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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!
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ They will mail (snail) you 10 copies for free... The installer is nice and the desktop looks pretty damn good... Uptown (not an Ubuntu salesman) Joe
All the other architectures I tried (Suns, _old_ x86s, _new_ x86s) worked great.
I really reall really like the fact that the minimal install and the installer itself doesn't require the X-windows bloat.
Is Your Development Project a Sinking Ship?
So now, is HURD so unimportant to slashdot that news related to it is just grouped under some other news? The same slashdot that carries a front page story about even release candidates of the Linux kernel?
See what I've been reading.
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.
Well, I wondered the same thing until I tried out Debian and realized you could do interesting things like downgrade packages to previous versions. In general, the install system had features Portage doesn't, until the next version of Portage anyway.
:)
That didn't stop me from happily moving to FreeBSD, however.
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.
Why does each and every distribution need to reinvent the installer and the package management tools and the portage system and the system layout?
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?
I mean really, reinventing a new tool to do something that people have been doing for 30 years is the height of arrogance. And even if they do invent their own package management system, does it only have to run with their own custom portage system? Can we have multiple interfaces to just one portage system that works across all posix systems?
Ideally I should be able to pop in a DVD, and have a single installer come up that lets me mix and match my kernel with my package management system and select what packages I want to install and then have it install them in a known location that is the same as everyone elses in the world.
I should be able to deploy a software package one time and just have it compile and install itself on any unix like system. And work.
All you separate distributions and operating systems need to get off your high horses and share the labor for things that are common between all of you. This is why we don't have unix on every desktop right now. The fragmentation is killing adoption of unix on the desktop.
Bran muffins and whiskey.
I've always thought there should be two versions of linux: bleeding edge, and ignorant housewife editions.
There's a third: A powerful version that is stable. I need to spend my time using Linux to do things for my job, I don't like to spend time debugging the OS.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
IIRC, ubuntu uses the new debian-installer.
The problem with all installers (Fedora included) is that dependency tracking is extremely difficult and complex, and packages don't always accurately describe their dependencies. They also don't have any good way of handling multiple flavours of (essentially) the same product. They also don't talk with each other, so don't expect apt or rpm to know about anything you installed from CPAN or CPANPLUS, even though there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't have a program to rationalize the contents of different installer databases.
However, that is not the fault of Debian, but rather the fault of the problem being solved. It is extremely complex, and no good solution currently exists.
As a distribution, I like Debian a lot. No, that's not just because they included my FOLK patches as an alternative kernel (though that is a factor, because it means Debian is far more capable of including interesting ideas than almost any other distribution). Debian is simply a damn good distribution. It's comprehensive, it's consistant in approach, and it's been able to maintain a very high level of quality, despite having a very large number of contributors. (Or maybe because they do.)
There have been a lot of distributions, over the ages. Some have failed because the maintainers gave up (SLS, for example). Some failed because they appealed to too specialized an audience, so there wasn't a userbase to keep things going (QLinux is an example of that). Some failed because of political reasons (Stampede Linux got busted over a "trademark infringement" that pushed credibility a little far). Some failed because the maintainers went commercial (Red Hat Linux, I'm talking to you!).
Given that kind of turbulent history, it's impressive that Debian has done as well as it has. Those involved in the project should feel proud of themselves. IIRC, Slackware is the only other distro that has lasted as long, or atracted such a following.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, Debian and OS X Fink do share an install system - apt-get. "All the Linux distributions"? Would be nice, but there are a fair few .deb-based ones out there now. RedHat and Cygwin share a system I believe (I'm prepared to be corrected here), because Cygwin was originally has ties to RedHat.
Ideally I should be able to pop in a DVD, and have a single installer come up...
Ah, well you've lost me there already you see. A DVD? I run Debian on a old laptop that hasn't got a CD drive, let alone a DVD. I also run it on a Cobalt RaQ - not even a floppy drive there. A single installer? But on my flashy new hardware I like graphical installs, whereas I would spit blood at anything requiring a graphical install if I was trying to put it onto the Cobalt.
All you separate distributions and operating systems need to get off your high horses and share the labor for things that are common between all of you.
OK. So who gets off whose horse first? I know - let's dump RPM, I always hated it. But hold on, it's used with some of the most popular and commercially supported distros right? So I know, let's dump .deb, after all it's only minority. But hang on, some of the most stable distributions there are use .deb so there must be some merit in it. I know, let's dump RPM...and repeat ad nauseam.
Cheers,
Ian
One of the things I've noticed of late with Debian is that their vaulted upgrade procedure between versions is definitely not working for Woody and Sarge.
/etc directory is a little much.
Upgrading from a fresh Woody install -- of 3.0r0, to be precise -- directly to Sarge as it now stands destroys Gnome completely. It will boot, start X11, but then die horribly for reasons I have yet to sort out fully. (I did this three weeks ago, for an old beater that was a gift) And it would die consistently only in that operating any Gnome application in tandem with another would do it.
The only way I could get the install procedure to update correctly was by using a sarge netinstall CD with a beta from August.
I believe the kernel versions changing has a lot to do with this. Of course, blaming Debian for this is not fair, but expecting users to suddenly know everything about the kernel version, the module loading/management procedure and the deep changes to the
I don't care about a GUI installer. I do care about Debian's stability between versions. I used to think Debian's upgrade process flawed (speed of releases) but essentially fine for those people who didn't want to think about dependency hell when using an online upgrading service. But now I am wondering if they really have it under control; I think they've taken policy as far as they can go.
They should commit to a regular timeframe for stable/server/stale versions and stick to it. Once a year is plenty of time.
