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New Debian Project Leader
Carlos Laviola writes: "Ben Collins is the new DPL. The results of the 2001 leadership election have been posted a few minutes ago on the debian-devel-announce and debian-vote mailing lists. The announcement is here. Congratulations to Ben Collins and the other candidates!"
What will this mean for world politics today!? This is clearly shocking, and the effects will surely be felt far outside his cubicle!
Debian is the definition of stability,
/usr/ports collection, ftp based install. On BSD 1st.
On X86 boxes, FreeBSD is more stable.
Apt-get rocks too.
And FreeBSD was there rocking 1st. Things like the make update,
Debian considered using a BSD kernel also.
-- posting anonymously so I won't be next...
This comment says a lot about the shift in Slashdot demographics. (We're much more enlightened now that we have people who can tell us that Open Source is for wankers and 14-year-olds.)
About 60-70 people and maybe 100 hosts. Not large, but bigger than a home network too.
I assume you're using it as a stateful firewall? Does it work well?
Yes I am and yes it does. The established/related rules haven't shown any problems over about a month, and both active and passive ftp work (a minor miracle after some past experiences). We aren't using any other protocols that really take advantage of statefulness, although something like traceroute could if a module existed for it.
Well, I am using netfilter as a production firewall. It replaced a $25,000 piece of software from Firewall1. I haven't heard any complaints, nor have I had any crashes or break-ins. It's got my vote for you-can-stake-your-job-on-it status. Definitely not crap - a significant improvement over ipchains. I've been impressed with the flexibility and power of the architecture. Sure, it would be nice to have a few more modules for some oddball protocols, but what's there already is plenty for normal use.
However, you are free to create a tarball of your home directory and bring it with you. You can also tar up your /etc directory, in case you want to remember how some things were configured in your old distribution. (Do NOT use your /etc directory as-is in the new distribution, however -- that would cause a mess.) Anyway, it's not hard. If you want it to be as easy as flipping the "now-be-a-debian-machine" switch, on the other hand, you're screwed.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
> What kind of punishment or reward can you get
> for voting for DPL?
Lower or higher priority when finding time to evaluate patches and suggestions. I don't know about Debian, but that is a huge problem for gcc and gdb development, there are more people writing patches than people qualified or trusted enough to evaluate them for inclusion.
That said, apt-get is a damn fine tool and has made my life very easy for keeping up to date.
--
I'll chime in to concur with the above assessment: it's fairly easy to take your home directory and any special system config files and scripts you have from one distro to another.
/home on it. (If /home has its own partition, this becomes _really_ easy.) I've done just this conversion to change a RedHat system to a Debian system, with a minimum of fuss. You can even keep a non-tar/gz copy of your important /etc config files in your home directory for easy access during the reinstall.
If you are careful, you can always just mkfs over partitions that are distro-specific, making sure to preserve the partition with
Are you using unstable or testing (woody)? I'm using woody and X 4 works fine for me. Whats broken?
There is nothing specifically undemocratic about non-secret votes when there is still a free choice. Recent non-secret votes for union representation in Mexican factories, in an environment when known labor activists are instantly fired and thugs are hired to beat people up, cannot be said to be democratic.
But there are other cases where secrecy would make things less democratic, like if representatives in a legislature can secretly vote for programs that favor their friends but outrage the people they are supposed to represent.
Hmm, my experience is partially different from yours. Debian works great on my servers, my workstations and my laptop. This is coming from a Sony VAIO F360, the 3 workstations I end up using in a week are 2 twin processor P3-550's and a P2-450. I only regret with Debian so far is that I haven't had spare hardware from other platforms to try it with :).
Debian considered using a BSD kernel also.
Debian has considered making an additional distribution using a BSD kernel, but it was never an issue of replacing Linux with a BSD kernel as you imply.
We need more kernels :) Hell...there should be an effort to make a Debian GNU/NT :) (as bad as it would be designing around a non-DFSG kernel, it would be amusing as all hell ;) )
Believe it or not there some people have seriously considering making a Debian Win32 distro. It does make some sense for people who have to use Windows for one reason or another, for the same reason there's CygWin.
Wow, you mean I'll still know my system configuration after an upgrade?
Wow, you mean the whims of a large corporate distributor won't change my filesystem layout each upgrade?
Wow you mean that they have a set of ideals and they actually stick to them?
Wow, you mean if I like it I don't have to worry about it going away?
Where do I sign up? Oh, wait, I already have...
