“If you ask me (and you didn’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway), Debian should have two overarching priorities for the next release: 1. putting a timed release cycle in place, so what happened with sarge never happens again; and 2. keeping the growing family of Debian derivatives united around a common core — namely, Debian itself. What’s at stake? If we don’t do something about both of these problems, actual and potential, Debian will be irrelevant by the time etch is out” says Debian’s founder.
Debian: Where should we/we should go from here?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Forming some sort of unofficial governing board between the different Debian based distributions that are willing to partake would be good. They could reach agreements to such things as how the menu is arranged in KDE and Gnome so they don’t all have to repackage programs for each different distribution; then all could save money by having one giant repository if they wanted to, or at the very least they could have 99-100% compatible packages.
This kind of advice might raise alarm bells in some people’s minds, but without some sort of standards there will be more fragmentation in Linux. I don’t want to see one big Linux distribution; I like having options, but some sort of commons and standards do need to be put in place in order to achieve some desired improvements in Linux.
Anyway I don’t expect everyone to agree, that’s just my $0.02.
Ian makes some good points….
I HOPE the infrastructure and plans are in place for a reasonable release cycle and while I agree that if you were to unify the derivatives you would certinly have something awesome, that kind of seems to limit choices… Now if they can come together somewhat and still be individual products then that would be cool! I wish he would elaborate a bit more about unity of the derivitives. I certanly do not want debian to become commercial in any way shape or form, I do not want a major money backer corporation putting pressure on which way debian should go or anything…
I have read the article a few times and sometimes I feel like he isnt asking too much and other times I feel like someone has obviously impersonated the great founding father of the best distro on earth… Progeny is his baby now and nothing stops him from taking over the world, but my debian should sit in the corner and be debian, and i will sit there with it
i think anyway, let me read the article again 
This is another stregth of Debian that I hope they don’t break away from as they try and make changes.
http://www.nl.debian.org/ports/
i have always loved the “taste” of debian and now I have a whole menu of food to choose from from 100%pure debian to just a smidgen of debian and everywhere in between……
I wouldn’s say Debian is the best distro on earth, for me it was a horror story, I know some people like it, but I will never go near another distribution that uses DPKG again. That said, people serious about Linux need to stick their necks out for the good of the big idea sometimes, even if they don’t like the distribution in question.
I don’t want all the Debian based distributions to merge, in fact if they all used one big repository and packages from any one of them was 100% compatible with any other Debian derivative then a major competitive edge would be lost. What I’m hoping will happen is that they will be careful with how much their packages are incompatible, I remember using Xandros 2.0 Deluxe once and many official Debian packages would mess up the KDE menu.
If anything all I’m hoping for is that they will get together and talk out some compromises so they don’t wind up with a similar situation to what RPM is like right now, where each distribution that isn’t based on Fedora or Mandrake has to modify or (usually) rebuild packages from scratch for their own distribution and new users don’t know which ones to use.
“but I will never go near another distribution that uses DPKG again”
any reason behind this or just got a icky feeling?
actually i use my libranet disks to install packages on Xandros OCE, gotta be careful especially replacing anything xandros tweaked but works welll even installed gnome this way!
Yea i do agree they need to get together and chat a bit about how to handle distro specific changes and how to have seperate lives but not duplicate ALL effort…
as i said i wish Ian was a bit more descriptive on what he wants to see happen, then again should his opinion simply be his and nothing more, do we owe him a debt of gratitude for popping out debian – I have always ALWAYS thought he was THE MAN…
It is ironic, as Debian has become the foundation of choice for most derivative distributions, its relavence begins to diminish and stagnation sets in.
I think its time for Debian to move in new directions. Distros like GoboLinux, package management systems like the Zero Install System and other such innovative ideas must eventually be pursued, or risk irrelevancy.
Debian is now in a postion to influance the geneal direction of the GNU. Will it have the courage to do so? Or will it fade?
Speaking of which, after using nothing but Debian for many years –since the release of potato, two days ago I switched to Ubuntu. I’m sad about it. Debian was a liberation. But Ubunutu is Debians after all with better polished.
I wouldn’t say Debian is Irrelevant yet but the trend is certainly going that direction. They lost many unstable/testing people to ubuntu and stable just doesn’t appear to have the mind share it once had. I could be wrong but it seems many of the ppl who’re looking for stable software are looking to Redhat/Novell/CentOS more and more.
