Interview with Debian Project Leader

brunotorres writes "I've interviewed Martin Michlmayr, Debian project leader. In this interview we talked about the upcoming Debian release, Sarge. An excerpt: 'We heard for years that Debian is hard to install and the old installer wasn't very easy to maintain or advance, so we we decided to throw the installer away and start from scratch. The new installer is much more modular, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.'" Reader ron_ivi points out that new Debian/Hurd CDs are available. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

Heh, choice quote, taken out of context, I'm sure

[grasshoppa]

We heard for years that Debian is hard to install and the old installer wasn't very easy to maintain or advance, so we we decided to throw the installer away and start from scratch. The new installer is much more modular, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.

heh, so if I'm reading this right, they know the old installer is hard to use, but they really don't care. The new one is easier to extend and maintain, and that's all that's important. :)

Missing Question:

[ypoint]

Is Your Development Project a Sinking Ship?

Damn installer

[Tsiangkun]

The only time it gave me headaches was when I banged my head on the desk trying to seewhat type of chipset my ethernet card had, and what type of graphics card was inside the box.

As long as you know what type of hardware you have, debian is simple to install, and very easy to keep updated. I think most people just don't like to read the text on screen detailing exactly what's going on during the install.

Re:Heh, choice quote, taken out of context, I'm su

[MikeMacK]

which makes it easier to maintain and extend.

Wouldn't Viagra accomplish the same thing.

Clever Martin

[RealAlaskan]

From TFA:

NF: [interviewer] When will we be able to celebrate Sarge's release?

MM: [interviewee] There's currently no date for the release. There are a number of show-stoppers related to our infrastructure which we have to sort out before we can make a release. We hope Sarge will come out near the beginning of the year.

Clever Martin! He doesn't say which year.

Sarge is great. When it becomes the new Stable, I may just switch from Testing to Stable.

Why linux doesn't sell well...

[copponex]

Oh, you don't know anything about computers? Try our Ignorant Housewife edition. See, it's for stupid people - like you.

Re:Why linux doesn't sell well...

[0racle]

I wonder how often something called Ignorent Housewife Edition' would be downloaded?

You know you read too much slashdot ..

[ElektroHolunder]

You know you read too much slashdot when you read sentences like this:

we're aware that many people are interested in a graphical installer and certain languages like Thai might even require this

and catch yourself thinking " 'Thai'? Oh no, not another scripting language.."

Re:openoffice

[MsGeek]

That's funny, because I just copied your very words into my KDE Klipper from Firefox then pasted them right into an OpenOffice document. And I'm running Debian Sarge/Sid!

Try the FUD, it's excellent today. May I suggest a full-bodied whine with that?

Re:Why does every distribution need to reinvent wh

[Phexro]

"Can't we have just one installer, one package management tool and one portage system that is shared by all the linux distributions, the bsd variants, OS X fink, windows cygwin, the comercial vendors, and all the rest?"

No.

You must be new here.

Re:What?

[hayden]

So now, is HURD so unimportant to slashdot that news related to it is just grouped under some other news?

Yes.

Re:Why linux doesn't sell well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Change .iso to .avi and it'd get plenty of hits!

Another funny quote

[MrEd]

At the end of the New Installer discussion -

Now you will log into the system and enjoy it.

Yes, SIR! Appropriate for a release called 'sarge'.

Re:Gentoo?

[molnarcs]

Gentoo is perfect for ignorant people. It may even make them feel they're learning something, although they don't.

Haha, that was funny. And true. A friend of mine who used mandrake for a few days went on to install gentoo, for rumour had it that if you can install it, you'll learn a lot about the system.

Spent hours and hours installing it, (which doesn't make too much sense - why not have a functioning system in 5 minutes and then rebuild everything?), installation documentation in his lap, and after a while he managed to install it. Took another day to get alsa working (couldn't help him, I myself was confused by it). Anyway, in a few days, he had a working system with X (and without working kpdf, for he missed a use-flag apparently). And I spent the next few weeks explaining the most trivial things I could learned reading the Introduction to Linux [tldp.org] guide on my two-hour trip home on a train. Apparently, my friend didn't buy into the "I'm now a geek cause I installed gentoo" myth, and was very very frustrated. Finally, I dug up the excellent Machtelt Garrels guide (still the best in linuxland for newbies I think) and I lent it to him.

(Then later he switched back to Win2000, and just upgraded to XP recently).

Re:Heh, choice quote, taken out of context, I'm su

[drinkypoo]

You have it backwards; Viagra helps you extend and maintain, not maintain and extend.