The reason for the initial post was not to start a disto debate, but to point out that the article posted could have been more informative if it had included more information regarding the election process and the candidates.The reason I dragged RedHat and SuSE into this was to note that news wise, the majority of the articles posted were no more informative than this article. Debian, RedHat, and SuSE have very different focus. Their common ground is a OS.I have thought of slashdot as a light techie sight which runs the gambit on what it is willing to address. The problem is that article posts have become less substance based and more just a quick slap of a fact (New Pres., New Version, etc.). This is not true of all articles, but this one was definitely lacking some basic gut support.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
In looking over the past articles of Debian, RedHat, and SuSE (older stuff, search on distro name), I noticed that Debian had the most articles within the past year, while RedHat and SuSE each had about half the number of articles. I also noted that while the discussions of Debian related to the developers and the actual content of their distro, RedHat's and SuSE's articles were mainly version releases.My point being, there is a bit of a bias here. I agree with the post which has already been moderated off the list that the articles being posted seem to be showing a lopsided view. This article would have been more beneficial if it discussed the voting process and structure of Debian rather than just saying who won. This type of article posting is what gives slashdot a bad name. It would have been simple enough to add a link or two in the article which referenced some of the discussion of the candidate's views. At least then readers could also check out where Debian might be heading.The elections began on 06 March 2001. Platforms were posted by Ben Collins, Branden Robinson, and Bdale Garbee.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
If you think BSD's ports do the same thing, you're in for a surprise. apts dependency handling is much more complex: it doesn't just check if a program is there but also makes sure all versions match, handles multiple packages providing the same feature, takes conflicts and recommendations into account and complete dependency resolution. If you managed to screw up your dependencies by dpkg --force, apt can compute a complete set of changes to bring your system into a usable state.
libh just made me laugh.
Why? Is it more cross-platform for cross-compiles? Just seems kind of odd. Your post, if expanded, might be an interesting story over at K5
Best Slashdot Co
Well...
In most Debian votes, the ballots are revealed afterwards. The same is true (IIRC) with Usenet new group votes, etc. There is nothing specifically undemocratic about non-secret votes.
In fact, revealing the votes can make the process more fair, because then everyone who voted can verify that their vote was recorded correctly, and that the vote was tallied correctly. That openness helps ensure that the vote remains fair.
However, the person running this particular vote made a mistake -- DPL votes are supposed to be kept secret. He didn't read the constitution properly while tired. He has already apologised to the Debian Developers.
I've done it. Here is a procedure. It is written for powerpc, but I don't see any reason why this can't be adapted to other platforms. It will be necessary to install a working kernel into the new / partition before booting from it for the first time. I have done this succesfully on a powerpc sytem. Debian provides an 'installkernel' script that can do it. If you are really tight on disk then it might be better to install from scratch.
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
You'll have to do a re-install. And installing debian is NOT installing RedHat or Mandrake. Think text-based. Think installing a lot of your own packages after you think it's all said and done. The default install won't just dump everything onto your system. You'll have to be comfortable with apt-getting the stuff you need.
Debian is great because you really can know everything that's loaded on your system. The tricky part is that you're the one who has to get it there.
I love my debian system, but, for example, I had to apt-get the SVGA XServer after the install was complete. Its not an easy install.
Word. MrSndrs
Second place is two weeks :)
Congratulations and best of luck.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
That would be really cool imho...
:) Hell...there should be an effort to make a Debian GNU/NT :) (as bad as it would be designing around a non-DFSG kernel, it would be amusing as all hell ;) )
Debian GNU/LInux
Debian GNU/HURD
We need more kernels
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Debian is not a governmental style democracy. The debian constitution is a limited one, one that only governs the organization. It does not apoply to anyone outside of it.
What thi smeans is that ONLY people who are debian developers are affected by the vote, and only they can vote.
This is important, because Debian developers are a "small" group, of interested people. They are not "Joe Random", they are people brought together with a specific set of common goals.
Many of the protections that have been designed into larger social systems, systems that effect everyone, are not needed. Such "childish" behaviour as trying to unfairly influence the vote or use someones vote against them wont occur in these situations.
There is very little advantage to being DPL, sure you get to act as the voice of debian in some fashion, you get to make certain decisions and try to pull people together - there is some small amount of "prestige".
However, ther eis nothign to "buy votes" with. Every developer is (mostly) autonomous, and capable of making his own decisions.
Essentially, there is little motive to try and buy or otherwise coerce ones way into the position, and there is very little that one could leverage for such a coersion anyway.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
1) Until recently I would have agreed with you. I recently did a couple of debian installs for the first time in a year and a half or so (been a while since ive HAD to reinstall) and the install was SOOO much cleaner and easier than it was previously. - its already getting better!
:) I know I am damned surprized when something in it breaks majorly)
2) X Broken? I stable? - Anything is likely to break in unstable, and the DPL has no control over that. Unstable is where stuff is suposed to break. How else do we find the problems and fix them?
(perhaps unstable is too stable
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The various distros set up the system in slightly different ways. It would be a lot of work to write a tool that would scan through a Red Hat install, extract all the config info, and magically configure and install Debian for you. Worse, the tool would have to understand different versions of Red Hat, and Mandrake, and etc.