> “but I will never go near another distribution that uses DPKG again”
> any reason behind this or just got a icky feeling?
I don’t know if I’m just using it wrong, but when I install a large number of updates and I’m prompted to configure some of them, I usually end up breaking things. As far as I can tell I give dpkg all the right answers, and when I don’t know what to put in I follow the recomendations, but I still end up with software that won’t work afterwards, even if I run “apt-get install -f” to fix any broken dependencies.
For the most part these negative experiences have been confined to Debian itself and especially Libranet.I’ve never had these problems with RPM based distributions before, and I’ve never managed to run a Debian based distribution for very long before running into this problem. The whole mess I get myself into has me scared away from using anything that uses DPKG.
Its not that I don’t like Debian, its just that I can never seem to keep it running.
Debian is without a doubt one of the most technically excellent Linux distributions, but it will continue to fade until it can answer its biggest criticism…
Stable is always TOO DAMN OLD!!!
People are moving away to RedHat/CentOS, SuSE/Novell, Slackware, Gentoo, and the BSDs because they want something stable and reasonably current. In all honesty, how much more stable is a Debian Stable system than its competition?
The challenge is supporting dozens of system architectures while making timely and stable releases.
The whole mess I get myself into has me scared away from using anything that uses DPKG.
…
Its not that I don’t like Debian, its just that I can never seem to keep it running.
Sorry, but unless you were doing something stupid like trying to run unstable in a production environment, then I think the problem sits between the keyboard and the chair. You don’t even explain what broke and what was done to break it. Thousands (millions?) of people run Debian and its derivatives just fine.
I think with all the recent events , Apple+Intel, M$+Gentoos Founder, and the messy upgrades and cyclic dependencies with upgrades and such, Ian is having to step back and finally say ok we have a problem, and we cant continue to ignore this itchy rash on our legs lol…Some of the derivatives are slowly becoming more relevant than the original, namely distros like Ubuntu, which offers of the cleanest out of the box desktops I’ve seen, and smaller orgs like gobo that are tryin new things and branching away from home. These guys are moving and shakin while debian is just sputtering along at times without alot of direction. But liek Iam pointed out the farther they go from the core, the worse its gonna get. Ubuntu packages and Debian packages already dont mix well at all, but if you want a debian desktop with gnome 2.10 or kde 3.4, not the unstable tree..its REALLY unstable now as the name portrays, and thats assumign u can resolve all the cross dependency problems you encounter..(i think kde 3.4 is ok, but last i check gnome 2.10 packages were still out of sorts)…maybe they need to look into letting smaller groups do what debian doesnt do best. Say Align with Ubuntu and let them be the force that maintains the “Debian Desktop” and some other group the debian server, etc…just my ramblings..ill stop now ive lost focus babies cryin lol…I’m just glad Iam was able to man up and recognize the problems, thats the first step…
Well, I did just the opposite. I switched back to Debian after trying Ubutnu for some time. Maybe I hoped too much from Ubuntu, but I wasn’t so happy with it. I got: bugs, broken packages, repository problems, dependency problems, lots of non-comaptibilty issues with packages that are known to work well with Debian etc.
Why oh why can’t Ubuntu try to be a 100% Debian-compatible distro where people can use the original well-working Debian packages and repositories? Do we really want to fragment the Debian-based distro world the same way that RPM-based distro world is already fragmented, and where each and every distro has its own set of pcakages not compatible with other distros? Does Ubuntu want to become a new Mandrake or what?
I’m still looking forward to the next Ubuntu releases, however. It’s still a new distro – I could also say, quite a promising one… – and It’s developing very fast. However, for the time being, I’m gonna stay with classic Debian. It’s such a joy to use a fresh install of stable Debian Sarge too after all the trouble with Ubuntu. Probably I’ll switch to using Debian Testing/Unstable later. Sorry, but I have better experience of using Debian Unstable too (with apt-listbugs) than I had of Ubuntu Hoary release.
Besides, with the new easy to use Debian installer (Ubuntu Hoary uses basically the same new Debian installer!), and unofficial Xorg packages for Debian:
http://www1.apt-get.org/search.php?query=xorg&submit=&arch%5B~*…
there really isn’t much that Ubuntu can offer me that Debian doesn’t already have.
Stable is always TOO DAMN OLD!!!
Nope, it isn’t – not at the moment. Currently Debian stable has newer versions of many packaages than, for example, Ubuntu Hoary has.
