There certainly doesn't seem to be a single widely-used convention for embedding documentation in C or ObjC.
Sure there is. They're called comments. The whole automatically generated HTML API documentation movement is nice and all, but an engine to search through source code could just as easily read plain old comments.
Indeed. The whole Debian stable rationalization is actually pretty easy to explain.
I believe the meaning of the word 'stable' is doesn't change often.
Or was it "So placed as to resist forces tending to cause motion."
stable as in stability, right? Isn't stability supposed to be a good thing?
That in mind, I do agree releases a year or so more often would help Debian. But for some people only having to update every few years is a great thing, they don't want upheavals on their servers every 6 months. This is the kind of people Debian stable serves. All of the rest use testing or unstable. They should make the website be more clear that stable is not for desktop users who want recent stuff.
There really isn't anyone working on Debian full time, and it's release pace reflects this. Debian is, well, different.
I realize this is a play on the y2k "bug," but this isn't a bug at all. As if those "lazy programmers" took a "shortcut" by allocating a finite amount of memory for the timer..
It is, in fact, just a design issue that needs to be kept in mind, especially when the epoch nears its end. Which is not now.
"The only thing that makes Debian Debian is the installer."
That, I must say, is an extremely ignorant statement. It suprised me considering most of your points are very valid and well though out. It's akin to saying Red Hat is Red Hat is because of its graphical install program. Or, if you were (incorrectly) referring to dpkg as the "install program," saying that Red Hat is Red Hat because of RPM. I could go on for several pages, but you're a smart guy so I'm sure you will realize why this is wrong. In all liklihood this statment was simply badly misworded giving it an unintended meaning, especially out of context.
The base debs presumably have pretty close to the minimum needed to have a running Debian system. I apologise for my incorrect conclusion about what you had installed. I assumed so because even though you didn't start dselect, base-config would have, at the same time automatically selecting all packages with standard or greater priority. It is of course possible to skip this step, which it seems you had.
I was pretty doubtful of the 20MB claim too. Debian can get small, but a system that small is a thing of the past. kernel-image-2.6.10-1-686 itself takes 3/4 of 20 megs. I would argue that Debian can be very useful on 'small' systems, but I consider small 100-200 megs. With debfoster and localpurge at your command, you can purge anything you dont need and have a minimal-feature Debian system for whatever task you need to do. I would use Debian over all but the best microdistros any day. I wouldn't have to learn a new toolset and it could update itself with a cronjob without ever going offline. The notion that Debian is not useful for small systems is generally incorrect, though of course it depends on who you ask.
Regarding embedded systems, as you have suggested in other posts, I definately agree Debian is not suited. None of Debian's (or any non-embedded distribution, for that matter) strengths have any real value when it's stored in flash memory on an embedded device. It could be/have been useful as an upstream source for a specially tailored distro, however.
"Perhaps Debian isn't trying to address the embedded segment."
This is not true. The thing with Debian is that they don't have commercial interests so they aren't trying to 'address' anyone. They are not selling a product and they don't need users to stay around (this is probably not completely true, but much more so than corp-based distros). If as suggested in TFA an arch is not included in the release, its for the sole reason that there simply arent enough people willing to maintain it.
Base = Required Packages, likely some Important Default = Required, Important, Standard
You're obviously someone who just lets it install whatever and do its thing. No problem with that, really. But there is a lot of power to customization od Debian. Your options for tailoring your system are far more expansive than just selecting which optional and extra packages you want. Note that there are only 50 or so required packages, and none of them are overly large. With just those, you will have a very limited console system without most of the tools expected on a *NIX system.
As a side note, you can use the commands apt-get install dpkg-awk dpkg-awk 'priority:required' -- package for a list. But don't forget a kernel, they are priority: optional.
Sure it does -- at least for me. And its been like that for like a week now.
It alternates between "New! Get Gmail - Google's free email service with 1 GB of space." and "New! Get Gmail - Google's free email service with 1000 MB of space."
You wouldn't be able to write to a cloop compressed filesystem like knoppix has. Ever tried remastering knoppix? Takes forever to compress the whole disk. And you cant add files to it once its compressed.
A DVD would still increase available space, but compression is pretty much out of the question in such a situation.
The real problem is that say, Fedora Linux and, say, FreeBSD will be laid out completely differently. Not that FreeBSD and NetBSD will differ. BSD is not a solution, but indeed part of the problem. Though not as big a part of the problem, since consistency between BSD variants certainly doens't hurt. In the end, even if BSD maintains internal consistency it solves very little of the larger issue of inconsistency between Linux and Unix, between Unix brands, and between Linux distros.
