And I'm saying that it's true, because at least in my experience, there's no need to reinstall _ever_, once you have a working Debian setup.
We have tried to replace the installer with something sensible at least once already, but the replacement was too ambitious and was delayed until after woody. I believe something similar may have happened while potato was being prepared, but I can't remember offhand.
Though if you read some other posts, you'd find out that a new, better installer is in the works for sarge (the next Debian), and the Progeny graphical installer is also available.
I think you misunderstood me; the folklore is that no-one cares about fixing the installer *because* no-one reinstalls, and that the suckiness of the present installer is a direct result of that.
I think that's folklore...the real reason AFAIK is that the installer was written back in 1996 or so, and the code is godawful; people were too busy unbreaking it for every new release to improve the installation process at all.
Luckily, there are at least two next-generation installers being worked on for sarge (PGI and debian-installer, with the latter likely being the default last I heard) They should suck much, much less. (hopefully even to a negative degree of suckage:) )
this is what all of bitkeeper's advocates, including it's creator, Larry McVoy
Actually, I *read* the thread, and Larry was attempting to claim that everyone should stay away from free version-control systems, and that he felt it was necessary to impede their development in any way possible.
His reasoning was essentially that someone could make a free bitkeeper clone which would be "good enough" to draw bitkeeper users away and bankrupt him, but that (because they would be unpaid/amateur/lazy/not Larry McVoy) they would be unable to acheive bk's high level of quality, the sun would fall out of the sky, the seas would boil, etc.
One such message is here, but there were a number of variations on the theme that were posted.
I'm strongly against the increase in copyright, but I'll fight it in the November elections.
How? What politicians will fight the copyright interests on this?
I'm going to vote this November, but I don't believe that any of my choices even have an opinion on this topic, let alone a well-informed opinion or one that I would agree with. (and I'm afraid that the ones who do are most likely third-party candidates: raving lunatics and/or thoughtful people with a snowball's chance in hell of winning)
The problem that springs to mind immediately is that this can affect *every program*. (and if you preload it in.xsession or.bashrc or something, it will)
That doesn't just count the user files you go and delete; it also counts the work file your graphics manipulation program generates, the intermediate cruft from compiles, the weirdly named checkpoints your desktop software writes out...in other words, tons of stuff that has no business being saved forever (or until the user remembers to empty the trash, which is -- to a first approximation -- the same thing)
If nothing else, you're quite likely to watch your available disk space go up in smoke, especially if more than one person uses your computer.
Anyway, I generally don't care; I won't be using this anyway (see above), but what other people do with their computers is their own business.
What's happening now is just like speed limit enforcement.
Hm, I think that what's happening (or at least being proposed) now is a lot more like the government requiring a device in every car which would physically prevent you (by taking over the brakes/acceleration) from exceeding the locally posted speed limit..
The point is that while they can't go after all the people who are actually breaking the law, they can make it illegal to manufacture a widget which does not act as a proxy for the government (ie, enforce the law itself). Then they go after the widget manufacturers.
Since widget manufacturers (think GM or Intel) are less numerous and easier to find, the theory is that this is a more attainable goal.
Reminds me of a story I heard about a Terry Pratchett book. Supposedly a Hollywood movie company was negotiating about making a movie out of "Mort". At some point in the discussion, the director said that he really liked the story, but wasn't there something that could be done about this whole Death angle? Apparently, people want an upbeat story and Death is a real "downer"..
(the above may be completely apocryphal, but I found it amusing..)
The problem is that CDs do not compete with each other since each offers a unique experience
This isn't entirely true -- there are entire classes of music which have been recorded by many different artists and are sold by many different companies. Some of these have even been slightly or significantly modified from their original form for the recording.
I am thinking primarily of classical music, although any music which has passed into the public domain will probably serve this purpose. I am not a music collector, but I have been told by people who are that you can in fact shop around for deals -- for instance, a recording of a Beethoven symphony by the New York Philharmonic tends to cost more than a recording of the same symphony by a respectable but lesser-known European orchestra.
Of course, I suppose I may be a "thief" since I haven't yet paid the Brahms estate for the CD I bought recently. Thank goodness that that part of the RIAA's dream world hasn't been enacted yet..
Ah, CivII...that game known everywhere for its superlative network play and freely available source code, not to mention it was one of the only games in 1997 that would run on Linux..
The main thing I remember about CivIII is squinting at the monitor from about 5 inches away so I could tell the difference between the infantry units. YMMV.
I've heard this repeated several places, and I don't understand where people are getting it. In fact, plex86 is a dead (or rather dormant) project, while bochs is chugging along healthily.
If you don't believe me, read the development mail archives for the month of May:
Who is going to make a command that sends stdin to the gnome clipboard?
I'm sure I've seen a half-dozen of these at least. I think there may even be one shipped with X. (for the X clipboard, which is probably what you mean)
It's an idiom. "I take it you don't read debian-devel" is a synonym.
Anyway, I may have been a bit hard on NMs; I worked with one recently who was very competent, and some (well-known) long-time maintainers still ask basic technical questions on -devel.
