Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Debian Project Leader
brunotorres writes "I've interviewed Martin Michlmayr, Debian project leader. In this interview we talked about the upcoming Debian release, Sarge. An excerpt: 'We heard for years that Debian is hard to install and the old installer wasn't very easy to maintain or advance, so we we decided to throw the installer away and start from scratch. The new installer is much more modular, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.'" Reader ron_ivi points out that new Debian/Hurd CDs are available. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
We heard for years that Debian is hard to install and the old installer wasn't very easy to maintain or advance, so we we decided to throw the installer away and start from scratch. The new installer is much more modular, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.
:)
heh, so if I'm reading this right, they know the old installer is hard to use, but they really don't care. The new one is easier to extend and maintain, and that's all that's important.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Is Your Development Project a Sinking Ship?
The only time it gave me headaches was when I banged my head on the desk trying to seewhat type of chipset my ethernet card had, and what type of graphics card was inside the box.
As long as you know what type of hardware you have, debian is simple to install, and very easy to keep updated. I think most people just don't like to read the text on screen detailing exactly what's going on during the install.
Wouldn't Viagra accomplish the same thing.
Sarge is great. When it becomes the new Stable, I may just switch from Testing to Stable.
See what I've been reading.
Oh, you don't know anything about computers? Try our Ignorant Housewife edition. See, it's for stupid people - like you.
That's funny, because I just copied your very words into my KDE Klipper from Firefox then pasted them right into an OpenOffice document. And I'm running Debian Sarge/Sid!
Try the FUD, it's excellent today. May I suggest a full-bodied whine with that?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"Can't we have just one installer, one package management tool and one portage system that is shared by all the linux distributions, the bsd variants, OS X fink, windows cygwin, the comercial vendors, and all the rest?"
No.
You must be new here.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Now you will log into the system and enjoy it.
Yes, SIR! Appropriate for a release called 'sarge'.
Wah!
Haha, that was funny. And true. A friend of mine who used mandrake for a few days went on to install gentoo, for rumour had it that if you can install it, you'll learn a lot about the system.
Spent hours and hours installing it, (which doesn't make too much sense - why not have a functioning system in 5 minutes and then rebuild everything?), installation documentation in his lap, and after a while he managed to install it. Took another day to get alsa working (couldn't help him, I myself was confused by it). Anyway, in a few days, he had a working system with X (and without working kpdf, for he missed a use-flag apparently). And I spent the next few weeks explaining the most trivial things I could learned reading the Introduction to Linux guide on my two-hour trip home on a train. Apparently, my friend didn't buy into the "I'm now a geek cause I installed gentoo" myth, and was very very frustrated. Finally, I dug up the excellent Machtelt Garrels guide (still the best in linuxland for newbies I think) and I lent it to him.
(Then later he switched back to Win2000, and just upgraded to XP recently).
You have it backwards; Viagra helps you extend and maintain, not maintain and extend.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"