Ansgar [2019-11-11 18:41 +0100]: > Mike Gabriel writes: > > I agree with that and at the same time think that we (Debian) should > > do our best at being universal (that's what the upcoming vote is > > about). > > How so? > > Debian doesn't support multiple libc implementations. So it's already > not universal if "universal" requires to always support alternative > implementations.
That's a rather/too strong definition of "universal", though. From an user's POV, "universal" means "I can use it for all/most use cases of my computing needs", i. e. from a smart watch over a cloud instance to a supercomputer. I don't see these use cases inherently being limited by only having one kernel, libc, or init system. We also don't have multiple coreutils, udisks, or sed (for a good reason). To the contrary, that's one of GNU/Linux'es strength -- it's put together in a way that it scales so well. IMHO, "always supports alternative implementations" equals lose coupling and (by trend) weaker APIs in between components, and is not always desirable. "universal" from an application POV *is* desirable for us as a project, but it doesn't depend on components being replaceable, but that they scale/adjust enough. Martin
