The Well-Tempered Debian desktop

An anonymous reader writes "What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad? How does it turn out? Surprisingly well! The article comprises an entertaining account of the entire process, complete with lots of informative screenshots, from downloading the net-install to tangling with Wi-Fi and modem PCMCIA cards as the last step — and everything in between. A great primer for Debian newbies... Go Debian!"

Comments

First post

[xming]

Are you guys all having hang-over or what? I am getting the FP :) Merry Christmas everyone from a Gentoo Desktop.

Any idea...?

[suv4x4]

Any idea why Etch is ripping off the classic Windows GUI? I mean, in a way, all all GUI-s ripp off each other, but look at the chrome of the Windows and the standard controls... ??

Re:Any idea...?

[ninjazach]

I'm not sure if I am correct here, but I believe that this particular user had customized KDE with the Redmond KWin window border theme that ships with KDE.

Re:Any idea...?

[HairyCanary]

Totally off topic, but the real question in my mind is why do the two most popular GUI's for Linux insist upon copying Windows in the first place? OSX provded that you do not need a start button to have a good GUI. I'd like Linux a lot better if the developers could get a little more original with the GUI. Or if they'd at least target a *good* GUI to copy ;-)

Re:Any idea...?

[walt-sjc]

Personally, I don't use a windows-like theme at all, but the answer is that the Windows look and feel is familiar to people who are moving from Windows to Linux (easier transition) or who work in both environments on a regular basis (consistency.) I would have thought this is obvious...

Re:Any idea...?

[Pink Tinkletini]

But the better they get at copying the Windows look and feel, the less reason there is to switch. I would have thought that was obvious.

Only on Slashdot would me-tooism be celebrated as a virtue.

Re:Any idea...?

[hahafaha]

Well, for two reasons. The first is that it makes it easier for new users to switch to GNU/Linux, and the second is that it is a pretty good system (*gasp*).

I mean, think about it. What are the parts that are copied? Similar looking and placed minimize, maximize, close buttons, a menu button, some sort of a menu and panels. Those are all very useful. Their exact location and appearance is there because it is more familiar to Windows users. It is fairly easy to change, too.

For example, my setup is as follows:

A Mac OSX-esque panel thing at the bottom (autohides). It has some of the programs I use regularly). I use the Mist GNOME theme, with a Close button (looks like an X) in the left corner, centered title text (this took editing raw XML to accomplish, BTW, since Mist has title text aligned to the left, by default), and a minimize button on the right. There is no maximize button, because that effect can be accomplished by double-clicking on the title bar. At the top, there is a short panel with the menu, weather, workspace switcher, window list, sound applet, language applet, notification area, sticky-notes applet, power supply applet, networking applet and clock applet.

Re:Any idea...?

[Anonymous Coward]

The theme and art selections on the screenshots are hideous. I would never use that ugly desktops.

Re:Any idea...?

[tacocat]

That's why they include WindowMaker. No START button and simple interface.

Re:Any idea...?

[scotch]

Only on Slashdot would me-tooism be celebrated as a virtue.

I've heard your sentiments expressed here countless times.

Re:Any idea...?

[Anonymous Coward]

No! the answer can't be as simple or correct as that! Nooooo!

It really is easy to use. It seems that kde/gnome get to be less cluttered looking than OSX.

That and everyone forgets you can move your taskbars around, resize them, and make it look JUST LIKE OSX.

Re:Any idea...?

[Anonymous Coward]

why do the two most popular GUI's for Linux insist upon copying Windows

Because if they don't, the desktop thumpers whine that their grandmother can't figure out how to do anything without going to Google and looking it up. If it's not the same down to the bugwards compatible behavior of the "Apply" button, it's too confusing for the 95% of the masses who are apparently blithering idiots.

Re:Any idea...?

[wizzat]

Speaking of WindowMaker, it is the desktop environment that I use. I've firmly fallen in love with it, though I've had to considerably alter the standard behavior to make it up to what I'm looking to use. For instance, I like having (exactly) 10 desktops. I like the buttons to do certain things, and the applications to behave certain ways. It is a very customized environment.

However, I've found (not so infrequently), that people who come to my computer for "pair programming" look at my desktop and think it's my screen saver. They quite literally have no idea how to use my box. Every single one of them has left with a "wow, this is a really productive environment!" after I explain how it works.

In the end, I love WindowMaker, and wish it were even more configurable. I suppose I have 2 weeks for the holiday, I could download the source and get to hacking. However, there's a dozen project's I'd love to devote my time to. And as much as I love WindowMaker and its ilk, I can't see it ever becoming mainstream again. The Windows "feel" has a stranglehold on the GUI market.

Re:Any idea...?

[quigonn]

Oh, WindowMaker. Such a cheap rip-off from NeXTstep.

Re:Any idea...?

[shish]

But the better they get at copying the Windows look and feel, the less reason there is to switch

People aren't switching for the GUI, they're switching for the price. The GUI is one of the reasons they stick with windows.

(Statements apply to the vast majority of non-technical people I know; the people who know what they're doing and *do* swap for the interface know how to set a non-default WM)

Re:Any idea...?

[Kjella]

Totally off topic, but the real question in my mind is why do the two most popular GUI's for Linux insist upon copying Windows in the first place?

Well, I can't speak for how everyone else is using it, but I use Linux much the way I use Windows 2000 - each window is maximized, which makes it almost like one application == one desktop. I have some sort of button in the corner I push to start stuff.

Quite frankly, dress it up as OS X or whatever "new paradigm" you want but I must say it's way down on my list of things that could have been improved. Maybe I'm not alone? I'm sure those that use OS X like OS X, that doesn't imply that the other 90% "haven't seen the light". Maybe we just prefer it this way.

Re:Any idea...?

[INT_QRK]

Ripping off "Classic Windows GUI"...hmm... I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I've on a number of occasions engaged in conversations with co-workers and friends who, when noticing my GNU/Linux (Ubuntu 6.10) desktop on my IBM T-41, suggest how well it "sort of copies Windows." I then kindly remind them of, and invite them to look up, the timelines for X-Windows, MOTIF, LISA, MacIntosh and others relative to MS Windows 1.0. I even still have my first 8088 with pre-windows IBM DOS and a beautiful MOTIF based windowing overlay called GeoWorks. Every once in a while I even take it out of my storage room, dust it off, put it together and boot it up. The MOTIF functionality and controls now, in retrospect, even look "Windows-ish" to me -- even though it pre-dated Windows. I guess when you're ubiquitous like MS you get to rewrite history.

Re:Any idea...?

[Lussarn]

I don't know if you have actually used Linux with Gnome (Or any other DE) but if you try it out you would notice that it isn't really like Windows. If there is one thing I hate it is overlapping Windows. The two most used program on my desktop have tabs (Browser and terminal). works way better than overlapping windows. I lay out my programs myself using virtual desktops and they pretty much stay that way until I reboot. In my book Windows doesn't work that way. Possibly can be made to work like that but it's not the default.

Windows and OS X has different kind of workarounds for what I see as a major problem, desktop clutter (Alt-tab, task-bars, exposé). In Linux and Gnome I don't find myself having the desktop cluttered and normally I don't need to use the taskbar or alt-tab even if they are there.

It's nice to see even the real desktop OSes is beginning to understand the need for virtual desktops, they do change your workflow but you need to be a little more carefull when laying out programs. In the end it works better than having everything on the same desktop.

Re:Any idea...?

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX provded that you do not need a start button to have a good GUI.

Actually, they did. The dock is a UI trainwreck compared to the start menu/taskbar.

Re:Any idea...?

[vhogemann]

Well,

The problem is that MacOSX has this "Application Folder" concept, so you can just browse to /Apps in your filesystem and find all of your applications by their name and icon... try doing the same with any Linux distro /usr/bin.

To be able to provide the same simplicity we must change the current layout of the Linux filesystem, I know at least one Linux distro that have done this: GOBO Linux.

Gobo use a rather radical approach to the problem, where every application goes under the /Apps folder. MacOSX for instance only keeps the "userland" applications there.

Re:Any idea...?

[slocan]

But the better they get at copying the Windows look and feel, the less reason there is to switch.

So your assumption is that Linux's different UI is one of the reasons which would motivate someone to switch from MS Windows to Linux?

If it has the "same" UI as Windows, then the UI ceases to be a reason to switch?

Well, I did not switch for this reason (and frankly don't think anyone switches to Linux because of it's UI). On the contrary. I thought and felt that the UI differences were more of a challenge against my decision to switch than an incentive. I knew that I would have a lot of learning and readjusting to do, having used Windows and DOS for so long.

At the end, in my case, the UI differences weren't much of a barrier, since I had some experience with an other UI (had used OS/2) and was well motivated by the freemdoms of the GPL and the absence of a license fee. Actually learning a new UI that has it's own virtues was actually fun for me.

Nevertheless, I generally regard UIs that need active learning to use as a barrier to technology adoption. (I.e. except when the challenge is fun.)

Therefore, UI similarities with Windows are not a virtue, but a chosen tactic to lower the difference barrier that can avert switchers. (And that doesn't mean Linux does not have UI features/virtues that I use and I miss when I have to use Windows at work. It has and I do.)

Therefore, having the "same" UI doesn't mean one less reason to switch, nor is it considered a virtue.

____________________

On the other hand, if aliens started mimicking the Windows Start button and UI on their systems, UseIt.com wouldn't have much to "complain" about Usability in the Movies and the UIs in the movies would be a lot more dull :-)

Re:Any idea...?

[fimbulvetr]

I recommend evaluating beryl, or a comparable GL program. I have the same tendencies as you, it seems, for maximizing windows. Recently, I tried beryl and much to my delight it offers the "cube" desktop, but one better - It lets you "push" applications to a different desktop by dragging the app to the edge of the screen. After a small delay it puts them in another desktop - wickedly satisfying for someone who has grown weary of the other alternatives (right clock menu, move to ->, switch then open, etc).

It's a little unstable for me yet, giving me hard lock ups every so often, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Re:Any idea...?

[fimbulvetr]

Suprisingly, linux separates userland utilities already - well at least debian does. Check your /usr/bin folder and compare to /usr/sbin. Alternatively, compare /sbin and /bin.

The reason it doesn't work so well to do it the way you suggested is because there is a lot of gray area. Every person, company, shareware maker, vendor, etc. is going to have a different opinion of where software should go. Just look at unix in general or even other distros (besides debian/ubuntu/gentoo). Apple can do it without few issues because they are the sole authority on their OS. What's the difference between MS and Apple again?

Re:Any idea...?

[marcello_dl]

Etch does not rip windows GUI, first because it is not tight to a particular GUI, only presenting some optional steps to newbies so that they start with a complete system. Also, IIRC kde default theme is not windows like.
I cannot speak for experience since my latest install was from woody, then started tracking sid.

TFA suggest the default desktop was gnome, that improves on macOS.

Personally i go for xfce and customize windowbar buttons for improved usability: close button on the left, all others to the right, which makes harder to close windows by accident. As a bonus the default cursor is black, which contrasts more on white document windows.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

I highly doubt those are the *reasons* they copied Windows. It seems more likely that copying Windows was the best they could do.

Linux lacks any useful means to list apps directly in the filesystem. Instead, like Windows, it needs a menu that references the applications, while hiding all the support files since it's not supported at the binary or filesystem level. You mention that you don't use a Windows theme. We're not talking about superficially copying Windows (same colors, same widget designs, etc). We're talking about the UI acting like Windows in fundamentally important ways.

If the designs behind KDE and/or GNOME are based on copying Windows as much as possible, I'd rather just use Windows (and trust me, I neither like, nor use, Windows).

What would make a better selling point?

A. Use Linux, the interface is just like Windows.
B. Use Linux, the interface is far superior to Windows.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

Well, I can't speak for how everyone else is using it, but I use Linux much the way I use Windows 2000 - each window is maximized, which makes it almost like one application == one desktop. I have some sort of button in the corner I push to start stuff.

I think you're highlighting a fundamental UI flaw with Windows and whatever desktop system you are using in Linux.

The reason people tend towards full-screen windows is that the UI naturally leads to it. I highly prefer how OS X works, which naturally leads to having multiple windows open at once, more readily accessible than being hidden behind a full-screen window and a crowded task bar.

I realize different people will like different UIs, but I personally *really* like having multiple windows open at once, unobscured by a full-screen window.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

I've used just about every X11 desktop there is, and their UIs do vary quite a bit. But there are four general types:

1. TWM (FVWM and Enlightenment are essentially more advanced variations of the style)
2. Windows clones (GNOME and KDE fall into this category, which, incidentally, is what the OP was referring to)
3. NeXT clones
4. "Experimental" desktops

Limiting our discussion to KDE and GNOME, adding tabs and a desktop pager do not change the underlying UI design, they merely augment it. Both UIs are very much derived from the Windows UI.