I agree, however Richard Stallman and his previous quests for recognition etc have only alienated some people who otherwise love free software. Forcing people to be thankful doesn't help anyone, and of course it can't really be described as gratitude then anyway. Unimportant (as far as I'm concerned) little things like forcing the title "GNU/Linux." Even though it was deserved, the way they demanded it only made matters worse.
I am grateful to Stallman and the FSF, but issues like that in the grandparent don't exactly feed that feeling. Still, you're probably right and certain others and I should cut them some slack.
Ah, I suppose this brings OOo in line with a GNU conference.
Though, I don't really see why the FSF feels the need to stamp such a name on software. I don't choose GPL because I want or even approve of my software being lumped into some FSF project. I know of no other license which includes such frivolity. My software is my project. OOo is their own project. This is how I think: I don't see OOo as GNU OOo, just as OOo.
I am aware, my reasoning was that Debian is not a GNU project. Yes, it is "Debian GNU/Linux" because the os is built around the linux kernel and the gnu toolset. I do see your point, however, but no such argument exists for OOo and therefore my point stands.
To clarify, my post is not meant to reject the name of the conference, but the suggested changes of the parent. I just didn't see how the suggested names were any more relevant to the content than the original. If anything, it should be renamed to a name relating more generally to Open Soure/Free Software.
Well, for one thing, computer books need not last very long because the content quickly becomes obsolete. It's not like a history textbook, as nothing is set in stone in fast-paced tech fields. Publishers want you to buy the newer editions, so they often publish only in soft-cover. Also, who needs them to be hard-cover? They're expensive enough as it is and they usually don't need to be re-read many times.
You forget that the world is 99% idiots and 1%/.ers.
Or was it 99% intelligent people and 1%/.ers?
Besides, with Window's being the premier OS "for-dummies," why should the target audience have to put up with spyware? Blaming it on their personal failings is like saying MS isn't doing such a bad job.
Heh I just typed in lycos.com's ip in the 'report a spam url' box.
Anyhow--if they do so many checks, couldn't the spammers do a little hacking code so that the webserver, ping, or whatever else has a long delay (high latency) even without being DDoSed? Then they Lycosites would stop hurling packets out yonder, while they happily send their spam.
The system is obviously morally wrong and technically flawed.
Why not find some that DO work and simply make a custom knoppix disc with them on it? It's not that hard to add stuff to knoppix, and there are a bunch of great guides. You licensed the drivers.. it's okay to "back them up" onto a CDR, right? =)
Hmm... there is about nothing in this post I agree with. First off, patches are easy as pie to get for Microsoft products once they release them. They have some pretty damn fast servers waiting to upload all the patches they've ever released. Second, backwards (reverse?) compatibility is also impressive. You can run many many old programs on new Windowses and often vice versa. Microsoft has WAY better backwards compatibility than Linux, as things often get rearranged and rethought in Linux. The problems with MS are vendor lock-in, security holes, instability. (stability being more of a problem with Microsoft Playstation OSes of 95,98,Me) To be honest, I think backwards compatibility holds Windows back... you get tons of remnant erroneous junk from old Windowses that piles up in the garbage heap that is Microsoft Windows code. Example: The Windows Registry... big disaster, but we still have it around. Why? The registry is a pathetic unmaintained cob-web-full configuration system with information about programs you thought you'd eradicated years ago. *shudders*. It is the single biggest cause of the common view of Windowsites that Windows should be reinstalled annually. And finally, the quantity of bugs in code is irrelevant to how many people use it. More people means more get exposed, and it also means that people will try to exploit flaws in the code, but having many users doesn't automatically make you a sloppy coder.
Ever wonder why Microsoft releases service packs? I figure that once they think they've squashed a good number of bugs, they need to rewrite some things in order to introduce new ones. They rewrite a bunch of now-working code in order to create new bugs just waiting to be exposed. SPs are the means to hide these among innocent security fixes and other additions. So yes, this brings me to that I do sort-of agree with your last point. They really do want you to upgrade to their latest incarnation of Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha! It will if you pin it up to a normal prio!
I love it..
Package: *
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority:500
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority:500
There certainly doesn't seem to be a single widely-used convention for embedding documentation in C or ObjC.
Sure there is. They're called comments. The whole automatically generated HTML API documentation movement is nice and all, but an engine to search through source code could just as easily read plain old comments.
Oh, and I forgot to add.
Unstable - changes often
for any slow people out there. English, anyone?
