While some in the Linux community are scratching their heads over the latest acquisition by Mandriva, one prominent member has a notion what the French distribution company is doing, and wholeheartedly approves. Also, Mandriva has announced the release of its Multi Network Firewall (MNF), version 2.
Mandriva’s Future May Be Debian
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I like where this may be going.
What if Mandriva is dissatisfied with the release cycle etc. and starts to splinter like Ubuntu? This may be off topic, but what is a good Debian based distro? I currently use Ubuntu, but the fact that they are splintering from Debian does not sit well with me. However, I like the great hardware detection and single CD install. Any thoughts? Sorry to derail the thread.
I just can’t believe what Ian Murdock said. This kind of attitude is what almost drove Debian out of the game entirely. Like a pure Debianist, he’s out of touch with reality. For instance, he seems to know nothing about the recent advancements made in Conectiva’s smart algorithm for apt. Neither does he seem to care or understand that Conectiva’s (at the time) Alfredo Kojima developed apt for rpm. This means, no, they won’t move to Debian technology, because they’ve moved /beyond/ it.
The sad thing is that the Debian community brags a lot about open source, but their dpkg management is stuck in a 10 year-old technology that they haven’t substantially improved, and that utterly depends on human engineering (which is the main cause of Debian falling so short on their aims). None of the improvements /ever/ made it back to the Debian tree…
Incredible how Linux press just lends itself to mindless meme.
and no more to be said about that
But, Murdock emphasized, there is a catch. While Mandriva could continue to acquire as they have been doing, Murdock does not believe that they will be able to do so for long “without making Debian a part of their story.” In fact, the founder of Debian believes that Mandriva cannot succeed without using Debian technology.
…
But, given the technologies involved, can Mandriva make that jump?
“Not only can they do it, my assertion is if they don’t do it, they can’t survive,” Murdock said.
Really? The head guy of Debian thinks that another distro can’t survive without Debian? Who would have thunk it?
…a nice KDE based distro (Mandriva), but with a real package manager (apt-get). That would rock. Even though I personaly would stick with Ubuntu, like a real gnome fanboy I am
i’m currently on breezy and i really like it as experimental testbed for debian (and as my primary workstation
). debian packagers should definitively keep an eye on ubuntu packages. i really like debian’s stability and that’s why sarge runs on my server but on the desktop i prefer being a little bit more on the edge and this is where ubuntu comes in! (and also for amd64 people, but this one is being watched after)
my thoughts exactly. i do agree with his thoughts on mandrivas overall plan of growing through aquiring small local distros. i doubt they will transition to .deb anytime soon. what with urpmi and all i dont see a lot of advantage to switching.
I prefer being a little bit more on the edge and this is where ubuntu comes in! (and also for amd64 people, but this one is being watched after)
Too much on the edge.
URPMI works wonderfully; there is NO need to replace it with anything. You set you sources up, and that is it – you have incredibly easy access to vast amounts of software and fine control over uninstall/install/upgrades.
Install package:
urpmi foo
uninstall package:
urpme foo
update sources:
urpmi.update -a
update ALL installed software:
urpmi –auto-select –auto
Those are just the simple things you can do; it can get a lot more detailed.
I bet my friend Sergio will really like the sound of that. We used to routinely get into the “Mandrake sucks….No Debian sucks, and Mandrake rules” argument. It was all in good fun though.
In case anyone is confused I’m the Debian fanboy, and my friend Sergio was the one who was the Mandrake fanboy. We used to poke at each other all the time. Gosh I miss those days….
Realistically speaking Debian is the only distribution large enough for Mandriva to support. They need to use open source software projects more to support their activities because maintaining a whole distribution themselves is becoming less and less of an option.
The interviewee’s personal biases aside, why would Mandriva switch from being their own thing to starting over by going to Debian? Is there a business case for it?
The Debian distribution offers nothing different than Mandriva short of the fact that they use ‘apt’ instead of ‘urpmi’ for package management. The two are roughly identical and Mandrake includes an RPM-based ‘apt’ that you can use in conjunction with their ‘urpmi’ for identical functionality. ‘apt’ and ‘urpmi’ repositories are equally as easy to setup, and there’s slightly more software for doing things with RPM databases.
Mandrake, for their part, would loose out on a certain degree of control of the distribution and have to sacrifice their (arguably) more disciplined use of package naming conventions and packaging procedures.
