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Record Low Turnout in Debian Leadership Election
daria42 writes "A record low voter turnout - highlighted by the fact that two-thirds of the candidates have not yet cast their ballot - is marring the Debian Project's ongoing elections for the Debian Project Leader position. Project secretary Manoj Srivastava said yesterday: "At the time of writing, half an hour into the second week of the vote, we have the lowest participation ever in a Debian project leader election seen so far"."
Is it something easier to use I might understand and be able to install myself?
My little site.
I believe there is a trend setting in here with the linux market, and it can be viewed as either something positive or negative, depending on your perspective. To me it is the answer why Debian isn't necessarily as popular as it once was.
Linux has been maturing steadily over the years, and it is beginning to take the shape of something viable for a casual user. It certainly isn't there yet, but there have been notable strides. As linux continues forth, it will only get closer and closer to being a very intuitive system.
That being said, I compare Linux to the likes of computer graphics. There was a stage where it just wasn't "there yet", and graphics clearly looked pasted on. This was fine because our mind said "hey, that's a graphic!", and we could easily tell what it was. Today, for the most part, we can only tell if something is a graphic because we know what is possible and what is not possible. Nothing is exceptionally glarring. Take a look at LotR, the graphics were incredibly seamless and only someone looking at them from a "possible" standpoint could truely make out the difference.
However, there was a stage in between these two levels, I liken to the example of the Final Fantasy movie, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The graphics were good, but not perfect. Our minds went from "Hey, its a graphic!" to "I guess that's kinda real", and we got confused. It winds up being confusing and awkward for us to watch, because we cannot get out minds to sort out what the heck we are seeing.
Linux is on that stage right now. It was previously something for the elite, it was difficult to use, it was extremely console based and you had to manually enter everything. I recall for the longest time needing to enter in my monitors horizontal and vertical refresh rates, plus then manually specify what resolutions my monitor could do, additionally state the size of my video card's ram. It was as elitest as operating systems really got, and we understood that.
Today, we find ourselves in the middle. Its not quite as plug and play as Windows or Macintosh, but its got some. Our minds are left thinking "Is this mainsteam or not?", and we don't know where to settle. Fedora installs the video drivers well for me the first time, but it was a nightmare getting Limewire to work.
So how does this relate? Well, because Linux isn't exclusively seen as an elitest operating system as much anymore and transitioning into something a little on the brain to use, we're seeing the depature of people from "Middle of the Road" distributions. Gentoo has its niche for the hardcore, but most distributions will attempt to make life as easy as possible for the user, a la Fedora or SUSE. They are trying to remove that middle ground and place themselves firmly into the "easy to use" category, while still retaining the power and flexibility Linux inherantly offers.
Those that did use Debian and the sort are moving on, they don't see the need for the elitest economy as much anymore, as Linux itself isn't as unique and hardcore as it once needed to be. We begin to see users use Linux not just to experiement on, but to actually use in a working environment, something to be taken a little more seriously.
In the end, the flourishment of distributions will begin to phase out, and personally I believe its for the better. We will be left with a handful, but those handful will have the attention of a much larger user and developer base, rather than having them spread thinly out. In the end, I believe this is a good thing. It looks like Debian may perhaps be one of the first examples.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
So, between the fact that not only is Debian getting publicly ridiculed by leaders of the Free Software Movement (such as Bruce Parens, IIRC) for the lenth of time it's taken them to release Sarge; but now they can't even stir up enough interest to get people to vote for posistions inside their own company?
I love Debian, and I used to use it before I switched to OpenBSD, but I honestly wonder if the project shouldn't hand over their resources to a vibrant and living project such as gentoo or ubuntu and step aside gracefully.
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
I'm not going to flame you but I think you miss the point of Debian. As you said, "younger distros like Ubuntu offer an easier take on the Linux Desktop," but Ubuntu is based on Debian! That fact alone, is a tribute to the stability and universality of Debian. The project's goals are lofty than other distributions.
The idea behind Debian is to be the "universal distribution," and to be a distribution completely Free as in GNU Public License. I think the Debian developers see their distribution as one step removed, as a bigger, more general distribution that's out there for other people to mold into what they see fit. So, the Debian developers have the attitude that they'll worry about stability and let the other guys: MEPIS, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Yoper, etc. worry about ramming through releases and bringing the software up to date. That's why I doubt the low voter turnout has anything to do with the slow release cycle.
- Ubuntu is not susceptible to viruses and spyware.
- For $0 he gets a complete operating system and set of applications, saving him around $1000.
- It works.
