of the project. Market share for the system and its derivatives is a stated goal of the project. This implicates a lot of projects the single project can't fulfil. It also includes some goals that it may fulfil. Fulfillable goals . Easier installation . User friendly interfaces . Configuration interfaces other than vi / files for all important tools[1] ... New projects . wysiwyg word processors (sorry, but I don't believe LyX is the answer, apart from being based on xforms/qt) . SpreadSheet . Database / frontends / address db's . Compound Office packages . Mail client (sorry, I don't believe that mozilla is the answer) . Network tools ... Please tell us where we have to improve our mechanisms according to your oppinion. 2. Maintaining a non-commercial alternative to the commercial Linux distributions. This was one of the most important goals of Debian. A non-commercial alternative helps keep the commercial distributions stay honest by preventing any of them from having a corner on the market. I think Debian's drifted too far from the mainstream of Linux to continue to fulfill this purpose. A non-commercial What is mainstream? Rpm might be mainstream as most other distribution have chosen it as their package manager. Hey, this doesn't make it any better, MS Windows is mainstream, too. This doesn't justify a movement, too. From the technical point of view dpkg is superiour in it's features. From the users point it's handling (-i, -r, --force-something) looks a lot more logical than rpm (-qiv etc.). I have to admit that dselect isn't able to handle our huge amount of packages. No point, Culus works on apt which will be functional and a wonderful frontend for dpkg. I used RedHat's package manager a few times, glint, on RH 4.2 only, I have to admit. I have to say, that I'm more than happy that we have dselect and its _functionality_ that is somewhat more complicated but results in easier handling. Obviously, the easiest way to do that is to derive from Red Hat. If so I feel offended that you posted this on the debian-* lists and not on redhat-* You're abusing Debian developers who work hard for this distribution. That's ashaming. 3. Provding shared maintainance on the base system for all Linux distributions. This is another early goal of Debian that we've not ever fulfilled. A system based on what commercial distributions are already deriving from, managed by a non-profit, with shared CVS, might be able to realize this goal. Isnt' there already a distribution based on Debian? (I have to admit that I don't recall its name.) Wasn't this one of the reasons Mike Neuffer and Dominik Kubla left? I don't think you seconded that goal at that time. For this, I'd suggest better helping FreeLinux than starting another thing. 4. Maintaining the Open Source standard of Linux. We're at the point where we don't really _need_ non-free and contrib directories any longer - all packages in the system should be Open Source - let someone else distribute the rest. Cool idea but this breaks 1. (Focus on the User, remember?). I would be very glad if we could just skip non-free and concentrate only on free software. But from my experience only hackers and experienced users are able to work without all that crap. (like tetex-non-free, mosaic, kde, xforms based stuff, commercial sql server etc. etc.) 8. Marketing On An Equal Footing with Engineering Marketing is important
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Rev. Joseph Carter wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 02:33:54AM -0500, Ean Schuessler wrote: [..] Bruce could have followed the great Freeware tradition of building concensus by putting togethor a team of Debianites dedicated to creating a newbie-friendly wrapper for the technically excellent Debian distribution. [..] If there are a group of people interested in doing this still, I am very much interested in seeing this done and contributing what I can to the project. I find this idea interesting and would like to see it... NO editor is as easy (read: mindless) as pico and pine is a user favorite. And the most config qmail requires after package installation is control/me, which I'd have a script edit for you.. =p I dunno...I think ee and ae are both pretty damned easy and mindless :)(ae is sooo mindless I have noticed it is putting CR in my text documents) Free Software is all about diversity. I agree. Debian is a great dist on technical merit, even though it doesn't have some of the niceties needed for a home-user who wants to try Linux on their machine and is willing to learn--but can't really afford a lot of time to figure out how to handle the common tasks we take for granted. This is very true... I know a number of people who just want toPoint and click and have it work At a fundamental level I question the proposition that Debian is not concerned with usability. Beyond that I question the fact that RedHat is so much more usable than Debian. See Crystal's horror story once she got everything installed. rpm is a file-based dependancy, not a package based. She knew she needed a file, not where to get it. This is the kind of thing dpkg does well IMO.. I have used both Debian and RedHat and I agree... dpkg is MUCH easierto use than RPM isand it works much better...at this point in the short few months I have used debian I have installed and uninstalled and generally used dpkg hundreds of times... on my past RedHat systems I alwasy had a lengthy read of the man page... it took forever to get it to work! The thing is thisRedHat is a GREAT 1st systemby that I mean the firsttime you ever install linux...as much as I love debian and think it is greatly superiour in many ways... I still recommend RedHat for the first time. This is just because it installs a nice useable system so nice and easy... and has graphical admin toolsthe learning curve to linux is sharp (unless you are comming from another Unix) but RedHat makes the first few days/weeks easier remember: There are only 2 kinds of system admins, those who have screwed their computer up while logged on as root, and those who havn't YET after they are at the level of having done that..(I have personally done that um... lets see...at least 3-5 times) ..that is when I suggest debian :) RedHat is a very good system to get started on...but hard to grow with Debian on the other hand makes a great 4th system (yes 4th...I messed it up once after I switched too..probably will again someday) -Steve -- -BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK- Version: 2.6.3a mQCNAzG30VYAAAEEAK8aj0pclro6ULfzim7TN0Y2FeNtzJKkA9rNZ8KGim3N+ULO 1dn4tfIqymSNDQLc/SDCvliTDP9vodSSYfQaovHE2wWE6n5igGIhA3RqyAnX9ctl 4wPI5FYJHHhsl2OsKJLui1TbTo6uJul3vG4U9CnopYscEbHm+Hxvn0zebBV9AAUR tCVTdGVwaGVuIEouIENhcnBlbnRlciA8U0pDQGRlbHBoaS5jb20+iQCVAwUQMcz2 fnxvn0zebBV9AQFb2QP+OiFDvDvuuomwdZns+pQTVqOu5zy3wdlyQki4Mo/X+5qY Nmj0s4qjfowaimj69db6w6jSvzeEY5gnlM92NI5dj6qliJScBVlRNBRffsHkvHkk C27LjUtVYkF3j30wyCwdzNe0FhRYBsz5F+i78ZSPrxlUkOvfFBUgAo2ZFwlwS4k= =z4IB -END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian 2.0
James Troup [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I never said it was unstable and it isn't. But we haven't used it before and I don't care how stable it is, we should not and will not start recompiling core applications with a previously unused (*in Debian*) library, one month into a freeze. The decision to postpone PAM integration till 2.1 was made a long time ago (see the list archives). You're saying we shouldn't re-make that decision now. I guess that's fine. You're saying that when the decisions was made (a long time ago) it was the right decision. I guess that's fine, too. However, I'm surprised that so much time had passed without anyone re-examining the decision. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distributionx
