Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Debian

Talking With Debian's Branden Robinson 104

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the open-source-is-made-of-people dept.
v.ciaglia writes to tell us that TuxJournal has a great interview with Branden Robinson, one of the Debian maintainers. The article has a nice mix of personal and Debian specific questions. From the interview: "My primary focus as Debian Project Leader has been to try to resolve some long-standing infrastructural issues that have been frustrating our developers and users. My emphasis has been on internal processes because, as I said above, I think we need to be prepared for more growth. I am very happy to speak at conferences and with the press about Debian, but fundamentally I think Debian sells itself. Because of that, I want to make sure that we're "ready to ship" -- ready to meet the demands of our users."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Talking With Debian's Branden Robinson More

Talking With Debian's Branden Robinson

Comments Filter:

  • Server down .. (Score:3, Funny)

    by dk.r*nger ( 460754 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @04:10PM (#14187586)
    Haha! Two comments and already the server is not responding. They must be running Debian on that thing, *LOL*

    (yes, I'm kidding)

  • Pre-emptive copying of article text... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1) Hi Branden, thank you for your availability. Can you tell us something about you? How are you? What's your work? What do you do in your life and your sparetime? What are your hobbies?

    Well, let's see. I'm 30 years old, married, have no children, and live inIndianapolis, Indiana. I work for Progeny Linux Systems, the company co-founded by Debian founder Ian Murdock. I don't have much spare time, but for hobbies I enjoy playing the electric guitar, reading (overwhelmingly non-fiction), and playing Dunge

  • ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @04:23PM (#14187688) Journal
    It seems that nowadays no discussion of Debian is complete without mentioning Ubuntu. I'm very much impressed with what Ubuntu has accomplished. It really is a great distro. But Ubuntu would be nowhere without Debian. [ubuntulinux.org] I would have liked to hear his thoughts on Ubuntu. Does it's existence help or hinder Debian? I have heard elsewhere that Ubuntu and Debian do work together on some issues, and that it has been positive for both distros. Still, I would have liked to hear whether he considers Ubuntu a good thing, and what his experiences have been in dealing with that team.

    • Re:ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SquadBoy ( 167263 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @04:36PM (#14187818) Homepage Journal
      As a long time Debian user (ex now but for reasons that have nothing to do with this or anything else mentioned in the article) the only problem with Ubuntu, well there are many but I'm ignoring what I see as some of it's more fatal flaws as many view these as features, is that their users tend to pollute Debian support fourms and tend to not take no for an answer. As in "Yes we *know* Ubuntu is based on Debian but *no* it is not Debian and no we will not support it."

      Other than that issue it's not like they are competing or anything and for what it is Ubuntu seems to be fairly decent. I just don't happen to like what it is. But on that point I'm going to be at odds with most folks here and thus only wanted to point out that people need to really grok that *no* based-ons are not Debian and that people who support Debian are, in general, not interested in supporting based-ons and when you are told that you *really* should take no for an answer.
      • Well, I'm sure the Ubuntu leadership would smack them with a clue-by-four if they could (hey, which distro doesn't?) but seeing how that's not going to happen, what can they do differently? Are the Ubuntu forums unresponsive and they can't get help there? Are they pointing people to the wrong forums? In short, I'd like your opinion on what could be done to improve the situation.
      • As in "Yes we *know* Ubuntu is based on Debian but *no* it is not Debian and no we will not support it."

        You forgot all the maniacal swearing that would typically be incorporated into that statement in a Debian forum.

        • Re:ubuntu? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by SquadBoy ( 167263 )
          Nah. If you pay close attention the swearing usually only happens after the same question is asked by the same person for the 5th time or so. :P
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Debian is great, this article is not (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mr.newt ( 244023 ) <allstarzero AT gmail DOT com> on Monday December 05, 2005 @04:29PM (#14187757)
    This is among the worst interviews I've ever read. First, the interviewer apparently used to work for slashdot (I know he's Italian, but he spelled Debian "Debain" more than once...give me a break). Second, this guy Branden Robinson, while obviously a great maintainer, is not a great interviewee. When he isn't sounding stiff and boring, he's busy sounding like an RMS clone ("we don't exist merely at the sufferance of a corporate entity" *puke*). My advice: don't waste your time with this article. If you manage to actually read the thing, you'll be disappointed (unless you actually give a crap how many hours Branden Robinson codes each day, and how many years it's been since he last played D&D).

    -Michael

    • Re:Debian is great, this article is not (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05, 2005 @05:20PM (#14188319)
      When he isn't sounding stiff and boring, he's busy sounding like an RMS clone ("we don't exist merely at the sufferance of a corporate entity" *puke*).

      Overrated. Debian actually *is* about Free Software. It's not just RMS-clonage, it's what their charter is.

      And Debian actually *is* the only significant distro that isn't tied to a corporation. Which matters.

      Hell I use Fedora myself, but you can't use it and not be aware that it's pwned by Red Hat. The community is largely irrelevant astro-turf. If Red Hat turned around tomorrow and said "fly Fedora, be free!" it would sink like a lead weight.

      But otherwise, I agree TFA blows.

    • Sounding like RMS isn't bad. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05, 2005 @06:56PM (#14189264)
      Your comment about sounding like RMS went without justification. Perhaps if more people listened to what RMS said and why, we'd have a community of people who aren't so eager to give up their software freedom for a little convenience.

