On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 11:14:33 -0400, Joey Hess wrote: > 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.
A an option in the installer like volatile/security should address a lot of this concern. > 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? The difference is that there is no arduous backporting/dsa process to push that update, and as an added benefit, it gets a ton of testing by going through unstable/testing first. Plus, there is a subset of users that want to always have the latest/greatest browser, and stable can never meet that need. > 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. Adding an option in the installer would significantly help discoverability. > (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?) Maybe the decision about backports priority should be reconsidered? Give it an appropriately higher priority due to its "official" nature now. Best wishes, Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-release-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100908113429.e1f18c56.michael.s.gilb...@gmail.com
