[room] Fwd: Re: oneline article: "Debian Alliance on The Horizon"

[Michael Shigorin]

----- Forwarded message from John <dingo/coco2.arach.net.au> -----

Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:28:52 +0800
From: John <dingo/coco2.arach.net.au>
Subject: Re: oneline article: "Debian Alliance on The Horizon"
Cc: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com

Ed Cogburn wrote:
>John wrote:
>
>
>>Ed Cogburn wrote:
>>
>>Warty to Hoary. Possibly, installing KDE in the middle confounded
>>things, but I think it _should_ have worked.
>
>
>
>Trust me, when you're doing a dist-upgrade, *nothing* is assured.  :)

So I'm learning. None of the Debianista will admit that of course:-\

>
>
>
>>Considering its parentage it works remarkably well. I do have regular
>>problem with the desktop locking for a few seconds when I select text;
>>that happened in Sarge too.
>>
>>Also the mouse goes funny at times: I can move the cursor but clicks
>>don't register and the cursor doesn't change. Ususlly, it comes good
>>when I navigate around the screens and close some windows. That happened
>>in Sarge too.
>
>
>
>Never saw these two myself (I was using Sarge when it was still unstable)
>but they both sound like some problem with your mouse or its driver.

Hm. For sure I've had the problem with USB Logitech and a3tech meese. 
Odds are good that it also happened with a Microsoft intellimouse (with 
a ball, not optical).

I have boxes of used keyboards and mice: I'm likely to use anything that 
comes to hand on occasion.

For some time I've used an IBM USB keyboard that came with a Netvista: 
it has a hole for a PS/2 mouse (which makes said mouse hot-pluggable). 
I'm pretty sure I've had Microsoft and IBM mice in there.

Sometimes, I have two mice (like right now).

>
>
>
>>I think it's time for the KDE folk to settle down to some refinement,
>>particularly of the core elements. It performs very poorly in 256 Mbytes
>>of RAM, and not brilliantly in 512.
>
>
>
>What concerns me is they aren't stopping at all.  3.5 will be the last
>version of KDE as we know it, and 4.0 will reinvent several wheels all over
>again (complete rewrite of desktop/panel/taskbar interaction called
>"Plasma").  Ok, granted, they're using the switch to Qt4 as the excuse for
>this, but still, it means lots of new code and lots of new bugs, on *top*
>of the new bugs introduced by Qt4.  :(  Obviously, 3.4 works for most of
>the devs, but unfortunately its never been quite stable for me (KControl
>hasn't worked since 3.3, and Konqueror is now very fragile), and now the
>devs are moving to KDE4.  Sigh.

It's true that something in KDE sometimes crashes, (Gnome too for that 
matter), but I don't recall any KDE or Gnome app taking anything else 
out; the dist-upgrade did mean that the desktop had to be restarted but 
that's different.

Same with the up2date of my Fedora Core desktop and laptop, but those 
got upgraded from 3.3 to 4 and it's to be expected some things won't 
work. Like starting new apps:-)

Nothing crashing Linux like my Olympus Digital Voice Recorder crashes 
Windows XP. Fortunately, it reboots quickly.


>
>
>
>>OTOH I used to use RHL 7.3 (KDE 2.2 I think) on a 128 Mb Pentium II and
>>it was better than FC3 on a 1.3 Ghz Celeron with 256.
>
>
>
>Ahh, the good ol'e days!  And you could have both GNOME and KDE installed
>without them using 200MB of hard space, now they *each* take up more than
>200MB or so, counting dependencies.

Well, yes, my wife was pretty happy about RHL 6 and Gnome or KDE 
(probably the latter) in
...
64 Mbytes.

Generally, I prefer more recent versions.

I got pretty excited when I discovered KDE 3.4 was in the new update for 
Fedora Core 3 because it's got zeroconf aka rendezvous aka bonjour support.

Except RH built KDE without zeroconf support.


When Gnome and KDE were new, I expected I'd end up using Gnome, but used 
KDE then because Gnome was too fragile.

Since then, it seems to me that Gnome has gone backwards, and while I 
use it sometimes, I really do not like it.

And it's the lack of official KDE in Ubuntu that caused me to revisit 
the RH fold.

I switched to Debian when RH changed direction; I'd been a happy RHL 
user until 7.3, and then in 8.0 there was this "new look" with I didn't 
particularly like, I could not easily tell by looking the difference 
between KDE and Gnome; I had a look at the beta and stayed on 7.3 until 
RH announced 9 (not 9.0).

It was about then I switched to Woody which was pretty new then.

The big frustration with Woody was its ever increasing age and the 
refusal of the Debianista to allow broken bits to be fixed.

For example, selinux: Russell explained to me that it was broken and he 
couldn't get the fixes in. Get them here <link to location> he said.

I'd thought impaired security is a security problem:-(

There was other broken software too, but that is the one that sticks best.

Sometimes, technology changes: new versions of firewall and antispamware 
 and SATA support are not cosmetic changes, they are essential for new 
desktops and servers alike.

In retrospect, something like Ubuntu had to happen. There was enough 
dissension within the Debian ranks that there had to be a significant 
body of people willing to "leave" (I can't think of a better word atm), 
to do something more aligned to what the users want. The surprising 
thing about it to me is that those developers who have followed another 
path appear to remain committed to Debian.

It seems to me that for a DD joining the Ubuntu team, it's like getting 
a new job: all the excitement is for the future. I'm sure that Mark's 
commitment to contributing to the Debian project helps, both in getting 
DDs to work on his project, and keeping focus on putting back.

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike на altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/