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Interview with Debian Project Leader
An anonymous reader sent us a link to a Linux Power interview
with
Wichert Akkerman,
the Debian GNU/Linux project leader.
Talks about the future of Debian, his role, and more.
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I did not like the attitude of the interviewer. He was talking as if Debian is some totally unknown distribution. Go, back and look at slashdot polls. Debian is the second most used Linux distribtuion. The next release "Slink" will release for four architectures simultaneously. And the Arm, PPC and, UltraSparc ports are underway.
I think there are many things that the Debian people are doing right. I have used RedHat since 5.0 and Debian since 1.3, and I can say without any reservation that Debian is vastly superior. Probably, the installation process is more confusing to a newbie (it does not detect any of your hardware, so you have to be smart enough to know what your hardware is, and what drivers to select). However the same installation process puts more power in hands of people with a clue. For example it is possible to do an ftp install directly over a ppp connection which many distributions can't. Also, Debian does not force you to install XFree if you don't wish to. (Who needs X on a server?) No matter what I tryed on RedHat it DID install X and a bunch of other packages which took around 300MB of space.
Also, I disagree with a common misconception that "dselect sucks". Dselect is a rather nice front-end to dpkg. If you don't like dselect you can always use the command line dpkg (Which without apt or dselect is no much different from rpm.) But dselect takes you one step beyond dpkg. It allows you to browse/search packages, read their descriptions, look at their dependencies, and install them automatically right from an ftp mirror with just a couple keystrokes (try that in RH). Apt is nice, but I still prefer dselect. When you type apt-get install foo, you already know what foo is, while with dselect you can read what foo is and also notice that there are other packages that depend on or conflict with foo.deb .
Also, someone above has noticed above that installation of "difficult" programs like sendmail or apache is rediculously easy on debian. dpkg does not just throw binaries all over your HD like rpm does. It also asks you questions about what kind of config you would like etc. And after that you are free to play with config files to tune your progie even more. Overall, the distribution looks like a very high QUALITY operation system. The distribution that I would recommend to my frineds or use at work.
One thing I appreciate tremendously is Debian's focus on being 100% Free Software, in a time when too many people are giving up on that critical goal.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Okay, dude. You do this. You take their codes. Got that? Take it, and change it. Okay? Good. Then you declare your own distro.
Or you shut up.
Nice interview - Looks like Debian will have a good guiding hand this year.
The problem for Debian is MINDSHARE. Notice how the only people posting to this topic (can we imply reading) are Debian users? RH really have a lot of strength and 'developing' software actually strengthens their hold cos RPM becomes default and they get reflected glory. Many new and experienced users think that Debian is a minor dying distrib, too techie and hard to install. This seems to be caused by:
.dpkg. Lets face it the Enlightenment CVS packages are way behind for Debian compared to RPM's (Note: no insult to the Debian maintainer who is a volunteer I'm just trying to make a point). This is cos any development by RH employees is done in RPM and nothing else, plus you have all the other distribs ie SuSe, Mandrake, whoever.
1) All headlines being about RH so that new users think there is ONE Linux.
2) Availability of RPM. All the 'fun' stuff like GNOME etc is packaged in RPM more than
3) Debian doesn't appear friendly. Somehow it doesn't present the same friendly front to the world - I think I get this from the web site and the 'cold' icon. They need to put up more news etc - the weekly newsletter will help I am sure. Debian has great things like apt-get updates, the massive number of packages and the integrated menu system but we don't hear about them as much.
4) Phenomonal(sp?) long times between releases. This makes Debian appear DEAD cos nothing happens for ages - yeah it is stupid but people think about things if they hear about them often. I know there are good reasons like volunteers, getting this right (compare RH 5.0) etc. It is a little irritating that lots of the stuff in 'frozen' is pretty 'out-of-date' which is testament to how quickly Linux develops.
5) The horrific legalese and crap that *seems* to exist within the project. I am *really* into GNU as a philosphy but how they can make something so brilliant sound so stultifying in the Debian project papers amazes me. Write a HANDBOOK not another 'what meets our requirements for free'. Don't get me wrong some of the stuff is important but there seems to be too much legalese rubbish in the documentation project and not enough actual production of user information. (NOTE: The current manual being produced for users looks very good so far).