Re:Any idea...?

[marcello_dl]

> But the better they get at copying the Windows look and feel, the less reason there is to switch.

I think the opposite is true. Non geek users don't want to be bothered with unfamiliar environments. Geeks hopefully know the UI variety and adaptability of linux UIs.

When forced to upgrade XP at work i'll suggest trying out kde with the most xp-like look before shelling out $$$ to run vista on old hardware, i won't show them a fancy compiz desktop.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

Linux advocates love to deride OS X for "eye candy", but in OS X, pretty much all eye candy serves a purpose, makes things easier, and doesn't significantly degrade the user experience.

Yet constantly, the Linux crowd comes up with nonsensical things, like the "cube" desktop. The irony is the "cube" desktop is an actual case of eye candy over substance.

The cube adds only one usability enhancement, which is to make working with virtual desktops more graphically usable. No longer do you have to deal with little rectangles, you can actually *see* the actual desktop, live, and interact with the windows on the desktops.

The problems it introduces are you can long longer see the entirety of your virtual desktops. By the very nature of the cube, you can only see, at most, three desktops at once, although more realistically, two. And even with two, they are going to be highly deformed.

With a cube, you also loose any universal spatial perspective. With a grid, the top-left is always top-left. Center is always center. Etc. With the cube, all positions are relative. This might seem superior (less restrictive) at a superficial glance, but in the long run, it makes the UI less usable.

If you want to look at the "cube" desktop done right, look at the pager in OS X. Full 3d interactivity on a 2d plane. The 3d cube does look 10x cooler, but you lose in usability what you gain in looks.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

Suprisingly, linux separates userland utilities already - well at least debian does. Check your /usr/bin folder and compare to /usr/sbin. Alternatively, compare /sbin and /bin.

utilities (by which you mean "command-line utilities" != Applications.

The reason it doesn't work so well to do it the way you suggested is because there is a lot of gray area. Every person, company, shareware maker, vendor, etc. is going to have a different opinion of where software should go.

That's not the problem, that's the symptom. The problem is *that there's no specific place for them to put things*. Linux would gain 100-fold in usability were it to embrace application and framework/library bundles.

Apple can do it without few issues because they are the sole authority on their OS.

WTF? Ubuntu is the sole authority on its OS. RedHat is the sole authority on its OS. Debian is the.. well, you get the picture.

What's the difference between MS and Apple again?

WTF? take 2. That doesn't even make any sense in the normal way "Apple == MS" doesn't make sense.

Re:Any idea...?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might not realize this, but OS X has those directories too. They're where all the BSD userland apps are kept. You're free to install apps there if you'd like. As always on unix systems, that's not exactly considered a best practice. The /local or /usr/local hierarchies are better places.

The real reason why the /Applications hierarchy is useful is because Apple came up with a nice packaging system to hide the internals of an application. In effect, an application is a directory containing an executable and all its support files. This abstraction allows for a slick interface. Click an icon and your executable is run. The abstraction also means that you can put an application bundle anywhere on your system and it will run. teTeX is similar. It lives in my /usr/local/teTeX hierarchy, but can easily mv the teTeX hierarchy anywhere if I want to.

As a comparison: I have about 1400 executables in my $PATH directories. About 800 of those are BSD and Apple subsystem utilities. I have about 100 applications in my /Applications folder (organized by type -- Sound, Video, and Graphics; Internet; and so on).

Re:Any idea...?

[RAMMS EIN]

``Quite frankly, dress it up as OS X or whatever "new paradigm"''

Which is really the NEXTSTEP UI with extra eye candy and some minor changes, and, IIRC, NEXTSTEP preceded Windows 95 by two years, to say nothing of Windows XP - or whatever Windows version the grandparent claims GNOME and KDE are copying.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

Well, for two reasons. The first is that it makes it easier for new users to switch to GNU/Linux, and the second is that it is a pretty good system (*gasp*).

Wrong and wrong.

Your first reason makes no sense. Who's going to switch to an OS whose UI just a bad copy of another bad UI?

Your second reason is even worse. The Windows system is not pretty good. It's "good enough".

For example, my setup is as follows:

Shuffling widgets around and changing text does not fundamentally change the UI.

Two things that are highly broken in the Windows (and GNOME and KDE) UI are the Start menu and the task bar. Moving them around the screen does not fix their flaws.

In response to your first answer above, the reason the Linux UIs copy Windows is that the filesystem layout and application format of Linux is very much like Windows, leading to Windows-like end-user metaphors. In Linux, you *have* to have a Start menu (or some analog). You can't just have an Applications folder, or any other automatically-updated application browser like you can in OS X.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

That and everyone forgets you can move your taskbars around, resize them, and make it look JUST LIKE OSX.

Looks != functionality.

Re:Any idea...?

[node 3]

TFA suggest the default desktop was gnome, that improves on macOS.

GNOME does not "improve on macOS(sic)"

It relates to Mac OS in two, and only two, ways.

1. Nautilus is spatial, like the old Mac OS Finder.
2. GNOME has a set of HIGs that are intended to provide usability.

If anything, GNOME is like starting with the Windows UI and trying to make it as usable as a Mac.

Re:Any idea...?

[fimbulvetr]

utilities (by which you mean "command-line utilities" != Applications.

See what I meant about everyone has a different opinion? What's the difference between an application and a utility?

That's not the problem, that's the symptom. The problem is *that there's no specific place for them to put things*. Linux would gain 100-fold in usability were it to embrace application and framework/library bundles.

The problem goes much deeper than not having a standardized location, it's that types of programs can, and often do, bleed over into other definitions.

Linux does use libraries/frameworks. In addition to the ones already used, many have died for one reason or another, mostly due to software darwinism.

WTF? Ubuntu is the sole authority on its OS. RedHat is the sole authority on its OS. Debian is the.. well, you get the picture.

The named distros all follow http://www.pathname.com/fhs/. They are the sole authoritity, indeed. They have, however, all decided to follow the same standards. That's more than most OSs can claim.

WTF? take 2. That doesn't even make any sense in the normal way "Apple == MS" doesn't make sense.

They share a similarity in that there are no clear formal rules for what goes where. With debian, I'm all but guaranteed that the package I install from the repos follows all debian guidelines and has predictable locations for files. With OSX and Windows, the applications/utilities I install are all installed with the values the author decided.

To sum up: The difference between application and utility is very hard to gauge. It'd be ridiculous and error-prone to separate them out, so just group them together and be done with it. Maybe 10 years down the road computer science course will decide which end to cut the hard boiled egg on (big end or little end?) and we can make a new folder for apps. Maybe we can even call it "app" without the CAPITAL so we can keep our pinky usage to a minimum (no pun intended).

Re:Any idea...?

[zsau]

In Linux, you *have* to have a Start menu (or some analog). You can't just have an Applications folder, or any other automatically-updated application browser like you can in OS X.

Umm... Perhaps if you're running Gnome or KDE, but that's no fault of the kernel. (Remember: Mac OS X is on top of a unix-like underpinning, so whatever it can do, Linux, in principle, can too.)

For instance, I use a ROX desktop on a single-user box. When I find a new ROX program, I save it to ~/apps/(location)/ folder, and then I run it. If I don't like it, I right click and choose delete. (If I do like it, I change its ownership so that I can't accidentally modify it/nothing else can, either, but that's probably paranoid.) My ~/apps folder is always up-to-date.

There's also GNUStep, which I had a play with yesterday. It seems to be less flexible WRT where programs are saved (I tried to move GNUMail.app to ~/apps/Network/GNUMail, and it didn't work), but the /usr/lib/GNUStep/System/Applications folder is always an up-to-date list.

This is the case because both ROX and GNUstep use something like AppDirs, where the whole program is stored under a single folder, and the UI makes it look like you click the folder to run the program.

Now, it's unfortunate that neither the ROX Desktop nor GNUStep are self-contained environments, so if you want an office suite you have to look elsewhere, so in practice it's difficult to have an auto-updated folder, and I've manually copied a few .desktop files like sol.desktop to ~/apps/Games/Solitare, but in principle it's entirely possible.

Re:Any idea...?

[HairyCanary]

If I had to pick the one thing I appreciate the most about OSX, it is the portability of the applications. Drag the Firefox icon from the installer image to the applications folder and you're done. Or put it somewhere else of your choice, whatever floats your boat. Everything needed to run that application is contained within that "icon". Really it's a folder, not a file, and so there is great flexibility in the data that can be contained within.

Right there I think OSX has one-upped both Windows and Linux. Never install anything, per se. And with disk space and bandwidth both being fairly plentiful these days, let's move away from shared libraries for everything that isn't seriously fundamental to the OS. Windows applications can do way too much damage to each other by way of the system32 folder IMO. And the registry... well, we don't even need to talk about that ;-). For Unix, the whole "dump it all in /usr/local/bin" irritates the crap outta me. Great, so when I want to nuke it later on or upgrade it, how do I know I got it all?

I used to hate MacOS. But I gotta say they made some really well thought out changes to OSX that are a generation ahead of what other OS's are doing at this time.

Re:Any idea...?

[Propaganda13]

C. Use Linux, you can use a familiar interface or a different one. Your choice.

Car Analogy
A. Use Car UX, it has a steering wheel.
B. Use Car UX, it has a new fangled control and no steering wheel. Hopefully, you don't crash while you get used to it.
C. Use Car UX, use the steering wheel or new fangled control. Your choice.

BTW, the guy actually CHOSE KDE since it's not a default.

Most people I know just want the OS to run the programs they want and to know where to click to get those programs to run.

Re:Any idea...?

[WilliamSChips]

As somebody who prefers Linux but has to use Windows for certain things, let me tell you that consistency between interfaces is a bad thing. Having it be just a liiiiiiiittle bit different fucks with your muscle memory.

Re:Any idea...?

[WilliamSChips]

That analogy only holds if turning Car UX's steering wheel causes the wheels to turn in the opposite direction from the usual when the car is in reverse as "familiar" interfaces in Linux are actually just similar enough to fuck with your muscle memory.

Re:Any idea...?

[evilviper]

Totally off topic, but the real question in my mind is why do the two most popular GUI's for Linux insist upon copying Windows in the first place?

Cause and effect???

Why are GNOME/KDE the two most popular GUIs? Could it be BECAUSE they copy Windows?

OSX provded that you do not need a start button to have a good GUI.

I'd say GNOME (default layout) is much more MacOS-like, than it is Windows-like.

And XFce seems to be up-and-comming. Perhaps we'll see more than just the "fast" or "mini" distros shipping with XFce as the default WM soon.

Re:Any idea...?

[walt-sjc]

But the better they get at copying the Windows look and feel, the less reason there is to switch.

Why?

Maybe there are OTHER reasons to switch besides the GUI such as:

No Activation / Genuine (dis)Advantage
No DRM
Better security
Cost
Freedom of choice (more alternatives in packages / distros)
Easier administration of large numbers of systems (it's a well known fact that it takes less administrators per machine than windows)
etc., etc.

Re:Any idea...?

[tacocat]

Yes it is, but NeXTstep was worth ripping off.

And since there is no NeXTstep, why not?

Re:Any idea...?

[alphamugwump]

Right there I think OSX has one-upped both Windows and Linux. Never install anything, per se. And with disk space and bandwidth both being fairly plentiful these days, let's move away from shared libraries for everything that isn't seriously fundamental to the OS.

Oh, yeah, let's go back about 50 years, and link everything in at compile time. Hell, why use an operating system at all, why not ship every program with it's own frikin KERNEL. After all, disk space, ram, and bandwidth are cheap, right? Seriously, shipping a program with its dependencies is PRIMITIVE; it's bloody redundant, and you have to download the same shitty libraries over and over again.

Windows applications can do way too much damage to each other by way of the system32 folder IMO. And the registry... well, we don't even need to talk about that ;-). For Unix, the whole "dump it all in /usr/local/bin" irritates the crap outta me. Great, so when I want to nuke it later on or upgrade it, how do I know I got it all?

