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Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

fabbe writes "The 6th annual Debian Developers Conference (DebConf) was held in Helsinki, Finland from July 10th to July 17th 2005. With over 300 registered participants from around 40 countries, this was the largest DebConf to date. More than 20 sponsors provided DebConf with a total budget of around 125,000 euros. The conference featured talks, workshops, demonstrations, coding marathons and round table discussions on various aspects of the Debian Project. The presentations were captured by the DebConf5 Video Team and are available online at at Debian's site. "

64 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. A question that has been bothering me: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Do these confrences ever end in failure?

    1. Re:A question that has been bothering me: by Darkon · · Score: 2, Interesting


      Do these confrences ever end in failure?

      This one might well do given the current climate.

    2. Re:A question that has been bothering me: by 10scjed · · Score: 1

      It just means the conference closed out with a return code of 0

      --
      --10scjed IANAL,AFAIK
  2. The Utnubu Project by ballstothat · · Score: 4, Informative
    Perhaps one of the more interesting bits to emerge from this was the Utnubu project...

    Link:
    http://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/archives/59-Li nux-Ball-Utnubu.html

    I think Debian can learn a lot from the rapid success of Ubuntu, and hopefully this project will help heal some of the growing rifts between the two camps.

    --
    10
    20 Print "Balls To That"
    1. Re:The Utnubu Project by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 1

      I, for one, erase my Ubuntu partition and welcome our new Utunbu overlords!

    2. Re:The Utnubu Project by electrichamster · · Score: 1

      Compact version of your sig:
      10 PRINT "Balls To This Post"
      20 GOTO 10

      :P

    3. Re:The Utnubu Project by ballstothat · · Score: 1
      I have a hard time admitting that your cleaned-up version of my code will compile faster, but I'll admit defeat

      However, it has always been my personal credo that it's "all about goto 10 loops". And frankly, I think that applies to all facets of life, not just BASIC programming.

      --
      10
      20 Print "Balls To That"
    4. Re:The Utnubu Project by nurhussein · · Score: 1

      I, for one, erase my Ubuntu partition and welcome our new Utunbu overlords!

      It's "Utnubu" dammit! Ubuntu for n00bs!

    5. Re:The Utnubu Project by electrichamster · · Score: 2, Funny
      However, it has always been my personal credo that it's "all about goto 10 loops". And frankly, I think that applies to all facets of life, not just BASIC programming.
      I think you'll find thats called obsessive compulsive disorder.
    6. Re:The Utnubu Project by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 1

      Thats not what I heard.... nope. The word on the street is that "Utnubu" is for _Ut_ter Nubu's. Hence the name! ;)

  3. Good lord. by debrain · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google: "Debian bittorrent", [I'm feeling lucky]

    Downloading Debian CD images with BitTorrent

    1. Re:Good lord. by Saven+Marek · · Score: 1

      The site isn't clear on it which one of those CD images contains the videos?

  4. wow...RTFA! by huckda · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's most interesting with pretty much zero insight as to what made it "successful"...

    --
    "Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
    1. Re:wow...RTFA! by NineNine · · Score: 1

      It's most interesting with pretty much zero insight as to what made it "successful"..

      I think that it's implied that it was successful because a whopping 300 people registered. I'm not saying that this criteria is either good or bad, but that's what I take from the summary + article.

  5. oh my fucking god. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    1. Re:oh my fucking god. by electrichamster · · Score: 1

      Gentlemen, start your wget's.

    2. Re:oh my fucking god. by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's amazing that "women in software" (of any kind) should raise a comment like "oh my fucking god." and "whoa. just whoa". You wonder why they shy away... A bunch of horny geeks getting excited over something completely mundane.

      Get a grip and grow up.

      For those of you that don't want to download the video: It's the opening slide for "Women in Debian and Free Open Source Sofware" by Magni Onsoien and Erin Clark (7/15/05).

