Michael Gilbert wrote: > I think that this need is justification to declare backports "officially > supported by the debian project". Thus when asked this question, you > can point to the fact that chromium is indeed supported on stable, just > via a different model than folks are used to.
Do you really think that desktop users[1] should be expected to learn about
backports, and manually configure them, and learn how to convince apt to
install from them, in order to get the best web browser available[2]? If
the preceding sounds simple, think again; you're suggesting that users
have to either dig up some faq or forum post, or post to debian-user, just
in order to get a good web browser.
If backports are really officially supported, and we encourage users to
install a web browser from them, which is not available in stable, how
is that truely different than shipping the same web browser in stable?
AFAICS the only difference is that only 10 to 25% [3] of users will find
the web browser in backports, while some other percentage will
install Ubuntu instead. The security team will still be left responsible
for supporting the former users' systems.
(BTW, have you considered that apt does not automatically upgrade packages
installed from backports? That the majority of documentation, including
the documentation on wiki.debian.org, about installing flashplugin-nonfree
from backports does not take this into account, and will leave the user with
a never-upgraded package?)
--
see shy jo
[1] As opposed to the server administrators who seem to be backports'
main current audience.
[2] Chromium or iceweasel; take your pick since backports is being
suggested as a delivery mechanism for both.
[3] Estimate based roughly on percentage of stable users who manage to
install flashplugin-nonfree, whose installation is similarly obfuscated.
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