Windows has no package manager. OSX attempts to use the filesystem as a package manager, leading to redundancy. Linux actually has a package manager, which is how you know you "Got it all"; you track what you put in, so you can remove it later. Incidentally, this also enables much more complicated stuff; installing a server will automatically set up that server. It also is infinitely more safe than just going in there and deleting stuff. Furthermore, it also centralizes distribution and upgrades. On windows (and probably the mac, too, I don't know) each application uses installs a little daemon that checks for updates when the system boots up. This is fine, until you have Windows, AVG, ZoneAlarm, QuickTime, RealPlayer, and God knows what all trying to check for updates at the same time over your crappy dialup connection. On Debian, you can update your system with a cron job that runs at midnight, out of sight and mind.

Forget Debian. You know what I want? A P2P package manager. Packages should be signed by the devs (Debian has this already, this is yet another reason for package managers). Once seeded, updates would spread virally across the network. You wouldn't need to give a shit about the legality of your mplayer package; you would just go get it. Anyone could easily build and distribute packages, and it would truly be an open distro.

Re:Any idea...?

[turbidostato]

"The GUI is one of the reasons they stick with windows."

So it were, they would never migrate from Windows 3.1 GUI to Windows 95, nor from Windows 95 to Windows XP.

The two reasons I hear the most about sticking on windows are:
1) Windows-only apps
2) Windows-only apps

Re:Any idea...?

[turbidostato]

"If it has the "same" UI as Windows, then the UI ceases to be a reason to switch?"

Yes, of course. Why somebody would change just to stay the same?

"I thought and felt that the UI differences were more of a challenge against my decision to switch than an incentive"

Then, the most you can say is that having the same GUI wouldn't be a deterrent for you to change but it's obvious it's not a decision maker either!

-Why do you use Magick Soap instead of Ultrawhite soap?
-Uhhh... because Magick Soap cleans the same, costs the same and I can find it exactly in the same shops than Ultrawhite.

No: you make your decision (either to stay or to move) because of the *differences*.

Re:Any idea...?

[turbidostato]

"Maybe there are OTHER reasons to switch besides the GUI"

Of course there are, so what?

We are not talking now about all these OTHER differences, but THIS ONE. Evidently you are not going to move (if at all) because the many things that are equal, but because the ones that are different. So if the GUI was different and now it's the same there's obviously one reason less to change, no matter how many OTHER reasons still stay.

Re:Any idea...?

[IpalindromeI]

Why don't you just use your pager and drag the small picture of the app to another desktop? Doesn't everyone using virtual desktops use a graphical pager?

The whole cube thing seems whizz-bang, but not particularly productive.

Re:Any idea...?

[IpalindromeI]

Linux advocates love to deride OS X...
Yet constantly, the Linux crowd comes up with nonsensical things...

This type of comment is worthless. The "Linux crowd" is not the Borg. It's made up of people with different tastes and interests. Some of them don't like aspects of OS X, and some of them do. It's not a contradiction.

Re:Any idea...?

[IpalindromeI]

In Linux, you *have* to have a Start menu (or some analog).

I don't have one. I have a couple shortcut icons for commonly used programs and that's it. Uncommonly used programs are started from a command line widget next to my clock.

Re:Any idea...?

[slocan]

"If it has the "same" UI as Windows, then the UI ceases to be a reason to switch?"

Yes, of course. Why somebody would change just to stay the same?

The question above was a rhetoric one. To emphasize the point being made that when changing from Windows to GNU/Linux, the main reason isn't the UI, but the freedoms of the GPL. I.e. the UI isn't a reason to switch.

Furthermore the point being made was that GNU/Linux's UI is rather a challenge or barrier to a switcher-would-be, because it is different. It's a difference that demotivates switchers because it imposes (re)learning procedures, common and new.

On the other hand, your counter-question -- Why somebody would change just to stay the same? -- could lead someone to think that if the UI is the same, or similar, then changing from Windows to GNU/Linux, would be "staying the same". The main difference isn't the UI, it's the GPL freedoms and the development model. These are the first reasons (together with their many implications) to switch to GNU/Linux.

"I thought and felt that the UI differences were more of a challenge against my decision to switch than an incentive"

Then, the most you can say is that having the same GUI wouldn't be a deterrent for you to change but it's obvious it's not a decision maker either!

-Why do you use Magick Soap instead of Ultrawhite soap?
-Uhhh... because Magick Soap cleans the same, costs the same and I can find it exactly in the same shops than Ultrawhite.

No: you make your decision (either to stay or to move) because of the *differences*.

In my case, if the UI were the same, I would still have changed. And with less worry with having to relearn how to do (UI-wise) what I had already mastered in Windows, because my main reasons to change were the GPL freedoms and the GNU/Linux security.

But for others, the different UI could well be a deterrent, and, therefore, a decision maker. And that deterrence is what some try to avert by making the UI more similar with what people are used to with Windows.

However, after having used GNU/Linux, I must say it's UI does have features I miss when I have to use Windows. Simple things, as having multiple workplaces and shading windows. As well as more innovative GUI features of XGL/Beryl, which have gradually become features I depend on for organizing my work, and that Windows lacks.

These innovative UI features are differences that could additionally motivate a switcher. This is another GNU/Linux UI development strategy: (A) making the UI a reason to switch, instead of (B) making the UI not be a deterrent to switch. This one (B) is more simple, since it doesn't require innovation, but only mimicking the most common UI features. It can be more effective, in the short-term, but it doesn't add value.

Developing an innovative albeit different UI adds much more value, and can well add up to the GPL Freedoms and the GNU/Linux development model as a reason to switch. This strategy (A) has more of a personality and, I think, would be more in the interest of those who actually use GNU/Linux: to have an improved, innovative and intelligent UI.

As soon as such innovative UI features become stable they should also be advocated as reasons to switch. Then the UI would be a decision maker motivator towards switching, because of it's values instead of it's absence of dissimilarities. Nevertheless, having to relearn OS managing procedures will always be a deterrent in some degree, for demanding time and productivity losses. These could be offset by gained time and productivity made possible by innovative intelligent features.

On an old laptop?

[Jim Buzbee]

How about installing Debian Etch on an NSLU2?

Re:On an old laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

warning, this thing is fun, small, usb2, well supported for debian, but SLOW AS F***
i was gonna use it to host my webserver but ended up going back to my desktop.
i am waiting for a cobalt qube3..

Re:On an old laptop?

[Briareos]

Well, duh... 266MHz and 32MB RAM - what did you expect?

If you were using Apache - try using something a bit more lightweight, like lighttpd...

np: Kaito - Holding A Baby (Hundred Million Love Years)

Fine and all but

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad?

The real question is: what happens when non-popular-linux-website folks attempt to install a Debian Etch on an old thinkpad? I'm not sure the report would be so peachy...

Re:Fine and all but

[frdmfghtr]

The real question is: what happens when non-popular-linux-website folks attempt to install a Debian Etch on an old thinkpad? I'm not sure the report would be so peachy...

Good question...and the answer, my friend, explains why Linux won't make it to the mainstream desktop for quite some time. I'm going to focus my comments on hitting a particular target audience, and neglect the technical/security superiority of one platform over another.

FTA:

Tops on my list of applications are Firefox and Thunderbird, and I always get rid of modified versions and substitute the pristine versions direct from Mozilla.org. So I downloaded both, unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/, where Debian likes to keep them, and created symlinks in /usr/bin/ pointing to /usr/lib/firefox/firefox and /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird, where the system expects to find them.

I tried Firefox first, but it wouldn't load. I tried it again, this time by typing firefox from a console window, and noticed that the program was sending out an error message ("error while loading shared libraries") regarding a file called "libstdc++.so.5" that it either couldn't load or find. A quick bit of googling led me to install the missing library, using the command (as root): apt-get install libstdc++5. Thankfully, that was all it took to get the pure, Mozilla.org-supplied Firefox running on my desktop.

Two points of interest here:

(1) The author had to create symbolic links to make Firefox and Thunderbird work.

(2) "A quick bit of googling" was required to get the missing library installed.

Read the first quoted paragraph again. Note the author had to unzip and untar the files into the directory "where Debian likes to keep them," and make the symlinks where "where the system expects to find them." Does the Debian distro put Firefox and Thunderbird in a different directory than the Ubuntu or Fedora? How about Slackware?

Lots of Linux fans berate Microsoft for stooping to the lowest common denominator, i.e. the common user, when it comes to making Windows more or less configurable. These same Linux fans point out that most users are just doing Web surfing, e-mail, word processing, and playing multimedia files/viewing photos--activities that don't require knowledge on configuring user permissions or defining firewall rules or any other low-level ("low level" as in base system) settings.

If these users are the ones that the Linux community are trying to get to migrate to Linux, there's a long road ahead of them. These "commoners" aren't going to know about installing libraries, or making symbolic links because "the system" expects the files in one locations but that particular distro "like them" somewhere else. Here's the real kicker; they don't CARE about these things. They want to read and send e-mail. They want to look at Web pages. They want to look at the pictures taken with their digital cameras. They know "click the setup.exe" files and the installation takes care of the rest, including installing other library files that may be needed. Click the desktop icon, and your program starts.

You want the masses to migrate to Linux? Make application installations "point and click" operations, including all necessary dependency checks and library installations as part of that initial click of the mouse button. Installing apps has to be that easy. There's no getting around it. Computers are no longer the domain for the tech-savvy (and haven't been for some time) and have to be made easy to use, like a television or microwave oven. Computers are a commodity, not an oddity.

Before you go off accusing me of being a MS apologist or fanboy, note that the only thing I use Windows for is playing a couple of games on rare occasion. The rest of time I'm on an OS X platform. I've used Linux in some research projects and tried to convert comp

Re:Fine and all but

[krmt]

You want the masses to migrate to Linux? Make application installations "point and click" operations, including all necessary dependency checks and library installations as part of that initial click of the mouse button. Installing apps has to be that easy.

Using an apt frontend of your choice really is that easy though. This author has gone out of his way to do things in a weird way, the same way it would be weird and difficult to set up an apt-like system for windows. That's what has made it hard for him. Installing software on Debian is insanely easy, provided you don't try and do things in a bizarre way, same as any other system. Just because you consider double-clicking setup.exe more normal than running synaptic doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things. People can and will learn if they make the move.

Re:Fine and all but

[jb.hl.com]

Using an apt frontend of your choice really is that easy though.

If, however, the app you want isn't available via apt in the way you like (e.g. you want to use Firefox and not Firepandadovebollocks that Debian ships now...dunno why but last time I tried Linux that really irritated me, possibly a bit more than not being able to get my surround sound working properly) or it isn't available in apt at all (mplayer anyone?), or you need to add extra repositories (which is NOT going to be easy to do for a newbie)...you may be slightly fuct.

Put it another way: if I want to play DVDs in 5.1 surround in VLC, here's how it works on Windows XP:

1. Download VideoLAN installer
2. Run VideoLAN installer
3. Click Next a few times until the installer finishes
4. Go into Windows' speaker settings and change the speaker type to 5.1 surround (which has a little descriptive picture to make it nice and clear) and click OK a few times.
4. Run VideoLAN and play my DVD, with surround sound working

I recently tried to do the same on Debian, and this is precisely how it went:

1. apt-get install vlc
2. Run VideoLAN client, try and play DVD
3. Notice that it crashes every time giving no cause or reason
3a. Smash with hammer
4. Google with the only real error message I get, which has nothing to do with DVDs
5. Find out that libdvdcss is required, and it's on an additional repository, so edit sources.list and apt-get update
5a. Realise that any sane person would have given up at step 3
6. Apt-get install libdvdcss (or whatever the precise package name is, I forget)
7. Run VLC, find out that my DVD plays now...in stereo
8. Play with volume settings and read lots of stuff about alsa.conf via Google
9. After much futzing, work out that ALSA outputs the rear to the subwoofer and vice versa for no explicable reason, so I had to swap the cables round
10. Watch my DVD, only with a pisspoor slow CPU-intensive picture because I haven't installed the NVidia drivers yet, which is yet another rigamarole

For its part, Xine (or at least Kaffeine) was even worse; that just crashed whenever I tried to play a 5.1 DVD. Now; which will be easier for a new person? For most people, over the phone I could tell them to go to VideoLAN.org and click the big Download link, and then tell them where in the Control Panel to go to enable surround. Can I do that on Debian? No. I'd have to explain to them how to edit sources.list, which commands to type in, when to type them in...you get my point.

This isn't just APT though, it's a lot of things. Why does ALSA change the subwoofer and rear plugs around for example? Where is the simple clicky box that changes the speaker settings from Stereo to 5.1? And I understand the licensing implications of including libdvdcss, but...well, who outside Slashdot is going to take "Well, it's the big bad mean MPAA" as an explanation for why getting DVDs working is such a pain in the ass?