Michael Meskes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - all graphic packaages with GIF support For what it's worth, GIF support is doable with free software, just not compressed gifs. [gif supports a variety of compression mechanisms, including none.] -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bruce Perens) writes: 1. Focus on the User I'd like to have developers who program because they like to see their work in the hands of users, especially _naive_ users. You are searching developers who will put significiant time into making parts of Debian (or the distribution-to-be) more user-friendly. Whenever you found them: Why don't they put their time into Debian and work on the relevant parts of Debian? This would save them a lot of duplicate work. I think even Debian developers for who user-friendliness isn't a top priority will be glad to see someone else do it. 2. Maintaining a non-commercial alternative to the commercial Linux distributions. I think Debian's drifted too far from the mainstream of Linux to continue to fulfill this purpose. Heavily depends on the defintion of mainstream. As I got it you believe that RedHat is to define what mainstream is, and mainstream has to use rpm. (You are invited to correct this.) As you know I don't share this definition. 3. Provding shared maintainance on the base system for all Linux distributions. That's what Dominik Kubla wanted to do. He pointed out that this has nothing to do with creating a new distribution, since such a base system approach will not be accepted by other distribution people when you start building your own distribution on top of your own base system. Thats the one point where I agree with Dominik ;-) BTW: What is the current state of Dominik's project (FreeLinux (?)). A base system has to be small, a distribution has to be big. This is another early goal of Debian that we've not ever fulfilled. There weren't that many people who pursued this goal, hence I don't consider this to be Debian's goal. 4. Maintaining the Open Source standard of Linux. We're at the point where we don't really _need_ non-free and contrib directories any longer - all packages in the system should be Open Source - let someone else distribute the rest. We probably don't need it. As long as people volunteer to maintain the packages we can distribute these packages with nearly no extra effort. Remember: Per Definition non-free and contrib aren't part of Debian. We might want to express this more clearly by moving directories around, but that isn't urgent. 5. Open Development. I am proposing development visible to all, but not a free-for-all. A core group of limited size to maintain the base system and oversee the rest probably _is_ necessary. Why is this necessary? IMHO the biggest problem is the (mis)use of the mailing lists. There are to many people chatting about to many things on too many mailing lists. People who know enough to package software for Debian don't necessarily have enough inside knowledge to discuss larger design issues. (And I'd like to see a split between technical and non-technical issues for -devel). I am not planning to copy the Debian constitution - I'd rather have the Bazaar-Method management we used for the first few years of the project. I don't know which of these ways is better. I know how things worked, and this leaves enough space for both improvement and worsening. I didn't understand which problems the constitution is expected to solve, so I have no idea what it will cause. 6. Direct Commercial Participation. That's only important for the base system. (IMHO) 8. Marketing On An Equal Footing with Engineering Marketing is important for getting the user's attention and giving the user what they want. Lack of good marketing is the main reason for the failure of Unix derivitaves to achieve market domination. I would put the marketing team at the same level as engineering, and have them work together constantly. Real developers tend to disklike marketing. You didn't tell us what this marketing team is going to do. (E.g., in case they will start promising impossible things they will become a pain for honest developers.) Marketing may have positive effects, but you have to name them. 9. A Random List of Other Goals. RPM as the package system We've been through this before. dpkg's is design is good. Someone has to fix the bugs. COAS as a system management framework. Why not? Who is going to do this? Non-interactive install. Goal accepted. I haven't seen relevant proposals lately. Limited set of interpreters for system tasks and pre-install and post-install scripts. How about ANSI shell (_not_ necessarily Bourne shell), Do you mean POSIX shell? I have never seen an ANSI shell specification. I'm concerned that Perl is a rather messy language compared to Python, and both Red Hat and Caldera seem to be focusing on Python. There is no point in asking for holy wars. No obscentity. Avoids legal problems and makes _me_ feel better. There is lots of room for free-speech
Intent to package pine-src
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- I have just read Bug #14355, in which Ian Jackson said about qmail-src: This package has no reason to exist and should be withdrawn. We distribute source as .dsc/.diff.gz/.orig.tar.gz. Well, this package exists for two reasons: 1) Because license does not allow to distribute a binary. 2) Because there is not an easy method for downloading a source package by using dselect or existing tools. To solve 1), we would have to change the license, but we can't because we obviously do not own the copyright... To solve 2), we can either: a) Modify dselect/dpkg so that it allows retrieving and unpacking source packages as well as binary packages. b) Allow .deb source packages like qmail-src, as an exception for the rule we distribute source as .dsc/.diff.gz/.orig.tar.gz for non-free packages. Since a) is clearly not going to be done for hamm, I don't see really a reason why -src packages should be forbidden. Ian, why do you still think that qmail-src should not exist? Are you the only one? [ I intent to package pine-src ]. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: latin1 iQCVAgUBNUiWTyqK7IlOjMLFAQG6SwP6AjzuHQ6swwuztxD6FSE0AgdogfKNBUid rnggu/JkP4YR9jOgb98dVHDlavVlx0wJT6KOvu6LfCSKXFClrK4+dvW19KkPv+3I O8OoU1pBf+rtuzgDtIUP/NT0/TfDBtOk/Q2zFZNOyV4cdCt0n8HzLwHXFKsLxJ1Q gT6EAybjvO8= =Vo/j -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
If someone has the desire to install an operating system on a computer that is created, supported, and distributed by volunteers they should expect to have to do some amount of reading to configure the system to their liking. When someone does the install and then proceeds to cry because the system doesn't do what their friend's does, without being willing to read and follow the documentation I quickly lose patience. It is a different issue if the person reads the documentation and doesn't understand it, or the solution is not in the documentation. At least the person has *tried* to help themselves. No problem here. As I said I *DID* find the answers and got my debian installation to talk to my ethernet card after making use of available documentation. But it was not Debian specfic documentation that was most helpfull, but rather general linux networking and slackware specific documentation that gave me my answers. Yep, lots of apps need to be ported - are you volunteering? Ok put your money where your mouth is eh? I'm not yet at the point where I could make the kind of contribution that I'd like to. First I need to get my own system in order (I'll end up starting from scratch with debin 2.0 when it is ready for prime time). Then I need to learn how to program GUI under X (which standard? Motif etc?), I currently know MFC under windows professionally. As with most free things, you get out what you put in. If you want a system that is easy for the casual user, you need to develop that and be willing to hold the hand of all the casual users when they don't understand why the system is doing what they told it to, not what they think it should be doing. Yes I'd also like to help improve system friendlyness for the begineer. I applaud Bruce for attempting to follow this goal, and wish him the best of luck in the endeavor. I hope it meets with better success than the Linux for Hams project. Maybe Debian should become linux for hams. How about a default configuration for amateur radio users? And solicit more ham radio packages. I'm willing to write / port some, in the near future. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 06:32:07PM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote: In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] you wrote: dpkg -s dosemu says: Package: dosemu Status: install ok installed Priority: extra Section: contrib Installed-Size: 1799 Maintainer: Herbert Xu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Version: 0.66.7-10 Depends: libc6, slang0.99.38, xlib6g (= 3.3-5) ... Does it possibly depend on having a working copy of DOS around? That would put it in contrib. -- David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
