Last September, some of the Debian Linux distribution's leadership wanted to make sure that Etch, the next version of Debian, arrived on its December 4th due date. Almost two months later, though, according to the February 17th Release Critical Bug Report memo to the Debian Developers Announcement list, there are still 541 release critical bugs.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Another way to look at Debian is to look at is at the reference implementation of an abstract system - the Debian System. As a reference implementation, it doesn't focus on all the shiny niceties we have all gotten used to - but it works. Sun does this with their J2EE product, they release reference implementations.
People like Ubuntu, Linspire, Mepis produce friendlier implementations of the abstrace Debian System. This does not in any way detract from Debian, it is rather a testament to its usefulness.
Having said that, I find Debian to be a very usable system if you know what you are doing. If you don't, it is best to use one of the friendlier implementations.
Member since:2006-06-26
What exactly happens at the moment? There are "nice" distributions that used to be based on Debian - well, they are now based on Ubuntu. So this "reference implementation" thing is somewhat fading away ...
Debian _is_ a very usable system. What I mean is: Does it still attract new users? Isn't it true that Ubuntu takes away a huge chunk - even now with Dapper for servers? And isn't Ubuntu on its way to substitute Debian (tho somewhat impossible since it's based on Debian itself)?
Member since:2005-09-01
>People like Ubuntu, Linspire, Mepis produce friendlier >implementations of the abstrace Debian System. This does >not in any way detract from Debian, it is rather a >testament to its usefulness.
True, but none of them makes use of the enormous work of stabizing the codebase as none of them is based on stable. Most of that work goes to waste as serious users have to seek for updated versions of their target software voiding any testing and integrations effort debian developers did.
Maybe debian should just ditch stable alltogether.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2006-06-26
It's difficult to attract new users to an operating system that is considered outdated when it's released. Even on the server side there are some rather old packages that are the cause of difficulties after too much time has passed.
And it's too easy to say Debian is for the server. Debian itself sees itself as a general purpose distribution. As such it has to compete not only with other solid server distributions such as RHEL or SLES but also with shiny desktop distributions such as Ubuntu, SUSE, and Fedora.