Sorry for the length, it being Christmas I may have drunk a little bit too much Hobgoblin (or, I'm sure a few people are lining up to say, "the Kool-Aid") ;)

Re:Fine and all but

[Kjella]

Two points of interest here:

No, the only point of interest here: He wanted to do something way outside what normal people would. He wanted to manually unpack and install software outside the distro's packaging and even outside normal packaging for Debian over a trademark dispute. Even of the few that knows, most of us don't care and maybe a few even like Debian "making RMS look soft" Legal. And it's so most definately in the category of "nice to have", if not "get a life". Would it be a showstopper if he couldn't do it? Hell no, they're installed and fully functional. This is in the big picture of linux adoption about as relevant as the vi/emacs flamewars.

Re:Fine and all but

[NDPTAL85]

Of course double clicking setup.exe is the right way to do things. You are talking youself out of common sense. Self installing programs are the easist to install. Anything else is an advocacy for more effort than is necessary. Its a free country so thats your right, but it is the silly way to do things.

Re:Fine and all but

[MostAwesomeDude]

Huh. I'm not sure if you should be Informative or Troll. Anyway, I'll bite.

So, Nvidia drivers aren't all that bad. There's a nice installer for them nowadays that you can download from their site. Same for ATI. Not really that big of a deal; you have to do it on Windows, too.

DVDs are a bit of a pain, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be. You can add sources to your APT list from within most package managers (in a GUI), and you only have to add one source to make it work.

If your 5.1 actually works magically in Windows XP, then I congratulate you, because my nice SB card never bothered to correctly work in Windows. Only the ALSA drivers could make it go into surround or digital mode.

My steps for DVDs on Etch:

* Go to ATI's site, and get the ATI driver package.
* Install ATI drivers.
* Load the fglrx kernel module, and restart the X server. (You could reboot instead, but my BIOS is too slow to boot for my patience.)
* Open up KPackage.
* Add VLC's repository to APT sources from KPackage.
* Download and install vlc and libdvdcss.
* Insert DVD and open VLC.

Not actually that bad of a process.

Oh, also, it says on the download page for VLC that you cannot play DVDs in Linux without libdvdcss. I'm not really sure how you missed that the first time...

Re:Fine and all but

[jb.hl.com]

So, Nvidia drivers aren't all that bad. There's a nice installer for them nowadays that you can download from their site. Same for ATI. Not really that big of a deal; you have to do it on Windows, too.

Installing the drivers on Linux using NVidia's installer requires dropping down to a console (already a daunting prospect for a newbie), making sure you have all the correct kernel sources/headers (non-trivial on Debian, considering the number of linux-headers packages available), and then running the installer. If the system GCC version and the kernel GCC version agree, then the drivers will install, otherwise it's more non-obvious apt-getting for Joe User. Of course, Debian provides packages for the NVidia drivers; they're just broken packages though, because nvidia-kernel-common doesn't appear to exist on apt. Ubuntu's packages, admittedly, work, but this is Debian we're talking here, not Ubuntu.

On Windows, you go to Nvidia's site, choose Download Drivers, choose your version of Windows and your card, click Download and then run the file and follow the prompts. Again, in terms of ease, Windows wins.

You can add sources to your APT list from within most package managers (in a GUI), and you only have to add one source to make it work.

I know full well that you can add sources in Synaptic etc, but how is a newbie supposed to know this? How is someone who has just hopped over from Windows or Mac supposed to know jack shit about source lists and how to add sources? They want to download applications, they won't care what a source list is! It may be obvious for you or me, but it won't be for someone whose idea of software installation is "download, click next a few times and run".

If your 5.1 actually works magically in Windows XP, then I congratulate you, because my nice SB card never bothered to correctly work in Windows.

Admittedly, my SB Live never worked on Windows XP either (I ascribe this to the complete and total suck of Creative in not allowing free download of their drivers, so I had to use shitty and likely incompatible drivers).

Load the fglrx kernel module, and restart the X server. (You could reboot instead, but my BIOS is too slow to boot for my patience.)
Add VLC's repository to APT sources from KPackage.

Uh-huh, but, did you have to quit X? If so, how is a newbie supposed to know how to stop GDM/KDM, install the drivers and restart the X server? How do they know if they have the kernel headers installed or not? If not, how would they know how to install them?

Do they actually know what a repository is? Do they know what goes in which box? How do you expect them to do this? All this is *not obvious*. On Windows, again, you go to NVidia/ATI/VLC's shiny website, click a download link, run the file you've downloaded and boom, you can now play DVDs/use 3D graphics (hell, I didn't even need to install extra video drivers to get tolerable video playback under XP!). None of this repository/killing X/kernel header business will make any sense to a newcomer. It's convoluted and longwinded. A typical user (as well as myself) would rather just click and go.

Oh, also, it says on the download page for VLC that you cannot play DVDs in Linux without libdvdcss. I'm not really sure how you missed that the first time...

Because I was using APT. The be-all-and-end-all for software installation, remember?

Re:Fine and all but

[MostAwesomeDude]

Because I was using APT. The be-all-and-end-all for software installation, remember?

Oh, is VLC back in the main repo? Sweet. Mine comes from the VLC repository. On the VLC front page, click "Debian Linux" under installs, and follow the directions. About as painful as, say, fetching .NET or MFC libraries for the first time on Windows.

Uh-huh, but, did you have to quit X? If so, how is a newbie supposed to know how to stop GDM/KDM, install the drivers and restart the X server? How do they know if they have the kernel headers installed or not? If not, how would they know how to install them?

I remember quite well that restarting a Windows computer is standard procedure after installing new video drivers. A reboot is adequate on Linux as well, no console-work needed. I just tend to avoid restarts on this computer due to a laggy BIOS which adds about 90 seconds to every cold boot.

I am trying desperately to remember if build-essential is still automatically installed by the Debian installer. However, I do remember for sure that kbuild is included with the stock kernels, and at least the ATI installer automatically builds the kernel modules when installing via the GUI. No out-of-console work is needed; even if the build package is not there, you can request it through your package manager.

Re:Fine and all but

[Anonymous Coward]

He wanted to do something way outside what normal people would. He wanted to manually unpack and install software outside the distro's packaging and even outside normal packaging for Debian

Yeah, what a freak. Every knows if it isn't in Debians repositories no one could possibly want it, right? What a moron!

Everyone knows Linux is dead easy DON'T TOUCH THAT!. Ohh, too bad...

Re:Fine and all but

[MobyTurbo]

Because I was using APT. The be-all-and-end-all for software installation, remember?

Oh, is VLC back in the main repo? Sweet. Yes, at least its in etch. Hmm, looking at this, it's in all the current versions of Debian: http://packages.debian.org/stable/graphics/vlc/

Mine comes from the VLC repository. On the VLC front page, click "Debian Linux" under installs, and follow the directions. About as painful as, say, fetching .NET or MFC libraries for the first time on Windows. Yep. I think the people who find Linux the most unfriendly are Windows power-users. The reason? They know all the ins and outs of the Windows way of doing things, so when things work differently in Linux, it's unexpected.

Re:Fine and all but

[krmt]

Funny, I don't think I've ever heard of setting up 5.1 Surround Sound as being something "average" people do. Most people tend to think "average" means doing things like writing in a word processor or checking email in a web browser or playing music. All of these work out of the box in Debian and any other linux system (mp3 codec issues aside, which aren't a "linux" problem, you can always pay for Linspire if you want those out of the box). The centralized Debian model works amazingly well for such people because it promotes a higher level of quality control than the average decentralized Windows installation. It's not perfect though. For most people, linux suits their needs just fine because they're not windows power users like you are.

There are definitely still problems, but a few years ago we didn't even have a web browser or hotpluggable automounting devices. Only a few months ago, we didn't have a reasonable rendering infrastructure to compete with OSX or vista. If nothing else, Linux pushes forward and breaks barriers one by one. It's ready for a lot of desktops right now, and it'll be ready for even more in the coming years.

Re:Fine and all but

[zsau]

(b) You're criticising Mozilla there. Why does Mozilla make it so hard to install Firefox? Third-party apps for GNU/Linux can be installed as simply as downloading and extracting a folder, and putting it wherever you want: The folder looks like the program to the end user, much the same as Mac OS X's system. You can distribute programs with all libraries statically linked, or add versions into the program and add them to the end of the dynamic link library search path. There's absolutely no reason (aside perhaps from arrogance and stupidity) why third-party software distributors shouldn't be using something like AppDirs or Autopackages. But this is no fault of Debian's; it is a fault of the third-party software distributors.

(b) Less importantly, a normal user would almost certainly be happy with Debian's version of Firefox, I think. So this is hardly a normal example. (I don't like Firefox, so I'm not sure what the differences are, or how significant: Thus I could be a bit wrong. But I doubt such differences are enough for the normal user to notice.)

Re:Fine and all but

[Theolojin]

Two points of interest here:

(1) The author had to create symbolic links to make Firefox and Thunderbird work.

(2) "A quick bit of googling" was required to get the missing library installed.

Read the first quoted paragraph again. Note the author had to unzip and untar the files into the directory "where Debian likes to keep them," and make the symlinks where "where the system expects to find them." Does the Debian distro put Firefox and Thunderbird in a different directory than the Ubuntu or Fedora? How about Slackware?

The author indicated he downloaded and installed Firefox and Thunderbird. He did not use Debian's install mechanism to install the software. He got the apps directly from Mozilla. It is for this reason that he needed to create the necessary symbolic links and had to correct errors with libraries. This is not a Debian problem. The author installed "non-Debian" software and had to exert a bit of effort to get it to work problem.

You want the masses to migrate to Linux? Make application installations "point and click" operations, including all necessary dependency checks and library installations as part of that initial click of the mouse button. Installing apps has to be that easy.

Again, had the author simply used Debian's 'apt-get' method of installing, all of the extra work would have been unnecessary. If anything, his installation of Firefox and Thunderbird demonstrate the freedom of Linux, not the difficulty of it.

Re:Fine and all but

[mgbastard]

If these users are the ones that the Linux community are trying to get to migrate to Linux, there's a long road ahead of them. These "commoners" aren't going to know about installing libraries, or making symbolic links because "the system" expects the files in one locations but that particular distro "like them" somewhere else. Here's the real kicker; they don't CARE about these things. They want to read and send e-mail. They want to look at Web pages. They want to look at the pictures taken with their digital cameras. They know "click the setup.exe" files and the installation takes care of the rest, including installing other library files that may be needed. Click the desktop icon, and your program starts.

I'm one of those "commoners" who doesn't want to spend time searching out libraries to install and making symlinks to get apps to work following installation.

These are all good points. These are the reasons that the masses would end up with ubuntu, redhat, suse, linspire, or the like. Debian is hardly a grandma's linux distro. It's not like we should expect gentoo or bleeding edge fedora to end up on your girl's toshiba $799 laptop as-is!

So let's at least make comparisons and expectations of polished linux distro that has bothered to make ease-of-use for a neophyte a priority. The Debian guys just aren't there for that sort of user, and there's nothing really wrong with that, at the moment. Now, if the user-friendly company boys make inroads and achieve real market acceptance: Then a truly, through and through libre project like Debian can bother with all that extra engineering that would be required.

Or if you don't care too much about having a 100% pure libre OS, you can have the Apple flavor of BSD UNIX for the masses...

Re:Fine and all but

[frdmfghtr]

Again, had the author simply used Debian's 'apt-get' method of installing, all of the extra work would have been unnecessary. If anything, his installation of Firefox and Thunderbird demonstrate the freedom of Linux, not the difficulty of it.

Not being familiar with 'apt-get,' how does that work? Does the application need to be in some sort of Debian-maintained database? (I ask because I really don't know; the only install package I have any experience with is RPM, and that was before Fedora came into being, to give you an idea of the time.)

If it is a Debian-maintained database, what if the app you want isn't in that database?

Re:Fine and all but

[CAIMLAS]

maybe the solution to package woes is for there to be a standard 'commercial' package type or translation API which could transliterate paths from the default to the distro default. It'd be straightforward enough, I think: just have a directive for man, bin, sbin, lib, etc. which deals with those file types as is the distro's standard way of dealing with things - and it'd be easy enough to test on a couple mainstream distros. Test on debian, mandrake, and whatever else is primarily popular (ubuntu? I don't do linux much these days), I'd think, and be reasonably certain it'd work on all the derivatives without modification. Seems we've gotten pretty standardized in general since 2000. Only odd-man-out I can think of would be Slack, or maybe Gentoo, and even most hardcore linux users avoid those due to practicality.