I think they should go SlackWare 🙂 never mind Debian.
I’m still curious what technology do Debian have that Mandriva needs? What Debian spesific technology are he thinking of?
Good to see potential closer ties between Mandriva and the “Debian world…….” – Mandriva needs to reconnect and tap back in to the “community” a little bit more – 3 years ago when “desktop Linux” left alot to be desired, Mandrake, via it’s distribution, was at the forefront of making people realise “Desktop Linux can work….. ordinary users can use this…..” – personally think Mandrake deserves a pat on the back for that, atleast
A core system, well built and modular. The number of packages suported by Debian, a joint effort of package QA, LSB certification, unified and modular configuration tools (something like webmin?, but GUI/curses wise), something besides a distro, a core from which distros can be built from without much effort, letting developers use their time in stuff other than repackaging everything over and over again, and use it in QA, new innovative features, etc…
I agree with “Closer-ties” poster, they should get closer to the community.
http://componentizedlinux.org/documentation/toward/
🙂
At first I thought “cool, my fave distro being based on my other fave distro!”, but after reading the thoughts and comments of people here, I’m not so sure anymore..
It’s true that both, urpmi and apt are equally powerful these days.
But what I’ve come to suspect now is that Murdock actually wants to take care of his own distro, since with its “version-updating” frequency its life might actually be “endangered” nowadays:
Adapt Mandriva to Debian; then merge! This could be good for Debian itself, but not so sure about Mandriva.. or perhaps they could merge into a successful better distro.. (?)
Mind you, all this could just be my semi-paranoid under-informed quasi-visionary thinking. 😀
Cheers!
It will take time and human resources to combine the newly acquired companies into a coherent business strategy. Using Debian as a foundation will allow Mandriva to more quickly retool itself. But then again, what do I know?
linux world and distoros begin to sound like the philosophical theory of ‘natural selection’
week and unnecessary onces are dying, and stronger and promising ones are gaining more power. Week tech.’s falling, better onces gaining more support.. all being eventually rather than any decession taken…
hopefully, in 2-3 yrs we will have at most 3 main roots(debian,redhat,suse), and rest will rely on those… and we will have %80 standart finally.. and naturally..
The article talks about Mandriva _and_ Debian but there is not a strong link between the two. Mandriva is a business, Debian isn’t. Mandriva is trying to branch out into various markets. There is nothing debianesque about this.
Mandriva is a very good RPM distribution with excellent packagement management tools (URPMI). Their main compeditor in this field is SUSE as it is the other main RPM based KDE distribution. SUSE is also becoming ‘neutral’ with the GNOME improving, thanks to the Ximian guys.
Why is another KDE Debian-based distribution needed? We have Xandros, MEPIS, Kubuntu etc… Why does Mandriva need to be added to the list? With developments like the Smart package manager, the package management of the distribution isn’t going to matter in years to come.
Debian is facing problems and Murdock knows it – in fact, he’s articulated most of them. Ubuntu has become a leading (if not the leading) distribution in geek’s minds and he hasn’t liked that it is moving further from Debian. As much as everyone talks about all the Debian based stuff stayins so compatible, they aren’t – not by a long shot. Xandros and Linspire are just completely, 100% out there. They are forks of Debian as much as Mandriva and SuSE are forks of RedHat. They aren’t members of the Debian family like Ubuntu is.
Now, with no other Debian based disto participating in the Debian development process, Ubuntu has almost become the new sid. Bringing in Mandriva would see development center around Debian again as both Ubuntu and Mandriva wouldn’t want to duplicate each other’s efforts. Since he seems to think that Debian will suffer if development moves away from Debian and to Ubuntu, this would be ideal for him. A nice Mandriva counterweight to Ubuntu in the Debian world.
Debian is going to do fine, but it doesn’t have the huge family that Debian developers point to. It has Ubuntu and it no more has Xandros or Linspire than RedHat has SuSE and Mandriva.
Euros, not Canadian dollars.
“Not only can they do it, my assertion is if they don’t do it, they can’t survive,” Murdock said.
Murdock sees that such an investiture in Debian technology would be a huge win for the Debian Project, as well. Recent successes notwithstanding, Murdock has concerns for the next 12-18 months of Debian’s life cycle. He has been publicly outspoken on the need to improve Debian’s release cycle process and on the need to keep the development “center of gravity” within the Debian Project and not letting it shift to the currently successful projects such as Ubuntu.