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
It's nice to read an interview from a distro project member where the problems/limitations of the distro, (such as the long release cycle), are openly admitted. All too often distro maintainers (and users) make excuses for current limitations in their distros and stubbornly refuse to address them in a rational manner.
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.
As a side note, I'd really like to see someone try to do this with Windows. Upgrading from 95 to 98 to 2k to XP and replacing HDs, CPUs and MBs under that system, while not having to reinstall all your applications and redo all the settings.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
"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.
Taking what you are saying a step further, why can't we just have a single distro? No we can't. The different free distros cater for different needs. Gentoo is for putting together a distro from the source. Debian is a distro with virtually all the apps out there and with a lot of ways to install the packages and supports many architectures. Fedora is for new users and people who want the latest eye candy apps. The commercial distros like SuSE and Mandrake *can* be unified but they're just in it for the money and they wont do it. Try convincing them.
Now, why can't we have a single package management system/installation system? Same reasoning - different distros do different things. You can't have a single package management system for both pre-compiled and source code distros without putting extra overhead on one of them. Same thing goes for installation system. And commercial distros just won't do it. Again, try convincing them.
(after you've chosen a boot often such as "vanilla" or "bf24" and then selected a language)
/proc/pci
ALT+F2
cat
voila! Hardware devices (well, PCI/AGP anyhow).
Change .iso to .avi and it'd get plenty of hits!
Now you will log into the system and enjoy it.
Yes, SIR! Appropriate for a release called 'sarge'.
Wah!
That is what I was going to answer because its true.Anaconda doesn't run on every arch. But why should x86 users, ie 80%+ of Debian users have to suffer without a great installer like Anaconda just so somebody using some obsure arch has the same aweful install experience(yes I know the installer has improved). Cater to your base which is x86. Let the rest get by with a lesser installer. They have till now and won't go away just because x86 as usual gets all of the goodies.
That or continue to watch as all of your users flee to distros like Ubuntu.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
An example:
Here we have the typical video driver selection screen. Can you seriously expect anyone who wasn't weaned with a transistorized soother to understand this screen?
Who but the eternal geek will know that VESA is only used for ancient systems or vmware, or that trident means the old, ancient trident chipset, and probably not the one that could show up in their laptop? - actually I don't even know myself on this one. I'd just have to try a bunch of installs to see, something a user should not have to do.
A little description beside each cryptic 4-5 letter identifier would be EXTREMELY helpful here.
Better yet would be some kind of auto-detection mechanism for the most common modern cards like other distros do.
Debian is not the only offender in this category.
Here's my favorite:
This is priceless.
What the hell is Simple, or Medium, or Advanced? Who's going to know what method will get their windowing environment working properly? (and really, that's all the user wants anyway)
Debian seriously needs a real user-interface designer to do their installer. So long as it's done by geeks, it will continue to be useable only by geeks. The folks at debian are assuming too much arcane knowledge upon their users, and because of that, they will continue to alienate the majority of users right from the outset.
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.'"
He displayed a genuine interest in linux, and I encouraged him to try gentoo (myself already using a ports based "distro"). And later seeing his frustrations, I realized my mistake. I think one of the most important things if you want to get someone on the linux/unix train is documentation. Which is almost there in gentoo, but not quite. The other is: a clear system layout. Debian comes close to it (I might try sarge when it comes out, just to keep my linux skills honed - not long ago I couldn't make usb flash drive work in SuSE, and I felt really embarrassed), but I still didn't know what mplayer.conf does in /etc (or .operarc for that matter).
So my recent method of getting people trying out linux (or freebsd) is to give them a book. I would say: don't touch anything on your computer. Read this or that, and if you are still interested, and enjoyed your reading (because you'll have to do a lot of reading later as well), than you can go on following installation instruction. One important note: never give docs in electronic format. It is easier to grasp the basic concepts if in book form, and (strange as it may sound) without sitting in the front of a puter. And then I would recommend a kind of distro you mentioned: it might be gentoo or debian or slackware, it doesn't really matter (as long as it's not rh or mandrake)
Anyway, for nostalgia's sake, I dug up some of my friend's posts on gentooforums. Note the growing use-flag paranoia (and I refer back to the above post in a post below, just for recursivity's sake. :)
Actually, I'd almost classify the Debian installer as "Ignorant Housewife edition".
Sarge-something-something-x86 and Sarge-something-something-powerpc are the ones I've downloaded so far, and I've actually had a chance to mess with the x86 one. (The old beige powermac g3 is in the process of getting its heavy ass moved into another room.) The install went something like this:
1) download iso and burn to CD
2) boot spare x86 machine from CD
3) wait
4) let it configure DHCP
4a) wonder why it didn't work, play with it a bit
4b) plug the damned ethernet cable in, repeat 4)
5) give it some network settings (domain name, machine name, etc)
7) pick some package groups to install
8) wait
9) wait
10) wait
11) give a root password, create a user
12) log in and use the damned thing
So it's not a 3-step-with-no-step-3 iMac. Whoopee. I didn't expect it to be. Then again, this is the first time I've ever used a Linux system. Ever. And I was practically spoonfed a working installation. And within a few hours of use, I was able to install/uninstall packages, mess with basic environment settings, and play a few games. That's a far cry from "not ready for the desktop."
I declare it... 2004 (I did the installation on 12/30/04) is the year of the Linux desktop. Hey, it passed my test.
Now to toss MacOS X 10.2.8 (the last release "supported" on the beige g3) out on it's ass... maybe in a few days. I need sleep.