The other solution is to have simple meta packages which fetch the requisite proprietary packages - ala gentoo - and standardize something for the proprietary package makers - an API, complete with EULA and what have you, presented to the user either through CLI or GUI - to provide interface to.

Re:Fine and all but

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Tops on my list of applications are Firefox and Thunderbird, and I always get rid of modified versions and substitute the pristine versions direct from Mozilla.org. So I downloaded both, unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/, where Debian likes to keep them, and created symlinks in /usr/bin/ pointing to /usr/lib/firefox/firefox and /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird, where the system expects to find them.

In other words, he knew that Debian modified the Mozilla code and cared enough to get the originals. A newbie would not have attempted to replace this, and would have used the bundled variants just fine. No symlinks or DLL^WSO hell to worry about.

Re:Fine and all but

[just_another_sean]

You know you picked the one thing where the guy said: I'm cool, I know what I'm doing, I don't want to use the already- configured-thus-so-easy-my-mom-could-find-it version of Firefox and TBird.

If this guy needed/wanted a browser and email client installed and ready without having to screw with symlinks or shared libraries then he could have had them. But he chose not to, he knew how to get what he wanted instead and spent a little effort compared with installing the packages made for the OS.

Just like in Windows a guy like me who knows what's he doing can change the default HTML editor to something better then Notepad and can change the default browser to something besides IE. Oh but don't forget when you do this that some programs won't play nice with files with spaces so don't forget to set up the HTML edit command correctly (with quotes) or it won't always work. And remember to use IE for Windows Update.

My point is that any OS has quirks and pitfalls once you try to change the default behaviour. Yes, you can do it, and it can be very rewarding for the truly geeky but *most folks* just use what they're given. As soon as this guy said, "I only want the pristine version of Firefox" he became more then just *most folks*.

Re:Fine and all but

[Peter La Casse]

The real question is: what happens when non-popular-linux-website folks attempt to install a Debian Etch on an old thinkpad? I'm not sure the report would be so peachy...

Good question...and the answer, my friend, explains why Linux won't make it to the mainstream desktop for quite some time.

Mainstream users don't install operating systems. Whether or not Linux will ever be "the" mainstream desktop is no longer constrained by installation issues. Other factors, such as agreements between software and hardware suppliers, are more important.

Untarring, symlinking and googling for answers are easy for power users, who are the ones called upon to install operating systems.

Re:Fine and all but

[petrus4]

Even of the few that knows, most of us don't care and maybe a few even like Debian "making RMS look soft" Legal. And it's so most definately in the category of "nice to have", if not "get a life".

This is exactly the problem, as far as Linux ever becoming anything that could be called mainstream is concerned. Normal people simply don't (and have no desire to) share the Debian developers' sociopolitical perspectives...and although there *are* instances where I do feel that FOSS minority thinking is a good thing, virtually none of what I've seen of Debian's policy or unofficial attitude is, in my mind.

They don't care about things which in my own mind anywayz are genuinely important...all they really accomplish with their so-called moral stands is the alienation of potential new users/co-developers, and the continuation of Linux being associated in the mainstream mind with abnormal, retrograde people...because in the case of Debian in particular, it genuinely is. People outside Linux looking in though don't have any real way of knowing that there actually are normal, sane individuals using the operating system...people who don't subscribe to RMS/Debian's divisive, faux moral crusade. The main reason being is that the normal majority of users are silent...they're simply busy coding, getting tasks performed, and helping people...it's only the zealots who are so noisy, and so sadly, it's the zealots which form the impressions of people who don't know that the silent majority exist. I only know because I've seen them on Freenode and in other places myself.

The Debian developers don't do themselves any favours whatsoever...it's been said before that people are the only real resource we have...if they keep pushing people away with their zealotry and their determination to dictate how others think, eventually they're only going to choke off their own possible future...because eventually, the current generation of Debian devs will get old, get tired, burn out, and need new blood. If they don't start behaving in different ways, they're potentially going to find said new blood very difficult to find.

I am really desperately hoping that a time is eventually going to come where Linux as a kernel is the only thing that exists. Linux as a social movement needs to die...because if it doesn't, Linux as a kernel eventually could...and unlike the cult, the kernel is something which genuinely *is* worth preserving.

Get off your soap box, Debian...and start realising that if the way you think is genuinely beneficial to people, they'll adopt it themselves, of their own free will...the only reason why you and the FSF need to try and ram it down people's throats is because it isn't something which they actually *want*.

Re:Fine and all but

[smadasam]

Or, even worse yet, a brand-new laptop. It would seem that whenever I get a new laptop, it takes the kernel several months to catch up before bleeding edge hardware gets supported. Try getting a new Core 2 Memrom based laptop working with a 64 bit kernel. Most distros will not work without significant headaches.

Re:Fine and all but

[Ben Hutchings]

Debian developers in general are not "zealots". There are substantial differences of opinion among Debian developers over what licence terms Debian can accept, and what would be classified as non-free (which doesn't in itself mean we can't distribute it). The renaming of Mozilla applications is a result of some mistrust between Mozilla and Debian, which I don't really understand. Mozilla insists that modified versions of its applications can be distributed under the original trademarked names only if the source modifications have been approved by Mozilla. Debian and Ubuntu make various changes to Firefox to improve integration with other applications and to apply security fixes that were made in later versions separately from other less important changes. Ubuntu was able to gain permission to do this. Debian, for some reason, has been given an ultimatum to change the names or revert these changes. Given a choice between integration and stability or keeping the good name (but requiring our users to change it if they want to improve it), Debian and in particular the maintainers of these applications in Debian have chosen the former.

Surprisingly?

[RAMMS EIN]

``What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad? How does it turn out? Surprisingly well!''

Only if you don't know Debian and you don't know IBM ThinkPads. If you do know them, you know that Debian generally works really well. Of course, Linux support for laptop hardware isn't always stellar, but IBM seems to actually have made an effort to ensure their hardware, including ThinkPads, played nice with Linux. Alas, Lenovo seems to have no intention of continuing that tradition.

Re:Surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have read the article. At the very end he mentions that he couldn't get his wireless card recognized by linux. That's a pretty big deal to me, but the author mentions it at the very end. He is too busy ooh'ing and aah'ing about the fonts and graphics.

Re:Surprisingly?

[hahafaha]

That's a pretty big deal to me, but the author mentions it at the very end. He is too busy ooh'ing and aah'ing about the fonts and graphics.

Note the bolded text. If he is ``ooh'ing and aah'ing [sic] about the fonts and graphics'', then those are clearly important to him.

Re:Surprisingly?

[moronoxyd]

And you seem to have missed the fact that the WiFi card is not build into the Thinkpad, but a PCMCIA card. So the problem has NOTHING to do with IBM and ThinkPads. Same for the modem. So all the hardware that was build into the Tinkpad seemed to have worked properly.

Re:Surprisingly?

[mevans336]

Alas, Lenovo seems to have no intention of continuing that tradition. Oh no? Better tell them that: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7778908329.html

Re:Surprisingly?

[Somnus]

Lenovo does sell Linux pre-loaded (have to call for a T60p with Suse). However, I haven't seen much about installing other flavors of Linux on such machines.

Re:Surprisingly?

[cserindere]

The wifi card did work in other distros though as mentioned in TFA.

I just did that!

[EvanED]

I just did the exact same thing myself. I don't know what type of computer this guy had, but I installed Etch on a Thinkpad 390X this past Friday. (That's like a 5 year old at least model I got for $40 used...) It went suprisingly simply actually. It even detected my wireless card no problems, which really surprised me.

The only hitch in the procedure that is even sorta the fault of Linux is that I don't know how to get it so that the computer will hibernate/resume.

Re:I just did that!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The only hitch in the procedure that is even sorta the fault of Linux is that I don't know how to get it so that the computer will hibernate/resume.

Check out swsusp.

Re:I just did that!

[walt-sjc]

Whenever you have difficulty installing Linux, the general solution is to use google.

Oh my, look at that... The first result provides some clues...

Re:I just did that!

[Alan426]

I'm writing this on a Compaq 1700 running Xubuntu (Debian-based dist with lightweight XFCE windows manager). This is a PIII with 128M. This Linux runs faster and seems more stable than the W98SE it originally shipped with. No problem with the antique wireless card, either. I agree with the parent about sleep and hibernate modes. Power management doesn't seem to work, but I haven't spent much time messing with it.

Re:I just did that!

[massysett]

Check out swsusp

You linked to suspend2. Actually swsusp and suspend2 are different. swsusp is in the main sources from kernel.org. It suspends to disk. suspend2 also suspends to disk, but also has additional features like compression and eye candy. It is not in the main sources from kernel.org so you have to patch your kernel or see if your distro offers a kernel already patched with suspend2 sources (Gentoo does, for example.)

On another note, suspend to ram is built in to the main sources. There's only one implementation of that.

Configuring suspend can be time consuming trial and error. What I think we need is a laptop distro, or at least some sort of app that sees what kind of laptop you have and automatically configures suspend, multimedia buttons, wireless, and other things that are peculiar to laptops.

Re:I just did that!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a whole set of hitches. It works great, unless you're using SCSI, or a swapfile, or a graphics card it doesn't happen to like, or maybe USB, or ...

If you have a USB mouse and keyboard (like me), good luck with their "compile all your USB drivers in as modules, and unload them prior to suspending" advice.

Re:I just did that!

[StikyPad]

Linux working and detecting all hardware on a 5 year-old laptop isn't surprising in the least. What would be surprising was if you installed it without a hitch on a 5 month-old laptop.

As for your hitch, try apt-get install hibernate

Re:I just did that!

[xenocide2]

"Configuring suspend can be time consuming trial and error. What I think we need is a laptop distro, or at least some sort of app that sees what kind of laptop you have and automatically configures suspend, multimedia buttons, wireless, and other things that are peculiar to laptops."

I have a suspicion your recent Linux experiences have been colored by Gentoo, so I'll point out that Ubuntu's first goals were laptop related. The "laptop-detect" program is supposed to determine whether the system being installed to is a laptop or not. Suspend to swap works, suspend to RAM appears to not work at all on this hardware with nvidia modules installed. The wireless, the Fn-keys, and volume control all work out of the box for me, but understandably, these things are hit and miss. Testing laptops is expensive, hard, and even when you do find a bug, if you can't fix it, finding someone who has the hardware who can fix it may prove impossible.

There's still plenty of room for improvement, but I think you can accomplish the goals you're looking for without forking a yet another distro: the Ubuntu Laptop Testing Team aims to test, debug and improve laptop support on ubuntu. There's a already plenty of support infrastructure, so if anyone wants to help, there's the place to start. And if you need any help, it's also a good place to start!

Re:I just did that!

[dfsmith]

If you're using ACPI, try downgrading to linux-kernel-2.6.16. On my A31p, resume is broken on later kernels.

If you're just having general suspend dificulties, look up the ThinkWiki.

Re:I just did that!

[massysett]

The strange thing is that I switched to Gentoo so that I could get the laptop stuff working. At least Gentoo is well documented and configurable. I found no distro that worked perfectly with everything on my laptop, including Ubuntu. (I was especially disappointed with Ubuntu because it had no wpa support out of the box.) But this was one or two Ubuntu releases ago, so it has hopefully improved since then. I'lld definitely check out the Ubuntu laptop project, thanks.

Re:I just did that!

[xenocide2]

It's interesting that WPA didn't work out of the box; usually Ubuntu favors propriertary modules over inferior open ones for networking, simply because so much functionality relies on a working network connection that it's the only pragmatic thing to do. But I haven't tried WPA because I own some hardware (Nintendo DS) that doesn't support it yet, if ever. So maybe WPA's in a bad state and I don't know it.

for Dell Inspiron 1150

[rjdegraaf]

This page describes install of Debian Etch on Dell Inspiron 1150, including tweaks for Compiz and Truecrypt encryption.

Re:for Dell Inspiron 1150

[thePig]

This page describes install of Debian Etch on Dell Inspiron 1150, including tweaks for Compiz and Truecrypt encryption. Looks like this is where the author obtained most of his information.
Anyways, one issue I find with all of these installation guidelines is that they do not always talk about 915resolution etc.
I had installed ubuntu and debian sarge/etch in dell laptops, and every time I had to get the help of 915resolution to get the max resolution possible.
Issues I found in debian etch are -
1. 915resolution needed, as mentioned above.
2. Sound/Audio -esp in flash based sites like youtube. The problem is - this works randomly. Same site might come up proper the second time I restart.
3. Hanging while booting. This occurs every 5 times or so, so the issue is not the max priority. It hangs while detecting hardware. Googling also wasnt much of a help here.
4. Grub latency - Mine is a dual-boot with WinXP. The boot-loader takes ages (approx 3-4 minutes) to come up every time I boot from linux. But, if I were to boot only linux/windows for consecutive 3 times, then the boot loader comes up fast. Googling didnt help here too.

