Debian World Domination Plan

An anonymous reader writes "Guillem Jover announced his plans to take over the non-Debian world and released a tool which converts in runtime any distribution to Debian. It does not convert in the sense of mapping all previous installed packages to the Debian counterparts, but installs a base system or tarball and cleans traces from the previous distribution."

Comments

Pathing the way

[Itsik]

Finally something that would pave the way and help all those that are "stuck" with RedHat servers.

Sounds more like vandalism to me...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

It does not convert ... installed packages to the Debian counterparts, but installs a base system ... and cleans traces from the previous distribution."

Debian's a fine distribution, but I doubt many people would take kindly to having this tool applied to a system that has been configured and running for any amount of time. If it's just going to install a base system, I'll just install a NEW system with Debian.

Show me a tool that converts portage or rpm data and creates a working Debian equivalent and I'll be impressed.

This doesnt accomplish anything more than wiping and starting over...

Re:Sounds more like vandalism to me...

[torpor]

Point:

a) You wouldn't run this script unless you wanted it to. Your comment is like saying, of a crowbar, that "people who have been living in a house for so long wouldn't want this crowbar used to demolish their house" ... well no, thats true ... "unless they wanted to demolish their house".

b) Wiping and starting over, on a system that you've been running for a long time, doesn't help. Duh.

This script is useful if:

i) You have a running system, and don't want to change your system services setup (Apache config, for example), and
ii) You -want- to, for some reason, convert to using Debian packages and management tools on your system, without interrupting too many of your existing running services.

Yup, I can think of cases where I'd want to use this tool. I've got Server A which has stuff running on it, and I want to move to debians' pkg tools and libraries for managing the system... cool.

Debian Installer

[turgid]

I tried Debian last year and got as far as the installer at which point it would let me proceed no further, despite my best efforts, patience, reading of effing manuals and trying different versions. This further confirmed my commitment to Slackware. If they spent time fixing their installer, they wouldn't need to write a tool to assimilate other boxes.

Hate this kind of atitude

[DFAoBolinho]

I really hate this kind of atitude.. I use GNU/Linux for many years now and used from Red Hat to Mandrake, from Slackware to Conectiva and now I focus more on Debian and Kurumin - and I have always faced this kind of atitude of "slack is for real men, the others are for sissy" or "use Gentoo or continue to lame". That is just plain and simple BULLSHIT!! (sorry for the cursing, but I think it's the only word that really fits into this case). There are numerous distribuitions with all kinds of package control systems, configurations and config-tools, diferent aplications, packages, and so on and so forth. The thing is, in my humble opition, there isn't anything like "a lamer linux" and a "hacker linux". GNU/Linux is simply GNU/Linux - and I have and always had the opinion that the person makes the system, not the way around. (thou many like to use Slack because it is "l33t" - go figure!) So, my final note is: Everyone has diferent tastes and needs, and has it's own way he likes to use his own computer so there isn't anything like "Mandrake rox and Debian sux" - just that for some people Mandrake is better, and for others Debian is the best choise (and so forth)!!! GNU/Linux is, after all, all about choise - so why curse and bring down others that choose diferent from us??

Re:How about a simple firewall instead

[argent]

How exactly is a box that has no ports listening for connections going to be attacked? Osmosis?

Bias update time.

[Balinares]

Debian used to snub KDE, alright. Thing is, they no longer do. So cut them some slack, who cares what they used to do and say as long as they've changed and improved. Don't blame the current distro for how it used to be managed.

In fact, if Debian keeps improving that way, it may very well become a strong contender for the desktop, which would be a Really Good Thing. While we may be a much of geeks here on /., I found that as you mature, you eventually reach a point where you're tired of fiddling with stuff all day long, and end up only using stuff that Just Works the way YOU want. In that regard, Debian+KDE is pretty much a killer combo.

(NB: Nope, I don't currently use Deb on my desktops, but if it keeps its current trend I may well switch eventually.)

No, nor should it bother you

[FreeUser]

A lot of people say they hate Microsoft because they say its on a mission of world domination.

Linus has been talking about world domination for 10 years.

[...]

So when its microsoft, people get antsy, but when its linux or debian, world domination is ok ?

Is that because
1) linux+debian are "inherently" good, and microsoft is inherently bad?
2) people are hypocritical and don't think more than about 8 inches infront of them
3) some other reason im missing..

1 and 3 are the correct answers.

3: Humor is a difficult concept I know, but try to follow along. Linus has been talking about "world domination" as a joke, not as a serious agenda. Any reading of his comments, in context, should make this abundantly clear (as should the historical context in which those of us using Linux in the early days circa 1993 never expected it to have the success it has had today).

which leads us to

1: Microsoft really is about world domination, and has a tremendously long track record of anti-competative behavior as a convicted monopolist to drive that point home. Microsoft really is about denying people choice, and has every intention of eradicating any viable alternative to their monopoly. Linux (even an arrogant distribution like Debian) has always been about choice, and Debian's occasional arrogance aside, this script's description as a "world domination utility" is almost certainly tongue in cheeck (c.f. "humor") and not meant seriously. In other words, yes, Microsoft (as defined by their own behavior) is Evil, and Linux (as defined by the behavior of its community) is generally Good.

And I say that as one who uses Gentoo and will never go back to Debian (ie. one who should "feel offended" if in fact I took this seriously, which I do not). It is a clever tool with a funny name based on an old, old joke, made all the funnier for having become a possibility (GNU/Linux really could "dominate" the world ... in the sense of becoming really populiar ... who would have thunk? Of course, GNU/Linux will never truly dominate anything, as dominion implies restriction of the freedom and choice of others, which is something a free, GPLed operating system can never do, by design.)

If MS released the "Linux Upgrade Kit" that put whatever SKU of windows you wanted on the box, people would be furious.

They have (or haven't you been following their press releases), and while people are annoyed, no one seems to be particularly "furious." The reaction is more one of "rolling our eyes." A migration kit from Linux to Windows will get about as much use as a football bat...but it is fun to watch the behomeoth flounder and flail around.

Re:Stupid.

[Bootsy Collins]

IMHO Debian needs to cut back on the number of supported architectures

If you were one of the people who ran Linux on one of those "other" architectures, you wouldn't feel this way. There are already a hundred gazillion distributions that focus on just a few architectures, and very few that try to be platform-agnostic. Why, exactly, do we need to take one of the very few latter, and convert it to yet another one of the former?

Stable is for Servers, Testing for workstations

[Bob_Robertson]

...and Unstable for those of us who live on the bleeding edge. Seriously, living on the edge is not fun. When the maintainers decide to change the wireless LAN software so that my 802.11 card is no longer eth1 but now wlan0, I need to be able to reconfigure quickly so that my laptop isn't unusable for an extended period.

That's why it's called unstable, because it really is. Things change, sometimes substantially.

Every objection you have is valid, with the caviat that Debian is not difficult for someone who has done it more than once. Installing Debian doesn't take me multiple hours or days, it takes little for the base install and the pre-designed task-based "standard" packages. Just because I choose to select packages through dselect one at a time doesn't mean you have to.

Knoppix is indeed astounding, and the hardware detection system Knopper uses is being fed back into the main distribution. When I installed on the laptop I'm using right now, a Vaio PCG-GRT170, I used Knoppix as the install medium.

I would not recomend this method unless Knoppix does everything you want it to do already, or you like installing software by hand. The dependencies and unique packages built into Knoppix make bringing it into the mainstream Debian update system a serious effort.

If you want to install Debian, get the minimalist 30MB CD image. This puts a small base system in place to be built into whatever you want it to be.

Bob-