- I have little inclination to provide support for MS based systems, so by running Ubuntu he gets me interested.
He bravely started off with the first release (warty) of Ubuntu. There were a few minor glitches (mainly that the graphical modem configuration didn't work, so I had to do it for him from the a bash prompt, and the web browser didn't have java and flash installed by default) but the whole process went remarkably smoothly. My expectation is that the imminent second release (hoary) will be polished enough that my father could do an installation by himself.In short, ditch the windows. For a typical home user Ubuntu can do everything windows can only more reliably, better and cheaper. (No doubt others will offer conflicting opinions.)
I might not want to run Debian on the desktop, but it's the only linux distro I'd choose for operating a production server. I've been running Debian for five years as my production server (web, email, database). So simple to install. So simple to upgrade and update. I can't imagine dealing with Gentoo or Mandrake or something in this regard. They may be fine desktop solutions. Maybe even decent small-time server solutions.. but in my environment where even an hour of downtime is a significant pain in the ass, I'll stick with my trusty Debian.
Of course, Slashdot runs Debian. I run Debian. Lots of important services are run on Debian. I wouldn't bother using anything else, other than on a desktop.
Go out and buy a new computer or motherboard and you'll discover that Debian is too old to run on it. What's the point of maintaining old versions of software for bugs and having Debian maintainers pestering developers to fix their old, obsolete versions?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
I had not yet voted when this announcement went out. (I have now, however.) The main reason I took so long to get my vote in is that the number of candidates (and the number of new candidates, since the incumbent isn't running) is higher than it has been in recent years, and I needed extra time to figure out who they all were, and how I thought they should be ranked. The last few elections, I had a fairly good idea of how I was going to vote before I even started looking at the candidates in detail. This year, it was a really tough choice, and I had to spend a lot more time on it. So, I wouldn't read too much into the low turnout at this point.
I use apt-get myself, but I am a Fedora user.
I had FC1 running patched up for a very long time, but for various reasons I eventually went with FC3. (Being fc4 is nearly out.. it's a little more polished then a fresh release now).
That being said, at the house when I want to update to a new FC release I can do it fairly easily. I simply have to change the release version and let it fly.
I did have a problem once where I had to manually reinstall one rpm.
Though nothing is guranteed in this manner and I'm sure it isn't as well played out as Debians.
Things really don't break enough to worry about rolling out mass changes at once, but any good admin can come up with an effective roll out stategy.
Still, Debian is a great distro and while I'm on a different side of the fence, we are all linux users.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Your right, my bad. Sid not Sarge. But I still stand by my point. The longer it takes to release the less that will go into the "less stable" releases. And yea Ubuntu certainly does have the cash to hold on. But that was never the project's goal and Debian tanking like it is certainly isn't good for all the projects based off it.
Something has changed at Debian. Debian users have gone from touting Debian as a great distro to touting Debian as something to base your distro off of.
And just to point something out people are not upset that its been a few years since a release. They are upset because the project has run off the rails and is being totally mismanged. Users can excuse delaying a bit to "get things right", but you can't keep fucking up over and over and expect users to keep understanding why you can't manage to get a release out.
Our shop deploys Debian in house whenever we get a chance. There's something to be said about a true concern for stability and hardware compatibility. Unfortunately, Debian ends with our in-house servers. Most of our clients really to prefer to hear the name Red Hat mentioned in conjunction with Linux. Red Hat offers support, something that is very appreciated by business types (not that they'd ever had to go beyond us for support). If someone has heard of Linux, then they've invariably heard of Red Hat.
Debian is a legitimate distro but it will stay a margin player. Marginalization of non-commercial offerings appears to be an emergent property of the growing popularity of Linux.
For what it's worth, it wouldn't hurt Debian to release something. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Debian Unstable is ready for "mass" consumption. Caution is one thing but Debian borders on the fascist side of conservativeness. ;)
You don't have to go to each Fedora machine with a CD. I've updated many Fedora and RedHat boxes to the next release with apt for rpm, like so:
You are right in that I don't think it's possible to perform a seamless dist-upgrade without a moment of downtime (to Debian's credit), but it's not quite as bad as taking a CD from machine to machine. That would be intolerable.
Also, for the record, I have had Fedora machines start behaving strangely after such an upgrade. Frankly, I'm a Debian-on-the-server fan myself.
Until recently I would've agreed with you on the matter of servers (running Debian stable for a desktop is IMO utterly hopeless).
My view recently changed when I realised that most of the system I was operating was from backports.org not Debian stable. To get some of the basics I needed I was having to go out to 3rd party repositories - ones with no guarantee of security support.