    3. Re:oh my fucking god. by alfino · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've had the pleasure to meet most of the Debian women at the debconf. And believe it or not: they were there to hack and improve Debian, not to serve as sexual attractors. Strangely, noone at debconf had a problem with that, or even thought otherwise. So why don't you (average slashdot reading horny male geek) go jack off to some porn site and not come back?

      --
      echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:" net@madduck
    4. Re:oh my fucking god. by Daytona89 · · Score: 1

      Mundane? What if the women are Debiant? Debiant Debutantes even? I smell a video deal.

    5. Re:oh my fucking god. by tyrione · · Score: 1
      You wonder why they shy away... A bunch of horny geeks getting excited over something completely mundane.
      Get real. Women who love attention from men don't shy away. Dykes and lipstick lesbian[read bisexual] shy away, while even the traditional prude in her mid-twenties still saving herself for the fantasy white knight still gets a tingle by all the attention.
  6. Congratulations! by hobotron · · Score: 3, Insightful


    You just described the formula for a successful meeting!

    --
    There is truth in humor.
  7. Re:Did it help this issue ? by ssj_195 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The only possible things that could help with this are:

    1) 100 programmers are hired full-time to reverse-engineer drivers;

    2) More than a handful of manufacturers actually open up their specs;

    3) Linux freezes its ABI, which I for one am not particularly in favour of.

    None of these have happened, to my knowledge. Oh, and Linux Desktop has bigger problems than drivers, but those that can plausibly be solved via hard work are rapidly being addressed.

  8. "success"? Huh? by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

    Success? Could it be different; I mean, successful here means "it was not cancelled"?

  9. and their consensus... by gik · · Score: 5, Funny

    "let's use redhat as our base distro from now on!"

    (DUCKS)

    --
    ZERO
    1. Re:and their consensus... by suitepotato · · Score: 1

      They also announced that the name was a joke gotten out of hand and no one could remember what it was anyways, so it will now be called "Debbie".

      Lawyers for Little Debbie and several hundred thousand women named Deborah were audibly drooling.

      Trekkies promised a write-in campaign saying that no one hearing the name would be in the slightest reminded of the Denebian Slime Eel reference anymore.

      --
      If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
  10. Define Success by ari_j · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For some, success is holding a conference on schedule with no deaths or maimings. For others, it is deciding exactly what the goals are for the next release. The blurb does not tell us what success the conference actually met, and from the other comments so far it appears that the article doesn't, either.

    Why not just say "Sixth DebConf Ends" instead of "...Ends in Success" when the additional words are meaningless?

    1. Re:Define Success by MrHanky · · Score: 1

      Of course. For Debian, success is defined as "relatively few deaths and maimings -- under a free license". HTH.

    2. Re:Define Success by martin-boundary · · Score: 1

      Remember that Debian is a Unix like system, and in the Unix philosophy successful conferences don't print out anything. That extra bit you're talking about was added by the slashdot submitter interface, but you can easily remove it by exporting the environment variable SLASHDOT_PEDANTIC="no". It's really only intended to make the exit code visible in the GUI.

  11. SAT-Style Analogy by ballstothat · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu : Debian :: PC-BSD : FreeBSD

    --
    10
    20 Print "Balls To That"
  12. Re:wow, no torrents.. by electrichamster · · Score: 1

    Apparently noone who has enough bandwidth understands the bittorrent concept either.

  13. As if Ubuntu wasn't weird enough.. by spaztech · · Score: 1


    As if telling everyone, "Here, have a copy of 'Ubuntu,'" wasn't bad enough. Now I can tell them I am also in full support of 'Utnubu' which is Ubuntu backwards. My coffee induced stutter is challenged enough. Seriously, I cringe everytime someone says, "OOB-WHAT-TOO?" as I hand them a copy.

    --
    /. spaztech ./
  14. Congratulations Debian... by pdbaby · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...on the completion of DebConf 1998!

    Ah but I do jest. Huzzah for Debian, my favourite distro

    --
    Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
  15. oblig torrent by LinuxHam · · Score: 1

    Crap. I got two of the three vids before the site slowed to a crawl. Can someone please bundle the presentations and vids into a torrent?

