Colin Walters Talks About Debian On The Desktop

An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com caught up with Colin Walters of the Debian Desktop subproject. Launched in late October, the project aims to simplify Desktop Linux. Walters' discusses the project goal to offer 'Software which Just Works' for home and office, new user and expert ... "

Comments

Re:For a real challenge..

[Directrix1]

wtf are you talking about?

Re:vlad

[Itsik]

Will you stop addressing yourself like that.

You can't be all things to all people

[josephgrossberg]

"for ... new user and expert" -- that's two projects, not one.

My mom wants menus and buttons. I want keybindings and no clutter. She wants an icon to double-click and a minimum of options. I want to customize the hell out of how my stuff looks and works.

Fine, you can have a Basic/Advanced switch, or enormous Preferences tabs, but then that's still two projects and not one.

The "interview" is absurdly short, but I Debian can successfully tackle this as a single project, much less a "(Debian Desktop) Subproject"

Joe Grossberg
http://josephgrossberg.blogspot.com

Seriously now..

[Randolpho]

What is this going to do that Gnome and KDE don't already do? Or is this a replacement of X? I still can't find exactly what Debian Desktop is supposed to *do*.

Re:Seriously now..

[fallacy]

It's not a replacement for either X as a windowing system or Gnome/KDE as desktop environments. It's more of a bringing together of what is available to a tighter binding so that a user can say "I want x type of desktop" (say, developer or a user) and Debian will create such an environment.
Additionally, any environment which wishes to be included as a DebianDesktop must meet a minimum set of requirements.

Locations which explain it fair better than I probably have are:
DebianDesktop
Debian Desktop Wiki
Debian Desktop Project Goals
Debian Desktop Tenets

Re:Seriously now..

[Randolpho]

So it's a high-level reorganization of the way windows environments utilize X?

Or is it a layer of abstraction between X and an environment?

Or was I just redundant? :)

Re:Seriously now..

[fallacy]

As far as I can tell: none of the above ;-)

It's a movement to create a better oiled desktop within Debian. I.e, make sure that GNOME and KDE desktop environments install correctly and with the minimum of fuss, have the setting up of X "as easy and foolproof as possible."
It's not a change in X or GNOME/KDE code, but rather a change in which the Debian distribution will handle the installation and configuration of them. The term "wrappers" would probably too coarse a word for it, but it'll be a collection of tools which help make the desktop environment setup as nice as possible.

Re:Seriously now..

[Anonymous Coward]

Frist post!

Re:Seriously now..

[Randolpho]

I almost got pulled in by your troll, but I am the better man! I will not get sucked in by your evil, malicious troll!

Hey, wait a minute! I replied!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oo ooo!!!

Linux question

[Quill_28]

I have some older computers(486/133mHZ - pentium/166) I am looking for opinions. I want to create simple X-terminals(fvwm2 probably), which dist is the best.

???

Re:Linux question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend going with a 2-3 year old, lighter-weight distribution using the 2.2 kernel. Current distros using the 2.4 kernel tend to be more resource-intensive compared to an older version of, say, Slackware. Current Debian defaults to the 2.2 kernel, so you can probably use it with acceptable results as long as you keep the installed packages to a bare minimum.

On that hardware, though, fvwm2 or xfce are going to be as good as it gets w/o X being boooooringly slow to run. Don't forget to load up with as much RAM as you can fit in the box; you really can't have too much RAM on those older systems - anything to avoid going to a swap area is a Good Thing.

If your system will boot from CD, I also *strongly* recommend burning Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org/) to a CD and using it for your initial checkout - it's very good at hardware detection and configuring X, even though it will bring up KDE and run very slowly. You can copy the config files it generates to a floppy and save them for the new install.

Re:Linux question

[Craig Ringer]

I've got 486 thin clients running Debian with IceWM, using ROX as a GUI file manager. Of course, they also run OpenOffice and Mozilla :-) but I expect you wouldn't be using those. The 486s network boot off a read-only NFS root, then fire up X and do an -query to the XDMCP server (running gdm) so all they're really running is XFree86 4.

Re:Linux question

[Craig Ringer]

I strongly reccomend steering clear of fvwm2 - IceWM is a better choice in basically every way, I think it even has a smaller disk and RAM footprint actually.