Besides, it really ain’t so difficult to track Debian Testing or Debian Unstable packages (just change the sources.list file to point to the other Debian releases), so what’s the problem? I’m sure that Debian Unstable (with apt-listbugs installed and bugs being avoided) is more stable than 75% of other distros out there…
Celerate said:
“I don’t know if I’m just using it wrong, but when I install a large number of updates and I’m prompted to configure some of them, I usually end up breaking things. As far as I can tell I give dpkg all the right answers, and when I don’t know what to put in I follow the recomendations, but I still end up with software that won’t work afterwards, even if I run “apt-get install -f” to fix any broken dependencies.”
When you have used Debian in the past did you mix different release branches from the repositories or use a single specific release to obtain your packages from? As I personally have found sticking to a single branch whether its the stable release or another release will halt all dependency errors from occurring.
Are you sure that you’re really talking about Debian, and not about those Debian-based distros like Libranet that you mention?
I know that it is relatively easy to break things with, say, Libranet, at least in the past, as Libranet uses so mixed sources to get its packages. And Libranet is said to be a 100% Debian-compatible distro… There can be even more problems with some othr “Debian-based” distros.
If Debian package management would be so bad as you claim, thousands of people wouldn’t love and trust it as much as they do – me included. It is much easier to break things with Gentoo’s source package management, for example…
I’m sure that Debian Unstable (with apt-listbugs installed and bugs being avoided) is more stable than 75% of other distros out there…
That’s probably true, and if it isn’t, “testing” probably is.
I think it’s a problem with naming – people see “testing”, and think, OK, it can’t be worth looking at. They don’t realise that Debian holds packages to a higher set of standards then they’re used to.
Maybe renaming stable/testing/unstable to production/stable/unstable would help things. Because I see that a lot of system admins appreciate a “production” release, i.e. people who run servers. But although desktop users don’t appreciate that, they may appreciate running something called “stable”. They’re the ones always complaining that the current “stable” is outdated; in fact it’s perfectly up-to-date if you’re a server admin, just not if you’re a desktop user.
I’ve been using unstable for years now, no unstability complaints yet. Occasionally some packages have been a bit buggy, however fixed packages usually arrive in a few days. I think you’re right, a desktop user would not care if was not called unstable. If it was called “bleeding edge” 99% desktop users would be using it.
the 2 needs are:
* a more useful release schedule
* debian as a base for derivative projects
solution:
* reduce content of debian to kernel plus essential userland tools (unix tools, package management tools)
why?:
* QUALITY – a smaller base is easier to maintain, ensure quality, port to multiple architectures
* TIMELY – a smaller well tested base will be easier to release, say every year.
* BASE – a smaller base will still allow other projects to sub-class this base-class, as it were.
* NICHE – this is the most appropriate niche for debian, its certainly not a desktop distro, nor is it a business distro, nor a server distro, … let it do what it does best … be a base for specialised distros.
* OPTIONS – a smaller base gives you options. it lets create things like debian/hurd and debian/bsd much more easily.
without ringing too many alrms, this is one of the ways that the BSDs have works, maintain a well known small base system, and let everyone esle build over it.
“Stable is always TOO DAMN OLD!!! ”
No. Stable is what it says it is. STABLE. I don’t want upgrades or test packages, only security fixes. For example, when I setup the bugzilla server at work, I don’t ever want to have to touch it again except for security updates.
Most production servers don’t need the latest and greatest. If you want a desktop use a desktop distro or run unstable/testing.
What Debian doesn’t assume, is that the user is an idiot. Yes the entire Linux Community lags in first rate documentation, but that gap is closing rapidly.
Coming over from a NeXTSTEP/Openstep/Win2k/XP/OSX background, I enjoy having Debian and with some exposure love the added skillsets Linux and Debian bring to the table.
I would say, when Linux abstracts more low-level details away from the General User, Linux will really begin to be an attractive option for the General User who does not have the help of a Linux skilled friend or family member.
My two operating systems of choice: Debian Linux and OS X Tiger.
I can code in GNUstep and Cocoa. I can jump into C++ via GNOME or KDE as well as Java using Apache Cocoon2 Frameworks, Tomcat and many other toolsets.
What I hope is that Tomcat 5 soon goes into Debian SID as well as Eclipse 3.1 when it is released.