    --
    Intelligent Life on Earth
    1. Re:oblig torrent by LinuxHam · · Score: 1

      Replying to self. I went right to the camp and didn't notice the hundreds of megs in each day's directory. I thought the days were going to hold the PPTs or PDFs. Sheesh.

      --
      Intelligent Life on Earth
  16. Re:Debian?!?!?! by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Funny

    I see dead operating systems, they're all around me, on servers shuffling traffic and packets, and they don't even know that they're dead

  17. Question by 101percent · · Score: 1

    What really upsets me is they made their video files in something other than ogg theora. Why?

    1. Re:Question by David+McBride · · Score: 1

      Because they want as many people as possible to be able to play them. Ogg Theora support isn't as widespread as MPEG2.

    2. Re:Question by lspd · · Score: 4, Informative

      What really upsets me is they made their video files in something other than ogg theora. Why?

      As a member of the Debconf video team, the guy that took all of the video home to finish processing, a Debian Developer and a Free Software nut, I'm probably as well qualified as anyone to answer this question.

      In a nutshell it's mpeg rather than Theora because none of the people arguing now, after the fact, that it should have been done in Theora were volunteering to help when the actual work was underway. Ffmpeg is GPL, it's in Debian main, and it has no problem encoding to mpeg-1. There are enough stupid software patents to be relatively certain that both Theora and mpeg-1 infringe on some. If there is a valid freeness issue against mepg-1, file a bug against the ffmepg package.

      Mpeg-1 allows anyone on any platform to view the files with minimal fuss. The results look remarkably good at the low bitrate used and AFAIK no one is running around suing over the use of mpeg-1. For a low bitrate encoding, what exactly does Theora add?

      It's even more comical that some are saying we should have used Theora while others are arguing that we should make DVD images (mpeg-2, where patents are actively enforced.) You really can't please everyone.

      Still, for anyone who wants the wholesome buzzword goodness of Theora, wait until we're finished processing the videos and Theora versions will be made available.

  18. Success! by RumGunner · · Score: 4, Funny

    Bill Gates is bankrupt, and everyone now runs Debian. Great conference everybody.

  19. Successful end? by stienman · · Score: 2, Insightful


    Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

    Ok, so how exactly can a conference be unsuccessfully ended? Is this where the attendees launch a sit-in and prevent the conference from ending, or what?

    It just seems like a hollow success.

    "What was good about the conference you jsut attended sir?"
    "Well, it ended. I'm quite thrilled by how well the organizers were able to get everyone to pack up and go - it was quite a success."

    -Adam

    1. Re:Successful end? by Stauf · · Score: 2, Funny
      ~$ debconf
      Usage: debconf [options] command [args]
      ~$ echo $?
      255
      My debconf didn't end in success :(
  20. Re:I am an end-user: Debian sucks by Sinus0idal · · Score: 1

    Maybe you have done an apt-get upgrade where an apt-get dist-upgrade may have been more apt ha, get it.

    Taxiiiii

  21. Sixth? by bioglaze · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If this was sixth, was the first one 0th?

    --
    Who is John Galt?
    1. Re:Sixth? by darketernal · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes.

  22. Re:Success? by suitepotato · · Score: 1

    Actually, I was going to ask this too. I mean, it's like saying in the news that someone "suffered an untimely death". Might they have "enjoyed a timely death"?

    "Damn, Mr. Reaper. That was right on time. Another minute and it would have been really bad timing."

    What WOULD failure be for this? They declared surrender and changed the base to Red Hat/Fedora Core? They decided that the new policy was too fast and people can't live at these speeds and we need to go back to the "when Hell freezes over" method of updates?

    What the hell is failure for a Debian Conference? Most not getting drunk after hours at the bar with their friends? No one gets lucky with a geekette? What was the definition of success?

    Seems weasel-worded to me. I think it would be better to say that the conference "went well" or "went wonderfully" or "narrowly avoided raid by local police".

