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Interview: Ask the Debian Project Leader
Wichert Akkerman, our interview guest this week, describes himself: "I'm a simple MSc Computer Science student who likes to work on Linux projects. I have been the Debian Project leader since February and that has taken most of my time. Debian is a project to produce a completely free operating system and as such we currently have a GNU/Linux distribution and are working on GNU/HURD as well." So ask away. One question per post, please. Moderators & assorted others will select the 10 - 15 questions we forward to Wichert Tuesday afternoon. His answers will appear Friday.
How do you feel about the emerging of distros basing themselves around Debian - eg. Stormix and Corel.. Chris. --
To what extent are you seeing Corel feeding back these changes to the Debian community? How good for Debian has Corel been, so far?
I'd like to know the status is on porting Debian to the FreeBSD kernel. A combination of the daemon and debian - how delicious.
Any news on when Debian will start accepting new maintainer applications again?
Is Debian looking to concentrate on a small set of well-established architectures, or are we going to see Debian for every conceivable environment that Linux can run under?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
any news on the long-awaited (or -supposed) graphical interface to apt? anything else in the works on the package-managing front?
What's the best way to get involved with the Debian project? Do you have a list of tasks that need to be done along with the required skills?
I ask because that seems to be one barrier keeping more people from helping out various free software projects -- they don't know where to start. If we could point to a list and say "The boot disks need testing; we expect these error messages:" or "The foo package has these ugly functions that need to be rewritten:" it would give us more concrete goals to reach.
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
With the things that have been learned from those attempts, is there likely to be some sort of dselect-ng ?
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Now that Qt 2 is free software, under the QPL, will Debian include KDE 2 when it is released, based on Qt 2?
Also, do you feel it is better to keep Linux entirely DSFG free software only, or to include software in some way restricted, such as Pine, Qt 1.x and Netscape?
Since you are working on both Linux (established) and the HURD (experimental), could you please tell what the advantages of using the HURD over Linux would be, once the HURD would near completion?
What are your feelings on RPM vs. dpkg? Would it be better for Debian to add any missing functionality to RPM, and then switch to that? In what way might Debian users benefit from sticking with dpkg over a modified RPM with equivalent functionality? From personal experience, the thing that really stood out in Debian was dselect, but that could sit on top of RPM just as well as it does on dpkg. Presumably the same applies to apt (although I haven't looked at Debian recently enough to know about apt).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Debian totes that it is a completely free distribution of Linux, and likes to look down on those that package things like Netscape and StarOffice in their distributions because they are not totally free. Meanwhile, Debian packages these things as well, but puts them in a section declared to be "non-free." How is that you can still maintain your air of superiority for a "free" distribution if you're distributing the same non-free programs as everyone else, yet still look down on distros such as RedHat solely because they don't keep a seperate non-free section? Would this not fall under the category of hypocrisy?
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
What will they do about the current problem with getting a debian maintainer? - AFAIK they had big problems because there are too many people who want to become debian maintainers.
Could you compare GNU/HURD to GNU/Linux, from a user's perspective. What are the advantages of each? What are the target groups for each? Why would I choose one over the other?
1. Eric Raymond has stated (during a speech, NYC :) that he believes that the Debian project is making it difficult for Linux to adopt a standard packaging system. What do you have to say in response?
2. I'm rather disturbed by the GNU Hurd's Debian-like appearance now. I was hoping for a radically different OS but I was disappointed with seeing a different underlying OS that still looks much like Debian. Does Debian have a legitimate reason for doing this?
3. Now from the GNU Hurd to Debianizing FreeBSD. My only question is: Why? Does this help improve the state of the world or simply help glorify Debian itself? I don't see a practical reason for doing this.
I am trying to understand your motives. Not ridicule them. Thank you for your time.
To my mind, the main problem that Debian has to sort out is its release cycle. It's one thing to have a well-tested distribution by the time it's released, but it's going too far to have packages a year or more out of date still in the current release. What steps are being taken to address this? Or is there an expectation that everyone is happy to use unstable?
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
I was looking over the info on the attempt to integrate FreeBSD's kernel, and was shocked to find that the people doing it were using BSD libc! Since glibc was designed with a certian amount of portability in mind, why not port glibc to FreeBSD's kernel? This would seem to be to make the overall port MUCH easier, as the rest of the debian code should be far simpler to port to a different kernel platform, but the same libc....
Hi!
First of all, thanks a lot (to you and to the rest of the Debian team) for an oustanding job!