With XCode 2.1 I finally get WebObjects [5.3]. It is a wonderful time to be in the world of IT. Now when that second wave of Internet expansion occurs it will just only improve as the Venture Capitol ramps up.
Both eclipse (3.1rc2) and tomcat 5 (5.0.28 i think) are in UNSTABLE/SID
.
Stable doesn’t necessarily mean more secure.It just means the best coherence with all packages.Having a bleeding edge will bite you in the nose at some point when you have to much conflicting dependencies with (exotic) packages and drivers.While joe average will not notice any difference but hot new packages.The heavy users suddenly experience a lot of their packages doesn’t work anymore.
While the previous situation with going to Sarge was perhaps unnecessary i think it’s important to find a somewhat better ballance between the release time and the coherence of the packages.Maybe debian should better know who they want to target most.I mean i have the feeling the guys and dolls who allways proclaim stable is just to damn old aren’t allways really the audience debian needs.And could be “lost” to debian-clones easily without a pain.
Right now, security updates are broken, so when the next big bug comes along, methinks testing or unstable will be more “secure”, unfortunately
http://bronikowski.com/index.php?menu=single&id=67 — Sorry. I’m running both Ubuntu & Debian, but I couldn’t resist.
ive tried the others, i always come running back to debian proper. (with dashes of experimental and even ubuntu) i find debian proper with some additves takes less work to set up the way i want it then starting with any ‘desktop’ distro. who are these peeple and why the heck do they assume i want all that crap on my desktop.
For servers I think debian has done the right thing. People want very long stable periods with low impact security patches. You have to release new stuff eventually but that should be driven by a monitoring of the needs of the user community (compelling package upgrades, architectural advances) rather than by an arbitrary calendar.
For the desktop, Debian is a paradox : The huge package library, the existence of unstable (no more “wait for the next release to get the latest kde or gnome or OO.org”) is a huge attraction for experienced users. But there is a lack of desktop focus in debian : Just check the menus and the file associations and you can immediately tell. Also, for the desktop it’s a lot less important to be available on so many platforms. And were is the central desktop control center ?
Why not rename the desktop part of unstable to something like “current desktop” ?
I’m an Ubuntu user, but I can’t for the life of me understand why Ubuntu chose to leave the Deb-pure way of packaging. The only answer to this is “we did it because we needed to.” – yes, but WHY?!
Being able to use the same .debs across different Debians was a major benefit to “Debian Linux”. I’d like to run Ubuntu on my desktop and Debian on my server, and be able to mix a couple .debs to each, but it’s just not possible, forcing me to choose between pure-Deb and pure-Ubuntu.
When that Anaconda mod/port gets fully working, probably 1/2 the Debian derivatives out there will lose their significance, that thing looks so sweet!
“I don’t know if I’m just using it wrong, but when I install a large number of updates and I’m prompted to configure some of them, I usually end up breaking things. As far as I can tell I give dpkg all the right answers, and when I don’t know what to put in I follow the recomendations, but I still end up with software that won’t work afterwards, even if I run “apt-get install -f” to fix any broken dependencies.”
You do know most people complain about this with RPM based distros not DEB based ones. Are you using dpkg? You should be using apt! I hate to say it but I would have to say this was probably your own doing. Any specifics about what was broke? I just use CDs as my source and have installed literally THOUSANDS of packages (woody) and never had a problem. Of course I also use other debian based distros and if you watch what you are doing then they are no problem either!
———————————-
“Stable is always TOO DAMN OLD!!!”
NO, woody was old, we all know that, too many changes in the linux world and debian world, trying to align a large scattered community like debian is dam near impossible, I think everything is in place that we will see more timely releases….
Other “stable” releases have been timed fairly nicely in releation to the state of linux at the time!
———————————–
“this is the most appropriate niche for debian, its certainly not a desktop distro, nor is it a business distro, nor a server distro, … let it do what it does best … ”
you are right and wrong all at the same time! debian is not a dektop distor, or business distro, or a server distro…It IS all of these, every single one and it does it all very well from a couple hundred meg desktop install to a few gigs desktop install, from a home sevrer for file sharing all the way up to ???? whatever you want it to do, businesses would be VERY wise to consider debian exactly because it is what it is! debian is DOING exactly what it does best, jack of all trades and maybe MAYBE not master of any but still good enough for a lot of people
————————————
“Say Align with Ubuntu and let them be the force that maintains the “Debian Desktop””
ha ha ha, you are joking on this one right! debian caters to all people and gives them all choices, ubuntu does a auto install if I remember right….