But I do feel that adding new people adds to the general level of poorly designed packages, and to the level of ignorance about various bits of policy (a lot of new packages were leaving out menu files at one point, although that seems to be less of a problem now) Even if handholding on lists doesn't take time, cleaning up after these people does.
Otherwise, if we're gonna wait a few more weeks, we might as well give KDE 3.0 and Gnome 2.0 (not to mention XFree 4.2) enough time to slide from unstable to testing and be included with Woody.
That way lies madness: those are your pet projects, but someone else might want a new version of Apache or gcc, or the new debian-installer system, or...
There's always going to be something that's "almost ready" to be in the next release. The solution is to make the next release happen faster, not to introduce an indefinite number of incremental delays.
The reason why it works for conventional software projects is that the new people need time to tune in to the project, and existing people are tied up to handholding the newcomers. For Debian, this just does not apply.
You must not read debian-devel. New maintainers (and even people who are already official maintainers) ask basic, everyone-should-know-that-already questions there on a regular basis, tying up time for everyone else (even if it's just the time to discard the message). It's probably part of the reason that many people have unsubscribed from -devel. Not to mention the effort the rest of us have to put into reporting (and fixing!) bugs in their packages.
You could argue that it's less of an issue for Debian, but it's certainly not irrelevant.
Oh, and one more note: it was a member of the new-maintainer queue who was responsible for filing 80 frivolous release-critical bugs, simply because he didn't know better. (see debian-devel ) Bringing people up to speed involves educating them about the social aspects of Debian ("don't file tons of bugs at release time that we have to spend time ignoring") as well as the technical ("package maintainers can't change the priorities of their packages"), and people weem to have as much trouble grasping both.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm saying that it's true, because at least in my experience, there's no need to reinstall _ever_, once you have a working Debian setup.
We have tried to replace the installer with something sensible at least once already, but the replacement was too ambitious and was delayed until after woody. I believe something similar may have happened while potato was being prepared, but I can't remember offhand.
Though if you read some other posts, you'd find out that a new, better installer is in the works for sarge (the next Debian), and the Progeny graphical installer is also available.
Other posts such as my first reply to you?
Daniel
I think you misunderstood me; the folklore is that no-one cares about fixing the installer *because* no-one reinstalls, and that the suckiness of the present installer is a direct result of that.
Daniel
I think that's folklore...the real reason AFAIK is that the installer was written back in 1996 or so, and the code is godawful; people were too busy unbreaking it for every new release to improve the installation process at all.
:) )
Luckily, there are at least two next-generation installers being worked on for sarge (PGI and debian-installer, with the latter likely being the default last I heard) They should suck much, much less. (hopefully even to a negative degree of suckage
Daniel
a copy of bzFlag, or some other type of productivity application.
:)
My, what an interesting life you must lead!
Daniel
this is what all of bitkeeper's advocates, including it's creator, Larry McVoy
Actually, I *read* the thread, and Larry was attempting to claim that everyone should stay away from free version-control systems, and that he felt it was necessary to impede their development in any way possible.
His reasoning was essentially that someone could make a free bitkeeper clone which would be "good enough" to draw bitkeeper users away and bankrupt him, but that (because they would be unpaid/amateur/lazy/not Larry McVoy) they would be unable to acheive bk's high level of quality, the sun would fall out of the sky, the seas would
boil, etc.
One such message is here, but there were a number of variations on the theme that were posted.
Daniel
I'm strongly against the increase in copyright, but I'll fight it in the November elections.
How? What politicians will fight the copyright interests on this?
I'm going to vote this November, but I don't believe that any of my choices even have an opinion on this topic, let alone a well-informed opinion or one that I would agree with. (and I'm afraid that the ones who do are most likely third-party candidates: raving lunatics and/or thoughtful people with a snowball's chance in hell of winning)
Daniel
"Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics." -- alleged French proverb.
Daniel
Would it interest you as much if the passage you found was from old greek myth, or Native American pagan stories?
Speaking of which -- forget Revelations; between this and the ice age story the other day, I'm looking out for the Fimbulwinter and the giants..
Daniel
Actually, I think that's an excellent idea. Give 'em all 100 :)
Daniel
(note to people not familiar with the GRE: a perfect score on a given section is 800)
The problem that springs to mind immediately is that this can affect *every program*. (and if you preload it in .xsession or .bashrc or something, it will)
That doesn't just count the user files you go and delete; it also counts the work file your graphics manipulation program generates, the intermediate cruft from compiles, the weirdly named checkpoints your desktop software writes out...in other words, tons of stuff that has no business being saved forever (or until the user remembers to empty the trash, which is -- to a first approximation -- the same thing)
If nothing else, you're quite likely to watch your available disk space go up in smoke, especially if more than one person uses your computer.
Anyway, I generally don't care; I won't be using this anyway (see above), but what other people do with their computers is their own business.
Daniel
What's happening now is just like speed limit enforcement.
