[Sussex] BBC coverage of vista

[Nic James Ferrier]

Gavin Stevens <starshine at gavmusic.uklinux.net> writes:

> Nic said:
>> 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.

Be careful. It *does* break from time to time. Just as you describe
Ubuntu does. Etch gets fixed quicker tho - but you can really fubar if
you panic. I did that once years ago. Ugh. What a mess.


> 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.

It's an idle thought really. I don't believe Debian will get out of
the stable market (the stable market? makes them sound like they sell
horse shelters).

But if they were to stop doing stable I think someone would soon start
making or selling a stable debian. In some ways this would be *better*
for business as they'd have a specific organization that they could
work with (** see note at end).

Debian is not really an operating system any more. It's the APT
repositories and all the organization that needs to make that
work - this includes the Debian Charter and the leadership structure
and all that; I believe all that is necessary when you have something
like APT.



** Note: Ubuntu have been developing their "enterprise" product
presumably with the same sort of aim in mind.

-- 
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk   for all your tapsell ferrier needs