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[Sheflug] Call me coward...
>>>>> "Barrie" == Barrie Bremner <TheEnglishman [at] ecosse.net> writes:
Barrie> Call me a coward, but if [Debian is] really this hard, why
Barrie> bother?
In my first Debian install, everything, including all the network
stuff (once the ethernet host driver was installed) worked first time.
So no, it doesn't have to be that hard to get a working system.
Mostly just accept the defaults unless you know different. Joe just
got unlucky.
When I started using Debian, I was mostly running Slackware and sick
of having important configure information buried three or four
releases back in the NEWS file of critical applications. I tried to
run Red Hat, but I was trying to install from the network, had an
unsupported network card (bad luck) and couldn't get to a root prompt
with a backhoe (bad design; I think RH is better now; TL is, I know,
because yours truly kicked and screamed until they made sure that it
was possible to get to a shell as soon as the initrd was mounted).
Debian didn't support my network card, either, but it did support
shelling out of the install. So I sneakernetted the driver over, and
that was the end of my problems. (Joe didn't have that alternative,
but that's stupidity on his part---you don't install an unknown OS
unless you know it has all needed drivers available on the distro
media or via sneakernet! He could have added removable media, bought
an NE2000 for $5 and used that to install the necessary driver, etc.)
SuSE, Caldera, etc didn't exist then, of course. I've never had a
Debian release stall on me in a new install the way both Red Hat and
Turbolinux have. (I have had Debian betas break badly, of course.) I
did have a tough time with the libc5 -> glibc transition, but my
Debian system kept working. Red Hat users also had a tough time, and
many of their systems did _not_ keep working.
Red Hat (along with the recovering-Windows-user-oriented distros in
general) has a lot more money now, and enough market presence that
people make sure their drivers get into the RH distro. They've taken
the software engineering courses. It's a good product (as are SuSE et
al.) But it's not aimed at Debian's audience.
As for the repeated questioning Barr describes, that's pretty ugly.
One reason it happens so much is that unlike most distros Debian is
basically policy-free: if it's free software, Debian distributes it
and you can choose it. (Of course, once you've got the right time
zone or X server it should remember that; that's a UI bug no doubt.
But how often do you do an install from scratch? It's forgivable
IMO.) Red Hat and SuSE simply install GNOME and KDE respectively; no
choices necessary until later. That's the consumer-friendly approach,
but it would piss off 2/3 of the Debian target audience, I assure you.
Another reason it happens is that most of Debian's audience _does_
know things like what that GPM configuration line means. Almost
nobody knows all of them, of course, but the ones they care about they
_want_ to be asked about.
Barrie> Call me ignorant, but what exactly does Debian have to
Barrie> offer?
What Debian offers (or has until recently :( ) is a somewhat clunky
distro (whose many slick features are hard to appreciate unless you
are a hacker) that supports hackers by having a strong policy aimed at
making sure the APIs are consistent and standards-conforming, by
providing copious documentation, and by keeping everything as open to
the administrator's view as possible. A hacker-type admin has
historically found it fairly easy to work around UI problems, whereas
with most user-friendly distros, if it's broke, you have to wait for
the distro update.
Debian also provides just about as many packages as anybody else,
including installers for proprietary software, almost all of which
work pretty well. So you can hack in vi or XEmacs and listen to your
CDs on workman or MP3s on xmms, scan Page 3 with SANE, and use
Internet phone service. This isn't bad for an all-volunteer distro;
it just lacks a fancy/no-brain-required install.
Joe Barr writes:
If the Debian team wants to keep its pure, unsullied distribution
alive, I believe it needs a 12-step program to get past the denial
and learn about things like ease of use and installation. A good
example to follow would be that of the GNOME project, where
developers actually want people to _use_ the software they've
created. Free software isn't really free when the barrier to its
use is as high as Debian's.
This guy claims to be a recovering programmer? What is he recovering
from, an encounter with turtle graphics? Whatever it was, it wasn't
open source: Joe doesn't know the difference between free beer and
free speech. Sheesh.
Free software is not about cheap and easy and maximum distribution to
"people" who never ever want to type a command to a shell, let alone
actually write a "batch file" or answer FAQs on a mailing list.[1]
Free software is about hacking and hackers sharing their hacks. It is
a happy coincidence, but only coincidence, that "free" software tends
to be cheap and high quality, and thus benefits "people" (including
hackers who want to concentrate on hacking _other_ software!)
As for the content of his argument about the demise of Debian, it's
complete crap. Debian doesn't _want_ "people" to use Debian; Debian
wants _hackers_ to use Debian. The example of GNOME is exactly right;
GNOME is very usable for users (when it works), friendly (I wish it
would shut up ... dpkg --remove gnome* ... there, much quieter ;), and
easy to write slick demos for. It is _hard_ to use for real software,
because it's mostly (still) undocumented, and because they write their
APIs on the fly, and change them every time they pee. The real
hackers I know who are not interested in hacking GNOME itself stay far
away from it. It's nothing but trouble, unless you want to do it
full-time. My experience with Debian is that it has no more or less
trouble than any other distro. Once you get it installed, you can
mostly forget it.[2]
There's nothing wrong with being a regular person who wants things to
be "user-friendly" and "just work." And GNOME and KDE will achieve a
great measure of inter-app interoperability in the near future
(although so far it's mostly just "skins", "themes", and transparent
*Terms, etc.) There are Debian-based distros that _do_ attempt to
achieve "just working-ness" (not so well yet), but that's not
_Debian's_ job. Debian is not intended to make life easy for Joe
Barr; he can buy Red Hat or SuSE. That's _their_ raison d'etre.
OTOH, _I_ am _most_ dissatisfied with Debian exactly when it tries to
be "user-friendly", because that typically means that they have taken
away options or information that I value. Debian has always been
targeted at people like me. As long as they remember that, they'll
_survive_ quite well---remember, as long as the other distros stay
_free_, Debian can use their stuff. They just won't be #1 in
installations.
Debian is not for everybody. It's aimed at the elite of hackerdom,
and the usage figures show that they hit the target. And then there
are a lot of us who just like it for one reason or another, usually
hack-related; you don't need to be elite. (And there are a lot of
elite hackers who use something else, but then, they get it free from
their employers in many cases; that's not exactly an unbiased
endorsement.)
Footnotes:
[1] This is most definitely not aimed at anyone in present company.
The point is that these days to get to be #1 in installed hosts you
need to attract people who only use Linux because their employer
forces them to (or more precisely, you need to attract their bosses).
[2] This is not true on the unstable branch; changes in "Debian
Policy" can wreak havoc on your system until all the packages are
updated to comply. That's why they call it "unstable"!
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
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