This is very frustrating to read. On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 6:04 AM Thomas Goirand <z...@debian.org> wrote: > > On 5/16/20 3:36 AM, Paul Wise wrote: > > Would it be fair to say that your main objection is that Ubuntu has > > much higher popularity than Debian > > This is what I regret, indeed. It's been like that for many years, and > the trend isn't reversing. We should ask ourselves why. From my point of > view, I see it as a problem of marketing more than OS content or > technical excellence.
No, I think they do things better. Their installer is much better, and it's a *lot* easier to switch. They had signed UEFI images before us, and they enable things like firmware for wifi cards. This allows Ubuntu to be easier for non-technical users to install computers without understanding main vs contrib vs nonfree, how to disable SecureBoot or what a firmware package is. We have lessons to learn about usability and we've not learned them, and remained stubborn about it. They're able to do a lot of this by focusing on just a few arches, and not every arch under the sun. To some degree, we (as Debian) are designed to enable projects like Ubuntu more than ever become Ubuntu. > > and so the Ubuntu policy to work > > upstream where possible leads people to come to Debian without > > necessarily caring about the Debian community or users but more about > > Ubuntu users? > > We are lucky this happens. No, it's explicit messaging by Ubuntu. I was an Ubuntu member before I was a Debian Developer. I'd like to think I've been a stable and long-time member of the community. I am only here because of Ubuntu. If someone tries to upload a NEW package, they're always told to go to Debian. > > > Personally, I think over the years Ubuntu's Debian involvement has > > been a net positive for Debian > > Indeed. > > > both in terms of packaging and other > > technical changes and in terms of attracting new contributors, often > > Ubuntu migrants end up contributing to Debian more than Ubuntu. I > > think the same goes for derivatives in general. > > That's truth. I am very thankful for Canonical to contribute things like > Grub, Python, MySQL and many other things directly in Debian. It's very > nice that some full time employees can take care of stuff like that. > It's also nice that some components are explicitly worked on to be the > same in both distros. I also like the fact that they push contributors > to work on upstream Debian. > > Never the less, I've seen multiple occurrences where some people vaguely > knew what Ubuntu was, but never heard of Debian. Saw others saying wrong > things, like Ubuntu was updating faster (which is wrong, as packages are > updated in Sid first). And many other things of that type. Isn't it > legitimate that I'm asking myself why? Shouldn't the Debian project try > to question its image? Let's fix our usability issues and maybe more "power users" will install Debian. > > Cheers, > > Thomas Goirand (zigo) > -- All programmers are playwrights, and all computers are lousy actors. #define sizeof(x) rand() :wq -- :wq