Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Debian news : The Debian 4.0 review and impression post
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Here's an overview of the different reviews and writeups about
> | Debian 4.0 (Etch) - so far stories from Digital Realms, Softpedia,
> | Lunapark6, Linux-magazin (DE), Linux.com and screenshots at
> | LinuxQuestions and Go2Linux. Blog overview at LinuxWatch.
> `----
>
> http://debian-news.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2424
>
Plain daft.
"Eric S. Raymond, the well-known Linux evangelist, dismisses the importance
of a new release of Debian. Raymond said, "It doesn't make any perceptible
difference to me. I'm using Ubuntu now..."
"Rumors of Debian's decline or irrelevance ..."
Isn't that like saying bricks and martor are irrelevant once the building is
built?
The derivatives of Debian are still Debian, they just have menu changes and
maybe the odd dialog helper or preconfigured bits and pieces, some of them
have nothing more than a prettier desktop background. The likes of Ubuntu
are just Debian with some optional bits and pieces ready done for the user,
or some pieces that make it easier for the user.
Many a distro over the years have done simmilar things to try to help the
end user. Some changed lib locations believing theirs was a neater way to
do it, others would change menu structures, some would put in helper
dialogs in areas where new users are most likely to have problems.
In the end though you can't get away from the fact that these other distros
are Debian. When Debian gets an update so do the derivatives. For that
reason Debian has to always tread carefully, only good strong code in the
base, they can play with the shells as anyone can, but there are more
limited simply because they have to take into account that a change, for
example an xml change in debian base can not kick into touch the derived
distros. Whilst the derived distros can take more risks, because they don't
have to worry about sub-distros based on theirs.
One of the areas concentrated on by the sub-distros is application load and
removal, there isn't any magic added, it is apt-get that is the magic. All
the distros are doing is giving users a different way to use the
functionality of apt-get. Some good ideas, others poor ideas, actually I
often think that some of the dialogs or web interfaces to apt-get hide too
much of it's extra capabilities.
I don't mean to lesson the derived distros by this, they are offering
something that helps users get onboard, that is a good thing, but don't
anyone under estimate Debian's place in this.
Debian's place in Linux is probably the most important part of all of Linux.
After the rock that is our kernel, we have the hardcore that is Debian.
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