If such issues were all cleared up, I guess linux is ready for an average joe. Installation otherwise was pretty simple.

Re:for Dell Inspiron 1150

[rjdegraaf]

4. Grub latency - Mine is a dual-boot with WinXP. The boot-loader takes ages (approx 3-4 minutes) to come up every time I boot from linux. But, if I were to boot only linux/windows for consecutive 3 times, then the boot loader comes up fast. Googling didnt help here too.

Some cases, when it takes longer time to boot, turn out a problem with /etc/hosts when name resolution can not be done and lookup times out before continuing the init processes.

Re:for Dell Inspiron 1150

[krmt]

1. 915resolution needed, as mentioned above

This is an issue with the Xorg i810 driver, and it's being remedied there. A beta version of the driver (xserver-xorg-video-i810-modesetting) is already available in the Debian unstable branch, and it'll be ready by the next Debian release.

...and

[EvanED]

The only hitch in the procedure that is even sorta the fault of Linux is that I don't know how to get it so that the computer will hibernate/resume.

Oh yeah, and my sound card doesn't work.

Re:Ubuntu

[triikan]

So, should user begin to migrate from Debian... to Debian? Well, sure.

Well done...

[PreacherTom]

Beautiful title, OP. Well done.

Not that useful

[scheme]

The article is interesting and all but it's not that useful. Installing Etch on a laptop that has components more recent than a PIII 600mhz cpu would be a much useful writeup. Most people are working with much newer equipment and seeing how well Etch supports recent laptop hardware would be much more useful for them.

Re:Not that useful

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Etch on a Celeron 300 ThinkPad 240 with 192 MB of memory. It actually works pretty well; I can even play DVD-quality video. It's fine for browsing the Web, writing documents, and watching the odd video file. Would a faster computer be nice? Sure, and I'm getting one (mostly because the plastic on this one is disintegrating), but this one has served quite well, and I got it for the best price of all: free.

But...

[Klaidas]

Does this mean that year 2007 will be the YEAR OF LINUX DESKTOP?
I kid, i kid! =)

Re:But...

[borgalicious]

Linux Desktop 2.0!

Re:But...

[MobyTurbo]

Does this mean that year 2007 will be the YEAR OF LINUX DESKTOP?
I kid, i kid! =) RTFA! The article was about a laptop, not a desktop, so this means 2007 will be the Year of the Linux Laptop! ;-)

The Author Isn't Very Thourough

[gers0667]

I don't know about this article. The author wasn't able to completely fill his desktop with icons.

Re:The Author Isn't Very Thourough

[khedron the jester]

Agreed. KDE actually has a proper program menu - why does he feel the need to make his desktop just like my Windows one?

KDE

[christurkel]

My only complaint about KDE is the klutter of it--all the stuff in the menus and all the included apps. A nice slimmed down KDE would be nice.

Re:KDE

[fimbulvetr]

Agreed. The clutter is one if the reasons I switched to gnome. Uglyness was second. Kde _can_ be made to look pretty, but it takes a lot of tweaking. The default gnome on ubuntu is excellent, which is one of the reasons I use it. There is still some life left in kde, though. I am very much looking forward to 4, and I still use konsole and kopete on a daily basis. While gnome-terminal is alright, they still have some speeding up to do as well as some option tweaking (Like when you use your "next tab" left/right shortcut, why does it not wrap? When you enter in a new short cut like "alt-v" - remnants of my tera-term days - for paste in the preferences menu, it does unexpected things, etc.)

It's only when I see screenshots like the ones in that article that I realize just how much polish ubuntu puts in. Still not switching from debian on my servers, though.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Modular KDE is already in gentoo. I would guess in others too.

They will phase out the monolithic install shortly.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, gnome has always been UGLY beyond belief. It's so ugly, it drove me to use fluxbox.

Re:KDE

[captjc]

I have used Gnome for the longest time. I recently tried KDE (on Kubuntu). While I had an overall positive experience, my biggest complaint was that it just did not seem to have the usability of Gnome.

For instance, Power management was horrible compared to Gnome (I use a laptop). Installing themes also was also a pain. (Though not really a KDE complaint per se) Synaptic as a graphical package manager beats the pants off anything on K.

Do not get me wrong, I am not bashing KDE, as I said, I liked it very much. But IMHO While K has the looks and nice interface configurability, Gnome is still the most usable [Linux] desktop thus far. I just hope (for the sake of Desktop Linux) that we can get an end product that has the best of both worlds.

IBM ThinkPad 2662-35U

[tokul]

IBM ThinkPad 2662-35U, Pentium III 600MHz processor, 192MB of SDRAM, and a 20GB hard drive.

Not enough RAM.

Re:IBM ThinkPad 2662-35U

[cciRRus]

Not enough RAM.

So he should install Windows 98 instead?

Re:IBM ThinkPad 2662-35U

[Anonymous Coward]

Well what Thinkpad is it? Who uses that 2662 designation anyway?? We only use that when ordering a replacement or a spare part, or you work for lenovo tech support. What model Thinkpad is the author talking about?

Honestly, throwing that number around isn't earning bragging points at the bar. It's like this guy that seemed convinced that knowing what the acronym DDR (as in memory) stands for, and throwing it into the conversation to describe the machine's features, automatically precludes his desktop computer from becoming en expensive doorstop.

Re:IBM ThinkPad 2662-35U

[tokul]

Looks like X20 with additional 64 MB RAM module.

Laptop model is from link in his article.

Re:Ubuntu

[Stemp]

This FUD ? again ? Ubuntu is free of charge and always will. Canonical want to make money on SUPPORT.

But it's a good idea to look at Debian from time to time. And anyway as an Ubuntu user, I consider to be part of the Debian family.

and what's the first thing they do?

[Anonymous Coward]

They install Debian, the true paragon of the Free Software movement, and what's the first thing they do?

• Download and install RealPlayer from real.com
• Download and install Adobe Reader from adobe.com
• Download and install Flash Player from adobe.com
• Download and install the Opera browser from opera.com
• Download and install Skype from skype.com
• Download and install Java from sun.com
• Download and install Crossover Office
• Microsoft Core Fonts
• MP3 non-free support
• Microsoft Video Codecs
• DeCSS!!!

Why don't you just install Windows? You've missed the entire point.

Re:and what's the first thing they do?

[westlake]

Why don't you just install Windows? You've missed the entire point.

To some Linux is a Movement. To others it is an Operating System.

You are not obliged to sign on to the Revolution when Debian is your Distro of choice. Thank God.

Re:and what's the first thing they do?

[cortana]

Yeah, they could at least have uesd the official Debian repositories for the packages that are available from them. /me shudders at the prospect of letting NVIDIA or ATI's installers crap all over his system

Re:and what's the first thing they do?

[kwark]

This illustrates the poor review. Some of these are already in Debian/testing (Sun JVM, MS corefonts (Adobe flash is in unstable)) or in a repository already included in his sources.list (mp3,ms codecs, some minimal realplayer support and libdvdcss).

Now why anyone would want to use Adobe's Acroread instead of kpdf/xpdf I can't imagine.

Re:and what's the first thing they do?

[couchslug]

"Why don't you just install Windows? You've missed the entire point."

Not if their point was to make the computer serve them in the way they wished.

unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/,

[tokul]

Adding applications

Once that was done, I started installing my favorite packages.

Tops on my list of applications are Firefox and Thunderbird, and I always get rid of modified versions and substitute the pristine versions direct from Mozilla.org. So I downloaded both, unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/, where Debian likes to keep them, and created symlinks in /usr/bin/ pointing to /usr/lib/firefox/firefox and /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird, where the system expects to find them.

Apparently dude've never read FHS. Say goodbye to your favorite packages when you apt-get upgrade.

Re:unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/,

[fimbulvetr]

Indeed. I always like to think this is a sign of newbs. If you need to overwrite the files a package maintainer maintains, what good is a package maintainer anymore? He has three paths from here:

A. Keep doing what he is doing, and suffer compounded problems in the long run. (Which is why I think he is a newb, as most people learn this lesson early).
B. Deal with what his package manager gives him.
C. _Understand_ his system and the intimacies of his package manager. Prevent problems before they happen. Install in /usr/local.

Re:unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/,

[krmt]

The problem with this article is that the guy clearly wants linux to work just like windows. That's all well and good, but it misses out on the real benefits of the linux (and debian) approach entirely. Still, it's nice to actually see someone write a positive article about Debian for a change.

Re:unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/,

[littlem]

Yes, I don't think he's worked out that / belongs to the distro and /usr/local belongs to him.

In addition, many Debian users would also consider it a good thing that the main repistory isn't stuffed with non-free proprietary software.

Re:Yea Right

[dosius]

With a version newer than 3.0?

-uso.

Etch and Thinkpads

[spidas]

The "dear editor" should try installing Etch on a LENOVO-built T60p, and then maybe, just maybe I'll be impressed!! (Writing this on an IBM-built T42p while my brand new LENOVO-built T60p languishes!!!)

debian is _THE_ distro

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

i know i sound like a fanboy, but i simply love debian...

to the point of tattooing the swirl on my left arm.

and windowmaker's icon in my back.

and yes, i'm as geek as geek can be.

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[wknoxwalker]

I think I speak for us all when I say,

"post pix plz"

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

your wish has been granted: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y238/covarde_anon imo/lixao/3772.jpg

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, the day you get to play with Mac OS X, you're really going to regret getting these tats done. I'm really sorry for you.

Signed,

Ex-Linux user who has seen the light.

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

no i won't... /me owns an iBook G4.

it's with my mother right now. can't wait for her to (finally) buy a mac mini so i can get it back, wipe the disk and install debian.

i bought the quality hardware, not the OS.

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[freewaybear]

i'm as geek as geek can be.

Oh yeah, check out my conversation starter I got about two years ago.GEEK

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[Anonymous Coward]

...can't wait for her to (finally) buy a mac mini so i can get it back, wipe the disk and install debian.

The only thing more pathetic than a PC user is a PC user trying to be a Mac user. We have a name for you people: switcheurs.

There's a good reason for your vexation at the Mac's operating system: You don't speak its language. Remember that the Mac was designed by artists, for artists, be they poets, musicians, or avant-garde mathematicians. A shiny new Mac can introduce your frathouse hovel to a modicum of good taste, but it can't make Mac users out of dweebs and squares like you.

So don't force what doesn't come naturally. You'll be much happier if you stick to an OS that suits your personality. And you'll be doing the rest of us a favor, too; you leave Macs to Mac users, and we'll leave beige to you.

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[cortana]

God, I'm so glad I got off the Apple treadmill when I could!

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

and here i was, thinking I was the fanboy...

Re:debian is _THE_ distro

[petrus4]

i know i sound like a fanboy, but i simply love debian...

If it meets your needs, that's great. It doesn't meet everyone's.

Not really that old...

[wasted]

His system:

...an IBM ThinkPad 2662-35U, ...with a Pentium III 600MHz processor, 192MB of SDRAM, and a 20GB hard drive.

I read the article on an IBM Thinkpad 560X with a Pentium 200MMX processor, 96MB of EDO RAM, and a 30GB Linux partition, running Debian Sarge. If his laptop is old, is mine an antique?

Re:Not really that old...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. I'm running FC6 on a 266 MHz, 160 MB RAM laptop. Not as old as yours, but I'm running a newer distro. ;-) I agree with you that Etch on his specs is boring. ;-)

Re:Not really that old...

[Orange Crush]

My handy laptop is an old thinkpad as well--P3 @ 800mhz & 512 ram. The only reason it runs XP is because I could never get power management to work properly under any distros I tried. (a bit of a deal breaker on a laptop.)

run from your home dir

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe i'm doing it wrong, but i run the mozilla firefox from /home//bin. that way i've got all the permissions i need to update without using su or sudo. it does pick up installed addons from the debian version, but to get flash working i just symlink to the libflashplugin.so installed by the flashplugin-nonfree.

the only restriction is you can't run both debian and official versions at the same time. which is fine since i run konqueror for nearly everything.

when they release

[towsonu2003]

it will be the well tempered out-of-date Debian desktop.

Re:when they release

[Respect_my_Authority]

So, why wait for the release? You can install Debian Etch right now (like the dude who wrote this article did).

aptitude search

[ThePhilips]

From RTFA:

I soon realized, however, that I generally didn't know the official repository package names for most of the apps that I wanted to download, so using apt-get quickly became a problem.