Several quick questions:
(A) What is exactly the BSD/Debian project? What are its goals? Is it officially supported by the Debian project, or is it just some sort of personal projects for some Debian programmers?
(B) When can we expect a release of the GNU/HURD? Do you think the HURD is the next great thing and that we'll all have to leave Linux/*BSD to install it on our machines?
(C) On a more personal note... how do you manage all this work? Jolt, Coca-Cola, designer drugs or just good old plain caffeine? Do you receive extra credit for working on Debian during your studies? =)
Thanks again -- keep up the good work!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
When will potato be released and what has to be done until then? - There seem to be some bigger problems with that.
Why was he not informed and announced a release date which they had to correct. (Current release date is in mid January)
How do you, and the Debian team feel about Corel only allowing adults (over 18) to download their distrobution of Linux?
Other major distributions have their derivative distros - eg RedHat and Mandrake etc. There are also some good jobs done of porting RedHat-written code to Debian (eg Linuxconf).
Given the problems experienced with Corel Linux, which is known to be "based on Debian", what are your feelings on having other distributions derived from Debian - in particular, how 'far' away from the original should they go and is there any preference in direction that they take?
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Recently there has been talk of porting software from debian to FreeBSD. I'm wondering what use this will offer for the userland and system part of FreeBSD.
If there is a plan to port software, how do you plan on submitting the code? Will you use the normal method and promote the current cvsup system? How does the Debian project see FreeBSD as an OS? Are there plans to implement current features of this software into Debian?
Justen Stepka
It seems to me that Debian is stuck in a situation where it's minor releases are actual MAJOR releases.
At what point will potato be released, and what revision number will it have? It seems to me it would have been better to have released potato a long time ago, and release 'sub-releases' often to keep up to date, instead of waiting for that never-to-be-seen 100% perfect release.
'Release Often' is a term often used to describe Open Source projects, but it doesn't seem to apply to Debian. Just sticking in 'beta' forever.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The current stable debian distribution "slink", is still based on the 2.0.x kernel, while the other big players couldn't adopt 2.2.x fast enough just because of the version number. With the 2.4 kernel just around the corner, how will Debian be able to compete with i.e. Red Hat, as they even might launch the next version with the 2.4 kernel as the Debian maintainers are still working on getting potato out the door?
What are the plans to do something about it? Hon the lot of geeks that are eager to help out join in, or what are the criteria or needed skills? Does one have to be an über-geek to get in?
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Debian seems to be getting too big to be managed. (by the user and wakkerman)
There are many packages and they are getting more and more. ("What? There is a new window manager? - Package it!") - I don't think this is the responsibility of a distribution.
A distribution should be the base system to run linux. Every more advanced system should be installed by the unix administrator.
To make it even more worse, packages like netstd get split up in many others and packages which should be split, don't. (Look at tetex-bin. You only need xlib6g because there is xdvi in it. - If you drop xdvi in it's own package you don't have to install xlib6g and xbase on your servers)
Recently, Debian adopted "logrotate" as their standard log rotation tool. I thought this was interesting because it was developed by Red Hat, not so much to increase the pool of Generally Good software out there as to meet a specific need they ran up against in the process of building a distribution. If this distinction makes any sense (and I think it certainly applies to, say install tools), what can you borrow from other distributions to bring Debian forward?
--
Xenu loves you!
It would be one thing if he just requested that people add the GNU to the name -- the fact that he berates people who don't disgusts me. Why does Debian pander to such behavior?
Thanks for your time, Wichert.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
As a longtime Debian user, (currently Potato) I know that Debian has received a lot of criticism for its political process. Perhaps because of the entirely open way of decision-making, it sometimes seems like the important decisions take a long time to make. Some have suggested that Debian needs some sort of a benevolent dictator. (much in the same way as the Linux kernel)
Perhaps directly affected by this, the Debian releases, although rock solid, are usually very far apart. (yes, I know there's always unstable)
It may be good that things undergo lengthy review; however is there some sort of middle ground that must be reached? What are your thoughts on the above?
Thanks!
As an enthusiastic user of Debian, one of its greatest weaknesses to me has been the apparent "orphaning" of stable releases once they are released. All further development (security updates aside) appears to be done for the new, unstable development version. Even new versions of existing, well defined and stable products are rarely backported into the stable tree, resulting in the stable version of Debian quickly consisting mostly of outdated software.
Is there any provision being made to allow for and support a more aggressive backporting of newly released software in current, stable releases, such as newer versions of xmms, netscape, mozilla, and so forth?