    --
    If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
  23. and our consensus? by consonant · · Score: 1

    all you base are belong to us

  24. Phew... by Momoru · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

    At least it wasn't like the previous five DebConf's which ended in bloodshed.

    1. Re:Phew... by Jim+Hall · · Score: 1

      Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

      Nope, doesn't help. For some reason, I'm still reading this headline as "Sith DebConf Ends in Success".

      So now the Sith have organized, and it's no longer "one master, one apprentice." Damn. Time to get your lightsabers ready.

  25. Mark Shuttleworth gave a talk on Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Mark Shuttleworth gave a talk about the purpose of Ubuntu.

    The video server is still responsive; there should be a mirror or two of that video, btw.

  26. Questions on current Sid by tyrione · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Some questions (if these were addressed at the conference my apologies for asking here):
    • What is the status on KDE 3.4.1 and accompanying addons becoming current with X.org currently kludging its way through Sid?[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]
    • When the hell is GNUstep going to get rebuilt against Freetype 2.1.10?
    • When will the Debian Java Policy become standard and agree upon?
    • Should I just build my own local debs for Eclipse 3.1 or will they be released before 2010?
    • What is the status, or if a plan even exists, regarding Debian working on a seemless Wireless config subsystem similar to say OS X? [waproamd, ndiswrapper, etc are ductape building blocks]*

    I am well aware that all these questions could be directed to a package manager, yet when it's broadcast to a higher level audience more attention helps overcome the inertia in place which always causes those package manager to accelerate their updates and/or be more pro-active on such concerns.

    [Note: I would assume when municipalities adopt the OSS model they plan on having both wired and wireless options accessible to their employees that could only help us regular users in seeing improvements to a vitally overlooked section of networking]

    1. Re:Questions on current Sid by andersa · · Score: 4, Informative

      What is the status on KDE 3.4.1 and accompanying addons becoming current with X.org currently kludging its way through Sid?[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]

      Everybody is working on the transition from GCC 3.3 to GCC 4. A big pile of packages have still to be rebuild. During that time the X Strike Force is working on getting Xorg to compile on all architectures. Once all that is in place. KDE 3.4.1 will be uploaded, and the bug squishing on that will begin. I'm guessing a month or so before a fully working KDE 3.4.1 is in sid, give a couple of months/take a week.. ;)

      In the meantime you can still use Alioth KDE 3.4.1 packages with sid and xorg (Yes, Really!). You need to delete all aspell and libjack packages from sid, and get libaspell and libjack from testing, then KDE will install without problems. And hold off on upgrading once you have something that works, unless you are prepared to sort out the dependency issues that are bound to arise

    2. Re:Questions on current Sid by Overfiend · · Score: 3, Informative

      [alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]

      Correction: I didn't upload the X.Org X11 packages to unstable (sid). David Nusinow did. David has taken the lead on X.Org X11 responsibilities, as I have recently acquired others.

      Doesn't stop me from helping out and doing commits, but I've been distancing myself from the actual package uploads over the past year or so. For example, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto handled most of the XFree86 4.3.0 uploads.

      --
      Address-collecting spam robots don't know how to crack ROT13. Do you?
    3. Re:Questions on current Sid by tyrione · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the correct. I hadn't figured once you were elected to lead the Debian Ship you'd have to handoff X packages as well.

      I've got them installed with Alioth packages, with a little tinkering it is working.

  27. Re:Success? by poopdeville · · Score: 1
    Actually, I was going to ask this too. I mean, it's like saying in the news that someone "suffered an untimely death". Might they have "enjoyed a timely death"?

    Except that when "suffer" is used as a transitive verb (which is to say, when it takes an object), it means primarily "to undergo or sustain." Similarly, the primary definition of the noun "success" is "The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted." Evidently, the Debian team was attempting to make this the largest DebConf ever.

    --
    After all, I am strangely colored.
  28. More info on Available Videos by sirmikester · · Score: 4, Informative

    Check out http://wiki.debian.net/?DebConf5Talks for more details about the available videos (some including slides).