The Debian installer gets the job done, but it isn't newbie-friendly. The good part is that you have complete control over everything it is doing. The bad part is it is constantly asking you for input about things a newbie might not understand. (But if you choose the defaults you can perhaps get through an install without full understanding of what is going on.)
The very good thing about Debian is that you only install it once. After you have your Debian system up, you just keep running apt-get and upgrading things. When Debian comes out with a new release, you can even use apt-get to upgrade to that. (The command is "apt-get dist-upgrade".)
By the way, if you want to try Debian and you are not looking forward to the installer, you might want to check out Progeny Debian. Progeny Debian is a version of Debian that has an improved installer. Unlike what Corel did with Debian, Progeny is sharing all the improvements with the Debian community so that future versions of Debian can have a cool installer too.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Why do you say this? I switched my laptop from redhat to Debian (testing) last year, and i don't miss a single thing from redhat. A few months ago, i installed debian on a bunch of old laptops at work which were unused (some ancient NEC, an old thinkpad, a couple old dells, a toshiba), and the installation for all of them was flawless. X worked fine right away for all of them. Sound took some effort (mainly looking at the linux-laptop-howtos, and copying the appropriate lines for conf.modules), but it worked for all of them except for the toshiba which wasn't supported by the kernel modules (it got alsa instead). Overall, the process was simple, and just as easy or easier than redhat installs.
Upgrading in debian is simple and actually works; i have much greater trust in debian packages than rpms.
To convert a system from redhat to Debian, you'll probably want to wipe your system and start anew. Tar up your home directories and any other directories you use to store files. Make a list of software you've installed so you remember to select them when you do the debian install. Backup /etc and any other directories which you think you might want files from.
Wipe the disks, install Debian, put your home directory into place. That's about it...
Yes, this is an interesting point, because it violates section 5.2.5 of the Debian Constitution. I have no idea why Raul decided to post all the results in the announcement, but I'm sure it was just a mistake.
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Its too late to get rid of it, I just hope that everyone will ignore it so that people aren't punished or rewarded for the way they voted.
What kind of punishment or reward can you get for voting for DPL? What would one gain in this process, since Debian is a non-profit organization whose objective is to make a high-quality, 100% free GNU/Linux distribution?
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Well one reward that I can think of is being made the maintainer of a high prestige package, or being given various other positions within the Debian project. These positions can result in experience and name recognition which can lead to a better job. I know of atleast one company, Progeny Linux Systems, that is looking to hire Debian developers.
Punishment could include things like not getting a maintership that you are the best person for, or having benificial patches rejected by the maintainer because of who you voted for.
Both rewards and punishment based on the way people voted will in the long run be detrimental to the Debian Project as a whole. Thats why I hope everyone just ignores the information about who voted for what and it can fade into obscurity.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
I want to preface this by saying that this discussion is entirely an exercise in possiblity. I am not saying that anyone will do what I am talking about. I'm just saying that because this list was posted the potential for abuse exists.
The problem isn't limited to what Ben does. Say I maintain the foobar package and I decide that I am going to give it up. Now say I supported someone other then Ben, and was upset that they didn't get in. I can go and look at this list and see that x supported the same person as I did. So even though they aren't as qualified as person y who supported Ben I decide that because x and myself both voted for the same person I am going to have x succeed me.
I will grant that this problem is much less likely to occur in a group as Debian where the developers have generally fewer and weaker relationships with each other. This kind of thing becomes a major issue in something like a high school student council election for several reasons. First off there is the fact that you see and interact with everyone else who voted on a much more regular basis. The second reason is what I think will save Debian from having too many problems with this, high school students as a group tend to be much more petty then Debian developers as a group.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
That's already been commented on in the debian-vote list in several places. Most notably here and here with a direct reference to the Debian constitution.
It's probably an honest mistake made with the intention of being open and transparent, although it went a little far. Its too late to get rid of it, I just hope that everyone will ignore it so that people aren't punished or rewarded for the way they voted. This is probably too much to hope for though, human nature being what it is.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Debian is the definition of stability, keep it up. The 'gotta push this out the door' mentality has taken over most of the other distros. Debian has always been the rock steady distro to turn to if you want a system to stay up.
Apt-get rocks too. That is possibly the biggest selling point for newbies, that it gets all dependancies as well and not just errors out when you're trying to upgrade a package.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
now don't slack off on that OpenLDAP development 8^)
Now THAT is what I call Open (Source) Voting...
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Congratulations! I am a Debain User, I love it. Thank you so much for all the work you are putting into it. Keep it up and take care!
http://www.reames.org/tattoo.html
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eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
Punishment: you could possibly be ostracised and/or humiliated by people who disagreed strongly with your vote and were petty.