“Debian has an enormous opportunity in front of it,” Murdock stated, if it can remain the center of Debian-based development. Having such a free, non-commercial center would be a strong selling point for any company to use Debian, he added, including Mandriva. Keeping Debian’s core non-commercial would prevent any temptations to specialize the core code into something only one distributor could use.
One such benefit could be the re-establishment of Debian as the central Linux Standard Base distribution, something that was originally intended when Bruce Perens initially proposed the LSB. The LSB, Murdock feels, has been weakened by other commercial distros’ lack of full participation.
This sounds like a Debianite who wants to use Mandriva to help what might be a dying Debian. Buzz off guy. Leave Mandriva out of your problems. I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees this.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! It’s THE BLOB!! Oh wait, no its just Mandriva.
Seriously. Buy out everything why don’t you?
They’re an enormous maintainership effort, this is the problem. THe packaging needs to be moved upstream by making it simpler to do. With all the tacit knowledge that debian maintainers have, could they have the intuitive knowledge to create the necessary protocols and formats which would address scalability. Heck if these protocols and formats aren’t burdened by licenses which force GPL implementations, then one could implement this across many unices and create a de facto standard which can drag the rest of the cruft to the depths of hell, giving us good policy, not programs. =P
To be fair, instead, I see it the opposite way: a few days ago I dist-upgraded Linspire to Debian Sid and 99% of everything was still working. I could also install as many Sid packages as I liked plus everything looked very pretty.
A few months ago I dist-upgraded Xandros to testing and, again, I didn’t break anything.
To be honest I did the same with Ubuntu when it was only a preview, I didn’t break anything but it didn’t look much like Debian in the end. From what I hear, these days the chance of successfully dist-upgrading Ubuntu to Sid are very small.
I found that the packages wich were truly Debian incompatible in Linspire and Xandros were very few.
There isn’t really any distro which is commercial, Debian based without breaking compatibility, and big enough to start and mantain a big project.
The only one which comes any near is Libranet, but Libranet doesn’t have the 3rd condition ( big enough to start and mantain a big project)
Kanotix is absolutely fine for me, but again it has only one or two developers. If Kano should get enough of Kanotix, it would go the same way as J.A.M.D. Linux (also happening to Feather linux right now)
What would the benefits be for Mandriva? Huge! No need to develop everything themselves any longer, stability (which has often been an issue with Mandrake/driva), huge choice…
And please don’t tell me that dpkg, apt and aptitude aren’t being actively developed. And in any case there is always room for improvement.
“The Debian distribution offers nothing different than Mandriva short of the fact that they use ‘apt’ instead of ‘urpmi’ for package management.”
Yeah, sure… Except that of the big Linux distributions, and at least for me, Mandrake/Mandriva has always been the buggiest, least stable, albeit easiest to install binary distribution – while Debian, on the other hand, has always been the most stable binary distro I’ve ever used. (I’m not the only one who has experienced, thought or said something similar…)
Urpmi and apt might be quite similar as concepts. But you cannot say that the package management in general, like package policies, repository management etc. of Madriva are similar to those of Debian. Debian aims to be super stable distribution targeted especially for competent IT professionals and server users who don’t need hand holding but appreciate stability, security and such virtues. Mandriva aims to be commercially succesful, easy to use, fashionable, relatively cutting edge distro especially targeted for new Linux users who want to have the “latest and the greatest” Linux software to show their friends.
For me there is a *huge* difference between Debian and Mandriva.
Ubuntu? My description of it would be that Ubuntu is something between Mandriva and Debian: it is more bleeding edge, easier to use and configure than Debian but also buggier and a lot less stable.
“From what I hear, these days the chance of successfully dist-upgrading Ubuntu to Sid are very small.”
Yep, you’re definitely right about that. Try it and you will soon have a totally broken OS… That is how far Ubuntu has gotten from Debian proper.
It is also interesting to read that you’ve actually had more success upgrading Linspire and Xandros to Debian testing/unstable.
Progeny is a proof that Murdoch dont learn from is own mistake and from is own personnal history. Great developper , poor businessman , poor strategist.
If he , the Creator and one of the best Debian developper cant go and make a run at running a Debian commercial Company namely Progeny , there is little chance for anyone else to do so.