I understand and recognize that some software (e.g. gcc, glibc, X, perl) may affect too many other dependent packages to be supported in both stable and development trees, but other software such as xmms and enlightenment don't fall into that category at all, yet debian packages often are never created to support the current stable release.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I have the impression that Debian's development
model is somewhat slow compared to the release
cycles of commercial Linux distributors.
There is IMHO the danger that Debian falls
behind against commercial Linux distributors.
Could more (benevolent) dictatorship and less
democracy help Debian to release solid code faster?
--
I've been using Debian for a long time now, and I'd like to contribute back to the project. However, I've been put off by what looks to me like excessive bureaucracy and some infighting among Debian developers. Are there any plans to streamline the process to become a developer/maintainer, and the developer contribution process itself? What about fostering a more civil peer review process?
I think I have heard the same rumor. It is actually a real question and does not deserve to have a negative score.
I understatand that every time the Debian unstable gets bigger and bigger and supports even more hadrware architectures. It take a while to make the distribution really stable and rock-solid before releasing it. However, what disappoints me is that, after release, Debian basically abandons the stable. The only updates that make it into stable are security (good job!) and fixes for some horrible bugs. So the current Debian stable still ships with Kernel 2.0.36 by default and XFree 3.3.2.x (this is rediculous!). Many people, and specially newbies get disappointed, they install it and then realize that their hardware is not supported and they have to rebuild kernel or hunt for "unofficial" official XFree 3.3.X debs for slink. Did Debian maintainers consider making more updates for stable? Specially, the updates that have to do with hardware support like X, Kernel and other related packages.
- akop
worlds as to what the `natural unit' of an operating system is. In
the Linux world it seems that the kernel is regarded as the operating
system, and the various different distributions are regarded as
flavours of Linux with their component parts being expected to be as
interchangeable as possible.
In the BSD world the whole distribution as deployed is held to be
the OS, and moving a piece of software from one distribution to
another has a bit of the flavour of a port. I think there are
advanatages to the BSD way of looking at things, since some properties
of OSs, especially security, make sense only when applied to the
system as a whole.
I am concerned, therefore, that the port of the Debian distribution
to the FreeBSD kernel might undermine this view. Is the Debian port
going to be positioned as an entirely new branch of BSD (say
DebianBSD), or is it going to be regarded more in the Linux way of
doing things? If the latter, how seriously do the Debian team take
these cultural differences between the BSD and Linux world? Who do
you see as your target user?
I've noticed that there seems to be a large quantity of interdeveloper conflict in the Debian project. Of course this is to be expected, but as Debian gets larger and more attention, it appears to have reached the point where it is significantly slowing development. Are there any plans for decentralization to improve the decision making process, and if so, what are those plans? Also, if you decentralized, how would you address elitism so that decisions remained in the project's best interest?
What do you make of all of this talk about appliances taking over the computer industry, and how sucessful do you suspect an OS like Debian will have if this really becomes mainstream?
How important are non-intel ports of the distro to the Debian project, and what emphasis is placed on supporting new platforms as they emerge?
SoupIsGood Food
Hi Wichert,
I've been following the development of the HURD for one or two years now, and I haven't seen much change in it. Do you expect the HURD ever going to be finished in the sense that it can be used in a serious way?
Cheers,
Martin van Boven
When the Debian project removed the KDE packages from their distribution, the given reason was that KDE could not be legally distributed without violating the GPL.
However, at least two of the packages removed, kdesupport and kdelibs, were not licensed under the GPL, but under the LGPL.
So, regardless of wether it was correct or not to remove kdebase/utils/etc, why were these two packages removed?
If these two packages were removed by mistake, what are the chances of them being reinstated?
Please notice that I have personally released at least two package that could be part of debian if kdelibs and kdesupport were not removed.
SUSE is releasing tools to make their version of Linux more secure (ie hardening scripts and other tools.) There is a project to make Red Hat 6.x more secure (bastille-linux). There are also several projects to create new distributions that are more secure. Are there any plans to create a secure version of Debian or to release scipts to make it more secure. I would love to see a version of Linux (maybe Debian) that would be considered as secure as (more secure than) Open BSD.
