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Dunc-Tank To Help Meet Debian Etch Deadline

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later dept.

Da Massive writes, "Debian GNU/Linux is experimenting with a new project called Dunc-Tank, which is aimed at securing funding to pay two key release managers — Steve Langasek and Andi Barth — in an effort to ensure the forthcoming Debian 4.0, known as etch, is released on time in December." Dunc-Tank is not affiliated with the Debian Project directly, and in fact was controversial on the debian-private list.

3 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Uhm, no? by abrotman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been using Debian for quite some time, and to me the point of Debian is stability. I couldn't give a rat's ass when etch releases as long as it works the way Debian is meant to. Please don't force the release to meet a deadline. You'll only be hurting the users that depend on Debian to be a stable and functional system.

  2. Re:Vista anyone? by nurhussein · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oh but think about it, if Etch gets released before Vista, Debian (the distro infamous for glacially slow release cycles) will have released three times between the last 2 versions of desktop Windows.

    So to all the "Linux sucks on the desktop, Windows pwns all" naysayers, even the slowest-releasing distro is improving at a rate faster than Windows. Say what you like about desktop Linux now, but it's one hell of a fast moving target, and it's only getting better.

  3. Re:The solution.... by csirac · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I use Debian for ? 11 years or something and have worked as a Debian sysadmin. ...
    Again IMHO, using Debian involves an unnecessary amount of effort just to get it running, simply because the mentality is that the system must be shiped naked with no configuration choices made

    Wow. I've only been a Debian user for 5 years, some of that time as an admin.

    I use Debian precisely because it saves me from having to configure stuff. I had a need to start developing with Zope the other day, I didn't have to edit a single .conf file to get it up and running - apt did everything for me.

    Packages like gforge are utterly remarkable. The debian apt installer scripts ask you basic questions and will setup/configure/create (dbs, tables, domains, user accounts, etc) for every dependency: OpenLDAP, PostgreSQL, Exim, Apache... a fully working and configured system without touching a single configuration file.

    For admin/dev stuff, Debian is remarkable. For the Desktop, you have to do some fiddling to get the final 1% functionality, but that's no problem for me. If a noob doesn't want to remember to install nm-applet to get a nice WLAN configuration applet, or which xmodmap commands will make his/her multimedia keys work - then Ubuntu is great.