:) and you might vote for them again next time...
Reward: you might gain influence with those you voted for, they might even buy you a beer
Childish behaviour, granted, and I wouldn't expect Debian developers to act like that.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
That's strange.
My laptop runs debian (installed off the internet last friday night at a friend's house over a bottle of whisky while we built his Alpha machine). Helix/Ximian Gnome.
My dual-head Athlon 850MHz workstation runs Debian, and I'll be playing Myth II and Quake II with sound and hardware accelerated 3D under XFree 4.0.2, care of Branden and his friends.
My file/print server, my mail server, my firewall, my friends' firewalls, my MP3 server and my web server all run Debian, on Intel and Sparc. My mp3 server is an old MCA architecture PS/2. Debian installed and ran out of the box.^H^H^H^Hoff the net
If I want to install software on any of these boxes, it's apt-get install packagename. No hunting around to find the right dependencies for some rpm file. A simple apt-get dist-upgrade brings them up to the latest release when it comes out.
Debian is incredible for servers. However, it's also incredible for everything else.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
My woody boxen are running 2.4, from the kernel-source-2.4.2 package.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Good luck installing debian on a laptop...I've found Debian to be an incredible platform for servers. On the other hand, it sucks for workstation use.
If I was you, I would find an unused box to install debian on. You'll like it very much once it's installed.
For your laptop, stick with Redhat, Mandrake, etc. They do a much better job with configuration of X, sound, etc.
Haven't looked at Progeny - but a better installer is exactly what Debian needs. The current installer leaves you up a creek if, for instance, the stock kernel doesn't support your NIC - there's no way back into what it then automatically refuses to set up after you compile a module or new kernel to deal with that. The maintainer of the installation routine doesn't care for suggestions on improvement either. Maybe he sees Progeny coming and knows he'll soon be obsolete. I hope so, because once it's installed Debian is much better than Red Hat in most regards, especially apt-get.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
looking at the posts on the debian list, it seems as if this was to be private infomation (who voted for whom). this was probably just an OOPS, but should this sort of information be public? i think this should probably be private infomation, maybe alowing the totals to be public, but not each vote.
It will have to wait a while - I want to back some stuff up with my new CD-writer, and my job is taking more of my day. Still, you've given me some hope. If only I'd taken notes the first time around, so I'd know what configuration changes I had made to the default Red Hat system...
Again, thanks for responding to a question that probably should have been asked on a newsgroup.
So, if I want to try it out, how do I convert my Red Hat box to Debian? Kill everything and start over? Change some core files? Or is it unadvisable?
It is often said that the many Linux distributions is a strength. I'll believe it if it is possible to move between systems. Any ideas?
BTW, background info, I'm running Red Hat on a laptop, dual-booting with Win98. Newer hardware requires the latest kernel as well as at least XFree 4.0.
Exceptionally relevant comment, considering that what Motox reacted to was the violation of the Debian constitution.
./ readers would disagree with your interpretation of the American way..
I think most
The DPL doesn't have any authority in making decisions about maintainership, so that won't arise. It's up to individual package maintainers who succeeds them, or, if they just orphan the package, anybody who wants it can work on it.
Ben does maintain a number of core packages (glibc, pam, etc.), but he puts a lot of work into them and I'm guessing he won't be needing a successor in the near future.
The only situation where the DPL can actually appoint people is the small number of delegates who exist. Where people are competent enough for those roles, though, one vote in a long-past election is unlikely to make a great deal of difference.
This type of article posting is what gives slashdot a bad name.
Slight OT, i also find the styles of discussions on some topics amoung slashdotters very .... pardon my enlish, uncivilised.
It seems like people are not sharing their opinions on things they find interesting or important. It appears that they are just trying to outwit each others. Almost a hockey fight.
In differt topics appear this week, we see
Right vs Left
Microsoft vs Linux
Linux vs BSD
Distribution wars
I just fear that we would be used as showcase to outside world on how unprofessional, stupid we are. And i feel that we are not that much better than those 'clueless people who buy MS products because they are being fed by Marketing'
How many hours a week do you visit here? Looks like i come here too often...
Ricky
Potato has always been 2.2, AFIK. 2.4 is still in the works.
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
With the names and the votes revealed :) Really democratic .)
>(perhaps unstable is too stable :) I know I am damned surprized when something in it breaks majorly)
You'r right! It's time to move to experimental to be on the cutting edge! =)
Hrmmm...
I hope Ben still has time to lead the SPARC port.
Congrats anyhow.
__________________ Hey Moderators!! Fuck Off! Thanks.
Yeah, I hope that Debian will stay the beloved dist I'm used to. But now I'll go and draw some SuSE and RedHats to Debian ;-)
-- just a geek - trying to change the world