That might not put it in contrib isn't there a Free version of DOS that someoen other than Micro$loth made? i fsomething like that works with DOSemu... -Steve David Welton wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 06:32:07PM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote: In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] you wrote: dpkg -s dosemu says: Package: dosemu Status: install ok installed Priority: extra Section: contrib Installed-Size: 1799 Maintainer: Herbert Xu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Version: 0.66.7-10 Depends: libc6, slang0.99.38, xlib6g (= 3.3-5) ... Does it possibly depend on having a working copy of DOS around? That would put it in contrib. -- David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK- Version: 2.6.3a mQCNAzG30VYAAAEEAK8aj0pclro6ULfzim7TN0Y2FeNtzJKkA9rNZ8KGim3N+ULO 1dn4tfIqymSNDQLc/SDCvliTDP9vodSSYfQaovHE2wWE6n5igGIhA3RqyAnX9ctl 4wPI5FYJHHhsl2OsKJLui1TbTo6uJul3vG4U9CnopYscEbHm+Hxvn0zebBV9AAUR tCVTdGVwaGVuIEouIENhcnBlbnRlciA8U0pDQGRlbHBoaS5jb20+iQCVAwUQMcz2 fnxvn0zebBV9AQFb2QP+OiFDvDvuuomwdZns+pQTVqOu5zy3wdlyQki4Mo/X+5qY Nmj0s4qjfowaimj69db6w6jSvzeEY5gnlM92NI5dj6qliJScBVlRNBRffsHkvHkk C27LjUtVYkF3j30wyCwdzNe0FhRYBsz5F+i78ZSPrxlUkOvfFBUgAo2ZFwlwS4k= =z4IB -END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distributionx
Here's a random idea... It seems as if we already have several pretty good distributions that continue to improve. Maybe it's time to start looking at some of the next steps in Linux's future, things like Open Source.. Gnome.. coordination with the business world. You (Bruce) have already shown that you can put out a Linux distribution. In my opinion, you did a pretty good job. Now, maybe you can move on towards bigger and better things.. I'm not sure what exactly, but.. there seem to be some new opportunities out there that would do more for the Linux community and provide more of a challenge than creating another distribution. Anyway.. ciao, -- David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Stephen Carpenter wrote: I dunno...I think ee and ae are both pretty damned easy and mindless :)(ae is sooo mindless I have noticed it is putting CR in my text documents) As it turns out the DOS CR is coming from slang and is being worked on. Ae's .rc files are currently broken as well, from the transition to slang. Most of the details have been worked out, although I am still looking for a reasonable way to deside whether ae is running in an xterm or the console. (trolling for ideas on this one at every opportunity ;-) Look for a much cleaner operation of ae in the next release...the vi stuff is even working again! I have gotten a lot of good help on this problem, and I want to take the time here to thank everone who contributed info and fixes. If I haven't thanked you in person, it is only because I am moving too fast and you fell through the cracks. Many thanks, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_- Author of The Debian Linux User's Guide _-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 01:05:19PM -0400, Stephen Carpenter wrote: That might not put it in contrib isn't there a Free version of DOS that someoen other than Micro$loth made? i fsomething like that works with DOSemu... Caldera makes one, but it's not Open Source. Ciao, -- David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 10:08:59AM -0700, David Welton wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 01:05:19PM -0400, Stephen Carpenter wrote: That might not put it in contrib isn't there a Free version of DOS that someoen other than Micro$loth made? i fsomething like that works with DOSemu... Caldera makes one, but it's not Open Source. Last I checked, Dosemu came with FreeDOS, which AFAIK is Open Source. It's not 100% working, but it's good enough to get most users up and running, and they can re-sys their drive with real DOS if they want it. Jeff -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Intent to package pine-src
On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Santiago Vila wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- I have just read Bug #14355, in which Ian Jackson said about qmail-src: This package has no reason to exist and should be withdrawn. We distribute source as .dsc/.diff.gz/.orig.tar.gz. Well, this package exists for two reasons: 1) Because license does not allow to distribute a binary. 2) Because there is not an easy method for downloading a source package by using dselect or existing tools. To solve 1), we would have to change the license, but we can't because we obviously do not own the copyright... To solve 2), we can either: a) Modify dselect/dpkg so that it allows retrieving and unpacking source packages as well as binary packages. b) Allow .deb source packages like qmail-src, as an exception for the rule we distribute source as .dsc/.diff.gz/.orig.tar.gz for non-free packages. Since a) is clearly not going to be done for hamm, I don't see really a reason why -src packages should be forbidden. Ian, why do you still think that qmail-src should not exist? Are you the only one? I agree with Ian. The .deb file format is expressly for the distribution of configured executables (binaries for short). Using this format for source distribution is simply asking for trouble. Maybe we need a tarball that contains .dsc, .changes, .diff, and .orig.tar.gz all rolled up in one .src file, known to all the necessary programs, but to me this isn't necessary. For almost two years now we have distributed source packages as a collection of checksum authenticated files with a pgp signed changes file containing them. These four files: .dsc, .changes, .diff, and .orig.tar.gz comprise the Debian Source Format, as described in the significant documentation. We do it this way for both DFSG Free as well as for contrib and non-free software, so why make an exeption in this case? Retrieval of source from archives is usually done by hand but any such bulk retrieval should be easy to manage with a script. I take the lack of a script to indicate the current relative lack of need. Anyone is welcome to prove me wrong by writing such a script ;-) Although few agree with me, I still feel that packaging kernel source in .deb format was/is a mistake. The kernel-package-builder package doesn't benefit from this packaging style, as far as I can tell and it makes the kernel more perculiar than it need be. Another benefit of this source format that the .deb does not provide is the one time only download of orig.tar.gz. Until the upstream version changes, one can keep up with the Debian package by only needing to download the .diff and .dsc files (typically many orders smaller) to create a source tree that will build the current version of the Debian package. Keep source in Source Format and use the .deb files for what they were intended, the distribution of binary components. Luck, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_- Author of The Debian Linux User's Guide _-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why is dosemu in contrib?