Now , If Murdock whant to offer is small company up in a very small stock swap for is current IP and technology and developpers and whant to join the #1 Global GNU/Linux leader ( Mandriva ), I am sure that François Bancilhon can accomodate him and that the Legend of Debian would be really welcome working at Mandriva. ( if François Bancilhon dont take this offer seriously , I think I have completely missjudged the man ).
Where Murdock is right is that Mandriva will eventually start buying Debian based company too : Libranet , Linspire , Xandros , Mepis , will eventually become prime target and ripe for acquisition. Too bad they did not get Robbins too before he joined Microsoft , he would have been a nice addition working on urpmi or/and smart.
So are you joining the Leader Mr Murdock ? 😉
I went and took a look at Progeny Componentized Linux. Ian’s plan is loud and clear: he wishes Mandriva to depend on Debian, so he can get his business rolling…Nothing wrong with that, except that recently acquired Conectiva has already done quite a lot of work on make apt on rpm systems better. So, it ain’t gonna happen, they aren’t going to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Progeny Componentized Linx looks pretty good. You only wish Debian developers had that vision, but they don’t. For Mandriva to get hooked up with Debian developers would be a terrible deal. They’re simply not agile enough, savvy enough. They tend to be stuck to their old ways, and they reject anything new.
Take Progeny, for example. It had some 2 years ago this nice project of a modular installer written in Python called Piggy, GUI and all. Its only problem is that it didn’t use kudzu. That could’ve been fixed. But what did Debian developers do for their installer? Simply ignore the work of Progeny. Start writing their buggy installer in C++ from scratch. Or take the work Conectiva did with apt, bringing better granularity to it. Again, Debian developers completely ignored it, as they ignore now the Smart algorithm. Their packaging documentation completely sucks, too (in fact, their whole documentation sucks – look at FreeBSD for an example of documentation – In 2020, Debian will fully document dpkg’s code and explain the void ohshit function).
I think what Progeny is trying to achieve is wise – you need a core system, you need LSB-compliance. There is no core system in Debian. These are issues for the real world. I’m not sure Ubuntu cares about these issues, although they’ve have managed to disentangle from that sick release management cycle of Debian’s, but it mostly seems an update-and-package-fast thing. Few people are really having a professional outlook. It looks to me like Progeny is. What they need to set out to do is to market themselves as aggressively as Ubuntu, have a clear release cycle and garantee all the packages Ubuntu has. Also, they need to choose a better name: “Componentized” is just to big.
I think they shouldn’t need to merge, just join expertise and developer work to achieve the core system CL is about.
They don’t have to depend on Debian, making something in the ways of CL is enough, there isn’t one real, easy to use core system.
With or without Debian we’ll just have to wait and see where Mandriva will go…
🙂
“For Mandriva to get hooked up with Debian developers would be a terrible deal. They’re simply not agile enough, savvy enough. They tend to be stuck to their old ways, and they reject anything new. There is no core system in Debian.
Their packaging documentation completely sucks, too (in fact, their whole documentation sucks”
Yeah, sure… Ok, Debian does have its problems. Except that Debian has always been used on many more mission critical machines than Mandriva ever… And except that I find much more Debian documentation online than Mandriva documentation. And Debian developers have simply different goals than the Mandriva salesmen.
Why does the new Nokia mobile device rely on Debian GNU/Linux instead of Mandriva? Why was Debian chosen for a space mission experiment and not Mandrake (could someone really expect that Mandrake could ever have been chosen to such a mission critical task? Hopefully the new Mandriva will be in the future?)? Why are more and more popular, componentized, specialized etc.etc. distributions based on Debian?
Those are some *serious* questions to consider if Mandriva wants to be taken as seriously as, for example, Debian (or Redhat, SUSE and a few others).
Debian does have its problems, especially the often mentioned slow release cycle (but they are working on it). But – Debian doesn’t have the reputation of a toy distro (easy to use GUI tools but often quite buggy and unstable) that Mandrake often has had. Why? Just because Debian is more difficult to configure…? I don’t think so. Maybe the new Mandriva will be much better, however?
