Ian Murdock: Debian "Missing a Big Opportunity" 330
Natester writes "While Debian struggles to get its next release (Etch) out the door, the project's founder, Ian Murdock, has spoken out about politics, the lack of firm leadership, and Ubuntu's meteoric rise in prominence. Murdock believes that Debian is "process run amok" — nobody feels empowered to make decisions, leading to the sluggish rate of progress."
Ian Murdock to join Sun (Score:5, Informative)
It's being announced today that I'm joining Sun as chief operating
platforms officer, which basically means I'll be in charge of Sun's
operating system strategy, spanning Solaris and Linux. I just posted the
announcement on my blog (http://ianmurdock.com/2007/03/19/joining-sun/),
and it'll likely be making the rounds soon. Just wanted to
make sure you heard the news directly from me and to introduce myself.
First things first: I'm a long time Linux user, developer, and advocate.
I founded Debian in 1993, co-founded a Linux distribution company called
Progeny in 1999, and most recently served as CTO of the new Linux
Foundation, where I was (and still am) chair of the LSB, the Linux
platform interoperability standard. I'm also a long time Sun fan.
As for what I'll be doing: While I'm coming in with some fairly formed
opinions about what Sun/Solaris/OpenSolaris ought to do (peruse my
blog a bit to learn more), I'm also a big believer in listening
before talking, and I have a lot of listening to do in the weeks
to come. So, please, feel free to drop me a line if you have
anything to tell me. And, please, be gentle while I get settled.
Gotta get on a call in a few minutes. In the meantime, I just wanted
to say hello, and to make sure you heard the news directly from me.
Later,
-ian
--
Ian Murdock
http://ianmurdock.com/ [ianmurdock.com]
Re:Debian is dead (Score:3, Informative)
Truth to tell, I don't really notice that much difference between running Debian testing and Ubuntu. At least no-one at my house is longing for the days when we ran Ubuntu.
So I am curious, what fabulous things am I missing? Or maybe the fact I am a fairly experienced Debian user negates most of it.
Re:It's sad (Score:3, Informative)
Choose the server option. (Score:3, Informative)
Boot the install CD and choose "Install a LAMP server" at the menu.
Other than that it's almost identical to Debian. And it doesn't get any easier than Debian.
Re:Oh its that simple huh? (Score:2, Informative)
I don't think that's true. Out-of-the-box, WMP doesn't play everything. Same problem with OS X's Quicktime Player: it doesn't play everything. (And it won't go to full-screen mode out of the box, either.)
On Windows and Mac I always have to install VLC to get a media player that "just works." On Ubuntu good media players are already there, and, yes, I have to install the codecs.
So what's the difference? I love the myth of the OS that "just works." Every OS requires tweaking to get it working the way you want.
Debian has it's place (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fuck Debian (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Debian's problem (Score:5, Informative)
The politics of the Debian development is sad to hear. It's always bad news. It's a shame because Debian is still a great distro. Even with all the internal conflicts, it's still my favorite distro.
Re:Firm Leadership (Score:1, Informative)
Humm..... I don't quite follow
tyrannyA democracy seems to be the least tyrannical. What's your solution?
Re:IDNRTA (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently you are confused by the traditional copy/paste X11 method, which still exists. But it is largely independent of the Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V shortcuts. I use X11-style copy and paste all the time and it works great. The thing you're mistakenly suggesting is that X11-style copy should automatically fill the Ctrl-X,Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V -style clipboard buffer. This is wrong. It would lead to mass confusion among people migrating from windows if it did this. So we either need to keep X11-style copy and paste separate from the other, standard copy and paste (separate clipboards and everything), or eliminate X11-style altogether.
Joe sixpack typically isn't going to mess with the X11-style copy and paste because he won't know it's there. Instead he'll use the standard Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V shortcuts and everything will work fairly well. And what is this "shift-insert" thing? Any windows user can tell you such a shortcut hasn't been used (officially) since Windows 95. Everyone long ago settled on the Apple-style keys.
Thanks to freedesktop standards, standard cut, copy, and paste now "just works." The only flaw remaining is that when an app closes, the contents of the clipboard it was using are lost. Clipboard managers solve that one though.
Re:Ubuntu no better than Debian (Score:4, Informative)
It isn't, though.
PAM in Testing was broken for months, and X in testing was broken for a while after the changeover to X.org. That's what led me to give up on Debian [ath0.com]: 'stable' was too out-of-date, 'testing' was too unstable. By cherry-picking from 'testing', Ubuntu seems to be able to find a happy medium.
Re:Choose the server option. (Score:1, Informative)