In light of the possibility of a Debian HURD distribution, and out of infamiliarity with Debian, I would like to ask what exactly Debian /is/...what comprises it. Is it a packaging/versioning/distribution mechanism? Is it a suite of bundled software? What exactly does Debian offer, or develop? How is it different from other distros? It seems to me that Debian isn't just a label and bundle of software slapped on to Linux, so what exactly is it?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I started using Linux at home with Debian 1.3, and stayed with it through 2.1. After that though, I switched to TurboLinux (though it might just as well have been RH or SuSE) for two reasons:
1) it seems Debian will forever be compiled i486,
and thus never benefit from the oft-huge speed increase of egcs/pgcc
2) the size and growth rate of Debian are, IMHO,
inexcusable. The main section no longer fits on one CD!
If it were just #1, I could probably live with it and just install a seperate compiler and library to compile and run the apps that I really need the speed from. But #2 is just nuts. The multi-CD method of install is very rough and difficult to figure out / use, and installing via ftp is simply not an option for those of us with 28.8 modems. Worse yet, this has caused the pace of Debian to slow to a crawl. "Stable" released versions contains libraries and apps of ancient (by the linux time scale) version, and the dependency structure of dpkg makes substituting self-compiled versions effectively impossible. In short, it's very difficult to have a Debian system that is at all current.
So, my questions are these:
1. Is the Debian project planning, at any point, to create a Pentium-optimized release?
2. Is the Debian project planning, at any point,
to create something like a Debian-lite, that includes only a core of packages such as commonly used libraries, X, popular user agents such as mutt, lftp, and lynx, essential and popular server daemons like sendmail, yp[stuff], nfs, and apache...? Basically, a distro of similar size to the more popular distros that fit easily onto one CD.
If Debian were to do those things, which I see as modernizing and streamlining respectively, I would switch back (or at least try it out in vmware =]).
MoNsTeR
After reading about 1/3 of the posts, the major complaint about Debian (it is free, who are we to complain?) seems to be that stable releases are abandoned. I have been using Debian throughout my Linux experience. I tried RedHat, but I was dissappointed with it. Debian does seem to be getting behind. I find myself downloading tar.gz files and upgrading a lot of components myself which is very time consuming, but probably good practice if nothing else. But it kind of defeats the point of having a distro. I am not presuming in anyway to be an expert or proclaim to have a better idea than the current one, but I had a suggestion on a new distro model that might make things a bit easier, especially with the fast moving world of open-source projects.
** A lot of open source projects make projections about when a new release will be made or one atleast knows the next version number obviously. Why not build a distribution in the following manner.
(1) Look at the open-source projects included in your distro or that you want to include. Look at your current distro set your new distro to include the next versions of open-source projects you currently include or plan to include. Make that your goal for the distro and when it is reached, up your version number and set a new set of goals.
(2) All the while, maintain your current stable and basically keep upgrading it with updates with the intent of meeting your goals for the new distro version. Once it is met, your current stable goes up one version number.
(3) Allow the users to set their version level. Maybe they don't want to touch packages above the goal of their current distro. They don't need the latest windowmaker, icewm, gnome, etc.
Basically, your current stable is a set of open-source project versions (kernel 2.0.36, GTK 1.2, etc.) that interoperate together. Then you have additional packages that fit into your new distro such as kernel 2.2.12, 2.3.18, etc.) A lot more testing would be required, but considering the larger developer base debian seems to be getting, it might make better use of the resource. This is in no way a totally developed thought. You may have already considered something like what I described, assuming what I described makes any sense at all.
What are the chances of getting Debian GNU/Linux released more frequently? Currently the releases happen about every 14 months or so. Is there anyway to speed it up so that it is say, every 6 months with minor bug/security releases to stay at it's usual speediness?
It seems to me that the whole HURD project [tho very promising in theory] has been in pre-beta hibernation for quite some time... so my question is:
What exactly would it take to ramp up work on the HURD so that *Debian/HURD* actually becomes reality... or maybe the question should be "is there no Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox for the lowly HURD??"
<---[singularity sig]
I've seen a number of comments already dealing with this subject but none have asked specifically what I want to know. As a new user to linux if anyone has a simple answer to my question, please answer
I've been wanting to try Debian for awhile now, the only thing holding me back is the tendency for Debian to fall behind by one current kernel release. With the upcoming release of pototo based on the 2.2 Kernel as well as the 2.4 kernel is Debian destined to fall behind once again? Are there any plans to adjust the release schedules or come up with a new release system to keep more up to date with the new software we're seeing more frequently?