——————————–
debian stable isnt like most distros stable release, I would say that testing is (most of the time) closer to most distros current releases. Bleeding edge that still works is unstable, well whenever unstable is churning then things may be broke for a while but once everything settles it is cool. And pull packages from experimental if you are brave enough!
debian is never love at first sight, in fact usually the opposite (i threw my first set of debian cds in the trash and vowed NEVER again) but once you get to know debian then it is TRUE love
..whew that is corny…
harlequin here i come!
I know stable is “stable” but how does a kernel that get 1-2 years old support all the new hardware that comes out into the market? How am I supposed to install Debian on a new CPU architecture, or with a new Raid card? If Debian is going to stick to old kernels and Linus is going to make it impossible for vendors to provide precompiled drivers, I think Debian needs to do something like RedHat where rereleases of the stable kernel are made containing all the latest and greatest drivers.
“I think Debian needs to do something like RedHat where rereleases of the stable kernel are made containing all the latest and greatest drivers.”
And that’s exactly what’s planned with regards to the new debian-installer. See http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2004/08/msg01941.html – “a goal of d-i has always been to release updates to the installer in between major debian releases, and these updates would likely include new kernels”
New kernels = updated hardware support. Problem solved.
“Right now, security updates are broken, so when the next big bug comes along, methinks testing or unstable will be more “secure”, unfortunately
”
Security updates are not broken. Where did you hear this FUD? 3.1r0 had a commented out line in sources.list affecting some of the package fetching applications (apt, aptitude, dselect, and those that depend upon them). Within a few hours a notice went out to everyone, including CD vendors, cautioning them not to press new CD’s and instructing admins of new installations to uncomment the line and change “testing” to “stable”. That’s it. Security updates were never broken; the default installation had a typo. That’s it. Additionally, no security bulletins had yet been released for Sarge, given that it was but a few hours old when the typo was found. Again, what was broken?
Check your facts before spewing FUD.
Maybe renaming stable/testing/unstable to production/stable/unstable would help things. Because I see that a lot of system admins appreciate a “production” release, i.e. people who run servers. But although desktop users don’t appreciate that, they may appreciate running something called “stable”. They’re the ones always complaining that the current “stable” is outdated; in fact it’s perfectly up-to-date if you’re a server admin, just not if you’re a desktop user.
Not a bad idea, but I prefer stable/current/testing myself. A little closer to what Slackware and FreeBSD uses.
-J
this same discussion occured around the release of woody. people complained about how long it took. sarge took even longer.
“Security updates are not broken. Where did you hear this FUD?”
I’d guess Jon was referring to Martin “Joey” Schulze’s “Still no Security Updates” blog entry (http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200506142140) posted yesterday evening. Given that Joey’s a member of the security team himself, you’d’ve thought he’d know what he’s talking about.
I’m an Ubuntu user, but I can’t for the life of me understand why Ubuntu chose to leave the Deb-pure way of packaging. The only answer to this is “we did it because we needed to.” – yes, but WHY?!
Because Debian development moves too slow. If Ubuntu tried to stay compatible with Sarge, we would have to use Sarge packages and abandon things like Xorg. Plus, Ubuntu has been (and will always be) based on Sid, not Sarge, so it can never be Sarge compatible. Not many third parties make debs for Sid, but every Sid deb I have tried works.
There the real answer.
Being able to use the same .debs across different Debians was a major benefit to “Debian Linux”. I’d like to run Ubuntu on my desktop and Debian on my server, and be able to mix a couple .debs to each, but it’s just not possible, forcing me to choose between pure-Deb and pure-Ubuntu.
Sure you can. Run Sid on your server and the packages should be mostly compatible. Don’t want to run Sid? Well us Ubuntu users don’t want to run software as old as Sarge to stay compatible.
There is a reason Ubuntu forked the Debian repo. If you want compatibility with Sarge I’ll be honest and say that Ubuntu really doesn’t care about that.
“run software as old as Sarge”
for the life of me i will never understand why it is so important to have 1.3.5 over 1.3.3
of course, i will never understand why the duplication of effort with ubuntu…..
me soooooooooo confuzzled
Both eclipse (3.1rc2) and tomcat 5 (5.0.28 i think) are in UNSTABLE/SID
.
