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Debian Project Nominations Opened
robstah writes "The Debian project have announced the opening of nominations for this year's Debian Project Leader (DPL) elections. The first nomination, that of Matthew Garrett (of Dasher fame) has also been announced on Debian Planet."
Other than maybe Eben Moglen, I can't think of anyone who would defend the purity of Debian more strongly than Richard Stallman. The Debian project has always been about providing a Free operating system that works great rather than a semi-Free operating system. This is in line with RMS's original goal of Hurd (which is booting now!).
Let Freedom ring!
Once again I think you AC you are the best. Hugs and Kisses
--
SARCASM
Why is HURD somehow superior in free-ness?
Sounds like democracy on steriods. large projects need benevolent dictators!
Get the tiny Debian
A wise man once said: If Debian spent less time encouraging politics and more time developing, packaging and testing, Debian stable would have more up2date software versions.
I forgot who said it. Doesn't matter anyway.
... that someone might finally move Debian forward, I know testing and unstable have more current software than stable but why not have a new stable release by now?
Woody has been the stable for what? five years or more, if Debian keeps waiting until every package has been tested for several months before they put out a new stable release it'll never happen since they update the individual packages more than once every six months.
I'm a little intrigued that the project leader position appears to only be open to developers. Perhaps it's done to ensure that the leader is aware of all of the complications involved at lower levels, but I have to wonder if it's always best to have a project led by one of the foot soldiers.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Will "sarge" become "stable" under the new leader?
Or is this going to become some "Real Soon Now" / "When It's Done" thingie?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
why every year? how do you get anything done when the leader is changing every year? Sounds like democracy on steriods.
Good point - it's like Wikipedia. Nothing good will ever come out of it.
large projects need benevolent dictators!
Exactly my thoughts. But those damn wikipedists just won't listen to me.
Heresy or not, though, I agree with the Debian Project: the GFDL imposes some onerous restrictions on what users can do with the licensed work, and Stallman seems unwilling to drop some of these restrictions.
How could he possibly "drop some of these restrictions" by which we mean OPTIONAL clauses of the GFDL which e.g. are not used by Wikipedia which seems to work under GFDL just fine?
I wonder if someone could convince the new leader to rename stable, testing and unstable to stale, rusting and broken...
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
But anyway, if Debian doesn't like the GFDL, what does it like better? The CC share-alike license? Would the CC share-alike-attribution license be ok?
And in the meantime, what does Debian plan to do about documentation that is already GFDL'd? It seems ridiculous to refuse to distribute docs just because they're GFDL licensed, especially if they don't have any invariant sections.
Find free books.
...of Dasher fame? He hasn't done anything else? That's his qualification? Some people take Democracy too far.
I'll admit Dasher is kinda cool but its really not all that complex. It'd be like MS putting the guy who thought up MouseKeys in charge of Windows.
Direct away from face when opening.
Or a well-formed constitution: http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Did they happen to mention who they nominated to be in charge of the "Gentoo zealot" trolls? The Debian organization has done a great job so far of making it look like it's actually the Gentoo users that are zealots, and I think the people putting the work into that part of their advocacy project deserve mention. Yet, unless I missed something, they appearly to have totally overlook those hard-working advocates.
Look, it's called 'unstable'. What sort of impression do you think that gives people?
One of the reasons people use distributions is to get a stable set of packages that work with one another, instead of having to pick them all out by hand. Your method above is basically reverting to hand selection, and is not really something that is acceptable outside of a hobbyist setting. One of the reasons for Ubuntu's instant success is that they QA'd a bunch of recent packages, and released them as a distribution.
This situation has, from my observation of things, led to a lot of people abandoning Debian for things like Ubuntu and Fedora. I guess it doesn't matter all that much - we're not going to lose out on any revenue;-) - but it's a pity, as Debian use to have an excellent technical reputation.
I suppose marketing types might say that Debian has mismanaged its brand or something like that, becoming known for the "freeer than thou" political battles with the FSF, and having a very out of date distribution rather than technical excellence. Hopefully, we can get that back, but it will be tough.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
How about nominating someone who will put a higher priority on getting Sarge out the door than on the purity issues?