--On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 12:20 pm -0500 Jeff Noxon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 10:08:59AM -0700, David Welton wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 01:05:19PM -0400, Stephen Carpenter wrote: That might not put it in contrib isn't there a Free version of DOS that someoen other than Micro$loth made? i fsomething like that works with DOSemu... Caldera makes one, but it's not Open Source. Last I checked, Dosemu came with FreeDOS, which AFAIK is Open Source. It's not 100% working, but it's good enough to get most users up and running, and they can re-sys their drive with real DOS if they want it. Speaking as someone who just installed it, yup, it seems to come with FreeDOS. I assumed FreeDOS is open source - don't know that for sure, though. Jules /+---+-\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd| | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED]| TW9 2TF *UK* | ++---+-+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \--/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian Source distributions (was Re: Intent to package pine-src)
--On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 1:57 pm -0400 Dale Scheetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Keep source in Source Format and use the .deb files for what they were intended, the distribution of binary components. I have little doubt you're right. I know none of the background. But... I think it would be nice to be able to download the source packages as well through the front-end (APT? Are you listening?). One of the things that I prefer about the *BSD distributions is the way you have all the source. In my NetBSD days, I never downloaded a binary - if you'd suggested it, I would have thought that was a funny idea. That has now changed (although I still miss 'make world' - BSD user-land took about 48 hours to build on my 68030). On my debian box, it would be nice for me to be able to say 'hmm.. there's a bug in ls.. that looks trivial to solve, I'll go have a look at the source'. In fact, some kind of automated re-uploading would be even froodier. It goes like this... hmm.. there's a bug in [commonly used utility]. Let's get the source [goes into apt, checks the 'also source' checkbox]. Ahh.. that's an easy one. mymachine# submit-bug-fix And the script runs a diff against .orig.tar.gz, and then allows me to enter a bug into the debian bug-tracker, with automatically generated patch included. This kind of thing would hugely increase the number of bugs we get fixed, if the system was this simple for people who are competent, but busy, programmers... Any thoughts? /+---+-\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd| | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED]| TW9 2TF *UK* | ++---+-+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \--/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Intent to package pine-src
hmm would it satisfy things to make a binary dist of the original files and of the debainized files...and litterally have it unpack the real pine and then run patch on it with a diff made agains t the debianized binaries? (I dunno that patch will do binaries...but you get the idea anyway...) yes yes...that idea is sick and twisted..and probably not ok either but... it was an idea...and besides...I kind of enjoy being sick and twisted ocasionally -Steve Dale Scheetz wrote: On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Santiago Vila wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- I have just read Bug #14355, in which Ian Jackson said about qmail-src: This package has no reason to exist and should be withdrawn. We distribute source as .dsc/.diff.gz/.orig.tar.gz. Well, this package exists for two reasons: 1) Because license does not allow to distribute a binary. 2) Because there is not an easy method for downloading a source package by using dselect or existing tools. To solve 1), we would have to change the license, but we can't because we obviously do not own the copyright... To solve 2), we can either: a) Modify dselect/dpkg so that it allows retrieving and unpacking source packages as well as binary packages. b) Allow .deb source packages like qmail-src, as an exception for the rule we distribute source as .dsc/.diff.gz/.orig.tar.gz for non-free packages. Since a) is clearly not going to be done for hamm, I don't see really a reason why -src packages should be forbidden. Ian, why do you still think that qmail-src should not exist? Are you the only one? I agree with Ian. The .deb file format is expressly for the distribution of configured executables (binaries for short). Using this format for source distribution is simply asking for trouble. Maybe we need a tarball that contains .dsc, .changes, .diff, and .orig.tar.gz all rolled up in one .src file, known to all the necessary programs, but to me this isn't necessary. For almost two years now we have distributed source packages as a collection of checksum authenticated files with a pgp signed changes file containing them. These four files: .dsc, .changes, .diff, and .orig.tar.gz comprise the Debian Source Format, as described in the significant documentation. We do it this way for both DFSG Free as well as for contrib and non-free software, so why make an exeption in this case? Retrieval of source from archives is usually done by hand but any such bulk retrieval should be easy to manage with a script. I take the lack of a script to indicate the current relative lack of need. Anyone is welcome to prove me wrong by writing such a script ;-) Although few agree with me, I still feel that packaging kernel source in .deb format was/is a mistake. The kernel-package-builder package doesn't benefit from this packaging style, as far as I can tell and it makes the kernel more perculiar than it need be. Another benefit of this source format that the .deb does not provide is the one time only download of orig.tar.gz. Until the upstream version changes, one can keep up with the Debian package by only needing to download the .diff and .dsc files (typically many orders smaller) to create a source tree that will build the current version of the Debian package. Keep source in Source Format and use the .deb files for what they were intended, the distribution of binary components. Luck, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_- Author of The Debian Linux User's Guide _-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- I am back to nothing worthwhile of a SIG again if you want my pgp key though check out: http://www.gis.net/~sjc/pgp.asc (BTW Thanx allot Noah for pointing out why putting my pgp key here was a bad idea...now I hafta find a new funny quote or something for here) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Intent to package pine-src
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Dale Scheetz wrote: I agree with Ian. The .deb file format is expressly for the distribution of configured executables (binaries for short). Using this format for source distribution is simply asking for trouble. I don't see any trouble. Maybe we need a tarball that contains .dsc, .changes, .diff, and .orig.tar.gz all rolled up in one .src file, known to all the necessary programs, but to me this isn't necessary. Well, for many people in debian-user, pine-src is a must. For almost two years now we have distributed source packages as a collection of checksum authenticated files with a pgp signed changes file containing them. These four files: .dsc, .changes, .diff, and .orig.tar.gz comprise the Debian Source Format, as described in the significant documentation. Yes, but remember that two years ago we had not read the license of pine carefully, and qmail had not been released. We do it this way for both DFSG Free as well as for contrib and non-free software, so why make an exeption in this case? Because we want to make easier the retrieving of *certain* source files. As easy as it is currently to retrieve binary .deb files. Retrieval of source from archives is usually done by hand but any such bulk retrieval should be easy to manage with a script. I take the lack of a script to