<cite>Yeah, sure… Ok, Debian does have its problems. Except that Debian has always been used on many more mission critical machines than Mandriva ever… And except that I find much more Debian documentation online than Mandriva documentation.</cite>
Do you mean by that how you need to read APT-HOWTO, because man apt is so bad? If you want to see what on-line documentation is, try a BSD system. They take documentation seriously.
Besides, I don’t see any arguments really holding up here. Debian doesn’t have the security enhancements RedHat server edition has, for instance. If you take such an example into consideration, very few of those Linux distros, including Debian, are ready for “mission critical.” In fact, for mission critical you want support, and Debian doesn’t provide that, and you want security, and Debian does not do that well by default. So what you’re refering to, in fact, is a little system administration on the side, not real heavy load.
I also see that you completely ignored what I said about Debian not even considering advances the community made with Debian tools, like Piggy and the smart algorithm.
I am not defending Mandriva. It’s a relatively new distro, but it is making inroads, maybe not so much in the American market, though. What I was saying is that for any business to be associated or depend upon developers who can’t even keep schedule is suicidal. I’ve run Debian for years, but today, I think we’re on the verge of seeing that boat sink. I’m not so sure people wanna risk waiting 2 years for the next release. It’s a risk I know I won’t take.
And also, Debian does not seem to have the wherewithal organizationally-wise to become an agile entity capable of adapting to the needs of the serious players in the Linux industry. Why is it that someone as important for Debian as Ian Murdock can propose such important and necessary changes as components, metadata for components and absolutely /none/ of that filters down to Debian? The answer is simple: Debian does not have a direction, the Debian developers are not knowledgeable enough to understand these issues. Plus, they’re arrogant and conceited. They’ve probably learned nothing about their organization from this Sarge fiasco.
” Except that Debian has always been used on many more mission critical machines than Mandriva ever… ”
No , but its fun of you to point that out , a couple years back OSDN Now OSTG ( http://www.ostg.com/ ) add all his site gone and destroyed due to the very poor security and stability and manageability of Debian , some never came back , many did not cameback with the previous content they add either some of it no one hadd a copy of. I can give thousand more example of the people who got byte by the lies of Debian. At the last SETCON Debian whas the fatest hacked GNU/Linux , The Mandriva Machine at security level 5 never once whas hacked.
“And except that I find much more Debian documentation online than Mandriva documentation. ”
Yes , more incomplete then the next because they are all independant and never fully cover the subject they discuss.Mandriva is not really better at keeping with the code there developper release do , but its unlike Debain they actually release code.
“And Debian developers have simply different goals than the Mandriva salesmen. ”
One Debian dont have salesmen , they have lazy resaller and lazy based of vendor the LUG and eductaion system and now UBUNTU distributed more CD then Debian core ever did , go ask the Debian foundation for that number. Second Mandriva Developper are expert where Debian developper are amateur.
For one they get paid , they also have a recognised instaler as one of the best solution , they have live cd ( where as only the Debian based does ) , They have professional security firewall and they have professional cluster solution that are in use everyday by professionnal. etc …
“the new Nokia mobile device rely on Debian GNU/Linux”
It rely on a embeded GNU/Linux version made by Nokia probably based on another “based of Debian”.
“Why was Debian chosen for a space mission experiment and not Mandrake”
The developper doing the experiment where familiar with Debian … NASA is also *THE* big funder of the Debian foundation ( oups did I let that big secret out ).
” could someone really expect that Mandrake could ever have been chosen to such a mission critical task? ”
Yes , but you dont know much about the russian and French and European Space program do you ? 😉
“Why are more and more popular, componentized, specialized etc.etc. distributions based on Debian? ”
Because the Debian core is shit and none of the Debian based until now offered much either ( Ubuntu is the only one to approach the level of competence Mandriva as ).
“Those are some *serious* questions”
No , because Mandriva as a proven track record of beeing Free ( as in Freedom and Cost too ) , GNU/GPL , they stick to there mandate ( giving the bestthey can to everyone ) , they keep on developing.
” Debian doesn’t have the reputation of a toy distro”
Debian as the reputation of being broken , unstable , unable to be used ,the new is as old as the 2 years old offer from other and is even more unsatble , offer incomplete solution , etc … Oh! you meant reputation … Mandriva dont play the name calling game …
Mandriva is Rock solid ( thats why its certified EAL 5 and no other distribution does , as to do with its military use in 16 country ( France , Israël , CANADA to name a few )
Mandriva is certified LSB compliant ( Debian could too as the LSB is leniant on there use of DEB the inferior package manager , but yet they dont pass half the test. )
Reputation based on the Lies of Red Hat , SUSE , Debian , etc are just that Lies.