I like Debian's reliability and I've used debian as my primary OS since around '96. I also live in the real world where non-OSS commercial software gets used. The libraries in Woody have gotten too far behind current. Sarge needs to get out the door soon if Debian is going to remain viable outside of the core clique of maintainers.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
No, Debian GNU/Linux. It's perfectly fine for the name of the entire distribution to be called 'Debian.' It's not perfectly fine to call Linux just Linux when refering to the Linux kernel being bundled with a distribution of software. If you are refering to the 'Linux kernel' by itself it is ok, to refer to it as Linux.
Also, you can have 100% Linux-free Debian--that's why saying Debian Linux is stupid.
I've just read all of this thread and many people keep saying that Debian is hard to install... OK, it may be hard to install for computer illiterates, but well, Debian is not everyone's distribution. It's not an easy install. You need to know your hardware. You need to be prepared to take pains. And, at the end of the process, the result looks like any Linux system installed by another, usually easier and quicker, means. So why take the time?
/etc/resolv.conf, /etc/apt/sources.list, and /etc/network/interfaces to help you edit your DFS installation. You may also want to print out copies of these files from an existing Linux installation. Run dpkg-query -l |more on an existing installation. You'll get a list of packages, displayed one screen of text at a time. Study the list to decide what packages you'll install. Find an archive for packages from Debian's server mirror list. Plan how to partition your DFS system. You need at least a root and a swap partition. Many users also prefer separate partitions for /home, /var, /boot, and other directories. Review how the GRUB boot manager works. In particular, pay attention to GRUB's unique system of numbering hard drive partitions, in which /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1 (that is, the first partition on either an EIDE or SCSI drive) is labeled hd0,0. You may want to print out an existing /boot/GRUB/menu.lst to consult.
/etc/init.d/hotplug start to detect USB devices, followed by /etc/init.d/discover start for general hardware detection. The order of these commands matters, because discover hangs if USB devices have not been de
One answer is that Debian offers a chance to learn about aspects of installation that you've never explored. Even if you have no background in computing, the do-it-yourself mentality of the free and open source communities is contagious. You may want to explore Debian out of sheer curiosity.
A more practical answer is that you want the security of building a GNU/Linux installation from the ground up, so that you know exactly what it contains and how the contents are installed. This behavior is in marked contrast to most distributions, which make choices that are not only unknown to the user, but which sometimes sacrifice security for convenience. For security-minded system administrators (that is, any who know their jobs), Debian not only gives them the control they want, but also saves them time when hardening a system. Since the base system installs without any graphical interfaces, this lack of assumptions makes Debian especially convenient for servers.
The basic steps for installing Debian are similar to those for Gentoo. Unfortunately, Debian current has only the bare minimum of documentation. The instructions that are available assume that the install posesses a reasonable amount of knowledge. That's why, although installation is usually the least interesting part of a distro review, most of the rest of this article explains the installation process at length. Debian isn't difficult to install if have the knowledge and take your time, but detailed instructions make the installation easier.
While you're downloading the latest CD image for DFS and burning it to CD, take time to: Review the man pages for
If you want to run Windows on the same machine as Debian, install Windows first.
As you start the Debian CD, the GRUB boot manager opens with a choice of 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, as well as 32- and 64-bit architectures. Once the CD finishes booting, log in as root with no password. The first thing you see is a list of useful commands. You can return to this list using the dfshints command.
With average luck, you won't need the dfscd command to reset the drive that holds the CD. Many of the other commands may also be unnecessary. All the same, to be sure that Debian is detecting your hardware and setup, run at least
I ran Debian for a year or two around 1999-2000. I liked many parts of it, but over time I got frustrated of following its progress since it was so slow. I have followed several Debian project leader elections over the years, at a distance, by reading the candidate's programs, and no matter who is elected, the slow progress continues. I must say - what difference do they really make? I understand that there could be lots of important stuff being done in the background, but my impression of Debian is that it is a stagnating distribution. Very conservative, moving very slowly. This can be good, but I think also it is dangerous.
Can someone mention the three most positive things going on in the Debian community right now. What will Debian bring in the near future? What makes Debian of today different compared with Debian three years ago?