indicate the current relative lack of need. Anyone is welcome to prove me wrong by writing such a script ;-) My point is that the functionality is already built-in in dpkg itself and we would not have to reinvent the wheel just for this particular case. Although few agree with me, I still feel that packaging kernel source in .deb format was/is a mistake. The kernel-package-builder package doesn't benefit from this packaging style, as far as I can tell and it makes the kernel more perculiar than it need be. Another benefit of this source format that the .deb does not provide is the one time only download of orig.tar.gz. Until the upstream version changes, one can keep up with the Debian package by only needing to download the .diff and .dsc files (typically many orders smaller) to create a source tree that will build the current version of the Debian package. Ok, then I will make two packages. One for the .orig.tar.gz file and another one for the .diff.gz and the .dsc files. This way only the second one will have to be downloaded for each new release. Keep source in Source Format and use the .deb files for what they were intended, the distribution of binary components. I *will* keep the source in source format. I will just create another .deb binary containing the source. The .deb files were intended to be the binary package format of a free Unix-clone distribution, Debian. If binaries are not allowed, the .deb binary format is certainly not suitable for its distribution and we can perfectly live with an exception. Moreover, non-free is not officially part of Debian. Why do we have to be so strict here for the rule of keeping the source just in the source package when there are already packages containing precompiled binaries in the *source* package (debian/rulkes being just a bunch of cp's)? Should we remove these from the archive for violating the rule that the source is the preferred form to do modifications? Please, think of it. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: latin1 iQCVAgUBNUjBJyqK7IlOjMLFAQF1EwQArwzacKqKEtVMqV8DC41KD8vZLJ9XL0y0 /4H85Fa8gAEPuPww/gPAiwSF2tWfSt8CQLajSOkpf9e7e9sPpdJQUBpZC+Yy5k6w /qL2t60NQBN63pFvfh1myyJL9gPjiPnrwwvdpccHIiCtzlZgpVQf1A6O8MCazCSK lH2VM6o6SpU= =KRY2 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Intent to package pine-src
Dale Scheetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree with Ian. The .deb file format is expressly for the distribution of configured executables (binaries for short). Using this format for source distribution is simply asking for trouble. Um... so does this mean we have to retract the kernel-source packages? Also, note that a variety of other packages include source, examples include: samba, ipx, modutils, netcat, xephem, ncurses3.4, mgetty, freetype1, cgilib. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Source distributions (was Re: Intent to package pine-src)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Jules Bean wrote: [ ... ] Any thoughts? Very nice... but *not for hamm*, as I said in my first mail. I was just talking about *hamm*, the distribution that will not change anymore once it will be released soon. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: latin1 iQCVAgUBNUjDKCqK7IlOjMLFAQEvBQQArRJQKjitoVBg681NcaxqwTptTRvo6MLt CKxzHevv1XH4fawebKbLm7y7b5KVEW+NiJ93qoDv5Vafj93nE9aynVK97fixoLyS JTboBexAbf/vZ2uhaVyhSikIqO/bwM8lCfvwq/g/+pjRrvhAEwJZYz4itIhw369k obIW9280PT0= =UpoZ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distributionx
From: Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] For what it's worth, GIF support is doable with free software, just not compressed gifs. [gif supports a variety of compression mechanisms, including none.] The patent expires in August. Bruce -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
BTW: What is the current state of Dominik's project (FreeLinux (?)). No messages regarding its progress or lack thereof for the past year. Real developers tend to disklike marketing. Don't tell that to my colleauges at Pixar. Or most other commercial firms. As far as I can tell they only dislike _bad_ marketing. You didn't tell us what this marketing team is going to do. Tell us how to please the user, mostly. There is some gap between the user and developer that the marketing people can help to bridge. We've been through this before. dpkg's is design is good. Someone has to fix the bugs. Actually, RPM's design is good too. It's pretty much a clone of dpkg. We seem to have established that it has the things Jason thought were missing. Do you mean POSIX shell? I have never seen an ANSI shell specification. Right. I'm concerned that Perl is a rather messy language compared to Python, and both Red Hat and Caldera seem to be focusing on Python. There is no point in asking for holy wars. No, I was just asking for a smaller base system. That means someone has to choose. Thanks Bruce -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Conflicts between developers and policy
On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 04:06:44AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Hi, Philip == Philip Hands [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I may have over reacted to being the lone voice crying in the wilderness bit. I prefer to keep away from such discussions until the air cleaned up a bit, but for the sake of the people who count votes here are my 0.02$: I think the policy should be strictly followed. Exceptions to and errors in the policy should be reported as a bug and properly included/fixed. The policy should include a rationale where the reason is not obvious. It should make clear what parts are required (must) and which are common practice (should). I prefer a must over a should. People should not be angry when policy is wrong for them, but they should happily work on the policy. The policy is not something that is forced on the developers by some higher person, but something the developers force on *themselves*. You can only experience real freedom if you feel the border. In short, I agree with Manoj. Marcus -- Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.Debian GNU/Linuxfinger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann http://www.debian.orgmaster.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Seeking other archs to build packages on
I am the E/Imlib/Fnlib maintainer. I would like to help or make packages for the other architectures that are able to run them. If you have a machine and can give me access please let me know. BTW is there a list of machines like this somewhere? Might be nice. -- --- How can you see, when your mind is not open? How can you think, when your eyes are closed? - Jason Bonham Band, Ordinary Black and White --- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Thanks for taking it as intended - and not the flame bait it might have sounded like. (Rough night last night - but I did put the delete disclaimer in) I've been using hamm for some time, and as long as you check to be sure that application you can't live without exists, it has been fairly stable for the last month. The autoup.sh script was a bit rough (I have heard it is much better now) and I trashed a system with it. After I installed from scratch everything has been reasonable (except the soundmodem programs were linked against libc5). When you get around to porting those ham apps, let me know and I'd be happy to help if I can. 73 de KB8PYM Pat Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Amateur Radio (voice): KB8PYM on KB8YVY repeater (52.650 / 146.835 / 444.650) Amateur Radio (packet): [EMAIL PROTECTED] Running down the hall: Hey you! You can ping your node, you can ping you neighbor, but you can't ping your neighborÂ’s node. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 30, 1998 12:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution If someone has the desire to install an operating system on a computer that is created, supported, and distributed by volunteers they should expect to have to do some amount of reading to configure the system to their liking. When someone does the install and then proceeds to cry because the system doesn't do what their friend's does, without being willing to read and follow the documentation I quickly lose patience. It is a different issue if the person reads the documentation and doesn't understand it, or the solution is not in the documentation. At least the person has *tried* to help themselves. No problem here. As I said I *DID* find the answers and got my debian installation to talk to my ethernet card after making use of available documentation. But it was not Debian specfic documentation that was most helpfull, but rather general linux networking and slackware specific documentation that gave me my answers. Yep, lots of apps need to be ported - are you volunteering? Ok put your money where your mouth is eh? I'm not yet at the point where I could make the kind of contribution that I'd like to. First I need to get my own system in order (I'll end up starting from scratch with debin 2.0 when it is ready for prime time). Then I need to learn how to program GUI under X (which standard? Motif etc?), I currently know MFC under windows professionally. As with most free things, you get out what you put in. If you want a system that is easy for the casual user, you need to develop that and be willing to hold the hand of all the casual users when they don't understand why the system is doing what they told it to, not what they think it should be doing. Yes I'd also like to help improve system friendlyness for the begineer. I applaud Bruce for attempting to follow this goal, and wish him the best of luck in the endeavor. I hope it meets with better success than the Linux for Hams project. Maybe Debian should become linux for hams. How about a default configuration for amateur radio users? And solicit more ham radio packages. I'm willing to write / port some, in the near future. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
Ean Schuessler wrote: [..] Bruce could have followed the great Freeware tradition of building concensus by putting togethor a team of Debianites dedicated to creating a newbie-friendly wrapper for the technically excellent Debian distribution. [..] Rev. Joseph Carter wrote: If there are a group of people interested in doing this still, I am very much interested in seeing this done and contributing what I can to the project. Stephen Carpenter writes: I find this idea interesting and would like to see it... Same here. This is the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote pppconfig. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: on forming a new Linux Distribution
From: Martin Schulze [EMAIL PROTECTED] What I read from Bruce here recalls a discussion on linux-kernel where Linus made the following statement: Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something jcompletely new. -- Linus Torvalds It doesn't seem to match the current circumstance. I'm not proposing to throw away Debian, but to address a different target from Debian. Splitting off sounds a lot gentler than pulling a Boris Yeltsin. [ Focus on the user issue ] This is the case for a lot of debian developers, not for all of them, I have to admit. I think it's too large a number for me to go against. This implicates a lot of projects the single project can't fulfil. It also includes some goals that it may fulfil. Obviously, we can't do everything by ourselves. We can provide a framework to support the work of others. Please tell us where we have to improve our mechanisms according to your oppinion. Oh gosh, you're not serious, are you? My solution would be rather draconian. The alternative I've chosen is much better than a draconian one. What is mainstream? Rpm might be mainstream as most other distribution have chosen it as their package manager. Hey, this doesn't make it any better, We seem to have established that it's functionaly equivalent to dpkg. It can use a better user interface. MS Windows is mainstream, too. And you should know that we'd love to have a WINE or TWIN that worked. That would make lots of users happy, and a free-software Windows system would not necessarily be technically bad one. Obviously, the easiest way to do that is to derive from Red Hat. If so I feel offended that you posted this on the debian-* lists and not on redhat-* Oh, they'll hear about it too. I do still get mail from the please come back folks on debian-devel, you know. I don't think coming back is a realistic option, Debian and I are going in opposite directions. Isnt' there already a distribution based on Debian? No, there isn't. Somebody took a little of our stuff for some French dist, but it's not Debian. Wasn't this one of the reasons Mike Neuffer and Dominik Kubla left? Yes, but their project did not succeed. Dominik was the only worker and had no time. I don't think you seconded that goal at that time. Gee, maybe I should have. Can't I change my mind in 3 years? 4. Maintaining the Open Source standard of Linux. Cool idea but this breaks 1. (Focus on the User, remember?). I don't believe that. Yes, some stuff needs improvement or replacement (like LyX), but free software is pretty fundamental to other goals of the project. Let the derivers add the non-free stuff. Thanks Bruce -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Stable Distribution Maintainer
On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 09:03:53PM -0400, Brian White wrote: This message is to inform everyone that Christian Hudon [EMAIL PROTECTED] will be taking over the management of the stable Debian release. He will be responsible for deciding which packages are worthy of stable and when to make a new point release. I think Christian is well suited for the position of Stable Distribution Manager given his past work in Debian and with the issues of security. Wow! I highly appreciate this. Regards, Joey -- / Martin Schulze * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * 26129 Oldenburg / / Experience is a useful thing. Unfortunately it is / / only acquired just after one could have used it. / pgpVgVDI8GqsX.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: **Ready your Flame-Throwers**
Unfoprtunatly I don't have a flame thrower... I had a can of lysol and a lighter but I ran out of lighter fluid...so I guess I will just have to reply in a civil manner :) It was definitly a bit refreshing to read your post...definitly a differnt Point of View than is usually seen on here. Even though I think your method of assesment is flawed...everything is flawed in some way or another (or as one song says nothing is ever perfect, this is just a test) The problem is that Debian is not a company...it is a group of volunteers like myself I recently realized that a package which I liked was available and needed work so I am trying to take it over why? well I like the package for one. Also because well... Linux gives me an alternative to microsoft and braindead completely closed and secretive development platforms... as such I want to give something back and help the community of linux users the same peopel who are the reason that it exists in the first place I do it for myself..because I want the program and I use the program... but if I only did it for myself...why would I care if it is available as a debian package? I think this is as much th eproblem as it is the good part :) it allows for some very nice and technically superior packages.. sinc ethe people who do it do it becaus ethey want superior packages (lets face it for a company that has to think about money and th enext version.. th emotivation i smarkedly differnet) it reminds me of when I told a friend that I was becomming a package maintainer he said now you will get all the flames I asked why and he said oh you know its the wrong color, it doesn't look right...it should do this.. (to which I said that it will be running as server process to which he replied oh great now it will NEVER be the right color :) ) but you know...I would like to get feedback from other users I like the idea of finding out what the people want and at leats taking that into consideration I mean sure we are technically superior...but is it really sacrificing technical superiority to add some aesthetics? (or at least make it easier