I tested Tomcat 5 (5.0.28). I want 5.5.9. If not in soon I’ll build a local package of it.
Eclipse 3.1R2 is not in the debian tree that I can find passed 2.1.3-4 under /contrib/e/eclipse/
I’ll give Eclipse 3.1 about 2 weeks to be built once it goes GM. If not I’ll build a local one for myself.
Indeed Andrew, that is where I got my facts.
Chewie: I’ll try not to take too much offense at “spewing FUD” — with all the bad press I can appreciate you being skeptical. That said, you can apologise off-thread if you prefer
Quote: “I know that it is relatively easy to break things with, say, Libranet, at least in the past, as Libranet uses so mixed sources to get its packages. And Libranet is said to be a 100% Debian-compatible distro..”
mmm i’ll take offence to this. If you know what you’re doing apt-get doesn’t stuff up on you. Thing is, most people expect apt-get to work it all magically out and *never* fail and that’s bullshit. apt can and does break.
As to Libranet – i’ve been using it since 2.7 and don’t have any major issues that I generally can’t simply fix. And I run mixed reps. But then, I know what i’m doing. If people are too lazy or stupid to learn how to use apt and dpkg properly then they shouldn’t play with it. People want to play and grab the “latest and greatest” from Sid etc and that’s when they break their systems – because they have no *idea* what they are doing. Stick to Ubuntu in that case.
I’ve used ubuntu/kubuntu/debian woody and Libranet and I know which one is better. I’ve just had to help a mate with debian sarge get basic things working, things that work out of the box with Libranet (and many other distros).
So – rather than blame a distro, maybe look at what you did to stuff things up and learn how to do things right might be a good idea.
Dave
I am a “DistroSurfer.” Last night I had to split in middle of another install. Tsunami warnings are like that. It’s not the first time I had to split in the middle of a Linux install, different reasons, but as usual the install was simply hanging out on my computer waiting to be finished when I got back.
Has any one noticed that there are more Knoppix based distros out there than you can shake a stick at? As far as that goes, has anyone counted how many Debian based distro’s there are? How about a link to where I could find that out, or can I get from Distrowatch? Anybody?
Maybe Debian simply needs to become just what they are, Keepers of the Gate. Just keep being an example of how to keep a good clean repository system, and let the distros spin off as they may to be what ever they evolve into — Ubuntu? How else are you going to learn new things. New distro’s are being kick started everyday, and with many of them, they have some new and very cool little tool or a way of doing things that are just a little better or just simply different. I love it. Why not?
I don’t write the code or make the distro’s, but I am one of the “Lost Ones,” who downloads nearly every distro they can and then trashes a partition to install it. I can never get enough partitions. Hard drives are never big enough. I keep a root privlaged link to my grub/menu.lst on the desktop of my default distro. This week its Mepis. So I’ve seen a lot of Debian base distros and have to say, wow, there’s a lot of them. I would think there are many people out there just like myself (habitual distrosurfers), who have noticed the trend toward Knoppix and all its spin-offs too.
I always thought of Debian as just being the parents that lets their children run free to learn on their own. That’s all any parent can do, give these distros the basic example of how you would like it done, but, as all parents, don’t expect your offspring to think inside the same box you have exampled. If they fall down, there are more to take their place everyday.
Besides, a parents job is to learn right along with their children, if you don’t let these distros explore their own way through the fire and learn back from them. Well, you get the picture.
Usually the problem was in fact with Libranet like you’ve said, I’ve only administered a Debian box once and it was “upgraded” to Libranet but worked relatively fine until then. Because I haven’t worked much with Debian or its derivatives I didn’t think to distinguish between Debian and Libranet.
Ian Murdock writes:
If we don’t do something about both of these problems, actual and potential, Debian will be irrelevant by the time etch is out
I think there’s another problem that Mr Murdock should seriously consider: Debian proper keeps developing so fast that all Debian derivative distros, including Murdock’s Progeny, might become irrelevant by the time etch is out. 😛
“As far as that goes, has anyone counted how many Debian based distro’s there are? How about a link to where I could find that out, or can I get from Distrowatch? Anybody?”
Check out http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence.
Thank you Andrew Saunders. I guess just get side tracked when visiting DistroWatch (can’t get past a new download), and I never make it to that part of their web site. I’ll save the link to my bookmarks, and I’ll never have to be ignorant on that subject again. Great resource!
Thanks