    --
    In linux libertas
  29. Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"? by grolschie · · Score: 1

    Debian "unstable" is fine. Problems arise when people add unofficial sources to /etc/apt/sources.list

  30. Ob "Monty Python and the Holy GPL" reference by g2devi · · Score: 1

    MORTICIAN: Bring out your dead!
    Bring out your dead!
    [clang] Bring out your dead!
    [clang] Bring out your dead!
    [clang] Bring out your dead!
    [clang] Bring out your dead!
    SLASHDOT: Here's one -- nine pence.
    DEBIAN: I'm not dead!
    MORTICIAN: What?
    SLASHDOT: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
    DEBIAN: I'm not dead!
    MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
    SLASHDOT: Yes, he is.
    DEBIAN: I'm not!
    MORTICIAN: He isn't.
    SLASHDOT: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
    DEBIAN: I'm getting better!
    SLASHDOT: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
    MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
    DEBIAN: I don't want to go on the cart!
    SLASHDOT: Oh, don't be such a baby.
    MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
    DEBIAN: I feel fine!
    SLASHDOT: Oh, do us a favor...
    MORTICIAN: I can't.
    SLASHDOT: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
    MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to SCO's -- they've lost nine today.
    SLASHDOT: Well, when is your next round?
    MORTICIAN: Thursday.
    DEBIAN: I think I'll go for a walk.
    SLASHDOT: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there something you can do?
    DEBIAN: I feel happy... I feel happy.

  31. no roiting or violence is good by achacha · · Score: 1

    At least there was no rioting, raping or pillaging, I would say it was a success. With these Debian people you can never tell which way things will go.

  32. ends in success? by m4c+north · · Score: 1

    exit $SUCCESS

    --
    Who's your user, program?
  33. Re:wow, no torrents.. by Karora · · Score: 1

    We discussed having torrents, but the host for the videos supposedly has multiple Gb to the internet and is better able to handle streaming (if the client software supports it) than torrents.

    I'd be interested to know what the bandwidth usage is, but I doubt that the bandwidth is challenged unless a lot of people are downloading 150MB videos by accident. I'd expect more cherry-picking than mirroring (it's a total of 7G or so).

    Feel free to set up a torrent though - this is open source, scratch-your-own-itch territory, after all... :-)


    .

    --

    ...heellpppp! I've been captured by little green penguins!
  34. Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"? by FishandChips · · Score: 1

    Debian unstable is not fine, in fact it's a bit of a joke. Neither Gnome 2.10 desktop environment nor KDE 3.4.1 are currently available - the first is borked and the second isn't around at all. Funny that, since plenty of other distros have been running both quite happily for a few months now. We won't even go into wifi or xorg. As other distros, even Debian-based ones, show more and more that it doesn't have to be like this, a lot of folks must be wondering what on earth Debian is actually for. No amount of gay write-ups about Debconf can conceal the feeling that the Debian folks still haven't noticed that the world's moved on a bit since the 1970s.

    --
    Las qué passoun
    tournoun pas maï
  35. Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"? by LordoftheWoods · · Score: 1

    It is intriguing and irritating how many people there are who dont use Debian but complain about it. gnome-about for me reveals version 2.10.2, and things have been running smoothly for me. It may not be "all there" but its certainly not "borked."

    If you watch the videos you'll see a nice anecodote about how one of the devs was complaining long ago before he was a DD, yet after it was suggested that he fix what he didn't like, he actually DID. Before you go about calling something a "joke," get your facts straight. unstable is development code and is not targetted at users (not that the adventurous can't, however, use it; I have in fact had few problems). It is not a "joke" because it serves its purpose perfectly: acting as a sort of 'entry point' for new packages and upgrades of old ones.