That's why aptitude's command "search" does exist.

e.g. "aptitude search sudoku" would search package names (and descriptions?) for string "sudoku". "dpkg -l '*sudoku*'" haven't really ever worked.

P.S. RTFA sucks. Judging Linux by ease of installation?? Give me a break. I use Linux precisely because (compared to Windows) I need to install it only once. And then it just works. Many of my friends use Linux precisely because of that stability - that allows people to actually concentrate on my own work. (M$Windows? You just have to reboot XP every week and reinstall it every year - to keep it running normally.)

Re:aptitude search

[ThePhilips]

If all the guys who write all the pointless "let's install Linux" reviews/articles actually coordinated and made a write up about using particular distro for let say one year - encountered problems, ease to find solution, user community, security, etc - that info would be welcome by many users and also distro developers.

Throwing idea. Though modern journalism is well known for its "skin deep" nature, so I do not expect miracles.

Re:aptitude search

[Anonymous Coward]

e.g. "aptitude search sudoku" would search package names (and descriptions?) for string "sudoku". "dpkg -l '*sudoku*'" haven't really ever worked.

"apt-cache search package_name" is the non-aptitude equivalent.

What about a *new* laptop??

[fdfisher]

What would be a better test of Debian Etch is seeing how it handles a *new* laptop. Everyone knows that Debian Stable is going to be easy to install on old hardware because they prioritize stability over timely release cycles and bleeding edge software. But that's exactly why so many people have trouble installing Debian, because they want to install it on new hardware that isn't supported by Debian Stable's outdated drivers.

Re:Ubuntu

[fdfisher]

Ubuntu may always be "free of charge," but that doesn't mean it will always be free in the way that really matters. The Ubuntu team has already begun shipping binary blobs in the kernel, non-free wireless drivers, and proprietary nvidia drivers in their standard, default setup. Debian's primary goal is to be a free (as in free speech) operating system, and as Ubuntu diverges from that fact, it becomes difficult to argue that they're truly "part of the Debian family."

Re:Ubuntu

[MichaelSmith]

And anyway as an Ubuntu user, I consider to be part of the Debian family.

Looking at the screenshots I was surprised that Etch doesn't have the same installer as Ubuntu. Is that in Sid yet?

Task Bar

[RAMMS EIN]

Oh, how I wish they would do away with the Windows task bar. It works fine when you have just a few windows open, but pretty soon you will get too many windows to properly fit in the task bar.

There are some work arounds, like putting the task bar on the side (makes the buttons hard to hit) or grouping several windows under one button (so you have to go through multiple levels to get to the one you want - yech), but by far the best solution I've seen is the one from NEXTSTEP: use icons, with a small text to differentiate between documents in the same application. You can fit many more icons on the screen edge than you can taskbar buttons, and they are easy to hit.

Re:Task Bar

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're running windows, disregard this.

Dual screens? Multiple desktops? Works wonders.(I have 2x4 desktops effectively)

If you have enough programs open that your taskbar fills up, you probably need a second monitor/video card anyway to work efficiently. Under Xorg/KDE, I have 2 separate desktops, each with their own taskbar. Only problem is I didn't compile with xinerama so I can't drag windows between the two.

Don't tell me it's too expensive, or your computer doesn't have the resources.

Re:Task Bar

[RAMMS EIN]

Well, it's not a problem for me (I run ratpoison and most of my stuff is in a single terminal window), but I don't like that GNOME and KDE, favored by the masses and the newbies, are propagating what I see as a bad interface.

Re:Ubuntu

[Respect_my_Authority]

Debian has now way better installer than Ubuntu (for instance, there are options for creating a degraded RAID array and for inserting a LUKS encryption layer at any level). And if you boot it with "installgui", you get this:

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/sc reenshots/index.php?linux_distribution=Debian-Inst aller%20etch%20RC1

symlinks to make Firefox work?

[alizard]

I AM running Debian Etch, I didn't need to create any symlinks, I just installed it via aptitude.

But it took basically everything I've learned over the last 3 years of using Fedora Core Linux to turn Debian into my customary desktop environment just to figure out what to install, and to track down dependencies not handled by Debian installers. If I knew then what I knew now, maybe I would have gone with Kubuntu.

I switched because I couldn't get FC6 to run my new Biostar GeForce6100 (Nvidia chipset) AM2 integrated motherboard video. And if you're using FC6. . . please, no more suggestions, assume that I've tried anything you can think of and it blew out with the same FPEexception message. Debian got the video working on the first try with vesa (NOT nv), and the second time around, the Debian-modified Nvidia driver worked just fine.

I'm surprised the article author didn't notice that under the hood, Lin/Freespire is Debian, too.

You want the masses to migrate to Linux? Make application installations "point and click" operations, including all necessary dependency checks and library installations as part of that initial click of the mouse button. Installing apps has to be that easy.

Agreed. Personally, I don't know why the community hasn't gone to static packages with all library dependencies installed with the program. It's not like disk space or broadband availability is a problem anymore. I'd rather put up with a longer download and waste disk space than have to install Yet Another Package from source.

amateurs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the author of this article is going all that trouble to install firefox and real player and the such manually?
apt is the only program you need to install every package you want.
There are gazillions of deb repositories around the world which offer almost everything you want.
go to apt-get.org and search for your package, then add the repository's address to your sources.list file.
In the process of search on apt-get.org, you will find some great repositories, some even on universities offering whatever free software they use intenraly. Many of them do the hard job of packaging everything not present in official Debian repositories.
Find your way into the apt, (or if you are a GUI guy, use aptitude), instead of trying to shoot yourself in the foot by making manual symlinks here and there.
Seriously, do they hire clueless amateurs for writing these kinds of 'reviews'? So that they can point out 100 times in their writings that 'a user in the discussion forum attached to this article told me that I should do this and add that to my blabla.conf'? It's not even funny.

easier than you might think

[alizard]

Debian Etch uses the same installer the current Knoppix does.

So drop in a Knoppix LiveCD and if it boots to the Desktop, go ahead with Etch.

Following this helpful hint is what got my desktop Linux box video working.

So easy!

[morboIV]

"What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad? How does it turn out? Surprisingly well! Except for this:

Tops on my list of applications are Firefox and Thunderbird, and I always get rid of modified versions and substitute the pristine versions direct from Mozilla.org. So I downloaded both, unzipped and untarred them into /usr/lib/, where Debian likes to keep them, and created symlinks in /usr/bin/ pointing to /usr/lib/firefox/firefox and /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird, where the system expects to find them. I tried Firefox first, but it wouldn't load. I tried it again, this time by typing firefox from a console window, and noticed that the program was sending out an error message ("error while loading shared libraries") regarding a file called "libstdc++.so.5" that it either couldn't load or find. A quick bit of googling led me to install the missing library, using the command (as root): apt-get install libstdc++5. Thankfully, that was all it took to get the pure, Mozilla.org-supplied Firefox running on my desktop. And this:

Following that, I typed (as root) apt-get update to see if those repositories were all accessible. The last one in the list, the multimedia.org repository, gave me an error that indicated a missing public key. What's up with that? A helpful reader on the DesktopLinux.com forum kindly provided the answer: "You need to download repository gpg key, then you need to add it to apt-key keyring. Look at the error message you got. As you can see there is a string [in the error message from apt-get], 07DC563D1F41B907. It is the key you need. Actually the key id is the second half of that string: 1F41B907. Now you can download the key and add it to keyring." He told me to run the following two commands (as root), to cure the problem, which I did: gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 1F41B907 gpg --armor --export 1F41B907 | apt-key add - And this:

Now it was time to get WiFi and dial-up Internet working. Here, I ran into two stumbling blocks -- probably both due to Linux's legendary hardware driver issues. In the case of WiFi, I attempted to use the WiFi configuration utility accessable from the KDE Menu via "Control Center > Internet & Network > Wireless Network." The result of starting that function was: "unable to autodetect wireless interface." Apparently, the system couldn't find my PCMCIA WiFi card, an old LinkSys WPC11 version 4 card. Now before you blame that card, bear in mind that in my recent test of seven desktop Linux distros on the same Thinkpad, the very same WiFi card worked perfectly with MEPIS, Xandros, and Kubuntu, and was detected but didn't "connect" with several others. With Etch, though, it was completely undetected. I'm hopeful that with some further investigation I can find a way to get it working. And this:

Thankfully, the problem with my PCMCIA modem was not quite so absolute. Using kppd, the modem dialed out to my ISP; but, each time it connected, it immediately disconnected and returned an error message: "pppd daemon died unexpectedly; Exit status: 1." As an alternative, I tried wvdial from the command line (as root), and was able to successfully connect to my ISP (Earthlink) using it. However, wvdial.conf, which contains the username and password for accessing the ISP is unencrypted, making me hesitant to use that as a long-term solution. Here too, I suspect I'll locate a better solution after additional investigation and experimentation. Jesus H. Christ, I'd hate to see an installation that didn't go "suprisingly well"!

the official Debian nVidia

[alizard]

installer package most certainly does work. . . I couldn't make the FC6 installer work (as in result in working video) after a week of trying.

Re:Ubuntu

[alienmole]

What is your goal in trying to create a division between Debian and Ubuntu? Are you really so committed to "free software" that you can't see the benefit in providing a system geared towards non-nerd users, which in order to fulfill its mission, relies on a few "blobs"?

I'm a Debian user (on my desktop, laptop, servers and handheld), and have no personal interest in Ubuntu. However, I think that the existence of Ubuntu is an unmitigated boon for the Debian community, the Linux community, and the world in general. I really don't see the point in allowing some perfect notion of free software get in the way of providing a good, usable collection of free software to ordinary users. As the saying goes, "the perfect is the enemy of the good".

Please consider moderating your perspective, in the interests of furthering the cause of free software.

Re:Ubuntu

[fdfisher]

I consider my perspective "moderated," and I don't think there's any harm in a system geared towards non-nerd users. I have even used Ubuntu myself. I don't want to create a division between Ubuntu and Debian users, but I just think people should be aware that there is a very big and realistic difference between the two distributions. Time and time again, I hear people say, "Ubuntu is based on Debian. It's the same thing, just new software that's easier to install." In fact, it's not the same thing, and people should understand that because to me, what makes Debian the best distribution isn't apt-get; it's the fact that it's completely free and maintained by an open, democratic community. Ubuntu has none of that. The other issue I have with Ubuntu is that at times they have gotten in the way of Debian development. For example, recently it was revealed that Mark Shuttleworth prevented the Debian GNOME maintainer (who also works for Canonical) from updating GNOME packages until after Ubuntu LSO had shipped. That's not exactly what I would call an "unmitigated boon for the Debian community."

BAH! Humbug!

[beowulf01]

Not another "how I installed and rated distro X." We are all doomed.
"LINUX" will never go mainstream for the home and this FA proves it yet again:
1. Linux doesn't exist as on OS - its just a kernel.
2. Fragmentation - too many distros with few standards or cooperation
3. linux fanboys think their fav distro is the "be-all and end-all" of existence
4. Its too hard for users to simply run the apps they want
5. package management sucks
6. hardware support sucks

I could go on and and on. Whoop dee doo...so he got debian "kinda-sorta" running on an old thinkpad. Whoopie.

What OS do I run, you ask? MS Windows 2000 and XP. Because they are true standardized OS with software and hardware support.

What Linux distro for speed and stability? Slackware. Because it is faster, more stable and has the best hardware compatibility there is among distros, and package management is simple, if simplistic. And believe it or not, a motivated novice can figure out how to edit a few text config files.

So I see the FA (and the linked distro comparison) and raise him 2 thinkpads, 2 compaqs, 4+ desktops ranging from Pentium266MMX to PII400 to PIII900 to AMD64. The only hardware issue was the laptops' Winmodens and those infrared ports. Oh and a cheap Leadtek Winfast TV card with MythTV. Everything else works "out of the box," especially Firefox and Thunderbird.

..end of rant..

Re:Ubuntu

[cyroth]

Not sure how "old" a T30 would be classed, but I'm posting from one running Ubuntu 6.10. Pretty damn close to Etch. The install process was pretty much clicking next.
Big deal, Windows has been this way for a long time. The problem comes when I want to install something that is not in apt.
I want to be able to give my grandparents a CD that they can pop in, it autoruns and they just keep clicking next and they can install GoogleEarth or whatever everybody is playing with at the time without having to write a script that will do all the work for them.
When the application vendors can do that, then "Linux" is easy to use.
If the "Linux for human beings" still requires knowing the difference between a pop tart and a command line then it is too hard.
The big distro vendors have made it easy to run the OS. All I need now is for the big apps to have "click next" installers for X and I never have to hear "my windows is broken" again.
Sorry for the off topic rant but, tis the season to visit relatives who have computers.

