On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 06:03:39PM -0400, bw wrote: > In-Reply-To: <20190528202437.ro7qososkbvmd...@randomstring.org> > > >bw wrote:
[ Dan Ritter ] > >Debian is not supposed to be a highly opinionated distribution, unless > >the opinion is "there should be lots of options". Claiming that "once > >you decide to deviate from debian defaults, you really can't expect > >anyone else to sympathize too much" is just... incorrect [...] +100 [ bw ] > These are some really great comments Dan, and I'll think about your point > of view. I've been using debian a little while, and not sure I'd agree > that is is not an opinionated distro. Maybe it was not supposed to be, > but I have seen quite a few things added or changed in the distro, and > yeah I'm talking pulseaudio, systemd, gnome, firefox/chromium, among > others that make me wonder if anybody is in charge, or do we just get what > upstream puts on the plate or what? Let's agree to differ, bw. I am a Debian user since longer than I care to remember (I think it was Bo I fell in love with, but my brain is old, so...) My Debian (stable/stretch) installation has no pulseaudio, no systemd, no gnome. It is my day-to-day workhorse. It takes anything I throw at it with a smile. > Hundreds of bugs in dozens of packages go unfixed, denied, ignored... > browsers just dumped in the repo and updated like what once every two > weeks now I get 300mb of packages? That's normal: Debian is a huge distro. Fixing bugs happens one at a time. And often, there are human things: differences in opinion, arguments, sometimes ugly ones. Debian is a social project, i.e. about a lot of people herding themselves -- and that is difficult. We humans tend to be a messy bunch. For a voluntary project, I'd say Debian is doing astoundingly well. Personally, I don't like every turn Debian has taken, mind you. But to me, it's the best distro out there. > It's obvious that we entered some kind of rapid development model a few > yrs ago. I got systemd installed a few yrs ago on my jessie system, and > had no idea for months that it even existed, or there was a change... now > that maybe was kind of insidious. But hey, that's water under the bridge, > we are where we are, and where we are is if you are an average user, don't > mess with defaults unless you want to spend a lot of time, and be on your > own doing research sometimes for years to solve your problems. It does take some work to keep the reins in one's hands. But you'll always find helpful people out there. > I sure did not mean to offend, just thinking out loud, take it for what it > is worth. I don't think you offended anyone. But my experience still disagrees with what you write: Debian is perfectly viable without systemd/pulse/Gnome. And the coolest thing? this is thanks to lots of maintainers who keep the SysV scripts in "their" packages alive, although they possibly prefer systemd. So... *thank you* to each one of you! Cheers -- t
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