Re:Linux question

[Anonymous Coward]

Definetly Slackware, so long as you're able to understand its complexities. Many distros will run like a dog on an older computer.
Btw, if your computers are a bit slow, you can buy new faster CPUs to stick in them for literally a couple of dollars.

There are some specialised C runtime libs for low-ram environments which may of use to you (I forget its name).

Re:Linux question

[Quill_28]

>Btw, if your computers are a bit slow, you can buy new faster CPUs to stick in them for literally a couple of dollars.

Not really as I would have to swap motherboards also on most of them.

Thanks for the suggestions

Re:Linux question

[Quill_28]

No kidding. I am not real familiar with all the different window managers. I always thought that fvwm2 was one of the smaller quicker ones.
Thanks for the tip.

Debian Desktop project's wiki

[cpeterso]

The Debian Desktop's project wiki has more details about the project's goals and proposals. It sounds like they are following some of the Red Hat 8.0 lead and trying to create a more unified, task-based system. Their proposals are more than just a new GUI.

Such a significant problem

[Trane Francks]

This is really something that should be addressed by all distros, not just Debian.

When the user makes any customizations, she should be given an option to test the changes ("Try it now" button) and revert to the previous settings. Inexperienced users are often afraid to make changes, which in their minds (or in reality) might break something, and have a hard time getting into the habit of just playing with different options, unless they are specifically encouraged or made to feel safe.

These are great ideas.

One of the things I've seen over my many years of Slackware use is that the menus for installed window managers often do not reflect actually installed packages. It's simply got to be frustrating for a newbie to see a menu entry for an app that is not installed on the system.

And how about upgrades? It seems to me that upgrading from one version to another should automatically trigger a search to ensure that installed programs are still there so that everything actually works.

Can I help? Erm, no...sorry. I wish I could. It doesn't bother me so much as I've grown accustomed to it, but grandma sure wouldn't tolerate that for very long.

Re:Such a significant problem

[John Hasler]

> And how about upgrades? It seems to me that
> upgrading from one version to another should
> automatically trigger a search to ensure that
> installed programs are still there so that
> everything actually works.

The Debian menu system is supposed to take care of that. Policy requires me to put code in my scripts to add my packages to the menu when they are installed and remove them from the menu when they are removed. I don't know how well it works because I don't use menus.

Debian the tail of Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again Debian jumps on the already crowded bandwagon and expects everyone to set up and take notice. Debian is the tail of Linux.

Answers to expected comments:

1. 2.4 is as stable as 2.2 except if you are running debian which installs 2.2 as default because 2.4 is "less stable".

2. Windows is an OS, get over it.

3. Distributions based on Debian (xandros...) use it because there is no one to sue them.

4. I love RedHat. They make the best, user friendly, server/desktop ready distribution.

Re:Debian the tail of Linux

[fallacy]

And what you fail to mention is that Debian is run/maintained/built completely by volunteers, and relies on good people's donations. Thus, this stable, powerful distribution created by this meriad of people is a testiment to their hard work and shown in the several other distributions which choose to base theirs on Debian.

Not to mention, it is a free, open distribution.

Of course, you already knew that...

Whilst you are certainly entitled to your own opinion on which distribution is best for you, not everyone shares the same opinion (and the world would be a boring place it they did).

Re:Debian the tail of Linux

[zemoo]

Mandrake is now also free and open.

Re:Debian the tail of Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Sod off.

Colin, I understand you go to Ohio State

[MicroBerto]

Go Buckeyes!

Re:Colin, I understand you go to Ohio State

[Anonymous Coward]

yes he does and I fucked his ass in the stacks...

It isn't a program, it is a new emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is to identify the complaints people currently have as a desktop for ordinary users and start to address them. For example, an ordinary user can't play CDs until they are added to the "audio" group, and they can't run hardware-accelerated 3D programs unless they are part of the "video" group. Likewise, it takes some special tinkering with /etc/fstab to allow ordinary users to access a vfat (Windows) partition. These are minor annoyances for someone who knows their way around Linux, but for the general public they would make many give up and go back to Windows.

"Just Works" because it doesn't appeal the masses.

[SHEENmaster]

We all know how well a certain (unnamed) product works with its mass murder^?^?^?^?^?^?monopoly.