IMO opinion most of the die hard Linux fans are faithful devotees of Debian yet they also want to be on the bleeding edge. It seems to me Debain would benefit greatly by keeping more up to date even if it was with sub-releases incorperating things such as KDE 2.0 and the 2.4 kernel. As I said before I'm releatively new to Linux and since I've had literally no experience I would not be surprised to find all of this is easily solved with dpkg or something similar. Please let me know if it can be.
LiNT
At the Comdex Corel demo, they had a gui front end to pkg. mgmt. Will the source go back to the Kommunity?
The two biggest problems with Debian are :
1) The steep pkg mgmt curve;
2) The documentation errors;
3) The primitive installation/configuration.
You really need someone to actually try using the docs you ship before sending them to the printer. The leaflet with the Debian/SGI 2.1 box I got from Comdex had about three rather grotesque errors.
I got past them fine, but you can forget about marketing such a thing to the "Frys Buyer".
Even once past that, having to do all that ascii configuration stuff for a base install is crazy.
Hope you have people working on cleaning all these problems up -- I don't see how you can go mainstream against Corel, Suse, Caldera or RedHat without a serious effort in these areas.
The publicly stated reason for closing new-maintainers was so that existing packages could be maintained better (did I get that right?). Are things any better now? It seems to me to be a non-sequitor that you can improve the maintainance of existing packages by preventing new people from joining - but maybe I am missing something here. At what point will you decide that packages are being maintained well enough so that new maintainers can be reopened? Couldnt whatever course of actions that you took upon closing new-maintainers also have been executed with new-maintainers still open?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
So is the goal to be the First Post or to be the first one to utter "first post"? Also you oughta get Mick a login, strictly for humour value, so we can keep running tallies of how bad his karma goes. I mean, as long as it is cool to get first post, why not do it w/ a login, so everyone can see it at +1?
What is/was your motivation to put out a Debian FreeBSD distro?
Will Debian ever make an initial public offering? :)
I'm not quite sure where to put this question;
it probably isn't a very good one for this topic,
but I couldn't find the package description, as
the package is no longer part of Debian. I was
wondering why Debian dropped the Grail web
browser. I'd like to contact the former Debian
maintainer for Grail, if possible; however,
the package description isn't available at the
Debian web site, since the package was dropped.
Any suggestions, anyone?
(currently testing something about signatures here)
What are your job duties?
Like:
Do you make executive decisions for debian?
Do you just keep organization?
Do you handle legal maters?
Etc..., refering back to the orginal question, what are your duties?
side question- describe a typical day, week, month?
Steve Bibayoff
ps I know I asked two questions, but there close enough to the same.
Did they at least give you the benefit of a decent reacharound?
the size and growth rate of Debian are, IMHO, inexcusable. The main section no longer fits on one CD!
IMHO, this is the beauty of Debian. As they are all volunteers there really is no way that Debian would not be huge. Why you ask? I'll tell you. People contribute what they like. In a company like redhat those in charge can say "stop fiddling with that HURD project and give us a hand".
In the Debian world if those in charge said something similiar the HURD group would give them the finger and continue their work. They are all volunteers doing what they do because they love it. They're not being paid by anyone and really have no deadlines save those that are self-imposed. Debian's size will continue to grow very quickly so long as people have diverse interests (and we know they do... I say linux, you say freebsd, etc, etc)
My questions: When will Debian again be accepting new Developers, because you've got someone in Maine ready to give you a hand.
btw- I really think pentium optimization is a great idea, even though I read somewhere the speed increase is minimal.
Do you think that Corel has taken the right path in making a user friendly distro of Debian? Aside from the hoopla of threatened lawsuits and other controversy do you think it is easy enough for a newbie and fleshed out enough for someone who wants to really use it?
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Does the Debian project plan to offer sourcecode Debian packages? I'm aware that apt already supports downloading and building packages from source archives. However, since a dependency system for source packages is missing, this remains an error-prone process. The need to install software from sourcecode seems to become more urgent as Debian supports more CPU architectures. It would also be a welcome feature for those who want Pentium-optimized binaries.
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
ta to slashdot for the good interview.
to the debian people:
i really like the
-- rm -rf / tells you if you have root or not
There is a free Qt now? With source and open development for all?
I haven't checked for a couple months, but all the links I can find still say there is no source, and it's about $1500 per developer in a closed source or "for profit" environment.
Obviously, the MS, Borland, Cygnus, Metrowerks solutions are a much better deal if this is still the case, so PLEASE give me some links...we want to use this.
