Le Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 07:54:44PM +0200, Daniel Pocock a écrit : > > If that means a user in Kosovo is more likely to configure their system > correctly, then it is a good technical solution, similar to what I > described (leaving out the country codes for such regions and helping > them choose alternatives). > > We could also have a disclaimer, "Not all entries in this list are > officially recognized as countries, some are disputed territories that > have been included for the purpose of helping users in those regions get > the optimal configuration." > > More concise: "Select the entry from this list of regions and countries > that most closely matches your geographic location"
Hi all, I think that configuring correctly the system is a goal that is much easier to follow compared with making sure the installer commmunicates a vision of the World in line with the user's views. It is quite a big limitation when the geographic location has to be known in order to configure a system correctly, especially that users are increasingly mobile. As far as I know, geographic location has been mostly an issue related to the choice of mirror, and fortunately the content delivery networks available from deb.debian.net should provide an excellent alternative to mirrors for most users. For the remaining users, while there may be cases where the best network source for packages is a country's mirror, it is by far not granted, so it is hard to avoid a recommendation such as "if the CDN is too slow, consult with other Debian users in your area or try mirrors that appear to be close to you". I do not see a mirror for Kosovo in <https://www.debian.org/mirror/list>, but this page uses the word "country" only twice, so it may be easier to have "Kosovo" in the list without having it seen as an endorsement by Debian. And since Kosovo does not have a TLD, there is no issue with names such as "ftp.<country>.debian.org". Country names may also be useful to pick a keyboard, but in this case there is no choice for Debian to make: we can just use the information provided by the maker. For languages, their presence or absence in the installer strongly depends on the availability of a translation team. I am quite sure that the bottleneck would not be ISO codes. Also, languages are easy to reconfigure after installation. Thus, we could remove from the list any locale that does not have visible support in Debian (installer + debconf + website + documentation + package descriptions + default desktop): that would ubloat the list and we could add a brief note that if users do not find their country, it is because Debian could not find support for it. So it seems that the solution would be to move away from asking the user to enter country codes ? Otherwise, the propose disclaimer sounds like a good alternative. Also, the elephant in the room is that any change will require some work... Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Debian Med packaging team, http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
