[Sussex] BBC coverage of vista

[Gavin Stevens]

On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:17:06 +0000
Nic James Ferrier <nferrier at tapsellferrier.co.uk> wrote:

> Gavin Stevens <starshine at gavmusic.uklinux.net> writes:
> 
> > Debian Etch is looking very good - good enough to persuade many more
> > people to _use Debian_.
> 
> I use Debian Etch constantly.
> 
> But they've already slipped the release date. 

I've been thinking carefully about your reply: I came to Debian (long
before it was "nice'n'easy") as a fed-up Windows user seeking a little
stability. For me, if Debian need a bit more time to make Etch fully
"stable", then fine by me. The worry about Debian release intervals has
intensified since Ubuntu came along. (We must never forget that, for all
the bleating that surrounded the 3 year gap between Woody & Sarge, that
Micro$oft took 5 years to give the world Vista after XP). I agree that
Ubuntu has a wide appeal, but I couldn't bring myself to use it again as
the difference in approach between Debian & Ubuntu is telling: Debian
wait & release a version that is very stable; Ubuntu release every six
months or so & always seem to finish up with something broken. If I want
"broken" I can always use Mandrake or go back to Windows (oh.. did I say
that out loud?).
> 
> Did you see that some people have started to talk about whether stable
> is necessary?
> 
> I have sympathy with that view. Ubuntu do stable Debian. Debian for
> the masses if you will. Debian people spend a lot of time and effort
> doing stable. I think it's good in one way, because that's the kind of
> disciplined stuff that they maybe wouldn't get to try out
> otherwise. But in other ways it's bad: it saps the energy of the
> debian project.

I have read about this idea. I've been running Etch on my second PC for
a few weeks now & it's fab.

Based on this experience, I could be persuaded to see merit in the
concept of not having "stable" in the accepted sense. However, there are
a good few people who value true stability - I would imagine that
business users would fall into this category. I can't quite bring myself
to agree completely with the idea of no traditional "stable" release,
but I can see that it is something that needs to be discussed.

Gavin.