On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 02:55:40PM +0200, "Mgr. Peter Tuharsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was heard to say: > Debian developers often see "Ubuntu the enemy" and are mocking it as > inferior technology. However, they fail to see, what does the Debian > really offer to desktop users eventually. They fail to understand, why > are they using Ubuntu happily and reference it to novices. It seems, > that desktop users don't see Debian fitting their needs. What are the means?
When you talk about "desktop users", I think you really mean "novice consumers". Is that a fair assessment? In my experience, Debian can work just fine on the desktop in some situations, just not for novice home users. (think, e.g., about desktops for office workers) > b, Stability > > It simply depends on, well, luck on choosing the particulary good > version of software. With stable upstream versions of software, there > should not be major stability issues anyhow. > > Debian proclaims to offer excellent stability. However, if some > application does have stability issues, users must wait at least 2 years > for next "stable" version of Debian to see the fix. The stability is not > automatically guaranteed by oldness of software and lack of upgrades in > Debian. The word "stable" with regard to Debian's repositories doesn't mean "works without bugs". Every piece of software has bugs, and in general, if a newer version of the software appears to have less bugs, that's a reflection of the fact that there's been less time for people to report the bugs it contains. Debian stable is "stable" in the sense of "solid rock" versus "shifting sands": we ensure that the behavior of the system won't change during a stable cycle. There might be bugs in it, but they'll be the same bugs throughout stable's lifetime. Why would you want this? In a setting where you have people doing productive work using a piece of software, unnecessary changes to the software are *worse* in the short term than a fixed and unchangable set of bugs: not only are changes likely to break the software, but they may require users to retrain or disrupt the processes of your organization. This is true even if the new software is an unqualified improvement (either in terms of bug count or usability) over the old software; look at the backlash over the new Ribbon interface in Microsoft office, for instance. Having briefly overseen a small network of Debian systems for a research group, my sense is that an 18-month cycle would work well in this setting; anything shorter than a year would be too disruptive. I await correction from more experienced members of this list who can tell me I'm full of it. :) Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