for users to change what it looks like) you know (ok...I know allot of you are going to get sick to the stomac at this thought) I have even thought of grabbing the redhat source for some toold like their control-panel and porting some of those modules to debian They would need ALOT of work (I like the front end but not how they work the back end...) but IMHO I think they could be made into a nice tool my main concern of course would be doing the one thing redhat didn't... making it so that the configs that the control panels make can be easily documented and understood and most importantly fall in line with how it woul dbe done editing files by hand (as redhat has it now it is almost impossible to figure out all of their scripts and weird undocumented config files) when i say this BTW I am specifically thinking op the nwtwork config...the userconfig should almost work fine out of the box and others...well you get the idea I for one would love to see debian more pretty and user-friendy just so long as it doesn't sacrifice technical superiority to do it and...I think that can be done...it wont happen overnight...but it can be done! -Steve Ian Keith Setford wrote: Yo- I am subscribed to devel although I am not a developer and since everyone else has had comments on Bruce's message so do I. It seems to me that the problem is difference in opinion on the direction of Debian. Unlike most of you (I presume) I have chosen to study business instead of computer science of some variety. I have seen that a group of developers would like to see Debian as the most technically advanced distribution at a cost of time and user-friendliness. On the other hand, we have those developers that have a vision of Debian being more user-friendly and less technical. I can presume that these same arguments were occuring in board rooms of the Big-3 auto-makers in the U.S. in the late 70's and early 80's. The problem is that Debian is presuming what the average or mainstream computer user wants. This is wrong. The focus should be on the customer and therein lies Debian's problem. Who are the developers working for? Are you in it to make Debian for hackers, for business or for home use? It is very hard if not impossible to achieve all of these. Why do companies segment their products? Why do they do selective marketing? WHO IS DEBIAN FOR? Does Sun make Solaris with the intent of home users running it? No. They made their product based on what their customers wanted. Microsoft tries this but their technical side is crap. Why not find out what computer users want? Why don't you segment Debian into two divisions? Like Microsoft does with it's products (except both Debians would retain superior technial ability). A Debain for a newbie and a Debian for power-users? I'm not sure how much work that would entail because
RE: **Ready your Flame-Throwers**
I'll bite: From: Ian Keith Setford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 30, 1998 3:09 PM To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: **Ready your Flame-Throwers** Yo- I am subscribed to devel although I am not a developer and since everyone else has had comments on Bruce's message so do I. It seems to me that the problem is difference in opinion on the direction of Debian. Unlike most of you (I presume) I have chosen to study business instead of computer science of some variety. I have seen that a group of developers would like to see Debian as the most technically advanced distribution at a cost of time and user-friendliness. On the other hand, we have those developers that have a vision of Debian being more user-friendly and less technical. Gee, I studied physics and am working on an astro-physics degree. Computers just pay the bills and keep me off the streets. Remember presume is almost ass-u-me :-) I can presume that these same arguments were occurring in board rooms of the Big-3 auto-makers in the U.S. in the late 70's and early 80's. The problem is that Debian is presuming what the average or mainstream computer user wants. This is wrong. The focus should be on the customer and therein lies Debian's problem. Who are the developers working for? Are you in it to make Debian for hackers, for business or for home use? It is very hard if not impossible to achieve all of these. Why do companies segment their products? Why do they do selective marketing? WHO IS DEBIAN FOR? Does Sun make Solaris with the intent of home users running it? No. They made their product based on what their customers wanted. Microsoft tries this but their technical side is crap. No doubt every product needs a focus. The rift opened when Bruce attempted to get the developers to see the value of marketing TO an audience. The developers are *volunteers* who do it as a hobby, not because a user wants this or that. For someone to market Debian, they would need to look at what is there and find the marketable points of it. Most of the developers would not be adverse to *suggestions* from marketing, but are against marketing driving the direction of the development. Most consumer mass market things are driven by marketing once the initial idea is built. That's why many new mini-vans have connivance outlets (cigarette lighter sockets) in the cargo area. There is no technical reason to have one there, but marketing said it would sell more vans. Why not find out what computer users want? Why don't you segment Debian into two divisions? Like Microsoft does with it's products (except both Debians would retain superior technial ability). A Debain for a newbie and a Debian for power-users? I'm not sure how much work that would entail because I am not a developer. See your comment on Micro$oft, and my comments above. I can tell you right now that no Linux distribution will conquer Microsoft or anyone else if they can not market themselves and release when they say they will. Being technically supreme will get you no where unless it is matched at least equally with ease in installation, visibility, customer support, and product reliability. We are not out to conquer Micro$oft, or anyone else. We are here to share out talents with like minded individuals (and some not so like minded). The fact that other people find it useful is a bonus. Debian, in it's current state, focuses on being technically superior with *excellent* support but lacks ease in installation and marketing. (Note I said marketing, not marketability.) Ok Mr. Business - create a marketing team and propose said marketing in such a way as to not step on the sensitive toes of the developers. Debian needs to be easier to install and it needs visibility to those who would purchase Windows. Why? This is a world domination style goal. Easier to install would be nice, and is being worked on from what I can tell. If Bruce wishes to make a more user-friendly distribution I wish he would do it under the guise of Debian. Excuse the comparison but if Bruce's Easy Debian or whatever the name is could do for Debian what Window's 95 did for Microsoft,all of Debian would be *far* better off. Bruce should do what Bruce thinks is right for Bruce. He's a big boy and can make decisions for himself. RedHat already has the ease in install and visibility so all they have to do is get their technical and support side better. RedHat has the visibility because it is commercially produced for profit. If Debian had the goal to be the number one Linux distribution in the world - regardless of the competition, the first thing I would suggest is a Debian point of purchase package to be made available through computer stores and bookstores. The question is: Who is Debian for and where do you see it one year from now? ..five years from now? Sounds like Micro$oft's where do you want to go
Ease of use and configurability
Am I the only one who feels that, to a large extent, ease of use *is* a
technical problem?
This is a somewhat major proposal and would be a big piece of architecture
if implemented. However it's something I've been kicking around in my head
for months and I haven't yet come up with a good counter-argument.
I'll also be pretty surprised if something similar hasn't been proposed
*somewhere* before.
