On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 04:08:13PM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
> I think we have more systemic issues. I am quite impressed how Nix/NixOS
> is able to pull so many packages and modules with so few people. But
> they use only one workflow, one way to package, one init system, etc.
> Looking at Arch, one workflow, one way to package, one init system, etc.
> Looking at Fedora, one workflow, one way to package, one init system.
I wouldn't call it "issues" per se. It's all about trade-offs.
Having only one way to do things helps velocity, but it also impedes
flexibility, which some users and developers value.
Having a faster release cycle either requires a lot more engineering
resources (volunteers or paid, depending on the distro) and/or it
forces users to continually update to new major releases if they want
to continue getting security updates.
There still *are* enterprise customers who like the longer release
cycles. Some of them even use Debian and have privately referred to
it as "their secret advantage". Whether it is a large number or not,
and whether they are contributing back to the Debian community (and
whether that is important to us) are different questions.
Requiring that all packages use the common distro-shipped shared
libraries (or Perl or Python components) as opposed to shipping their
own is another engineering tradeoff where there may be some
advantages, but also disadvantages, in terms of effort, pain if the
shared libraries or Perl/Python components laugh at the concept of
"stable API's", and userspace package upstreams that want to work
across a large number of distributions all supporting different
versions of their dependencies, and/or upstream that want to move
faster than Debian is willing to release.
These are all tradeoffs, and there is no one right answer. That may
be painful for those who believe that there is, and it is a hidden
assumption in the blithe assertion that Debian should be "The
Universal OS". Unfortunately, these tradeoffs mean that there can
*be* no single "Universal OS". There will always be a need for
different horses for different courses.
Debian has taken a strong opinionated stance on many of these
tradeoffs, and that's fine. It's not necessarily a problem, except
insofar that some people want Debian to be applicable for a particular
use case, such as for example Steam OS. It might be the answer is
that Debian simply can't be as Universal as we might aspire to be.
Cheers,
- Ted