Mandriva can do what all the other do and does it better , the others cant do it all , or even aproach what they do.
The best question is why Debian Core is the least used of the Debian and why is there so many Debian based ? Why is Debian Core not leading in all area since they had over 9 billion invested in them ( Remember the NASA and Debian Foundation I mentioned ). The answer is easy Debian always fail short in all area where they should be the overall leader in everything , if its Open Source and GPL use it and improve on it, thats why Mandriva is better then Debian.
Why is Ian Murdoch discussing Mandriva ? He as seen them in action … and he is scared , scared of those who could make is best creation obsolete and irrelevant. Better question is why is he not discussing Red Hat and SUSE with the same respect ?
Now go and make Debian LSB certfifed , and certified EAL 5 , then come back. Until then the unstable and buggy of amateur is not considered a valid testing method in anyone books.
“I agree with “Closer-ties” poster, they should get closer to the community.”
It would help if the community got closer to _us_. This is a bit of a bugbear for some Mandriva people. We have a large community, our code is all open source, we have blogs, a planet, talkative developers, mailing lists up the wazoo, and we contribute stuff back upstream all the time; yet it seems many Linux ‘communities’ and press sites more or less ignore Mandriva. Quick example: Read planet.gnome.org for a week, then count the mentions of Ubuntu, Fedora and SUSE and compare with the mentions of Mandriva. This happens all over the place, and it’s a bit sad, really. Note that OSNews is certainly not guilty, they post roughly as much stuff about MDV as about any other major distro and that’s great.
Mandriva can do what all the other do and does it better , the others cant do it all , or even aproach what they do.
What about their latest Disney style?Do you think people appreciate the Daffy Duck boot-screen and think the distro must be brilliant too?
It seems that Ian Murdock want its company to be bought by Mandriva: Progeny is not doing so well and Ian Murdock tries to sell it. I think that are the reasons of his comments …
Those who actually are interested in the future of Mandriva and package management, rather than just mindlessly flaming on OS News, might be interested what Claudio Matsuoka (a developer at Mandriva, formerly at Conectiva) has to say: http://tweek.dyndns.org:8080/blog/20050613/top-ten-problems-in-rpm
http://tweek.dyndns.org:8080/blog/20050609/parallelism-and-converge…
Ian linked to those posts from his blog (http://ianmurdock.com/), so it’s pretty likely that his speculations are based on that, and Linux Planet decided to make a story out of it…
everyone knows that Mandriva Look and feel can be modified after installation in a mather of seconds
Sure you can change the look after install that’s not the problem.It’s the first impression when you install mandriva.The install just doesn’t look professional,more to much like the beginner distro allways claimed to be (and it is i think).
[i]Also if you where a corporation/professional you would use there corporate product too …[i]
I don’t bother about style to much but can remember the BSD logo contest.The initial desktop style reflects badly what mandriva stands for.
Mandriva should polish it’s appearance to look more serious towards the coporate customers if they are serious about braoden their horizon.Progeny and Debian wouldn’t add anything to Mandriva.It’s far better to buy little technology firms that host great innovative concepts.For example Novell bought Immunix.
The install just doesn’t look professional,more to much like the beginner distro allways claimed to be (and it is i think).
I agree,collegues in the office asked what mandriva was.Their first impression it could be some new labelling kit with Disney templates.Although i really like the distro but finally the Redhat box was tested and approved.
Why all these ridiculous attacks on Debian? My personal experience with Mandrake is that all it’s bugs, quirks and meddling with my own configuration changes made me run back to Debian, that was 9.2. I’ve never used Connectiva or Mandriva, but I doubt they have changed there ways of shipping beta quality software for the sake of progress.
Debian might be extremely conservative, but it doesn’t confront me with crashes or stupid in your face kinda bugs. Why do you feel the need to flame everything Debian?
BTW. That 9 billion dollar NASA claim was extremely amusing. The new DPL, Branden Robinson, has done a assessment of all the funds accessible to the project. They were little and underused.
“They tend to be stuck to their old ways, and they reject anything new.”
I call it “if it aint broke then aint no need to fix it”! Got any other examples to support your argument?