I note that on April 20th, the Gnome System Control Panel Project was
announced (see http://www.gnome.org). I think this is our opportunity to
work with its originator, Andy Doran, on making a consistent, easy, and
powerful interface for configuring programs.
My idea is this:
Every program that fetches user-modifiable files to control its behavior
(on a Debian system and according to the FHS, these should all be in /etc
or as dotfiles/dirs in $HOME) should have a kind an associated interface
file. Call it /usr/lib/package/gconfig or something.
Now bear with me as I'm probably about to abuse some terms from both compiler
and object theory.
Most configration files are reducible to key/value pairs (sometimes a key
word may take multiple values simultaneously, as in a list of pathnames),
or a list of grouped key/value pairs (/etc/passwd).
To handle this we need to define some primitive object types, like
boolean
file
directory (subtype of file)
device (subtype of file)
plainfile
... (you get the idea)
URI (Universal Resource Indicator, superset of URL's)
URL (thus, URL is a subtype of URI)
integer
string
Maybe URI should be a subtype of string...that's a technical decision. I'm
painting in broad strokes right now.
We must also allow the interface file to define its own object types.
For instance, /etc/password might do this; it is an aggregation of some of
the primitive data types mentioned above.
Some common methods should be written into the primitive objects (testing
for file not found in the file object, range checking in integer, illegal
character detection in string, etc.
We must also allow the interface file to override methods, and define new
ones of its own for existing objects and objects defined within that
interface file.
The bottom line:
For instance, an interface file for /etc/X11/xdm/config would work
something like this. Be aware that I am no parsing guru and am in no way
wedded to the syntactical appearance of this; I'm just trying to
communicate the concept.
# interface file for /etc/X11/xdm/config
defineproperty(boolean(scaled,label(Scaled),style(yes,no))
definemethod(readscaling,subtype(read)) {
# read in line beginning with catalogue
# for each of the comma-delimited filenames
if (right(filename,9) = :unscaled)
fontpath.scaled = false
else
fontpath.scaled = true
}
definemethod(writescaling,subtype(write)) {
if ! (fontpath.scaled) {
fontpath.value = fontpath.value + :unscaled
}
}
definetype(fontpath,subtype(directory),addproperty(scaled), \
addmethod(readscaling),addmethod(writescaling))
boolean(clone-self,label(Clone self),style(on,off))
boolean(use-syslog,label(Use syslog),style(on,off))
setof(fontpath(catalogue,label(Catalogue))
plainfile(error-file,label(Error file))
integer(default-point-size,label(Default point size))
setof(integer(default-resolutions,label(Default resolutions))
Okay, hopefully some of you will be able to get the gist of what I mean by
all of the above.
The great thing about this approach is that you can build a data structure
understood by gconfig internally, then hand this off to a desired
front-end (dumb,ncurses/slang/newt,gtk).
Would this be hard as hell to implement? Hell yeah, probably. But think
of the potential rewards. Once implemented, initially, package maintainers
would have to do the work of developing a thorough understanding of their
packages' config files. But once this thing catches on, upstream
maintainers may begin to show an interest.
Pipe dream, or can we make it real? Or does this suffer from some horrible
conceptual flaw that I haven't thought of?
I must also say that I am sure I do not have the coding expertise to
implement much of this at all. If I did, I'd be on it.
--
G. Branden Robinson | Never underestimate the power of human
Purdue University | stupidity.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Robert Heinlein
http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |
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Re: The latest XFree86 (3.3.2-4)
XFree86 3.3.2-4 just got installed into the archive today (I uploaded it Sunday). Unless you have bandwidth to spare, please don't download it without good reason. With impeccable timing, a CERT bulletin warning of possible security problems with xlib and xterm was released just after I finished -4, so -5 will be coming out very, very soon. I'm not sure whether I want to spare my bandwidth, but I've installed 3.3.2-4 version (just because dselect wanted to do this and I was too lazy to contradict). And now all my xterms have a totally black background. Is it to warn about the security problem or just that security problem itself? :-) Anyway, I was unable to find out how to return my standard (light gray?) background back. /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm is identical to the previous one. If it's a bug, just consider this message as a bug-report, but if it's a feature, I would appreciate very much knowing how to get rid of it. I also had the following problems with installation: 1) xserver-svga post-install script produced some strange error (sorry, I didn't pay attention to this at that time and ignored it), and I've lost my /etc/X11/Xserver file. It was easy to reconstruct it from Xserver.dpkg-new, though. 2) xauth produced an error on startup the following error: xauth: (argv):1: bad display name blackshark. in add command (blackshark is a host name). But this one was easy to fix also (just to change the corresponding line in startx script). Thanks for the help! --- Shurik. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: **Ready your Flame-Throwers**
Patrick Ouellette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No doubt every product needs a focus. The rift opened when Bruce attempted to get the developers to see the value of marketing TO an audience. Hmm... the toughest part of a development project is analysis -- figuring out what needs to be done. Marketing (in the form of user surveys, and user feedback) is an excellent way to do some of the more nebulous forms of analysis. But marketing is also used as an excuse by bad managers. As in we're canning your project because we've determined that there's no market for it. And there's more. Point is: marketing means different things to different people. And, as I recall, Bruce made a statement to the effect that Marketing should be treated as equal to package maintenance. But Debian isn't a development project, and it doesn't make sense to have marketing folks doing package administration and (as I hope I've illustrated, above), marketing means very different things to different people. So a lot of people objected, and there was a lot of this useless talking past each other. And now people treat the whole thing as a rift. Which is bad, in my opinion. I mean, I think Bruce's project should be independent of Debian, just as Debian is independent of FSF. Certainly, there's room for another GNU project in the world. It might even be that some debian developers also contribute to this new project. Could also happen for Cygnus folks or FSF folks. But for people who insist on seeing this as some sort of nasty thing: IT'S NOT. I do wish Bruce would announce his mailing list address so we could say to people get this issue off the debian lists. [Or maybe he already has, and I've just not seen it yet.] I like the idea, and I'm tired reading messages from people explaining their view of why it's wrong. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Intent to package pine-src
Here is an idea. Why don't we make an installer package for these source-only packages. It would work the same way as netscape installer, except it would compile the binary as well as retrieve the source tarball from the net (or require user to have a tarball). I believe that will remove the objections of those who think .deb is wrong format for source packages, but will still mean that pine.deb is visible in the distribution. -- Proudly running Debian Linux! Linux vs. Windows is a no-Win situation Igor Grobman [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