I used Debian when I started (used Slackware first) but found it too hard. I then switched to RH but after 1.5 (I think) years found myself spending too much time wandering round the Web looking for packages. That and the desire to install via modem as a challenge (don't ask!) brought me back to Debian via FreeBSD. What I love most about Debian is that I don't spend time caring for my system, it does nearly everything for me - I get 3 hours every evening of free time and it it I like to chill with my gf and code. When people say RH is an 'easy' distrib to use I laugh, oh the install might be a little easier and the first packages might be easier but they can't touch Debians smooth integration. They can't beat the manual pages telling me where Debian is different (try installing the standard pcmcia source on a RH system, how the hech *do* those scripts in sysconfig work). They can't beat Debian for following the FSSTND. They can't beat that it is FREE in the true sense and done by volunteers, if RH say that commercial OS's are no good cos commercial developers don't care then why are commercial distributions different (Yeah I know I'm being a little unfair I'm just trying to make my point).
/blah
Thanks Debian for just working: Thanks Debian developers for being intrigued/caring/challenged enough to spend that time putting it all together.
It gets worse. In a recent Usenet CFV regarding the
creation of a KDE newsgroup, a certain high-ranking member
within the Debian group loudly voted against the creation
of the newsgroup.
I mean COME ON, it's just a goddamn newsgroup
for christ's sake. Debian is the distro for fanatics, as
far as I'm concerned. I
Can you give a copy of Debian GNU/Linux to the library? Will the librarian accept it? Has anybody ever tried this?
Red Hat eliminated all non-free software. Yah right. The Official CD ships with a bunch of non-free packages last time I checked. BRU and MetroX come to mind
Your post is very true, but I have a few corrections. .dpkg. Lets face it the Enlightenment CVS packages are way behind for Debian compared to RPM's
2) Availability of RPM. All the 'fun' stuff like GNOME etc is packaged in RPM more than
GNOME and E are under development and you know who is behind GNOME and E, so you should naturally expect rpms to come out first. But this is not true in general. Debian has more packages that any other distribution. The slink will ship like on 4 CDs for each architecture. KDE 1.1 is a good example. Debs for KDE 1.1 were available before rpm although KDE is not even part of debian distribution
3) Debian doesn't appear friendly. Somehow it doesn't present the same friendly front to the world - I think I get this from the web site and the 'cold' icon. They need to put up more news etc - the weekly newsletter will help I am sure
Do to www.debian.org and click on "weekly news"
4) Phenomonal(sp?) long times between releases. This makes Debian appear DEAD cos nothing happens for ages - yeah it is stupid but people think about things if they hear about them often.
But Debian releases are ROCK SOLID. Relatively few bugs and very secure. Not like RedHat whose silly erratas pages speak for itself
Personally, I just don't grasp the difficulty with dselect - or the .deb format - the documentation is on the website - that's one of the main reasons I started with Debian in the first place (excellent documentation and all packages online).
:)
I'm no guru, but I started using Linux with Debian 1.3.1r6 and a copy of "Running Linux" from Cheap Bytes - up and running on a single saturday afternoon on a system that had never known anything but M$ operating systems - I've since tried RH and SuSE - but I always went back to Debian. You SHOULD have some understanding about your hardware. Anyone who buys that 'you don't need to know that' BS is just asking to be screwed by the vendor with 'compatible' hardware and 'improved' BIOSes -
I read it earlier on this thread - Debian just works. Interesting that it gets so little attention from the press - no ad money no story I guess....
PS
I like the current Debian logo too
Dselect is terrible WRT handling and user interface. The functionality is good, but usage is difficult. It took me some time to get used to it, and even now, I sometimes press the wrong key yielding some unwanted result.
OK, handling of "Recommends" in dselect sucks as well.
Can't wait for apt. gnome-apt looks *very* good.
Martin Bialasinski
I tried Hamm (deb 2.0) and my install was a disaster. I figured I would just wait for 2.1 (after hearing about the package selection improvements). Well, I'm waiting, and waiting...
Recently, I've wanted to try again, because of all the good things I've heard, but looking at the package listings, I want to try the 2.2 (potato) unstable release (2.1 is already out of date, for the kinds of things I want to do).
Soooo, how can I get 2.2 images, without having to mirror the whole release and run the cd creation scripts? I just don't have the space to do it that way. Does anyone host ISO image snapshots of the potato release?