You can use KUDZU all you want! You are welcome to take the PGI installer and maintain it but why do it when we have a installer that works just fine? At one time you could use the PGI installer to install debian but that was a long time ago and it hasnt been maintained. Why should it!
——–
“debian dying”
it CANNOT DIE, ever, no way, as long as one debianite is alive then it lives! you have no clue about how saying something as asinine as “debian is dying” makes you sound so….well, asinine
——————
“you need a core system, you need LSB-compliance. There is no core system in Debian”
core system? what happened to choice? we have a core-system it is called the basesystem please stop fudding most distros have LSB compliance if you install the LSB package
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“documentation sucks”
i can show you guide after guide, info on top of info… Can you give us some examples and so forth. Of course my debianite answer is simply “jump in and fix anything you like” we are a community and that includes YOU!
————-
” because man apt is so bad”
uh, if you are familar with debian then you know to use INFO and not man pages! Thank you, your ignorance seems to be showing! Uh here is a online man page, can you please let eme know what is missing
http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/apt-get.8.html
and a simple altavista search shows one of many results about apt
http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/apt-get-intro.html.en
what more do you want?
———
“of being broken , unstable , unable to be used ,the new is as old”
once again, your ignorance is showing, please try to contain it! so lets play the “which GUI tools work in this point release” of mandrake and most other distros. debian is pure linux and simple config files. spend forever learning those GUI tools because next week they will change and you will have to relearn them again, personally once I switched to learning config files I havent had a problem doing much of anything in linux
————
most distros look to debian to see package management done RIGHT, apt was one of the first and is still the best! Why else would they always reference apt?
————–
debian is the omni-distro, from a old 133mhz machine with 16megs of memory and a 200meg hard drive to a just off the line hot-box, from a simple server to a complex desktop, and anything you can think of in between… lemme see you do that with mandrake, linspire, xandros, mepis, ubuntu…et all..
the only people who attack debian are the people who havent used it extensively…. lame!!!
for anyone thinking that mandrake is going to buy or merge with debian, WHOA are you out there, why would mandrake BUY a volunteer organization, and a merge — would be like merging….crap I cant think of anything, maybe a 40 year old person and a 5 year old person.. what the heck would that make.
Sorry to diss the IAN but sounds like he wants his baby to become ubuntu or soemthing, taking the world by storm, a single purpose directed sharp edge sword… no thanks, i like my modular, flexible, underdog, not quite directionless but very well rounded at least OS!!!
ok, if you need a EVEN EASIER debian then xandros or libranet….
Either that, or some sort of “French pride” complex that makes him advocate it?
I kind of disagree with you, these kind of projects have to show themselves community friendly, and they shouldn’t lay on the community to gather around them just because. Mdv should have a less comercial only face that scares away people. Any user looking to the site gets the feeling that he needs to be a member club to use the distro and contribute with bugs, etc. Having a club only devel releases is another thing that drives people away. It makes people feel they’re not part of the devel of the distro, that they’re missing something… does anyone share this view or feeling?
Could it be that the club(paid registration) ghost scares people away?
2. Alumni Level Membership
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People don’t realise they don’t have to be a paying member to be part of the community.
… but I’m a member of the club and believe in great things to come from all the things going on…
I kind of disagree with you, these kind of projects have to show themselves community friendly, and they shouldn’t lay on the community to gather around them just because. Mdv should have a less comercial only face that scares away people. Any user looking to the site gets the feeling that he needs to be a member club to use the distro and contribute with bugs, etc. Having a club only devel releases is another thing that drives people away. It makes people feel they’re not part of the devel of the distro, that they’re missing something… does anyone share this view or feeling?
Yep, I agree in part Bruno – I’ve had similar impressions when visiting the site – although it’s a fraction odd that Mandrake gets knocked on the “community” ticket, but SuSE comes out smelling of roses so often.
“The install just doesn’t look professional”
The instal look and is professional , its target is the majority , not some vocal minority , who can change it in seconds and will do so anyway, you can give it to a child a parent or a grand parent and no one will feel harassed by any of its content.
“the initial desktop style reflects badly what mandriva stands for. ”
No , it stands that its a distribution for everyone …
“Mandriva should polish it’s appearance to look more serious towards the coporate customers”
Use the corporate product …
“if they are serious about braoden their horizon.Progeny and Debian wouldn’t add anything to Mandriva.”
