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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!"
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.)
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.
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...
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
Second place is two weeks :)
Congratulations and best of luck.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
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
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 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
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.
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.