I thought this was an insightful takeaway from one of the links you shared:golinux wrote:That would depend on your perspective. As per your post "One Year of Debian", you are rather new here. Things really started to go down hill around 2011. Other threads related to the decline are here. It was a huge schism and exodus from this forum. Then systemd further drove away knowledgeable users. This forum is now pretty much an empty shell . . . no offense to the few here doing their best to keep it alive.
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 32#p384141
On one hand, the quote summarizes this thread's topic: when one utilizes alien repos in lieu of compiling from source, bad things happen, because each distro makes changes in order to fit their project's particular needs. (edit:) Troll attributes this to "fragmentation," which I've seen defined several different ways; in this context, I think fragmentation can be best defined as "focusing on the specific distribution," and not as "[over]abundant choice." Choice, on the other hand, is the whole point of the Linux philosophy.Troll wrote:...developers are targeting their applications at distros, rather Linux and its libraries...
In addition, it's interesting to note that, six years ago, the issue of "software incompatibility for the sake of the distro" was discussed in great detail, and only now are we realizing its effects. What it leaves out is that 1) source codes are now requiring certain, undesirable software, due to the direction of major distros (eg, xfce and dbus); and 2) some source code can bypass features that distros leave enabled by default (eg, xfce and systemd). Both of those are two sides of the same issue, though: convenience over choice. It is admittedly a pain to compile any desktop environment from source; understandably, most people use something easier -- like a deb.Distros also insist on modifying applications they ship - usually making them incompatible with the original
My hope is that Debian commits to software choice for the long haul, and continues to give users reasonable alternatives to undesirable programs (cough, systemd, cough), instead of taking the easy, albeit cohesive, route like other major distributions. I'll repeat ad nauseum that, if no one advocates for something, it will, eventually, be lost. If ever Debian abandons user choice, whether to imitate other projects or to maintain a "cohesive" distribution, I will abandon Debian. I hope that doesn't happen.