Indeed. The whole Debian stable rationalization is actually pretty easy to explain.
I believe the meaning of the word 'stable' is doesn't change often.
Or was it "So placed as to resist forces tending to cause motion."
stable as in stability, right? Isn't stability supposed to be a good thing?
That in mind, I do agree releases a year or so more often would help Debian. But for some people only having to update every few years is a great thing, they don't want upheavals on their servers every 6 months. This is the kind of people Debian stable serves. All of the rest use testing or unstable. They should make the website be more clear that stable is not for desktop users who want recent stuff.
There really isn't anyone working on Debian full time, and it's release pace reflects this. Debian is, well, different.
It's the year 2038 bug.
I realize this is a play on the y2k "bug," but this isn't a bug at all. As if those "lazy programmers" took a "shortcut" by allocating a finite amount of memory for the timer..
It is, in fact, just a design issue that needs to be kept in mind, especially when the epoch nears its end. Which is not now.
"The only thing that makes Debian Debian is the installer."
That, I must say, is an extremely ignorant statement. It suprised me considering most of your points are very valid and well though out. It's akin to saying Red Hat is Red Hat is because of its graphical install program. Or, if you were (incorrectly) referring to dpkg as the "install program," saying that Red Hat is Red Hat because of RPM. I could go on for several pages, but you're a smart guy so I'm sure you will realize why this is wrong. In all liklihood this statment was simply badly misworded giving it an unintended meaning, especially out of context.
Damn, I read more yet of your posts, and it seems you also suggested my last point. Like half of the posts in this discussion seem to be yours. =)
The base debs presumably have pretty close to the minimum needed to have a running Debian system. I apologise for my incorrect conclusion about what you had installed. I assumed so because even though you didn't start dselect, base-config would have, at the same time automatically selecting all packages with standard or greater priority. It is of course possible to skip this step, which it seems you had.
I was pretty doubtful of the 20MB claim too. Debian can get small, but a system that small is a thing of the past. kernel-image-2.6.10-1-686 itself takes 3/4 of 20 megs. I would argue that Debian can be very useful on 'small' systems, but I consider small 100-200 megs. With debfoster and localpurge at your command, you can purge anything you dont need and have a minimal-feature Debian system for whatever task you need to do. I would use Debian over all but the best microdistros any day. I wouldn't have to learn a new toolset and it could update itself with a cronjob without ever going offline. The notion that Debian is not useful for small systems is generally incorrect, though of course it depends on who you ask.
Regarding embedded systems, as you have suggested in other posts, I definately agree Debian is not suited. None of Debian's (or any non-embedded distribution, for that matter) strengths have any real value when it's stored in flash memory on an embedded device. It could be/have been useful as an upstream source for a specially tailored distro, however.
"Perhaps Debian isn't trying to address the embedded segment."
This is not true. The thing with Debian is that they don't have commercial interests so they aren't trying to 'address' anyone. They are not selling a product and they don't need users to stay around (this is probably not completely true, but much more so than corp-based distros). If as suggested in TFA an arch is not included in the release, its for the sole reason that there simply arent enough people willing to maintain it.
Base = Required Packages, likely some Important
Default = Required, Important, Standard
You're obviously someone who just lets it install whatever and do its thing. No problem with that, really. But there is a lot of power to customization od Debian. Your options for tailoring your system are far more expansive than just selecting which optional and extra packages you want. Note that there are only 50 or so required packages, and none of them are overly large. With just those, you will have a very limited console system without most of the tools expected on a *NIX system.
As a side note, you can use the commands
apt-get install dpkg-awk
dpkg-awk 'priority:required' -- package
for a list. But don't forget a kernel, they are priority: optional.
Ah, posted before knowing how this stuff works. I must be one of the "random users" that they are inviting at this moment.
Guess this is a good time to check it out.
Sure it does -- at least for me. And its been like that for like a week now.
It alternates between
"New! Get Gmail - Google's free email service with 1 GB of space."
and
"New! Get Gmail - Google's free email service with 1000 MB of space."
You wouldn't be able to write to a cloop compressed filesystem like knoppix has. Ever tried remastering knoppix? Takes forever to compress the whole disk. And you cant add files to it once its compressed.
A DVD would still increase available space, but compression is pretty much out of the question in such a situation.
The real problem is that say, Fedora Linux and, say, FreeBSD will be laid out completely differently. Not that FreeBSD and NetBSD will differ. BSD is not a solution, but indeed part of the problem. Though not as big a part of the problem, since consistency between BSD variants certainly doens't hurt. In the end, even if BSD maintains internal consistency it solves very little of the larger issue of inconsistency between Linux and Unix, between Unix brands, and between Linux distros.
