Ian Murdock: Debian "Missing a Big Opportunity"

Natester writes "While Debian struggles to get its next release (Etch) out the door, the project's founder, Ian Murdock, has spoken out about politics, the lack of firm leadership, and Ubuntu's meteoric rise in prominence. Murdock believes that Debian is "process run amok" — nobody feels empowered to make decisions, leading to the sluggish rate of progress."

Comments

There is another obvious angle here

[Fuckin ROBOTS!]

Shut your fucking piehole nerd.

Debian is dead

[realmolo]

Really, Ubuntu has made Debian obsolete in most ways. Why would anyone even bother installing "true" Debian at this point? Ubuntu is easier and better in almost every way. And, even though it's a "desktop distro", I find that it works great for servers. Just shut off the GUI.

Re:Debian is dead

[Ilgaz]

If this is entirely about "new version" software, here is a paste from OS X 10.4.9 (current) which is considered to be World's number 1 Unix Desktop:

Ilgaz:~ ilgaz$ httpd -v
Server version: Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin)
Server built: Aug 21 2005 15:35:42
Ilgaz:~ ilgaz$ php -v
PHP 4.4.4 (cli) (built: Jan 19 2007 19:18:59)
Copyright (c) 1997-2006 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v1.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2004 Zend Technologies

Our OS is "dead" too, no new software.. Sigh!

Re:Debian is dead

[ahg]

Debian != Difficult to install (inherently).
Debian = More Power = More Choice at install time
More Choices = More knowledge needed
Debian = More knowledge needed = Difficult or even incomprehensable to those without the knowledge

For Example: Most distros don't ask you during the installtion process what MTA you want to install. Most Desktop Users don't care, and may not even know what an MTA is. Debian will ask you if you want Exim, Sendmail, Postfix and a few others I can't recall. Does this make it more difficult than Ubuntu? The answers depends on whether Ubuntu's default install meets your neesd, or if you have to go back and change things after the inital install. However, Debian also provides a choice of standard install sets that should allow a carefree installation to proceed easily in less than 40 minutes. Power Users, Debian's main user base, find the extra time spent answering the questions an "advanced" Debian installation asks - can be well worth it.

Re:Ian Murdock to join Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

congratulations on joining a team that had developed a real OS and not some kids plaything.

it looks as if you finally hit the mark and are running with the big dogs. i'm sure you won't miss the little whiners in the linux community.

Netcraft

[jimmiejaz]

Netcraft confirms it, Debian is dying, the grave is dug, and it's bastard offspring, Ubuntu is lowering the casket.

The King is dead, long live FreeBSD

Fuck Debian

[jaxon6]

You know what?

Fuck Debian.

I am so sick of their elitism, their idealism, their purity-over-functionalism. I cut my teeth on Debian and I thought it was a great platform to learn on, but it has no place in the workplace. Can anybody honestly justify an email telling the userbase that 'Uh, so Firefox is being renamed to Iceweasel. No, seriously. It still works the same, but now it's different. Please adjust accordingly.'

I firmly believe that efforts such as Debian deserve their place and that we all benefit from them, but only in the sense that we also benefit from flag-waving hippies; their freedom is our freedom. But, I wouldn't want any of those hippies coming into my work, spouting liberal ideals while simultaneously interfering with actual productivity.

Keeping control of a large network is difficult enough without having the personalities of brilliant yet insignificant(to me) developers holding back shipping dates, preventing current software releases and in general preventing me from doing my job.

I think Debian needs a wakeup call. It should either be abandoned or made correct; no in-between. I remember those ideals I had a decade ago when installing Debian from floppy. Those ideals, while they have their place, should never be paramount in the decision-making process when managing a network of any size.

So, once again, filled with the frustration of knowing that a great platform has succumbed to its worst elements - Fuck Debian.

But what if things weren't as hypothetical as that

[nietsch]

You are just a jealous griefer. I am glad you are not part of the debian team, though unfortunately some people with the same attitude are, and if I were DPL, I'd make that past tense quick.
Hopefully next release it will be a completely separate company that sponsors the release team so there will be less jealousy like this.