The Puffin group has a running parisc-linux
shell now (see http://www.thepuffingroup.com/parisc/weekly)
Do you think on an architecture so far out of the
mainstream there will be enough developers to create
a distro? Also, feelings are split as far as
optimizing for ix86 chipset families -- have any
groups formed to do so, and do you think a consensus
will emerge in favor of supporting optimized build
rules for arch-i586 and friends, if not distributing
the binaries themselves, can be reached?
Someone had to do it.
What is intended to be done to counter the fact that for many Debian volunteers, helping debian "is just not fun anymore", because of the size & complexity of the project , politics, flame wars, ... ?
Egoine.
Or more aptly, when the HURD project become easy to install? Is it still standard operating procedure to operate on top of Debian GNU/Linux? I think the single most powerful thing a supporter can do is USE the OS. Is it mostly a question of critical mass? Where does the project need help? Does GCC 2.95 and Apache 1.3.9 run on the HURD? Will it scale on my dual proc machine?
I've been running linux for over 2 years(first distro was Slackware 3.2). After a while the libc5/glib2 thing was too much and I changed over to RedHat 5.2. Updated to RedHat 6 when that cam out and it was ok. Heard enough good stuff about Debian that I thought I've give it a try a couple months ago.
With Slink being SO out of date(based on a 2.0.x kernel for starters), that's not an option to install. I need stuff like XFree86 3.3.5 for my voodoo3, some programs need to be run on a 2.2.x kernel, etc. So I decided to just point to Potato and install from there. The Potato install scripts crashed on me 3 times in a row(yes I know it's "unstable") and I finally Just re-installed RedHat 6.1.
So my question. What do you say to someone that wants to use debian, but Slink is out of date, and Potato won't install? It possible to just install Slink and "apt-get dist update" and point to Potato after a successful Slink install? How does one do a freah install of Debian now, and have an up-to-date system(2.2.13, XFree86 3.3.5, etc.)?
How's that floppy distro coming? When might we see a feature freeze?
and PPC? is it likely debian will ever come to the PPC platform in any real form?
there's a PPC section of the Potato part of the debian ftp site, but it doesn't have a lot of support, and last time i checked there was _no_ documentation. and potato's supposedly unstable anyway.
Please, please say this will eventually come to be a full distribution. i would _really_ rather have debian on this here mac than the quasi-redhat that is linuxppc. Not to mention that linuxppc's distribution, well, isn't perfect. there are a _lot_ of things broken right out of the box. It would be nice to have something resembling an alternative.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This is an important question to ask, but it needs to be restated in a way that doesn't sound like a barely disguised attack from a Linux zealot. How about something like:
Since you are working on both Linux (established) and the HURD (experimental), what new mechanisms, facilities or areas do you see the HURD opening up in future years beyond the Unix space that is covered by Linux?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Potato, contrary to popular belief, is updated, but updates consist of bugfixes (many security-related). You won't have the latest and greatest stuff out there, but if you want a stable box, it's the way to fly.
Slink offers a rapid development cycle and plenty of opportunities to experience the bugs and incompatibilities which plague other distros -- well, sort of (Slink is usually fixable). Packaging for Slink usually trails application release by a few days to a weeks for more obscure stuff. Plenty quick for me.
So have at it -- stable and conservative, or bleeding edge. Take your pick.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
When moderating content such as this, it's alway sa good idea to read and understand what the person is stating three times in 3 different ways. Sometimes trolls are hard to catch, but this is a classic. Please be careful in future and use moderation spairingly.
...I thought I was confused, but now I just don't know....
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Wasn't there something about one question per post?
There are rumors floating around that Redhat will buy Corel. How do you feel about Redhat purchasing the company that designed Corel Linux, which is based upon debian? This could pose a great conflict, as Redhat and Debian are "competitors" in the linux market.
- clowns are evil
Linux, FreeBSD and HURD are all UNIX-like (whatever that means) operating systems/kernels. Is Debian considering any non-UNIX-like operating systems/kernels? I'm thinking about things like MVS, OS/400 (sorry, I work with a lot of IBM kit). I don't know a lot about HURD, but I suspect you could build something that looks like (for instance) OS/400 on top of it. Is this a direction that the Debian project would consider if the large corporates showed interest?
I would like to know what does Mr. Debian do with all the money that he gets from selling Debian CDs.
That's it.. You only use non-free if you want so. Can you do it with redhat?
There has been a lot of discussion on debian-devel lately (and for some time now) on the "package pool" system. How far have these discussions gone? I've already watched a few simply disappear with no concrete changes at all.