    Last I checked, GNOME 2.8 (from Sarge) is not from the '70s. Getting the latest and greatest software released has never, ever, been a priority in Debian. Building the best possible OS is, and this means letting things stabilize in unstable and testing before being released. Debian as an organization will not, as a rule, risk a release of new and unproven code to its stable OS. So before you go ranting about how your distro r0x and such, you could do yourself a favor and try to understand the distro you love bashing. To further refute your comment:

    mike@Tyr:~$ apt-cache show xserver-xorg | grep Version:
    Version: 6.8.2.dfsg.1-4

    Yes, this is a recent development, but it still shows a total lack of factual backing on your part. ( You don't have to run Debian to find these things out, there is packages.debian.org )

    I have no idea what about Debian could make a fellow Linux-user say such things such as that the information provide about the conference are "gay write-ups" to "conceal the feeling that the Debian folks still haven't noticed that the world's moved on a bit since the 1970s." Such hostility is utterly unfounded.

    And before the Ubuntu fans enter combat with their notions that Ubuntu has "replaced" Debian, let me say that you betray the beliefs of your own group of developers by saying that. I do not believe that any Ubuntu dev beliefs that Ubuntu has replaced Debian. Ubuntu had been a good citizen in the community and has contributed much back to its base distro. There is a generally good relationship between the two. The idea that Ubuntu makes Debian obsolete is created by misguided Ubuntu fans and contrasts with the ideas of those in charge of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a great OS, it has benefitted immesurably from the countless hours of work put into Debian, and I believe it will continue to benefit from that work. It is not, at least not yet, completely independent from its base. Ubuntu has put tons of work into making an easy-to-use Debian with a pretty face, and to provide the world's kiddies with the latest and greatest software. Only a select group of Ubuntu fans have declared independence from Debian. I dare say that Ubuntu and Debian are not all that different; what the users see (and complain about) has changed since the people who created Ubuntu care about addressing problems which Debian devs don't see as problems worth addressing, or that they believe need to be addressed by individuals according to their needs and not be predetermined by the distro.

    This is a bit overboard in the rant department to me, but i feel it was worth it. I will come to the defense of Debian as long as I continue to see it as the best distro for me, and that may mean thourougly addressing the misguided accusations of others. Let the inevitable flameware begin (for the Xth time, where X is immesurably large).

  36. Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"? by FishandChips · · Score: 1

    As it happens I use Debian Sid and typed my comments on it (then and now). Try hitting apt-get install gnome-desktop-enviroment. Your post suggests exactly why Debian is struggling to adapt to the twenty-first century: patronising incomprehension of the aspirations and needs of orginary computer users, for which read human beings: "Ubuntu has put tons of work into making an easy-to-use Debian with a pretty face, and to provide the world's kiddies with the latest and greatest software." So other distros are toys for kids, only real men use Debian, etc. Some of us can see where this is leading and we aren't keen to go there, imho.

    --
    Las qué passoun
    tournoun pas maï
  37. Re:You are using "testing" or "unstable"? by LordoftheWoods · · Score: 1

    Other distros are not necessarily toys for kids, if you had read my post you would have seen I find Ubuntu a very amiable distribution. Not just for kids, but for anyone who enjoys using it. I don't like the "There is only Debian" or "Real Men use Debian" mentalities either. My opinion is that if you are an ordinary computer user and also the maintainer of your computer (you know how many problems this causes in the Windows camp), then you have needs which Debian does not serve and Ubuntu would be a much better choice. As for the dependency issue with gnome-desktop-environment, this is generally a non-issue: it is just a slight quirk which happens every now-and-then because of the fine granularity of packages being released into the archive. Yes, it could be avoided by reworking the scripts which release the packages into the archive, but as I said it is a non-issue because those who use unstable are supposed to be developers who know what that means and that it will be resolved when all dependencies are released into the archive. It even explains it to you:

    "Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming."

    Again, this is just how it works since packages are released little-by-little into unstable. But somehow I suspect you already knew this..

    Also, the only reason I chose to use the world 'kiddies' in my post was to characterize the whining which often happens about Debian due to the age of its stable packages. Besides, why would "ordinary computer users" feel the need to upgrade anyway? Why would they even consider using unstable, Debian's development system? Some such users in the windows camp are still using 7-yr old Windows 98. The only updates they really need are the "Priority: high" ones to software with potential security vulnerabilities, they hardly need to update all of GNOME.