I agree with your view about ABI compatibility, but as a developer also understand why. That constant breaking of compatibility is one of the reasons open source software can develop so fast. Having to worry about working around a bugs and limitations in older versions of libtiff or libxml would be yet another slowdown. It's quite possible to install multiple versions of libraries in parallel, too, thanks to the soname versioning scheme in *nix, though few distributors package more than one version of a library.
It's not just ABI compatibility too, though, it's compatibility with "old bugs" and with API changes.
To be honest, it sounds a lot like what you want is FreeBSD. I've been tempted to try it out for similar reasons myself - dead stable, small "OS", easily upgraded extra userspace. That's pretty much what I want - like having "woody" for the core OS, but "sarge" for the rest, w/o the nightmares that entails when you try to do it on Debian (IMHO it's impressive they've made it work at all).
Backports could satisfy the same role - the "ports" collection in fbsd - but it doesn't seem to have all that much coverage or all that much enthusiasm behind it.
I'm a Debian developer, and I haven't voted -- yet. I'll cast my DPL vote towards the end of the cycle, as usual. Here's why:
While I generally agree with your views, I can't entirely agree on the matter of developers. In my view, in the context of the Debian distribution, a "developer" has quite a different set of required skills.
;-)
A Debian developer - think "person who develops packages for Debian" - needs to be able to work with the Debian packaging system, needs to know quite a bit about porting apps to different archs, and needs to be a build system wizard. They don't need to know how to write a linked list in C - but they might need to know how to correctly replace all str[something-weird]* calls with another flavour or fix assumptions in the upstream source that cause a dependence on Solaris's libc.
I know quite a few very good developers who could't make a package for any distro to save their life. I also know quite a few skilled package maintainers whose ability to fix others' code is often astonishing despite their relative lack of traditional programming expertise. I also know a fair few people (myself included) who think that if you're implementing a linked list, you need to get over your NIH syndrome and discover the wonder of libraries, and/or get a higher-level language
Overall - I'm not convinced "Debian developer" is the best title, when "package maintainer" is often more accurate, but many of these folks deserve the term Developer as much as whoever hacks out the original package.
Ah, drat - you're an AC anyway. May as well post this given that I've already written it.
Actually you could be right. The recent delays in the release of the next stable, are extremely problematic. I am a former debian user who now moved to Ubuntu (probably like many others) The problem really was/is for me the release cycles. Testing sort of is okish, but still running X11, unstable broke too often. And stable, forget it, hell freezes over before they release the next stable. Probably many users of Debian moved to Ubuntu and other apt based distros. If Debian could go for a better release cycle mechanism they could get the uses back. But Debian really is stagnating currently. 10 years after the first installer, they finally have one, still one of the few distros running on XFree 4.3 (and they will be for the forseeable future) KDE and gnome even if they pump out now the next stable already again a year behind the latest releases etc....
What do you lose when somebody makes a package that just happened that is of no utility for you? Or do mean they should all concentrate on the packages that you use just to serve you?
I don't care what people package. I just think that as far as lofty goals go, that particular one is shallow. The Debian organisation suffers from the same thing as, say, a lot of university departments; it's self-selecting, self-sustaining, self-directing, and is in some danger of eventually disappearing up its own viewpoint, as it were. The "universal distribution" idea provides no counterbalance; basically, the group exists to please itself.
Of course I don't feel they should concentrate on the packages I use, to please or serve me - I don't use Debian anyway. And I'm happy for the group to work on pleasing itself and nobody else, if that's what they want to do. Individuals of similar taste will use Debian; the self-selection will continue; nothing wrong with that - except that it's not a "universal" distribution then, is it?
Do you know what you are talking about? If their ideology is to spread Free Software and the concept of Freedom, and your so called "Practical Success" means more people using Debian, I don't see how the two ideas conflict.
Yeah, I do know what I am talking about, but thanks for asking.
Ideology is a fine and wonderful thing, but it is not easy to reconcile it with practical considerations. Practical success in my view involves a good atmosphere within the Debian project; an atmosphere, by preference, that promotes constructive action and dissuades political rubbish. In other words, my metric for practical success in this context is not the number of people using Debian directly.
In practice, I'm seeing a lot of political crap going on within the Debian project, compared to other groups, and I think that has a lot to do with those who wear their ideologies on their sleeves. Others may disagree. Many probably like it this way, since ideological struggle is attractive to some. Myself, I have respect for the ideals of Free Software and Freedom and many other things with gratuitous capital letters, but like many ideals, I just don't feel they need to be broadcast and cherished as self-consciously as they in fact are.