Congratulations on the great work!
rbp
HURD is a kernel, Linux is a kernel, and FreeBSD has a kernel. The kernel is not the operating system. Debian is an operating system which is becoming kernel independant. To make a complete new operating system around HURD would be to reinvent the wheel. And seeing as HURD and Debian are both GNU or FSF projects (is Debian under FSF, it is isn't it? I get lost in all these terms) then it makes perfect sense for them to blend.
FreeBSD on the other hand is a bigger issue. FreeBSD already has its own complete operating system. Making a FreeBSD based Debian is in many ways reinventing the wheel. But the motivation behind it is most probably to do with people's favouring the Debian environment over the FreeBSD one, or simply to do with adding another kernel option to Debianwhich surely can't hurt.
I'd be most interested in his opinion on the FreeBSD kernel as it seems quite a leap.
Besides GNU/Linux and GNU/HURD, is it possible that someday Debian might attempt an OS that completely breaks with the UNIX tradition? Although I understand HURD implements UNIX in a different way, how about an OS that reflects and entirely new way of thinking in its API's and its visible structure?
-- John Truong
Oh, I see, the "free edition" and "pro editions" both have source code, which is great, but we can't use it. There's no way my manager will let me pay $1550 per developer for a set of libraries.
Our current strategy is to wait on Borland's C++ Builder, which has a fairly rich set of objects in a RAD environment, for about $200-$300 per developer. Supposedly, this will be out in mid 2000.
Unfortunately, we can't release our code. It's just not possible, as we subcontract proprietary software.
How can I help the Debian collection of applications work well with distributed filesystems? For example, I'd like an entire LAN to have access to the Debian applications through Coda, saving the need for local appplication installation and maintenance.
Wichert, How do you respond to accusations that you are mearly a puppet of The Cabal and that it is really their evil cow aggenda that you implement? For those that do not know, it is widely speculated that Debian is ruled by an elite upper class known only as The Cabal. They apparently enjoy total power within the Project, nay, within the entire community, to do anything they please - but they act in secrete and are totally unaccountable to the massas. Some of us feel that during Wichert's election run The Cabal deliberately secured Wichert's victory in exchange for his very soul! The Cabal wanted to ensure that the Project Leader would not stand in the way of their evil plans! How this travesty against the electorate of Debian is continued is beyond me, The Cabal must abuse an awesome amount of power. They do things without voting for 3 months and *gasp* they actually make things work?! This simply cannot be allowed. Wichert must be exposed for the Cabal Loving Puppet that he truely is and the Cabal must be utterly destroyed! The Truth Is Out There!!
Is Debian going to take any actions against the fact that Corel's FTP server is basically unreachable for updates and everybody is using Debian's FTP mirrors?Or this was an agrement between Corel and Debian Project?
The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. Alan Saporta
It's a kernel and related BSD-derived utilities.
Hands in my pocket
I'm a unix administrator. At this moment we have about 50 Linux (yes debian) boxen and 4 HP-UX closets and a few Solaris pizzaboxes, and perhaps 10 NT's. We have to get a few more Solaris boxes installed, and beleive me, if it was possible they would be Linux boxes.
The problem with Solaris is that the environment that it is shipped with hasn't changed since the early 80's. Is there a chance that we could ever see a debian distro that is made for Solaris. That way I could use the same packages (recompiled though) for both Linux and Solaris.
- Debian is to big to be practical installing.
- Debian stable is simply to old, when the next unstable has not even been freezed yet.
- dselect does not give the proper overview of the adhering packages.
Would it be an idea to group the packages into maintainable clusters, and the clusters could have (relatively) independant release frequency?Could it be made easier to get what is appropriate to install, for this or that task? (I know that it is already so for initial installation, but it is only for firsttimers and the sectioning is very crude)
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
Some other distributions (Caldera, Corel) are using a graphical installation in their distribution.
For new users who are used to M$ Windows this is much more friendly than the text-based installation of Debian and makes it much more attractive to 'try out Linux'.
Are there any plans to create a graphical installation? It seems to me that this could attract a lot of new users.
bye,
pte
I've seen alot of talk recently about a Debian FreeBSD distro. Leaving the pros and cons aside for a moment, is this really happening, or is it just a bunch of useless talk?
1. Most people now know that new-maintainer has been closed temporarily. Most don't know that it was closed for close to a year. I am sure many people want to know the status of new-maintainer; open, closed or gone for good?
