Debian And The Rise of Linux

There's an article in this month's LinMagAu that asks a question about how the rise of Linux will impact Debian and what that could mean. Good article, especially interesting if you have been a fan of Debian.

Re:I like the wording of that..

What's wrong with RH? It's made the most headway in developing a true alternative to M$. Anyway you cut it RH helps all linux distro's across the board.

Re:I like the wording of that..

"Debiam is three years out of date"

That's just tripe, and you know it. I have no idea why you got moderated up twice for spreading FUD. I use Mandrake and Debian at home, and Red Hat and Debian at work. Debian is pretty modern.

Re:I like the wording of that..

Please explain the inclusion of GCC 2.96 in RH then.

Re:I like the wording of that..

It depends on who makes the decision as to what to use in a corporate environment.

If English-speaking non-technical executives decide to pick a Linux distro, I'd say they overwhelmingly seem to choose Red Hat, since that's the one they're most likely to know / Dell's most likely to pre-install.

If technical staff is allowed to make the decision, Debian makes a much better showing. In my experience, over half of these installations are Debian, Red Hat being second most popular.

*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

By mid 2004 at the latest Linux will be a serious contender on the average desktop. The downfall of Windows won't be imminent (that will take another couple of years at least) but Linux will begin to take a serious chunk of the market. Kids will be doing their homework with it, Moms and Pops will be doing Internet banking and sending email to Aunt Edna with it, secretaries will be drafting letters with it, accountants will be creating spreadsheets with it.

But will Debian be there?

We all know that Debian is technically one of the most advanced operating systems on the planet, but is it ready to ride the coming shockwave of the desktop Linux juggernaught?

And just as importantly, do we want it to?

Yes, I know the argument that says Debian is created for the benefit of the people who do the creating, and that we shouldn't care if anyone outside the core developer group uses it or not.

I think that argument is bunk.

I say we should want Debian to grow with Linux, because if it doesn't, it's doomed. Doomed to be marginalised in an increasingly Linux-aware market, and doomed to be eclipsed technically by development efforts focused on the high profile commercial distros.

This point was really driven home to me last week when on two consecutive days I was asked for instructions on setting up Apt-cacher under Red Hat. The requests came from people who manage networks of Red Hat boxes using Apt-rpm, and naturally they wanted to cache packages to save some bandwidth. Apt-rpm and Apt-cacher were exactly the solution they needed.

So a Debian initiative saved the day for some Red Hat users. Sweet.

But now the most frequently cited technical advantage of Debian is gone, assimilated by the highest profile commercial distro. Now when people are discussing switching to Linux, there is no longer the argument that Debian is worth the pain of the initial install and the lack of general vendor support in order to reap the benefit of the most advanced package management system in the world. Instead, users can just install Red Hat and still get the benefits of Apt.

Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. It's the way things are meant to work in the Open Source world. Good ideas and good software get around, and a fundamental part of the Debian credo is that we don't restrict who can benefit from it, no matter what their application. That's a principle I firmly believe in.

And of course I'm glossing over the situation a bit here: I can imagine Debian developers all around the world jumping up and down and yelling that Debian is much more than a bunch of packages, or a technical specification for how to create them, or a tool to manage them. But I'm deliberately simplifying things because that's the way the average Joe User is going to see it: Oh, Red Hat has Apt now, cool. I'll use that instead of Debian.

Joe User doesn't know (or care) about the obsessive backporting of security patches to the stable release, or about the technical and social infrastructure and numerous supporting apps built up around Dpkg and Apt, or Debian's devotion to the purity of truly Open Source licences. As far as Joe User is concerned Redhat has Apt, and that's all there is to it. They don't know enough to make the finer distinctions.

Without distinguishing features like Apt, the argument for going with Debian is diminished. Sure, there are still arguments to be made, but they are less obvious. Here's an exercise for you: imagine you are standing at the water cooler chatting with workmates, and a non-technical colleague just said they are thinking of trying Linux at home and were going to install Red Hat but they heard Debian is really good, but has a tricky installer. They think they'll just try Red Hat because that's what they've heard of other people using, but are interested in your opinion because you're in computers. You've got exactly 15 seconds to succinctly explain why Debian may be better for them than Red Hat.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

I don't think Debian is going to collapse soon, But I do agree the installer could use some rethinking. Things I would like to see included: System recovery (using distributed backups over the lan), hardware autodetection, an installation blog - or something like that where you can put your installation remarks/choices, etc. Also, I'm looking for a command that would backup all config files that have been changed, or all files not managed by apt.

Also, if there were a central repository for those installation blogs, developers could easily see where most of the problems arise.. Just some random thoughts..

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

"he way the average Joe User is going to see it: Oh, Red Hat has Apt now, cool. I'll use that instead of Debian. "

Unfortunately, Jow User doesn't realise that it isn't Apt itself that makes Apt great. It's the effort that goes in to creating the packages correctly that Apt uses. Broken and poorly maintained packages will render Apt as useful as RPM.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

You are probably aware of this, but just to clear some misconceptions:

rpm deb

apt up2date Red Carpet

In other words, rpm (like deb) is a package format. Apt (like up2date, red carpet nad a number of others) is a system for downloading and installing packages, finding and solving dependencies between packages and so on.

Running apt on redhat still means using rpm - it's just that you use apt as the manager, instead of using the rpm tools directly to do stuff manually. As packages, rpm and deb are pretty much equal; rpm has gotten a bad rap in part because rpm based distros typically did not have a package manager earlier, and foremost, because there was no solid, single repository for them with people dedicated solely to find and fix inconsistencies and conflicts before pushing them out to users.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

Why care so much about Joe User?
Let RedHat, ALT Linux and other commercial firms
care about them. They would get their revenues
and give their contribution to OpenSource world,
including Debian.

Users switch to Debian not from Windows (or complete
computer illiteracy), but rather from other Linux
distro's.

Personally I switched to Debian from RH (four or five years
ago) when I found out, that when I need some piece
of software which is not included in my distro,
I routinely go to ftp.debian.org and grab orig.tar.gz from there.

There should be at least one distro in the world,
which cares about clever people, not stupid ones.

Debian perfectly fill that niche. It is created
by clever people and targetted to clever people.

With apt-get dist-upgrade who need installer
at all, once he learned how dump/restore work?
And for first time in the life you better
to call some more experiencd friend.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

I agree. Let the nerds have their distro, let the business world have the main ones. *ducks*

Debian should not get into the "Joe User" mode, because it alienates the only people that use it. Let RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSe fight over Joe User. Just as long as it's linux.

Linux reference system

I think for Linux to grow more, it needs a reference implementation so that developers and users know that something will work for sure.

I think Debian GNU/Linux should be this system for several reasons.
It's non-commercial, meaning SuSe can't complain that the reference system is partial to RedHat or anyone else.
It's conservative, which is very important for reference systems. If you write for Debian 3.0, you know it will be around for awhile. This doesn't mean that RedHat can't extend their distribution to add more recent libraries or programs. It just mean that something written for Debian 3.0 will work in the RedHat system that says it follows 3.0.

Re:Linux reference system

There already is such a system in the form of the LSB.

The main problems with using Debian as a reference distro are:

a) Not as popular as some other distros (which is not btw just because the clueless masses are stupid, give people some credit).

b) They don't have any real problem breaking binary compat with other distros, see their decision over the libdb mess.

c) The LSB already does it, and is widely accepted, has test cases etc.

Re:Linux reference system

Debian as a reference platform? Sure, as soon as they get rid of .deb and start using .rpm packages. RedHat, RedFlag, SuSE, Mandrake use RPM, which constitutes the vast majority of non-uber-geek installs.

That'll probably be about the time Steve Ballmer gets praised for his dancing abilities and Bill Gates extolls the virtues of the GPL -- with a straight face.

Hint: "monkey boy" isn't considered praise.

Yeah watch out

I totally agree with the article. How many times have we seen technically superior technology being totally ignored and people going for 'popular' technology. Remember, the PC itself wasn't a technically superior machine. The intel processors weren't the best at the time, but everybody started buying PC's because they all wanted to play Leasure Suit Larry on it (.. and use Wordperfect).

So Debian should be more of a VHS than a Betamax if it wants to stand a chance...

Yuioup

Although I use and dearly love Debian

I can see that it is clearly not disgned to have that much polish in GUI areas. Debian has been and will (IMHO) continue to be primarily designed for the technical user/Debian Developer, as these are the guys making the design choices. No walkthroughs, no neat GUI config a la Mangrake, not that much focus on usability as the assumption is that almost all users will be technically proficient.

This is a self-fullfilling prophecy, and to change this will take quite a major change from the existing Debian (fairly elitist) culture.

Where Debian will shine is not nessicarily as a mainstream distro itself, but as the basis of systems that are more widely used, such as Xandros and Knoppix. Is this a bad thing?

It does run the risk that Debian-as-distro/brand become marginalised, but all that needs to happen for the Debian project to stay healthy is that Debian-as-underlying-system is widespread.

This said, my Ideal World(tm) is every man and his dog running Deb... ;)

Re:My biggest compliant with debian

I agree on most of your points.

I'm a Debian user, not a developer, and I chose Debian for two main reasons: I like to understand what goes on, and many distros try to hide things from me to be "friendly". I don't have anything against RTFM, at least to a great extent. The other reason is that it is the most free distro around. Additionally, I had many good friends using Debian, always somebody I can call up.

However, I'm not capable of packaging anything myself, and I'm not a hacker. I'm a newbie. Things are hard, even after RTFMing...

Woody is allready terribly outdated, security packages like snort and nessus are pretty much useless. Then, KDE 3 is a whole lot more stable in my experience than KDE 2.2.2 which is in Woody. SpamAssasin must be kept up-to-date in the arms race with spammers. Exim is so old, people on the Exim-lists can't help you because they don't remember how Exim 3 was configured...

There are many who cries for an easier install, but I don't. It wasn't that hard, even for a newbie like me. Just had to call up my friends a few times. Debian folks are very helpful.

It seems like Sarge is following pretty much the same path as Woody did, released when really big things has been done. What I would like to see is Sarge being just an updated Woody. No new installer, no new groundbreaking stuff, just updated packages, Snort, Exim 4, Apache 2.0, KDE 3.1, GNOME 2.0, etc. Up-to-date, tested and out the door...

That's what I would like to see, but I realize there is very little I can do to help it happen.

Debian has the problem the whole Linux world has..

... to much people around comming from Windows.

Debian was always about doing "The Right thing", about not only making things work, but make them work like they should work.

But you cannot build a good distribution on software getting worse and worse. Think about more and more software unable to do basic things, because people did not thought about them as they are not feasable with one human before one computer. Because people grew up with windows and do not even know how it could work.

On good example is konqueror and its identification of file type through filename's suffix. Do you have time to tell 300 users of your computers to rename "download.htm" to "bild.gif" to be able to click on it. (Oh, sorry I forgot, you are using your computer alone...)

Even Debian, which was formerly known to be usable by admins, is now working on abolishing its old working menu system to one build up on KDE's
menus. (Instead that someone would finaly get a menu-method for KDE and the old one.)
It's a shame, the old system capable of creating a menu looking the same under all window-managers (except KDE, because the KDE people do not want to integrate) making life for an admin really easy, is dropped for a thing not nearly capable of it.
(No possibility to specify a menu-hirachy. And the proposed format for icons is png. absurd.)

On the subject of Debian

WARNING : THIS IS NOT A FLAMEBAIT. I LOVE DEBIAN, BUT READ ON ...

I started using Linux with SlackWare when it was the only distro available out there. I used to love them tarballs, but then at the time systems still had manageable sizes, so one really could compile everything in a reasonable time.

Then I had the (mis?)fortune of being hired by a certain Caldera spinoff and was forced to use OpenLinux 1.2. That was my first contact with RPM, and that was a painful contact. Part of my work also involved writing and maintaining specfiles for various cross-platform packages. That's when I learned that (1) RPM was better than tarballs because it had dependencies, (2) RPM dependencies are not powerful enough and (3) RPM isn't backward-compatible. In short, RPM is not good but it's better than nothing.

At that company, I also had the misfortune of meeting a Debian fanatic. Note that I say he's a fanatic of Debian, not that Debian made him a fanatic. Having tried Debian long ago myself, when it wasn't ready for prime-time, and having found it complicated and messy at the time, I was conforted in this idea by the truly detestable way this guy was patronizing everybody who didn't use Debian, and was turned off Debian for another 2 years.

Then, several months ago, it was a sunday afternoon, my local computer shop was closed, and I couldn't find my RH CD to reinstall my box. I though : what the hell, I'm no more stupid than the average Debian user and I have nothing to do, let's try the Debian network-install. Well, I went through a little pain (it's not quite totally polished yet), but I've never looked back. dpkg and apt-get are just a godsend, and I too am now a convert today.

Moral of the story : I avoided using Debian for several years entirely due to the advocacy of one (well, several actually) Debian bigot. You can always say that I should have been more intelligent and I should have made my own opinion, but I never had time and the experience you get from other users do count for me.

In conclusion : what's the biggest good that could happen to Debian ? that other distros' package management got better so Debian bigots wouldn't have such an powerful incentive to behave like asses and disgust other people of Debian before they even try it. Or better still, that the Debian bigots start realizing that they won't win anybody to Debian by being patronizing.

Oh Dear God No

Why I like Debian:

(1) Serious philosophical principles. The only people to say GNU/Linux with a straight face. People concerned with my liberty above all else.

(2) No Prepackaged Experience. I run Fluxbox, Gnome-Terminal, Mozilla, and Konqueror, and have a proper GTK/KDE library environment. It all works the way I want it.

(3) The system state is transactional. Glitz is antithetical to transactionality. Glitz hides transactions. I like transactions.

(4) No waiting forever to compile stuff pointlessly.

#1 is the crucial element. Liberty is paramount.

Re:Oh Dear God No

What i dont like about debian:

-Only good for servers

Upgrade your MDA video card, you'll see it's pretty good at being a desktop box. Where the hell did you get that ?

-Stable: old

Possibly, but it's stable. That's the main reason to use it. Caldera OpenLinux, which was supposed to be robust as a primary goal, also had outdated but well-tested packages (before Caldera let it grow too old it was useless to everybody).

-Unstable:looking for trouble, and still old

No and no. I use unstable with no problem at all, and I don't find it very out of date. Some things are, but most of the packages are fairly current.

-Licensing issues, cool apps missing

That's partially true. But you can always add non-free sources in your /etc/apt/sources.list. And you can always compile the tarballs if you really need to.

-No xfree 4.3, no mplayer

No mplayer ? hello ?

ppc@akula:~$ apt-cache search mplayer
mplayer-mozilla - Embedded video player for mozilla
mencoder-386 - MPlayer's Movie Encoder
acidrip - ripping and encoding DVD tool using mplayer and mencoder
mencoder-686 - MPlayer's Movie Encoder
mplayer-k6 - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux
mplayer-doc - Documentation for mplayer
mplayer-fonts - Fonts for mplayer
kplayer - A KDE media player based on MPlayer
mencoder-k6 - MPlayer's Movie Encoder
lumiere - A GNOME frontend to mplayer
mplayer-386 - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux
mplayer-686 - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux


-Unfriendly community

Unfortunately, that's true, at least partially.

-Everyone now has apt or an improved version of it
-Installer sucks
-Dselect sucks

dselect and installer do suck, yes. But it's worth the pain IMHO.

Re:Oh Dear God No

No mplayer ? hello ?

Just to nitpick, I think you got those from Christian Marillat's apt source [marillat.free.fr]; they're not in Debian proper.

dselect and installer do suck, yes. But it's worth the pain IMHO.

dselect sucks and is not worth the pain. aptitude, on the other hand, is Very Good. (Incidentally, I wonder if on Red Hat + APT, I can browse packages like I do with aptitude's UI...)

Re:what about platform independence?

umm NetBSD....a few more than Debian..

http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/

Segments

IHMO I really feel that Debian is aimed at the server and techincal user market and not the sort of people who run windows. Debian is very very powerful but not that intuative. For example to setup networking you have to /etc/network/interfaces. In RH you click on the pretty networking panel.

However as mentioned in that article apt-get is a saviour. Security problem on RH. Download RPM, check deps, install. Fix broken config

Debian: apt-get update && apt-get install

Walk away

Just MHO

Rus

debian in a redhat shop

The company i work for uses a good deal of redhat for workstations and high end servers. Even our NT admin converted to redhat and uses vmware for when he needs to run NT. I personally now run debian at work, and am trying to get them to change to deb.
After using redhat for many months here, then changing to debian, ill never go back to RH. It can be a pain to get installed, but once there, its solid. where as on redhat I had lots of dep issues because I was always installing cutting edge crap. I have done the same on debian, but with alot less issues. With in a few weeks ill have the chance to change over our DNS server to debian. And onward from there...

Good way to try Debian

For those turned off or scared away by the debian install process (which still seems stuck in the 90's. Jesus, did I just say that?), grab a Knoppix CD.

No, seriously. I don't run debian primarily because I don't want to go through the install process. I don't know what chipset my nic has, and I really don't care to know, know what I mean? Ditto with everything else.

I've been using flavors of RedHat, culminating with Redhat9 that's currently my Linux of "choice", mainly because Redhat offered superior hardware detection/setup. But, I've always had to tweak a bit here and there to get it working nicely.

However, with the advent of Knoppix, I think that's about to change. I popped in Knoppix 3.2 today for the first time to see what it was all about. The hardware detection on this LIVE CD is absolutely.. superb. It recognized and setup my Orinoco Wireless card. It found and mounted my Sony Cybershot Camera. Jesus, it even found and setup my Wacom! The only thing it didn't do was give me dual-head support OOB, but I don't think I know any distro that does that. But that's okay, fortunately I know how to set that up myself. It comes with KDE, it looks great, it just WORKS. And because it "just works" I'm really tempted to wipe RedHat off and do the HD install of this.

Some notes that I've come across, though: As Knoppix uses a special blend of testing/unstable (or something like that), it's really hard to do dist-upgrade and what not without downgrading your desktop. I heartily recommend reading through the docs at the Knoppix website and finding out what issues may remain. As a desktop Debian based distro, though, I think Knoppix just plain rules.

deja vu

I thought this looked familiar:

Exhibit A [slashdot.org]

So what?

If Linux gets a lot bigger, but Debian doesn't get bigger with it-- so what?

The Debian developers seem to be happy to work on Debian for their own use and for the use of the people who use it now. As long as that audience doesn't shrink too much-- and I doubt it will, for though many slashdot posters love to scoff at this, there are some people who use Debian for philosophical and other reasons-- then the same number of people will continue to use Debian.

Yeah, I agree that Debian needs to move forward and needs to make sure it stays as close to the "cutting edge" as possible. But I don't understand why other Linux distributions exploding into extreme popularity among people not currently using Linux at all must detract from Debian. That sort of "must be the market leader to survive" mentality may work for commerical entities (be they open or closed source companies), but Debian isn't one such beast.

Indeed, I suspect what will happen is that the "mainstream" distros will become more attached to proprietary offerings. Red Hat's made amazing contributions to the open source community, but if their users are demanding crossover office sorts of things bundled with Microsoft Office, and M$ agrees to licence that, I'd be surprised if Red Hat didn't go for it. There will be those who will stick with Debian for philosophical reasons-- and so long as there are enough of them to provide a core of Debian maintainers, why not? It doesn't hurt anybody else.

That's the great thing about free software. Anybody who wants to do their own thing can do their own thing, without being beholden to what somebody else is doing, and without requiring anybody else to be beholden to them.

-Rob

up2date vs apt

The author raises many valid points, but it should be noted that not many Red Hat users could give a stuff about 'apt'.

Red Hat Linux comes with one free basic RHN/up2date licence. For enterprise customers (like us) 'RHN Enterprise' with central package management, server grouping etc. is a fantastic product and superior to using apt.

Obsessing with apt and the (internal) superiority of dpkg is typical of the Debian bigot. Those of us in the real world have more important fish to fry.

Quit drooling over apt-get

APT is a tool, not an idol so quit the crap. Being a very useful tool indeed it should be, has been and will be ported everywhere it is needed. Go ahead, port it to Apple, the users will only benefit from it.

Calling APT the main and only advantage of Debian is plain ignorance.

Debian's strength lies in maturity which results from well-defined development policies, experienced & dedicated developers and large quantities of common sense :)

Apart from raving over APT for the first 1/3 of it's length, the article is, of course, right. Average Joe cannot tackle Debian.

Still, I wouldn't worry so much. The server market is huge. Debian simply kicks ass there.

Debian safe whilst it sticks to its heritage!

Debian is not only the distribution of choice for the technically savvy, it is in most cases the best choice for deployment in Business.

The inevitable rise of GNU/Linux is one thing, Debian's place in the world is another. The two are not connected!

We deploy GNU/Linux and Free Software, every day, in an Enterprise setting. The opinion-du-jour on 'Linux on the Desktop' has almost nothing to do with distribution selection for any particular business. To the extent that Debian sticks to its long tradition of quality, stability, security and attention to detail it will remain right at the top of the shortlist (certainly for us at the very least).

Any increase in GNU/Linux usage is good for the community. Home users will be swayed by what they have always been swayed by - ease of use, getting their stuff done, and eye-candy. Decisions on Distributions used in business will continue to be made using a differenct set of criteria.

APT is NOT the "big advantage" of Debian

Well, it's sad that people say that now that apt has been ported to other distributions, Debian has no advantages anymore. The development process in Debian is the real advantage, with some nice consequences:

• Eleven hardware architectures supported.
• Support for other kernels (Hurd and BSD) is almost there (experimental versions do work already).
• A solid and intelligent policy, which will yield uniformness among packages, their directories and configuration files, etc, besides other nice things.
• An excellent bug-tracking system.
• More software than any other Linux distribution.
• Respect for upstream software (like, Debian doesn't call Apache "httpd", they call it "apache").
• Usually, there are scripts to automate everything: compare kernel compilation in RedHat to kernel compilation in Debian, for example.
• Stability. Debian is famous for not releasing buggy software, no matter how long it takes to release.
• Respect for suggestions and request from users: Debian will listen to users (via the bug tracking system), and if what you say makes sense, it will be included. No marketing department will filter anything.

Well, ther are other advantages, but these are the ones I remember now. By the way, I've been using APT for Conectiva, and I can tell you it's really not as good as the original (lacks stability, and is slower).

In the Tradition of Greenspun's Tenth

``Any sufficiently complicated software distribution contains an ad hoc, informally specified bug-ridden implementation of half of Debian GNU/Linux.''

debian is not just apt and a philosophy

Here is why I am likely to stick to debian in the foreseeable future:

• it's not because of the philosophy (I love the philosophy, but it wouldn't keep me from switching to a better distro if that makes my life in front of the computer better)
• it's not just because of apt
• it's because the packages have an extremely high quality, and because of a long term hassle-free upgrade procedure

Let me explain this in a bit more detail:

I started using debian roughly 4 years ago, after having tried various other distributions for different amounts of time (admittedly I was a complete clueless newbie then and had only limited abilites to stray too far from the default install).

Since then I have been running exactly the same debian installation.

I have started with stable, then went to testing, then went to unstable. In this time, I've upgraded my cpu and mobo twice, replaced various hardware, and have upgraded my desktop environment through various fairly incompatible KDE versions, and painlessly went through the c++ ABI changes.

And all I've done in all