Hm, I think that what's happening (or at least being proposed) now is a lot more like the government requiring a device in every car which would physically prevent you (by taking over the brakes/acceleration) from exceeding the locally posted speed limit..
The point is that while they can't go after all the people who are actually breaking the law, they can make it illegal to manufacture a widget which does not act as a proxy for the government (ie, enforce the law itself). Then they go after the widget manufacturers.
Since widget manufacturers (think GM or Intel) are less numerous and easier to find, the theory is that this is a more attainable goal.
Daniel
Reminds me of a story I heard about a Terry Pratchett book. Supposedly a Hollywood movie company was negotiating about making a movie out of "Mort". At some point in the discussion, the director said that he really liked the story, but wasn't there something that could be done about this whole Death angle? Apparently, people want an upbeat story and Death is a real "downer"..
(the above may be completely apocryphal, but I found it amusing..)
Daniel
The problem is that CDs do not compete with each other since each offers a unique experience
This isn't entirely true -- there are entire classes of music which have been recorded by many different artists and are sold by many different companies. Some of these have even been slightly or significantly modified from their original form for the recording.
I am thinking primarily of classical music, although any music which has passed into the public domain will probably serve this purpose. I am not a music collector, but I have been told by people who are that you can in fact shop around for deals -- for instance, a recording of a Beethoven symphony by the New York Philharmonic tends to cost more than a recording of the same symphony by a respectable but lesser-known European orchestra.
Of course, I suppose I may be a "thief" since I haven't yet paid the Brahms estate for the CD I bought recently. Thank goodness that that part of the RIAA's dream world hasn't been enacted yet..
Daniel
My point was that Linux is totally independent from GNU
That might be an interesting point if Debian looked anything like a bare Linux kernel.
Cheers,
Daniel
(yes, IHBT..)
civII came out in 1997 or so, right?
Ah, CivII...that game known everywhere for its superlative network play and freely available source code, not to mention it was one of the only games in 1997 that would run on Linux..
Daniel
(IHBT. IHL. HAND)
graphically it kicks the crap out of freeciv.
The main thing I remember about CivIII is squinting at the monitor from about 5 inches away so I could tell the difference between the infantry units. YMMV.
Daniel
[title: "Why are you all so negative?"]
Answer: this is Slashdot.
Daniel
But that's the whole fun about playing against the Great Wall.. Onward to metallurgy! >=)
Daniel
But, umm, nobody is talking about exploding CDs. Except maybe you.
Daniel
I've heard this repeated several places, and I don't understand where people are getting it. In fact, plex86 is a dead (or rather dormant) project, while bochs is chugging along healthily.
If you don't believe me, read the development mail archives for the month of May:
bochs
plex86
Daniel
Who is going to make a command that sends stdin to the gnome clipboard?
I'm sure I've seen a half-dozen of these at least. I think there may even be one shipped with X. (for the X clipboard, which is probably what you mean)
This is probably why the above poster was amused.
Daniel
If you don't want to spend time fixing someone else's bug, use an alternative software package.
<SARCASM>Yeah, that's a great way to improve the quality of Debian.</SARCASM>
Daniel
You must not read debian-devel.
:-)
Why are you forbidding me?
It's an idiom. "I take it you don't read debian-devel" is a synonym.
Anyway, I may have been a bit hard on NMs; I worked with one recently who was very competent, and some (well-known) long-time maintainers still ask basic technical questions on -devel.
But I do feel that adding new people adds to the general level of poorly designed packages, and to the level of ignorance about various bits of policy (a lot of new packages were leaving out menu files at one point, although that seems to be less of a problem now) Even if handholding on lists doesn't take time, cleaning up after these people does.
Daniel
Otherwise, if we're gonna wait a few more weeks, we might as well give KDE 3.0 and Gnome 2.0 (not to mention XFree 4.2) enough time to slide from unstable to testing and be included with Woody.
That way lies madness: those are your pet projects, but someone else might want a new version of Apache or gcc, or the new debian-installer system, or...
There's always going to be something that's "almost ready" to be in the next release. The solution is to make the next release happen faster, not to introduce an indefinite number of incremental delays.
Daniel
The reason why it works for conventional software projects is that the new people need time to tune in to the project, and existing people are tied up to handholding the newcomers. For Debian, this just does not apply.
You must not read debian-devel. New maintainers (and even people who are already official maintainers) ask basic, everyone-should-know-that-already questions there on a regular basis, tying up time for everyone else (even if it's just the time to discard the message). It's probably part of the reason that many people have unsubscribed from -devel. Not to mention the effort the rest of us have to put into reporting (and fixing!) bugs in their packages.
You could argue that it's less of an issue for Debian, but it's certainly not irrelevant.
Oh, and one more note: it was a member of the new-maintainer queue who was responsible for filing 80 frivolous release-critical bugs, simply because he didn't know better. (see debian-devel ) Bringing people up to speed involves educating them about the social aspects of Debian ("don't file tons of bugs at release time that we have to spend time ignoring") as well as the technical ("package maintainers can't change the priorities of their packages"), and people weem to have as much trouble grasping both.
Daniel