> possible From: Luke Leighton <l...@lkcl.net> > To: dng@lists.dyne.org > Date: Today 01:44:25 PM >
> > i believe you may be severely underestimating the workload that the > current debian maintainers handle. there are over 35,000 packages, > and i believe something like 1,000 maintainers. there are something > like 12 ports to different architectures, and the mirrors (of which > there are around a hundred) require something like 160 gigabytes of space > and tend to redline whatever network bandwidth they're allowed, > particularly during upgrades. > Actually, with respect, I'm not ignoring the size of Debian. I understand perfectly well what is involved. I do admit, I could have explained myself better. I'm all for using their upstream work, and even establishing a good working relationship with them for passing patches back to them. I'm not suggesting that Devuan start over. What I am saying is that Devuan should not concern itself with the day to day Debian's problems, such as Debian's release schedules or packaging decisions. In that respect Devuan needs to go its own way. The less Devuan feels pressured to keep in sync with Debian, the easier it will be for Devuan with a much smaller developer base. > > to expect even a medium-sized team to cope with 10 to 100 times the > workload which the current debian team handle, by dropping the entire > debian repository onto them and expecting them to be able to recompile > it and maintain it is... i think you'd agree, completely unrealistic. Yes, I would. If you will humor me, I would also point out that most of the people interested in Devuan or even Debian will be aiming for servers, not desktops. If they want something more than that, they will probably go elsewhere, because Debian's (and by extension Devuan's) repository is not refreshed fast enough for their taste. In that sense, user applications like Gimp and Libreoffice become less important. Personally, I think that Devuan could, even possibly should, consign them to a rolling release repo to be updated whenever Devuan has the time. The official Devuan release could just be the core Linux system, and a selection of the most reliable service daemons, which is something much more reasonable to ask from a smaller team. Furthermore, I know the decision has been made and I am not trying to change it, but I'd like to express the opinion that Devuan being based on Debian testing makes things much harder than they need to be. I would have chosen to base Devuan on Debian stable instead. Before anyone protests, please consider that: 1. If Devuan was based on Debian stable, then Devuan would not be hostage to whatever release schedule Debian has. If Debian Jesse is a year late - which has happened to Debian before - then Devuan is a year late, if only by proxy. 2. As Jesse stands right now, you have to excise systemd before Jesse is even finished, which makes doing so something of a moving target, especially if Debian changes chains of packages upstream, making you have to start the same process all over again. 3. With the exception of a few things, generally speaking user applications do not use systemd and are virtually agnostic, even in binary form. They will usually run reliably on any Linux as long as the core system libraries meet a minimum. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
