On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 09:49, Ole-Egil Hvitmyren wrote: > > Basically, I've discovered that people are _terminally_ afraid of using > testing or unstable, and not because of security holes (these people > surf the net with AmigaOS on a daily basis. AmigaOS doesn't have a > concept of memory protection. You do the math). But because of the > names. They think they have to run stable on their workstations because > otherwise things will crash all the time.
That's why I always say 'sid' instead of 'unstable'. I like 'testing' better than 'sarge' though, at least as long as it isn't anywhere near a release. > [...] XFree86 should get higher priority, it's been stuck at 4.2.1 > in Debian for ages now, and there's VERY good reasons for upgrading > to 4.3.0 if you buy new hardware. You only need the X server for hardware support though, which my dri-trunk packages provide, even for woody. Otherwise, you're welcome to join the X Strike Force and get 4.3 for sid moving forward. :) > The problem is that when one distribution is named "stable", people > who are new to Debian think the others must suck badly. If the > naming was changed so you had something to the effect of "server", > "workstation" and "devel", people would get the idea. Am I making > sense here? Maybe, but this isn't the right place to discuss this. -project or -devel would be better. FWIW, I don't think these names are absolutely better. There are valid reasons for running stable on a workstation (in particular in controlled environments like corporations or government agencies) and testing or sid on a server, for example. > So some people go for other distributions instead of upgrading Debian, > because they DO NOT WANT TO RUN non-stable systems, and they think that > since Yellow Dog 3.0 is released, while Sarge is "testing" (since Woody > is "stable" this implies a lack of stability). All in all, they end up > with the EXCACT same software as if they had gone for Sarge, but it > doesn't SEEM like that because of the names. There isn't much that can be done about the fact that choice confuses some people, is there? ;) > Sorry for the rant, but I feel Debian has some way to go before our > marketing skills are on par with the other distributions. Maybe because we don't do marketing at all? :) We don't have a product we need to sell, after all. -- Earthling Michel Dänzer \ Debian (powerpc), XFree86 and DRI developer Software libre enthusiast \ http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer
