Alexander Antoniades <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Well, I don't know where that statement came from. What became woody > > was certainly the least buggy, most secure set of software we had at > > the time when woody froze. Which was a long long time before release. > > Well in my opinion there's an inadvertent implication that comes from > defending older software against newer software that people complain isn't in > Woody (or Debian). See in this exchange you and I are having, you talk about > the immaturity of KDE 3.x
Of the KDE *packages*. > or dependency problems in OpenOffice.org, where as > the alternatives that exist in Woody or Sarge have just as many if not more > problems. I was talking about the versions in unstable actually. > My feeling is the information should be more forthcoming from Debian to help > users and perspective users understand why software isn't moving forward > through the Debian system. Sure. I think we have been pretty forthcoming. The C/C++/gcc ABI change is what is jamming up sarge. The reason why woody is stale is because our stupid release cycles are so long. I feel like a broken record here... > > > and packages spanning multiple versions that never get out of Sid. > > I don't follow, "spanning multiple versions" ? > > I mean OpenOffice 1.01 never made it out of Sid, now there's 1.02, will that > make into Sarge before a new version comes out? I'm sure it will. You have to understand, the movement of packages from unstable to testing is (by and large) a *mechanical* process. According to <URL:http://packages.qa.debian.org/o/openoffice.org.html> is a "Valid candidate". It's just waiting for the packages it depends upon to make it into testing. > If Debian remains more than a year behind what other distributions > are shipping at that point, my fear is it will become overwhelmed and won't > be able to sustain the resources necessary to keep the project > competitive. We common have people vocally concerned about our survival. Let me assure you. Debian cannot be overwhelmed. Are we "competative"? We don't care. When it gets down to it, the Debian Developers do the work that interests them. That's always been why the install system sucked so hard -- no one cared. Their system was already installed. Debian by us and for us. If it works for you, great. A lot of people over the last few years have been working on the desktop stuff (KDE, Gnome), and it's come along quite a bit. You're new to Debian so you only see the problems. I see the progress. Me, personnally, I don't really care about desktops, my machines are too slow to run them, and I don't work on them. We've never gone after Windows users migrating to Linux. We accept our limitations. Maybe someday that will be different, or a commercial re-distributor can make headway here, fine. We don't really care, though, partly because we don't want to deal with all the Newbie questions from Windows users clogging our support networks. If you're concerned about Debian and want to help with how it works, you have only one option: become a Debian developer. If you're interested in the operation of a certain package, your best bet is to file bugs. Don't raise your suggestions to me, because I can't help you. Speaking of which, for all the issues raised, I can't see that you've ever filed one bug on a single Debian package. I might not be looking for the right email addresses, tho. >I don't think it will keep Debian from getting the resources >necessary to keep it competitive, which in time will make it >irrelevant. Well, even if we permanently "lost" the desktop war (whatever that would possible mean), we still have our solid, core niche of by hackers and for hackers. > If you go to Melissa's opening this weekend we can talk more then. Ooh -- I wasn't invited! I'm sure they meant to. Can you send me the invite privately? -- ...Adam Di Carlo...<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.......<URL:http://www.onshored.com/>
