Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on April 14, 2007 04:08 AM
The one flaw of this otherwise excellent article is that it casts Etch as the result of some kind of new approach that Debian has taken as a reaction to Ubuntu, rather than acknowledging that it is the current culmination of the approach Debian has been taking all along. It's why our website has always used hifalutin term "the Universal Operating System".
Trying to be all things to all people has been a continuing challange and inspiration to Debian in the 10+ years I've worked on the distibution. It has often resulted in slow development of a well-designed system instead of a quick special-purpose hack. It's our greatest strength and potentially our greatest weakness. Ubuntu's greatest relevance is perhaps as an illistration of how that weakness can be exploited. I'm glad that you think that Etch manages to play to the strength of the philosophy.
(BTW, selecting linux-image-2.6.18-4 installs the exact same kernel as linux-image-2.6.18, it just won't automatically upgrade your system to 2.6.18-5 when it's available. Selecting the default linux-image-2.6 is much better for most people. But this is why we hide this complexity from them in expert mode.)
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Etch not reactionary
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 14, 2007 04:08 AMTrying to be all things to all people has been a continuing challange and inspiration to Debian in the 10+ years I've worked on the distibution. It has often resulted in slow development of a well-designed system instead of a quick special-purpose hack. It's our greatest strength and potentially our greatest weakness. Ubuntu's greatest relevance is perhaps as an illistration of how that weakness can be exploited. I'm glad that you think that Etch manages to play to the strength of the philosophy.
(BTW, selecting linux-image-2.6.18-4 installs the exact same kernel as linux-image-2.6.18, it just won't automatically upgrade your system to 2.6.18-5 when it's available. Selecting the default linux-image-2.6 is much better for most people. But this is why we hide this complexity from them in expert mode.)
-- Joey Hess
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