.rpm's are dominate right now. What do you feel Debian did to `lose' the packaging war. Do you think it has yet to be fought or will the fight shift to another arena (standard Unix packages?).
2. Beauracracy. Debian is a large project but it isn't the world's biggest. I'd say the Linux kernel is at least twice as large. Why do you think that Debian has built so much bueracracy when other projects don't? Or do you feel that beauracracy is simple a function of distributions (i.e. all distributions are beaurocratic: Free/Net/Open*BSDs, etc.)
3. You've been working on dpkg and dselect for some time now. I believe you are even intending to write a compatible library (HPML?) to eventually replace them. Care to give us a status report on it?
4. More on packages. In the Linux world
Isnt it amazing how everytime slashdot does one of these interviews they request one question per post. Never seems to work....i quess paying attention to details isnt in this groups skillset.
What are the major goals for the Potato, and the consequent releases? That is what architectures and features will you be supporting in the near future? Is the release process, for instance in favor of utilizing package pools for more up-to-date releases, likely to change?
Thanks,
__
Eray Ozkural,
CS, Bilkent Univ.
--exa--
If there are no differences above kernel level, then there is little point to bothering with Hurd. Might as well just improve Linux a bit.
The point is twofold:
Things may not be there yet, but that's certainly the intent.
The result of this is much as you suggest, that there don't have to be a lot of differences visible in user space. Applications that run on Linux should also be able to run on Hurd.
The notion of filesystem translators, for instance, is something that Linux doesn't do.
As time goes by, if there is any merit to Hurd, the use of Hurd facilities such as translators should result in systems based on Hurd diverging from the way Linux looks.
Conclusion: Both Linux and Hurd offer many things that are similar, such as:
- Multiple users
- Multiple tasks
- Hierarchical filesystems
- GLIBC
...
which will result in them looking pretty similar in a lot of ways.The similarities at present comes from trying to get the stuff that works on Linux to work on Hurd.
Eventually, if Hurd "goes well," the differences will emerge...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
1. new-maintainer was closed by them to make sure they'll be able to setup a way to filter people trying to contribute to Debian development using a metric defined by themselves only;
2. every new enhancement must be approved by them before having any success. in fact, most enhancements only succeed if proposed by them.
3. the bashing in the mailing lists is usually supported by them as red-herrings to the real decisions they make.
4. they love to say GPL'd software is better, while using apache, xfree, and others to glorify RMS. i can remeber how people have changed their minds about Debian/FreeBSD once RMS said it was "a bad idea". things like java will never have changes inside debian.
5. they always have the fantastic speech that "you can do almost anything [in Debian], just work for it". reality shows that you'll be a slave of their closed-minds once you become a developer.
6. some of these beasts work for debian in private companies full time. these ones think this automatically enables them to be bosses of the other poor souls.
7. they say what they want, do what they want to do, and don't like to hear what others say and work for. in other words, poor developers are completely alienated.
as an advice to the new-maintainer, debian is only fun in the suburbs, where you can still have fun doing interesting stuff. don't expect, however, that your work will be respected by the elite - debian is much like corporations, poeople above you are always arrogant yet you make they keep running.
I doubt the slashdot bosses will ask this...
It's sad, because this is probably the most true point in the whole list. Everyone that deals with Debian Development know about "The Cabals" and what they have been doing. However, for an outsider, this is likely to be just another X-Files foolish.
What is being done to speed up the process of signing up new developers to Debian, and when will it be back on line?
Something needs to be done to get new releases of Debian out sooner. As it now stands by the time Potato is out (with a 2.2 kernel), the 2.4 kernel will have been released. Debian is the ONLY distro out now still shipping with the 2.0 kernel standard. If the entire distro can't be released sooner, the at least have a means to get major 'world wide' linux updates packaged.
DELTA BURKE WOULD VERY MUCH BE ON THAT LIST
I feel that Debian's greatest strength is in its package-space, which is both vast and amazingly consistent. On the other hand, many commercial distributions do (IMHO) a better job at providing pre-selected sets of packages, configuration options and installation programs for the general-case desktop or server.
That's why when I try to imagine the ideal future for Linux, I usually think of numerous commercial distributions that are easy and quick to install, but all connected to the same package-space that Debian provides. Sort of limiting Debian's function to being a hyper-distribution, a super-set of all possible package-selections. And letting commercial distributors actually deal with the users and the installation process and select which packages or profiles they probably need.
So my question is: would you say such a system is likely, possible or even desireable?