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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."
Red Hat is irrelevant... Mandrake is irrelevant... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!
... will upgrade Windows XP to Debian 4.0.
Someone's bound to install it! Resistance is futile.....
UHM... correct me if I'm wrong, but I think KDE works pretty well in Debian/unstable? I fail to see your point.
-pug
From the code:
/etc/debian_version ]
[...]
if [ -e
then
if [ "$DISTRO" = unknown ]; then
error 1 "You already have a Debian system"
[...]
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...
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Then as a migration tool it's pretty limited.
/home and /data and /specified intact).
It would be fantasic to be able to hit a button, have something read the RPM database and automagically reinstall a APT based system (leaving
It's not fantasic to replace the kernel and leave you with a right royal mess of apps that can't be maintained, or worse still nuke everything so it doesn't work right.
This is a first step, which is cool, but it looks like it needs extending a bit to gain some practical application. Rather like the depenguinator (script to remove linux and install BSD) its a cool toy with little real application as of yet.
Beep beep.
Debian kills small babies. Gentoo doesn't. You do like small babies right?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Well, it's a simple 12KiB shell script, nothing much to see there. It's well written and it's a nice idea, though.
I would wait a couple releases before using it in a real environment though... hotswapping releases is a very tricky matter, and can screw up majorly your computer, expecially if it's done via a script.
My Stack Overflow user
Great...just waiting for someone to start combining all of these OS/distro converters with a worm.
Welcome to the OS Wars of '04. You never know what you'll boot. Debian? BSD? Windows 3.11?
We are apt of borg. RPM is futile. You will be dpkg'ed.
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
IIRC It was originally intended to convert a redhat installation in a server where the provider would only install redhat.
Speaking as a debian user for many years:
They do have a stable, modern distribution. It's called "testing". The not-so modern "stable" distribution is a dream tho.. You could drive a 15 ton tank through it and it'd still stay up. I've been running it on server (in the wild) for more than 2 years now with nary a problem. It's easy to maintain and has everything I need no more than an apt-get away. No recompilation, no searching for dependencies.. unlike some other distributions I've used.
I wish everything was that easy.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
Oh well, let's just hope that I can make it through the day without anyone noticing. Then I'll be basking on the beach in So.Cal for a week. :)
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
I think the KDE problems have already been dropped years ago. What they need to drop to get to the desktop is:
1) there installer, it simply requires far too much manual tweaking to get from a first install to a useable system, other distro are far better here. If Knoppix takes a minute to boot and be useable and Debian multiple hours up to days, something is seriously wrong.
2) there 'stable' concept, it just doesn't make sense to have all stuff crunched into one gigantic package and call it 'stable'. Stability isn't a gloabl issue, but very often a per package one, ie a new KDE or Gimp can often be way more stable than the stuff that you find in a Debian stable, but it will never get included in there, since stable dosn't get any updates at all beside security fixes. This often leads to having packages in stable that are far less stable than what you can get from unstable. 'stable' should mean having a stable system, not being stuck with the same programm versions for multiple years.
In the latest poll amonst KDE developers Debian was the favoured distro. 25% total.
If a first you don't succeed, your a programmer...
How exactly is a box that has no ports listening for connections going to be attacked? Osmosis?
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.
/., 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.
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
(NB: Nope, I don't currently use Deb on my desktops, but if it keeps its current trend I may well switch eventually.)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Today, we salute you, Mister Production-Random-Shell-Script-Runner...
* because you've earned it.
(Mister Production-Random-Shell-Script-Runneeeerrrrrr...
Your ineptitude with your daily systems administration tasks means that we have plenty of server downtime and lost data...
(OohoOOoho data all gooonneee...)
Don't take it personally, we all know that you'd be out on your ass in a minute, if you weren't the boss's son...
(WOOohooOhhoHh kickbacks from the big maaannnn...)
So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, Mister Production-Random-Shell-Script-Runner...*ksschtt!
(Reeeeaall American heeerroooooessss...)
A lot of people say they hate Microsoft because they say its on a mission of world domination.
... 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.)
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
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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?
...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-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics