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Even Linus thinks Debian is hard to install

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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llivv
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#76 Post by llivv »

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DebPad
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#77 Post by DebPad »

Torvalds is a kernel developer. As long as a system provides the usual PC tools that everyone likes, is easy to use, and has solid developer tools, I think he'll be fine with it. He uses Emacs, but I doubt he gets bashed in the Vi community.

Chapter 6
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#78 Post by Chapter 6 »

DebPad wrote:Torvalds is a kernel developer. As long as a system provides the usual PC tools that everyone likes, is easy to use, and has solid developer tools, I think he'll be fine with it. He uses Emacs, but I doubt he gets bashed in the Vi community.
I hear he's heterosexual too. No word yet on whether the gay community is bashing him.

His reason for being heterosexual? He says it was just the right fit for him. :lol:
"Now the body of one soul I adore wants to die
You have always told me you'd not live past 25
I say stay long enough to repay all who cause strife."

-- Alice in Chains, Sludge Factory

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perlhacker14
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#79 Post by perlhacker14 »

llivv wrote:
perlhacker14 wrote:
swirling_vortex wrote:http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/
Then, it is not very usable; less then half the repos have been ported, and it is quite unstable from reading that...
My bet is on:
All the best kernel hackers have their hands FULL coding one kernel, to all the wacky hardware there is available today.
Probably true... Might explain why GNU and Hurd are getting no where.
Last time I checked, were they not dropping really older hardware support in the kernel any way... seeing as no one is using it any more (m64k)?
Arven bids you a good day...

My Laptop: Toshiba Satellite A25-S3072; 3.06 GHz Pentium 4; 473 MiB RAM; Debian Testing/Unstable/Experimental / Slackware 12; Whatever WM/DE I feel like at the moment

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llivv
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#80 Post by llivv »

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#81 Post by perlhacker14 »

llivv wrote:following my slightly offtopic comment about "if Linus has a Live system preference" and also related to old hardware. I was searching for instructions on howto keep a handle on system memory usage within my Live system, so I can do more stuff on it without having to reboot after exhausting most/all system resources. I'm still searching for some relevant tips and tricks for this, and yesterday I found this little bit of trivia on the Live wiki
Live wiki wrote:The first OS to support LiveDistro operations as they now exist appears to have been the AmigaOS, which could be booted from CD on an Amiga CDTV in 1990
LiveDistro wiki
I see that many people would love to bring back the old days when things were much easier for them to understand and their old hardware was supported by nice people who would do nice things for them.

Time is funny! ain't it?
Ahh, yes... How we all miss Windows3.1 and AmigaOS...
And all that old hardware: simple, expensive, subject to Moore's Law, and fit only for the OS of the year.
Life is good.
Arven bids you a good day...

My Laptop: Toshiba Satellite A25-S3072; 3.06 GHz Pentium 4; 473 MiB RAM; Debian Testing/Unstable/Experimental / Slackware 12; Whatever WM/DE I feel like at the moment

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#82 Post by swirling_vortex »

and allow me to do the only part I really care about - the kernel.
You’re asking all these marketing and company questions, and the thing is, I’m not at all into it. I’m totally uninterested. What I’m into is the technology, and working together with people.
I find that a little disturbing. In order to satisfy all Linux users, you must be be able to look at all points of views, not just from the developer's perspective.

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#83 Post by Lavene »

swirling_vortex wrote:I find that a little disturbing. In order to satisfy all Linux users, you must be be able to look at all points of views, not just from the developer's perspective.
One has to remember that Linus started Linux out of a pure hacker's interest in operating systems and computer hw (specifically the 386 processor). That it started snowballing and ended up in what it is today no one, not even Linus, could predict. But he is still just a hacker. Asking him to develop an interest in marketing, economics and what not, just because he happened to accidentally start a revolution, really is not fair. And besides, there are other much stronger forces in the FOSS community taking care of that bit, people that are well qualified and interested in it.

People keep expecting all kinds of things from Linus, sort of taking it for granted that he is somewhat super human but he is not. He is a guy with a passion... just as he was many years ago when Linux happened.

Tina

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#84 Post by swirling_vortex »

Lavene wrote:
swirling_vortex wrote:I find that a little disturbing. In order to satisfy all Linux users, you must be be able to look at all points of views, not just from the developer's perspective.
One has to remember that Linus started Linux out of a pure hacker's interest in operating systems and computer hw (specifically the 386 processor). That it started snowballing and ended up in what it is today no one, not even Linus, could predict. But he is still just a hacker. Asking him to develop an interest in marketing, economics and what not, just because he happened to accidentally start a revolution, really is not fair. And besides, there are other much stronger forces in the FOSS community taking care of that bit, people that are well qualified and interested in it.

People keep expecting all kinds of things from Linus, sort of taking it for granted that he is somewhat super human but he is not. He is a guy with a passion... just as he was many years ago when Linux happened.

Tina
I understand that, but Linux is no longer the "hacker's project". It's been turned into a full fledge OS and since he is the man at the top and making decisions about the kernel, then I think he should at least keep one eye on where the project is going and also realize how his decisions can affect Linux's usage, such as the GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 mess.

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#85 Post by llivv »

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#86 Post by llivv »

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#87 Post by swirling_vortex »

I didn't mean to imply that Linus should focus strictly on enterprise and legal issues, but he should at least take notice on how his decisions affect people who use Linux.

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#88 Post by Chapter 6 »

swirling_vortex wrote:I didn't mean to imply that Linus should focus strictly on enterprise and legal issues, but he should at least take notice on how his decisions affect people who use Linux.
Does Linus really have any obligation to anyone though? And, if he has no obligation to the Linux community, can he be faulted for choosing not to do the things that others may want him to do?

I agree with Lavene on this. It was never the intent of Linus for Linux to become what it has. It's all been beyond his control for the most part. So it would seem somewhat ridiculous to want to hold him accountable for a lot of the things that he had no control over.

When you get down to the nitty gritty of it, you have to accept that Linus began Linux with a very narrow focus -- development of a kernel. He is wholly within his right to maintain that focus independent of what others may wish of him. And I really can find no reason to fault or blame him for that. Can you?
"Now the body of one soul I adore wants to die
You have always told me you'd not live past 25
I say stay long enough to repay all who cause strife."

-- Alice in Chains, Sludge Factory

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#89 Post by swirling_vortex »

Chapter 6 wrote:
swirling_vortex wrote:I didn't mean to imply that Linus should focus strictly on enterprise and legal issues, but he should at least take notice on how his decisions affect people who use Linux.
Does Linus really have any obligation to anyone though? And, if he has no obligation to the Linux community, can he be faulted for choosing not to do the things that others may want him to do?

I agree with Lavene on this. It was never the intent of Linus for Linux to become what it has. It's all been beyond his control for the most part. So it would seem somewhat ridiculous to want to hold him accountable for a lot of the things that he had no control over.

When you get down to the nitty gritty of it, you have to accept that Linus began Linux with a very narrow focus -- development of a kernel. He is wholly within his right to maintain that focus independent of what others may wish of him. And I really can find no reason to fault or blame him for that. Can you?
You're forgetting one thing, being adaptive. Sure, Linus certainly has no obligation to do what I'm suggesting, but continuing to have a narrow focus is one way you can kill a project.

Let's go back to the topic of this thread, that Debian is hard to install. All of us here know that is not true, so what he said shows that he's not keeping up on the end-user of things.

If Linux is to survive and compete with the likes of Microsoft (provided they don't kill thenselves first), then Linux developers must be able to listen to everybody. Sure, they do a lot better job than Microsoft, but some order must be brought into this "chaotic" system.

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#90 Post by BioTube »

One thing the kernel needs is a coherent changelog.
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#91 Post by Telemachus »

BioTube wrote:One thing the kernel needs is a coherent changelog.
It's not in the kernel itself, but I find this useful: http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges

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#92 Post by BioTube »

That's much better than the notes kernel.org has.
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Linus

#93 Post by michaelwr »

swirling_vortex wrote:
A curiosity: which is your favourite distribution, and which on e do you consider more secure?
Linux Torvalds wrote: I don’t really tend to care much, I’ve changed distributions over the years, and to me the most important thing tends to be that they are easy to install and upgrade, and allow me to do the only part I really care about - the kernel.

So the only major distribution I’ve never used has actually been Debian, exactly because that has traditionally been harder to install. Which sounds kind of strange, since Debian is also considered to be the “hard-core technical” distribution, but that’s literally exactly what I personally do not want in a distro. I’ll take the nice ones with simple installers etc, because to me, that’s the whole and only point of using a distribution in the first place.

So I’ve used SuSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, YDL (I ran my main setup on PowerPC-based machines for a while, and YDL - Yellow Dog Linux - ended up the easiest choice). Right now, most of my machines seem to have Fedora 7 on then, but that’s only a statement of fact, not meant to be that I think it’s necessarily “better” than the other distros.
Oh c'mon, you've got to be kidding me. How can you not like Debian? From that attitude, you'd think he'd be running something like Linspire for Xandros. :)
Hard to believe someone with his technical expertise would look for the "easiest" to use Linux distro. I used Fedora 7 recently but became frustrated with it. SeLinux is annoying. It's overkill. And don't ask for help on Fedora forum. I had 17 year old teens with 2 month's of Linux experience offering me advice. Pathetic. I think (some distro's) it's a dumbing down thing.

Mike

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#94 Post by llivv »

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#95 Post by muskrat »

So the only major distribution I’ve never used has actually been Debian,............
So I’ve used SuSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu,
I suppose Ubuntu ought to be proud, the've managed to get the great Linus Torvalds to call them a major distro. When in reality thier a Debian child.

I for one really don't care how hard it is to install. What counts to me is stability of use and maintance ease after instalation. You'd think a software programer would realize that you only install once in a while, but you use and maintain it daily.

Quite Frankly I was floored to read a statement like that from him. I guess I never really thought about his choice of distros. But after playing with LFS, I guess I would have guessed he would have something like that. No distro he listed is in my or my friends top 10 list.

Well SuSe might slip into the top 10, but the rest fall far short. In realilty I suppose with several hundred distros to choice from it's no wonder he's as confussed as the rest of us which is the best. Now I don't feel so bad about my confussion of choices.
Frankly, I wonder why dying companies don't release their proprietary code to open source. Instead they take it to the graveyard of ideas. Corel and Libranet come to mind.
I aggree 100%, Libranet taking the admin control panel to the grave was a real mind boggler. There was quit a few people offered to help keep Libranet alive, but they choose the grave yard instead. I was a Libranet user, but not any more.

it is strange that someone who created and maintains the linux kernel opts for the easiest distro.Makes you wish he would make it easier to read the kernel source Wink
Or maybe just make it easier to recomplie the kernel. if ease is one of his main concerns.
Personally, I like to go to the source of the matter, if I can find it. Again, personally I'm already a bit skewed by the OP and further skewed by the subsequent posts in this thread. Not that being skewed is a good thing or a bad thing. it just "is" another one of those things. That being said, I believe Linus has the right to say what he says to whom ever he wants to say it, about "whatever", especially if someone is asking his opinion.
Your right, he can say what he pleases, on the same note we can comment on what he says. Especially when what he says shocks us as something a newbie might say but not a linux guru.
Personally, I started with Debian. I didn't think that it was a difficult distro to install, but I had no experience with other distros. So I had nothing to really compare my Debian experience with.I have since tried Ubuntu, and there is no question that Ubuntu is much easier to install than Debian is. Even now.
I guess I don't speak well enough english to understand easy or easier. Because to me Ubuntu isn't easier, it just uses the gui install. Debian has a great gui install but, it's not the default, you have to use an F key to get it started.

One thing the debian installer does that no body but slackware does is let you have your choice of software to install, (desktop, server, whatever). All the others install and you have to weed out software you don't want, then add software you want afterwards.

That's not easy to me.
Debian is not easier to install than some other distros. It never has been.
I'm basicly lazy, and love easy street. And I have been using debian since Woody with ease.

I suppose someone will have to define "easy" to me. I looked it up in Wikipidea Dictionary and got this. (The term easy is used, typically in a pejorative sense, to refer to someone (usually, a woman) who is receptive to sexual advances (in the usual case, by a man).) So that hasn't helped me to understand statments like "Debian Installer isn't easy, and never has been".

If debian isn't easy, then why are there more minor distros based on debian than any others?
Steve - Muskrat
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Registered desktop PC #261727 Sidux
Registered laptop PC #310468 Debian Lenny

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