On 8/8/07, Tim Hull <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, Hi Tim,
> I'm a new (though fairly knowledgeable) Debian user and possibly a > prospective developer. Anyway, though I do like Debian a lot, one thing is > obvious - it lags somewhat behind as a desktop (or laptop) distribution as > compared to many other distributions (notably Ubuntu, which is of course > based on Debian). Your opinion, I believe that a lot of people disagree based on press coverage after Etch release and own experience with the desktops and laptops. > Anyway, I'm curious - what are the plans for Lenny to help bridge this gap? > I have heard the DPL's statements about "making Debian sexy", and I'm > wondering what the plans are and how I can get involved. A few particular > areas of interest for me are: It depends. I believe that the release team is committed to deliver the most up-to-date and good supported desktop, but it depends on upstream work, desktop environment maintainers work, debian-installer team, tasksel team and others. Debian Etch is sexier than anything we've ever released and Lenny will be even more cool. Like we can't force people to do volunteer work, we can't force users from others distributions to switch. That's insane write comments about Debian based on boot-floppies era and even woody or sarge releases now. You've Etch and you will have Lenny and a lot more projects will benefit from our work adding their brand and work over our stuff. You don't see them complaining that we're lagging behind, because they know that after all the fights we deliver and we lead on the most critical areas. By the way, have you heard about the MEPIS 'switch back' ? I expect more of that anytime soon. > * Making laptop frequency scaling/suspend/etc work "out of the box" when > Laptop task is installed It isn't state of art in Etch but I blame the upstream. It's still messy in both kerneland and userland for some laptops. I'm sure we will do better for Lenny, but there's no magic solution. If you've some ideas, please share your thoughts on debian-desktop mailing list. > * Installing all (free) codecs that are commonly used by default in the > Desktop task (FAAC is one that comes to mind as one that could be added, as > it is in main now) That's what we did! :) Install Etch, get some popcorn and point your epiphany or iceweasel browser at apple.com/trailers for example. > * Simplifying debian-installer for new users (this could include by > streamlining the steps as well as having an Ubuntu-like 1-CD live installer) There's a lot going on in terms of live cd installation, Otavio Salvador (d-i) and the debian-live team were working on some cool stuff during debconf. I hope we will have more than Ubuntu-like live installer for Lenny and of course any Debian-based distribution will copy that (including the CDD I develop) and users won't remember who made what in a few days. :-) > (...) > Anyway, I'm curious to hear what's going on with respect to Debian on the > desktop. I understand that there are things Debian can't do (i.e. include > non-free or illegal software), but I feel Debian has a great deal of > potential as a stable desktop distribution. I want to help out as I can, > and I'd prefer to do so with Debian due to it's open development process and > non-profit status. The Debian Desktop team is working to improve the common artwork and the infrastructure for collaboration between GNOME, KDE and Xfce teams inside Debian. We've art.debian.net now for example, and some of that artwork will be included by default. We're considering free flash and java support for the browsers. We will ship updated Xorg, GNOME, KDE and Xfce of course, and lots of minor add-ons will be included as default (eg.: gnome-app-installl) to cover some most needed use cases. regards, -- stratus http://stratusandtheswirl.blogspot.com get debian @ http://get.debian.net/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