Seriously , you just proved you dont know what progeny and Debian are.
“For example Novell bought Immunix.”
Yes Novell is going the way of SUSE too …
“Why all these ridiculous attacks on Debian? ”
No attack and nothing ridiculous whas said on my part. I just stated Some Debian history.
“My personal experience with Mandrake is that all it’s bugs, … Debian”
If you dont know how to use something you need to learn , inferior product like Debian dont offer the automatization that more advanced GNU/Linux like Mandriva provide , Mandriva is exeptionnaly good at truning off and letting changes made by the user alone when you know what your doing. If you havent tried the latest from 2005 , I guess you really have nothing of value to say. Even more when you quote your last try as a 2003 distribution …
“but I doubt they have changed there ways of shipping beta quality software for the sake of progress. ”
Actually cutting edge and Beta are two different things , but I guess since I try Beta software everyday I know the difference …
” but it doesn’t confront me with crashes or stupid in your face kinda bugs.”
Yes of course the imaginary Bugs and Crashes too bad you dont have a real one to offer.
“Why do you feel the need to flame everything Debian?”
Why are are you an incompetent GNU/Linux user who also happen to be a lying morons ? Why cant you make a system million of real user have no problem using in there everyday life ?
” That 9 billion dollar NASA claim was extremely amusing. ”
I said Debian add since there creation 9 billion invested in them and that NASA is also a big donator and sponsor of Debian. Dont try to change what I said into something else in order to make me look stupid.
“They were little and underused.”
“has done a assessment of all the funds accessible to the project. They were little and underused.”
What can I say the money is already spent …
Now if he need more money why dont he ask for some … I am sure that Debian user and developper and resaller will give money if asked in order to support there favorite distribution , there like the Mandriva User ( that whas a joke Btw , I know you whont get the cynical humor in it )
“Does Moulineuf have Mandriva stock?”
Nope , never did. I dont like how Jacque Le Marois as control over the stock and the fact that it drop so often for such a good company , when it should be above the value of Red Hat. I whas offered the possibility to buy SUSE shares but they never made it to any of there IPO.
“or some sort of “French pride” complex”
Nope I am a Real American from CANADA
Why Do I like Mandriva :
They have shown time and time again to be the one giving there best with the platter they got.
They never Give up and never surrender and are not coward they lead the charge.
Does MDV have EAL 5 by default or was that a different fork?
I found this link (in French):
http://www.infogiciel.info/article0029.html
“what’s in stake for Linux in terms of deployment.”
care to enlighten me???
“A core system is what BSD Unixes have, and that’s why you can have an up-to-date *stable* desktop in FreeBSD, but you can’t have one in Debian.”
strange, i thought i did have one, in fact i have a few flavors to pick from in debian and they are all fairly up to date and range in stability but even the worse is fairly stable…
” no, you don’t know Unix, you only know Debian, your little toy kewl desktop, ”
that is toooo funny, wouldnt a toy kewl desktop be a up-to-date desktop which is something that you just argued that you cannot have in debian…
oh and did you see something lacking in the man page on apt?
LE 2005 is not a corporate product. It has not been positioned, marketed or sold as a corporate product. We have products for corporate users, and they don’t have the same bootsplash.
The Club only releases are not development releases. The development of Mandriva is done entirely in the publicly available Cooker distribution, like Debian and Ubuntu development (and, to take a cheap shot, markedly _un_like SUSE development – I’m not sure about Fedora, is Rawhide a true rolling distro the public can track, or not?) The Club releases are basically the previous stable release with some important things backported from Cooker (KDE 3.4, in the latest instance). They are effectively ‘dead ends’; the Club releases derived from 2005 do not form any part of the development of 2006.
Sure, the websites often encourage you to join the Club; we have to make a living somehow. Suggesting our attitude is ‘commercial only’ is a tad too far, though. Our mailing lists (beginner, expert, Cooker, server, security, translations…) are entirely public and open, we provide and always have provided an entirely free (in both senses) and complete distro release, our development process is open…that’s a lot more than some distros can say.
Oh, and there’s no reason to consider only the official MDV sites etc. when discussing the ‘community’. What about http://www.mandrivausers.org, the unofficial community wiki, easy URPMI, #mandriva IRC and other places?