But... Be fair..

[dbcad7]

Some of these things are not the installation. They are modifications to the installation.

The WiFi and modem problems.. sure that's a good point. The rest of your shock at the "horror of it all", shows you don't understand what he was modifying. I am sure that a Windows "power user" tweaking a system would seem just as complicated to the average Windows newbie. I've said it before, I'll say it again.. to do complicated things is, well.. complicated.

Re:But... Be fair..

[morboIV]

Yeah, like installing vanilla Firefox. God knows how tricky that is for a windows newbie.

Re:But... Be fair..

[dbcad7]

Well, he already had Firefox. Plain vanilla thing.. whatever, it's really hard on Linux too. you unzip the file and run. I believe he was installing it for multiuser use.. a little more complicated. I'm sure any Windows newbie can do that on a Windows machine no problem, right ?.. you just install it, log off and log on as another user, and it's just there waiting for you isn't it ?

Slow news day

[Anonymous Coward]

"A linux user installs a linux distribution on a computer"

Holy Snapples!

Re:BAH! Humbug!

[petrus4]

1. Linux doesn't exist as on OS - its just a kernel.

Linux isn't - FreeBSD is. They have their own kernel, C library, and toolchain if you use TenDRA.

2. Fragmentation - too many distros with few standards or cooperation

See above. ;)

3. linux fanboys think their fav distro is the "be-all and end-all" of existence

Debian fanboys are a particularly obnoxious breed. I don't consider FreeBSD perfect...hardware support admittedly is still sketchy...but it's a damn sight better than anything I've come across in the Linux scene.

4. Its too hard for users to simply run the apps they want
5. package management sucks

Ports is VASTLY more user friendly and stable than any form of package management I've used with Linux...don't take my fanboyish word for it, though. *grin* Try it yourself and see.

What Linux distro for speed and stability? Slackware. Because it is faster, more stable and has the best hardware compatibility there is among distros, and package management is simple, if simplistic.

Enormously agreed. Debian seems to have deviated from what used to be the norm (and is now only represented by Slackware, tragically) in seemingly just about every way possible, and the rationale generally seems to have been, "because we can."

This is a con how?

[Benanov]

From TFA:

Doesn't offer automated installation of some popular proprietary apps and plug-ins such as Adobe acroread and flashplayer, Skype, Opera, etc., and doesn't provide "standard" Firefox/Thunderbird

Yeah. I know. And I like it that way.

Re:BAH! Humbug!

[beowulf01]

Linux isn't - FreeBSD is. They have their own kernel, C library, and toolchain if you use TenDRA.

True. I have FreeBSD iso here somewhere but haven't yet had a chance to give it a whirl. Of course, my rant was directed at linux fanboys (of whom I am one) and not the Unix flavors. I do have enough spare parts about so maybe...

Basically, I searched the world over for an open source alternative to a proprietary OS that is simple and allows me to use the computer as the tool it is meant to be. As a computer hobbyist, sure I could fiddle and play with it all day; but as a user, I just gotta get shit done...Heck maybe I'll just stick with Slackware. After 10+ yrs I can set it up on anything.

It just rankles me that the open source world is so busy with maximizing choice that we spend more time playing with the OS (i.e "distro") than actually using the computer for anything. Oh, and don't get me started on the binary vs. compile-it-all-from-source and the "evils" of ever trying to make a living using open source.

Anyway, time to recompile the kernel..why? BECAUSE I CAN!

Re:Ubuntu

[alienmole]

Saying Ubuntu and Debian are not the same thing is not the same as saying they're not in the same family. I was mainly objecting to the latter claim, which seems unnecessarily divisive.

As for the point about Gnome, you're quoting someone from Novell who's fighting to avoid losing Suse developers to Ubuntu. I'll reserve judgement until I see some facts. In the meantime, it seems to me that the person paying someone's salary does have some say over what they do with their time. I'll also observe that I'd rather see someone like Shuttleworth involved with a Debian derivative than to see a company like Microsoft involved, the way it is with Novell and Suse.

If Debian had no derivative distros geared towards end users, that would be a bad thing for Debian. I don't think you could ask for a much better end-user distro than Ubuntu, except in a fantasy world, despite Shuttleworth's various personal quirks etc. So yes, I think Ubuntu is an unmitigated boon for Debian. It would be a more unmitigated boon for its community if people on both sides didn't treat the difference as a divisive one, though.

Re:Ubuntu

[fdfisher]

As for the point about Gnome, you're quoting someone from Novell who's fighting to avoid losing Suse developers to Ubuntu. I'll reserve judgement until I see some facts.

The link I posted above is to the blog of Josselin Mouette, one of the lead developers and maintainers of GNOME in Debian and in fact the Debian Developer responsible for getting GNOME 2.16.2 into testing. It's true that he is quoting a Suse developer, but if you scroll down to the comments you'll see that he himself asserts, "as one of the other GNOME maintainers, I can assure you this charge is true."

If Debian had no derivative distros geared towards end users, that would be a bad thing for Debian.

Debian itself is geared toward end users, just not the ones you have in mind. And honestly, why should Debian care about people who will use proprietary drivers over free ones just so they can "bring the bling"? That's not who Debian was meant for in the first place, and it's really none of our business to go around proselytizing to the masses. Debian is maintained by a community for that community and there's no reason why so much of the Debian Developers' time should be wasted trying to appease people who aren't interested in free software in the first place. I'm not saying Debian shouldn't care about making their distribution easier to maintain and install. I'm just saying that we should not give up the basic ideas and rights that the distro was founded on in the process, and we certainly shouldn't concern ourselves with the tinkerings of some company outside of Debian whose self-described "benevolent dictator for life" has admitted himself that Debian and Ubuntu have very different goals. I think it was said best by the Debian Developer, Gustavo Franco: "Debian is about us. The result of our work and feedback from our users, that are potential contributors in a much more powerful manner than alternative solutions." If Ubuntu wants to piggy-back off the labor of Debian to meet their own, very different goals then that's fine, but let's not forget what Debian is all about. This is a distribution for free software enthusiasts. The fact that there is another distribution out there that closely resembles Debian, but has entirely different goals and values does not help Debian to meet its own goals and values.

Re:Ubuntu

[fdfisher]

bah, I guess I hit the "preview" button one too few times. That should read, "...Josselin Mouette, one of the lead developers and maintainers of GNOME in Debian and in fact the Debian Developer responsible for getting GNOME 2.16.2 into experimental."

Re:Ubuntu

[alienmole]

So Jousselin Mouette says, in effect, "trust me" with no details in an argument that's obviously quite contentious, and I should just take him at his word? It's interesting that he chose not to use his own words to characterize the situation. Perhaps if I knew him personally, I could just accept this at face value, but otherwise, as I said, I'll reserve judgement until I see some facts. The free software community is filled with people whose idealism sometimes gets in the way of their ability to perceive reality, and the personal disagreements often outweigh any rational arguments, too.

And honestly, why should Debian care about people who will use proprietary drivers over free ones just so they can "bring the bling"?

Here and elsewhere, you're overgeneralizing from a specific case. Luckily, you are not Debian. I use proprietary Nvidia drivers, on some of my Debian machines - that's my choice, and my right as a user of free software. Should I assume I'm therefore not welcome in the Debian community or even the broader "family" originally mentioned? You obviously have strong convictions, but not everyone shares those exact convictions - even some other Debian users.

My point, BTW, is not about "proselytizing to the masses", but rather that wider distribution of Debian software will be in Debian's interest in the long run, even if it's through derivative distros like Ubuntu. That doesn't mean Debian needs to change what it's doing, except for some members of the Debian community in one area: their tolerance for other people who are using Debian software in ways that free software allows it to be used. Your position is the one which seems against the goals of free software, to me.

Re:Ubuntu

[fdfisher]

I use proprietary Nvidia drivers, on some of my Debian machines - that's my choice, and my right as a user of free software. Should I assume I'm therefore not welcome in the Debian community or even the broader "family" originally mentioned? You obviously have strong convictions, but not everyone shares those exact convictions - even some other Debian users. [...] That doesn't mean Debian needs to change what it's doing, except for some members of the Debian community in one area: their tolerance for other people who are using Debian software in ways that free software allows it to be used. Your position is the one which seems against the goals of free software, to me.

If you choose to manually install and configure proprietary Nvidia drivers on your Debian computer, that's one thing, but it's different for Debian itself to distribute and support proprietary drivers as Ubuntu is doing. You can dual boot your computer with Windows and Linux, but does this mean that Windows users are part of the Debian community and that Debian developers should start distributing Windows? Are you prepared to include Linspire as part of the "Debian family?" Suppose Vista ships with a Windows version of apt-get; are we supposed to embrace Microsoft with warm arms and welcome them into the "Debian family." You have the freedom to do whatever you want with Debian software, but that doesn't mean that Debian's developers should be implicated in that process. And even if some Debian users do not share these same convictions about free software, it's not an "over-generalization" to say that these convictions are the basis of Debian. Debian has a Social Contract to which all the developers are expected to abide, and which specifically outlines strict guidelines for what kinds of software they are and are not going to support. Number two on the list: "The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form."

As I said above, my problem is not with Ubuntu or any other derivative of Debian existing or using Debian's software. My issue, and what I think distinguishes Ubuntu from most other Debian derivatives, is that they expect the Debian developers to change the way they package their software so that it will meet the needs of Ubuntu. If Ubuntu wants a certain feature that Debian doesn't have; they go to Debian and twist their arms, buy out their developers, and whine and complain about what a bunch of stubborn pigs the Debian people are until they get their way. And then whenever someone in Debian complains, whenever they say, "hey this is not your place," the Ubuntu-ites go, "oh stop being so divisive." I just want Ubuntu to be more clear about the fact that they are NOT Debian and that they are NOT a completely free distribution. And most importantly, I want them to leave the Debian Developers alone so they can do their jobs, developing software to meet the needs of Debian (rather than Ubuntu.)

Re:Ubuntu

[alienmole]

You have the freedom to do whatever you want with Debian software, but that doesn't mean that Debian's developers should be implicated in that process.

I agree.

I just want Ubuntu to be more clear about the fact that they are NOT Debian and that they are NOT a completely free distribution.

That's reasonable.

Re the "Debian family", we're arguing about a term without a definition. To me, if a distro is based on Debian (rather than just, say, supporting apt-get as Fedora does) then there's grounds for considering it part of the Debian family. That's a technical or lineage-oriented definition. Of course, if you define the Debian family as those distros that adhere to the Debian Social Contract, then I imagine you cut the family down significantly. Perhaps Linspire and Ubuntu can be considered black sheep members of the family. That's not such a bad analogy: black sheep members of real families have often done something which the rest of the family disapproves of, like violate some religious rule. Sound familiar?

My issue, and what I think distinguishes Ubuntu from most other Debian derivatives, is that they expect the Debian developers to change the way they package their software so that it will meet the needs of Ubuntu. If Ubuntu wants a certain feature that Debian doesn't have; they go to Debian and twist their arms, buy out their developers, and whine and complain about what a bunch of stubborn pigs the Debian people are until they get their way.

You've given me one example of this, light on detail. If the situation more generally is really as bad as you say, then you have a point. OTOH, I could imagine situations in which it might be in Debian's interests to make changes, even if it seems like a pain to the developers. In the long run, the work that's gone into Ubuntu is likely to benefit Debian, and better compatibility between the two could work both ways. Perhaps another way to deal with Ubuntu demands would be to figure out what Ubuntu can do for Debian, and explicitly ask for that in return. That would make for a more balanced negotiation, and might force Ubuntu to moderate their demands.

As for buying out developers, that's an interesting subject. The implication of your objections in this area is that ideally, Debian developers should be employed (paid) doing something that has nothing to do with Debian, so that there won't be any conflicts of interest. As soon as you have developers being paid to work on something that's related to what they're doing for Debian, there are going to be conflicts of interest, unless they're being paid out of Debian funds. So the question becomes, is having developers funded to work on Debian-related things worth the costs in terms of whatever conflicts of interest might arise? I haven't seen real evidence to argue otherwise. Spats between developers are going to happen no matter what the issues are. If there's a real systemic problem, then it's at least as much Debian's problem to deal with in terms of the general issue of how its developers support themselves, and how it relates to derivative distributions, as it is Ubuntu's.