I'll give it a try anyway (also want to try BSD 3.1) when I have more time to fiddle with it, but anything that eases the download burden would really be a help.
PS. The debian tree puts the i386 and the alpha binary directories as siblings, so a simple wget -m command will download a lot of stuff I don't want (Alpha binaries). Is there an easy way to just mirror the i386 binaries?
Thanks for any help
Debian volunteers are about as diverse as any other kind of group with one major exception: almost all of them are passionate about free software. They prefer it to non-free, OK? So what if some come off as fanatical about freedom? I think a concept as grand and as threatened as freedom deserves far more fanatacism than most people think. Most people take it for granted--what a pity. Anyway, if you have a softer stance on freedom, no one is stopping you from starting your own distribution. I'll stay with Debian because they have the guts to not compromise on freedom.
huh? Well i'm gonna go demand that redhat lets me work for them, then im gonna sabotage them. See my point? Debian is not a political party, its a group of developers that share a common goal, if you dont share our goal why would you want to be a developer anyway?
Uhh, where have you been? Debian dropped kde quite a while ago, as for qt it is in the non-free section. It is not officially part of debian, they are provided for the convienence of the users.
Correction about enlightenment cvs packages. /etc/apt/sources.list
./
add the following to
deb http://www.debian.org/~bma/e-cvs/debs/
The package name is enlightenment-cvs
And our gnome packages do lag behind a little, 0.99.3 is in potato and 0.99.8 will be uploaded very soon. Packages do exist, they just aren't menioned on gnome.org like the rpms.
Oh, yeah, you are right, I just got back from beating some people into submission because they didn't define their concepts of free software the way I thought they should.
If you dont agree with debian then dont join, or better yet start your own distribution based on it.
http://www.debian.org/~bma/e-cvs/debs
Granted, I don't update them as often as I should. There was a point in time where I made new ones every major commit. That was when I had to hand-hack the source each time to get it to work with the FHS. Has _anyone_ noticed that the debian stuff is IN THE E SRC TREE?! I sent raster that patch for two reasons...a) to make my life easier in making the packages (I just have to do a cvs update, and a dch -i), and b) so people can BUILD THEIR OWN if they want more up to date ones. All I do when I build a package is 'fakeroot debian/rules binary', wait about 15 minutes, upload them to the aforementioned URL, and run dpkg-scanpackages on them so they are accessible via APT.
On a related note, I probably won't be doing the E CVS debs much longer. Jules Bean, another Debian developer, will probably be taking over shortly.
You also may wonder why the E CVS debs are not in the main distribution - easy - CVS is for _developers_, not the end user. I don't want to be flooded with bug reports for the latest CVS snap not working, because of an upstream source glitch that was fixed 2 minutes after I built the .debs. E15 is almost ready for release, and when it's released, it'll go into Debian. Simple as that.
bma
Uber-E maintainer for Debian
--
Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.debian.org/
These people who think everyone in the Debian project must agree with the DFSG are a subgroup of the project as a whole. As you yourself say, Debian has always had an "enormous number of dissenting opinions" -- well the opinion of this group is just such a dissenting opinion.
Joey Hess, debian developer and editor of Debian Weekly News.
see shy jo
Here's a hint. Just because one is a debian developer does not mean their every private action should be taken as reflecting on debian as a whole.
see shy jo
This, in combination with some discussion I've seen on the Debian lists about requiring maintainers to agree with DFSG (and/or FSF?) as well as abide by them makes me very nervous. Free software in general, and Linux and Debian in particular, have gotten where they are because everybody is able to contribute. Allowing input only from people who agree with you is fine if you are never wrong; in the real world, it is a sure path to disaster. This is completely apart from the irony of a "free as in speech" software distribution requiring that you think a certain way in order to participate.
Realize that I don't think this is a problem at present; but things are definitely showing signs of heading that way.
I really like Debian; I don't want to see it go away. That a distribution put together and maintained entirely by volunteers is so successful is an amazing accomplishment. A quick look at Debian's history will show that this is because of the enormous number of dissenting opinions that have been dealt with, not because there weren't any.
Debian has certain ways it wants things done. This is fine. The maintainers should be made aware of this and expected to comply. However, doing the equivalent of requiring membership in a specific political party as a price of admission, IMNSHO, is a huge mistake.