I would so buy that! Too bad it wont be practical for quite a while...
I agree, however Richard Stallman and his previous quests for recognition etc have only alienated some people who otherwise love free software. Forcing people to be thankful doesn't help anyone, and of course it can't really be described as gratitude then anyway. Unimportant (as far as I'm concerned) little things like forcing the title "GNU/Linux." Even though it was deserved, the way they demanded it only made matters worse.
I am grateful to Stallman and the FSF, but issues like that in the grandparent don't exactly feed that feeling. Still, you're probably right and certain others and I should cut them some slack.
Ah, I suppose this brings OOo in line with a GNU conference.
Though, I don't really see why the FSF feels the need to stamp such a name on software. I don't choose GPL because I want or even approve of my software being lumped into some FSF project. I know of no other license which includes such frivolity. My software is my project. OOo is their own project. This is how I think: I don't see OOo as GNU OOo, just as OOo.
O.o
Just as Telco prevented certain calls from reaching their customers, ISPs prevent certain connections from reaching their customers.
How is this different? Or did I misunderstand TFA..
I am aware, my reasoning was that Debian is not a GNU project. Yes, it is "Debian GNU/Linux" because the os is built around the linux kernel and the gnu toolset. I do see your point, however, but no such argument exists for OOo and therefore my point stands. To clarify, my post is not meant to reject the name of the conference, but the suggested changes of the parent. I just didn't see how the suggested names were any more relevant to the content than the original. If anything, it should be renamed to a name relating more generally to Open Soure/Free Software.
Well, for one thing, computer books need not last very long because the content quickly becomes obsolete. It's not like a history textbook, as nothing is set in stone in fast-paced tech fields. Publishers want you to buy the newer editions, so they often publish only in soft-cover. Also, who needs them to be hard-cover? They're expensive enough as it is and they usually don't need to be re-read many times.
huh?
Debian != GNU
OpenOffice != GNU
how is GNU or GNU/Linux any better?
You forget that the world is 99% idiots and 1% /.ers.
/.ers?
Or was it 99% intelligent people and 1%
Besides, with Window's being the premier OS "for-dummies," why should the target audience have to put up with spyware? Blaming it on their personal failings is like saying MS isn't doing such a bad job.
Heh I just typed in lycos.com's ip in the 'report a spam url' box. Anyhow--if they do so many checks, couldn't the spammers do a little hacking code so that the webserver, ping, or whatever else has a long delay (high latency) even without being DDoSed? Then they Lycosites would stop hurling packets out yonder, while they happily send their spam. The system is obviously morally wrong and technically flawed.
Why not find some that DO work and simply make a custom knoppix disc with them on it? It's not that hard to add stuff to knoppix, and there are a bunch of great guides. You licensed the drivers.. it's okay to "back them up" onto a CDR, right? =)
Hmm... there is about nothing in this post I agree with. First off, patches are easy as pie to get for Microsoft products once they release them. They have some pretty damn fast servers waiting to upload all the patches they've ever released. Second, backwards (reverse?) compatibility is also impressive. You can run many many old programs on new Windowses and often vice versa. Microsoft has WAY better backwards compatibility than Linux, as things often get rearranged and rethought in Linux. The problems with MS are vendor lock-in, security holes, instability. (stability being more of a problem with Microsoft Playstation OSes of 95,98,Me) To be honest, I think backwards compatibility holds Windows back... you get tons of remnant erroneous junk from old Windowses that piles up in the garbage heap that is Microsoft Windows code. Example: The Windows Registry... big disaster, but we still have it around. Why? The registry is a pathetic unmaintained cob-web-full configuration system with information about programs you thought you'd eradicated years ago. *shudders*. It is the single biggest cause of the common view of Windowsites that Windows should be reinstalled annually. And finally, the quantity of bugs in code is irrelevant to how many people use it. More people means more get exposed, and it also means that people will try to exploit flaws in the code, but having many users doesn't automatically make you a sloppy coder. Ever wonder why Microsoft releases service packs? I figure that once they think they've squashed a good number of bugs, they need to rewrite some things in order to introduce new ones. They rewrite a bunch of now-working code in order to create new bugs just waiting to be exposed. SPs are the means to hide these among innocent security fixes and other additions. So yes, this brings me to that I do sort-of agree with your last point. They really do want you to upgrade to their latest incarnation of Windows.