As to why, it would seem self evident. Free software improves and grows in an evolutionary process. By locking people into one mindset, you've just eliminated one of the major sources of change. I agree with you that Debian is the best distribution. I think it got there by expressly not doing this.
And again, I have a real problem with holding so tightly to the free software mantle then basically saying "yes, it's free as in speech, as long as you don't say it here."
A very coherent, well-spoken interview. I'm glad to see that he mentioned user-friendliness several times, I've been concerned about Debian's installation/initial setup problems for a while now. If they do gnome-apt right and resolve the UI issues, the futue will be very good...
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Great summary! This week, prodded by the latest /. survey results, I installed Debian for the first time (2.1 prerelease) and I'm very impressed. As someone else pointed out, the hardware detection is non-existent, unlike RH, so you have to know what's going on in order to configure your network and soundcard. Without much better hardware detection, Debian will definitely remain "too techie and hard to install." Fortunately, they appear to have the right infrastructure (dpackage, etc.) to add better hardware detection in the future, it's just that nobody's written it yet.
Also, there are a lot of bugs, but because there's so much more functionality than RH, and so many more people working on fixing the bugs, I feel like pitching in to help fix the bugs myself, rather than complaining. As soon as I become a little more familiar with the system, and learn how to make packages, I'm definitely going to sign up as a maintainer. I'm pretty good at writing documentation, so maybe I can start with that, as well as fixing the few installation bugs I noticed with slink.
One other nice thing is that the bleeding edge (unstable branch) is much easier to download than the RH equivalent (Rawhide), which AFAIK is only available for FTP from rawhide.redhat.com, which is completely overloaded all the time.
Finally, regarding the new GLIBC 2.1, I have much more confidence that Debian will survive that transition relatively unscathed (in particular, Debian uses a library naming scheme which will allow C++ programs linked with GLIBC 2.0 to coexist with those linked with GLIBC 2.1). My experience with Rawhide on this matter has not been very pleasant, and if you've installed EGCS 1.1.x on Redhat, you'll probably find all of your C++ binaries break when RedHat 6 comes out (in a nutshell, Redhat uses libstdc++.so.2.9.0 for both the GLIBC 2.0 and 2.1 version of libstdc++, which are incompatible with each other). Bad luck for people who compiled KDE or other C++ apps themselves using EGCS 1.1.1 (luckily, the KDE binary RPMs are built with an older version of EGCS which uses libstdc++.so.2.8.0, and so won't conflict with the new libstdc++ for GLIBC 2.1).
-Jake
--
Jake
and I love it! LSL shipped it priority mail and it did not take me long to get it going.
The distribution has the packages that match my personality. It was a nice surprise to have a great selection of scientific applications that are conviently installed. Other things caught my eye too, like the OJ screen saver.
For me, this is the ultimate distribution. I hope they enjoy the little donation from me in return.
Having the maintainers agree to contribute code using licenses that meet thier criteria for "free" software in has nothing to do with technical issues. Debian is not saying, "all programs must be single threaded" or "GUIs are for wimps, end of discussion." They are saying that they will only build a their distribution using licenses that meet specified requirements. That doesn't stiffle the discussions and arguments about technical issues, usability concerns or any other tangible aspect of the distribution. It just guarantees the consumers of the distribution that they can do anything they want with the distribution, except make the code secret.
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I think that Wichert is not
talking about anything like swearing an oath on
some document. The interview is just to see
if the developer-to-be understands what Debian is,
and that it is 100% free software. The developer
can still upload non-free packages to the non-free
section (if their licenses allow this). Understandably, the developer must agree that everything in the main part of the distribution consists of free software and that binary only software and shareware and warez and whatnot cannot be included in a free distribution. The interview is meant to
try to avoid possible misunderstandings.
John Lapeyre
A friend of mine spent quite a bit of time getting a mirror script that grabs an i386 slink/potato Debian distribution minus some of the "unnecessary" stuff. If you have provided your email address, I could have sent it to you.
To summarize, this makes me question how "open" Debian and the rest of linux really are. Your speech is free as long as it is our speech, eh?
AIUI, Debian's commitment to free software is about choice. Therefore, non-free packages are simply made available in a different category outside the core distribution.
"Caring about 100% free software" is a misleading approximation of Debian's philosophy.
~ Casper Boden-Cummins
Debian user since 0.93r6