  • chkconfig vs update-rc.d (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You know what debian could really use out of the box? A utility like redhat's chkconfig. Even seasoned debian users get frustrated with the confusing update-rc.d util for starting/stopping services.

    If you want to list all the services that are currently running you still have to write a damn shell script yourself to go poking through the /etc/rc*.d! What a pain compared to a simple "chkconfig --list".

    • Re:chkconfig vs update-rc.d (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "seasoned debian users" : no, n00bs : yes.

      apt-get sysv-rc-conf
      or
      apt-get sysvconfig.

      You even get the choice between 2 great apps.

    • Starting and stopping services is done by /etc/init.d/service [start|stop].

      ls /etc/rc?.d/S*... what a pain!

      If you don't want to use one of the interfaces mentioned by other posters, you can most easily disable a service by removing it. apt-get remove ntp-server for example.
    • umeboshi@bard:~$ apt-cache show rcconf
      Package: rcconf
      Priority: optional
      Section: admin
      Installed-Size: 112
      Maintainer: Atsushi KAMOSHIDA
      Architecture: all
      Version: 1.12
      Depends: whiptail | whiptail-provider | dialog, sysv-rc, perl, perl-modules
      Conflicts: file-rc
      Filename: pool/main/r/rcconf/rcconf_1.12_all.deb
      Size: 17460
      MD5sum: 04ca4de26f8462a85bd11b01ccf7b4d5
      Description: Debian Runlevel configuration tool
      This tool configures system services in connection with system
      runlevels. It turns on/off ser
    • Glad to see I'm not the only one interested in this. I actually looked at writing a clone tool for Debian based systems for both chkconfig and the "service" command from RedHat. I got as far as creating the service clone: http://jayloden.com/service_clone.htm [jayloden.com] but I didnt get to the chkconfig yet. Now that you've reminded me I may have to mess around with this again.

      I haven't played with the tools the other replies mentioned (though I plan to now), so I can't comment on them, but it's definitely not a bad id
    • update-rc.d, much like the other update-(alternatives|binfmts|inetd|.*) commands, isn't really intended to be a user's frontend. Many people choose to use them for that, but they're intended to be scriptable interfaces for package installation.

      Useful frontends for the rc.d scripts exist; sysv-rc-conf and sysvconfig spring to mind, although I believe there's another one.
  • I am no marketing guru (far from it: I'm an Engineering Student!), but I don't think that letting the product sell itself is necessarily the best idea. Especially for a product like Debian which isn't the latest flashy-eye-candy-fuzzy-character toy for the Christmas season...
    • Although I dont disagree, I dont think that being flashy is good criterion for marketability. I would be quite anoyed if my monkey wrench came with any ribbons or fur attached. The problem seems common with many other linux distros; a general lack of marketing to the public. I think people generally dont know about linux and see no reason to change if they have a semi operational windows machine.
    • Seems to work fairly well for Red Hat, no?

    • Re:Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @07:26PM (#14189489)
      I really wish people would stop calling debian (and even linux) a product. Furthermore it would be very helpful if people stopped thinking about it as a product too.

      Linux is a gift to the world, it's a game, it's a social experiment, it's the last ditch attempt at building a selfless meritocracy but it's not a product.

      There I got that off my chest now.
      • shush you.

        pointy haired bosses will faint at the thought of having to repeat that to _their_ pointy haired bosses.

        i actually think debian -is- a product... of a somewhat sophisticated organization trying to do TheRightThing.

        fyi, i dont use debian becuase of the tools, per se. i use debian because of the quality process wrapped around it. with all the hubbub around wikipedia, check this out:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(business) [wikipedia.org]

        i use debian, the good. but my main interest is in debian, the servic

      • I really wish people would stop calling debian (and even linux) a product.

        I'll call Debian a "solution" if it'll make you happy ;)

    • What you don't understand is that they don't care about selling itself. That's one of the big points of Debian, because they don't try to outwhore other distros with whizbang bleeding edge features, but their stuff seems to work rock solid, even testing/unstable.

  • No mention of Ubuntu? (Score:5, Funny)

    by marcushnk ( 90744 ) <(senectus) (at) (gmail.com)> on Monday December 05, 2005 @05:17PM (#14188275) Journal
    I wonder if that's now a clause in his interview contracts:
    I will not talk about Ubuntu.
    Do not ask me about Ubuntu.
    If you force me to listen to a question about Ubuntu I will stick my fingers in my ears like this and go "LaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa!" :-P
    • It's forgivable -- have you seen the number of Ubuntu users asking Debian people for support?
    • Given the interviewer hadn't quite got the "job" title right, perhaps he hadn't heard of Ubuntu ;)

      But I don't think Branden is going to have any interesting insights on Ubuntu. The interesting insights I think come from those doing Ubuntu.

      Ubuntu only changes Debian in terms of what it takes away in users/developers, and even then most of it is reusable in Debian easily enough. What I want to know is what the people who "left" Debian development for Ubuntu development think and do.

  • Paranoia Strikes: How Assure No Trojans in Debian? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How can a user be assured that there are no trojans/backdoors built into the various contributed pieces of Debian?

    Each package requires customization to work under Debian. Wouldn't it be easy to slip a backdoor or two into any number of given packages? E.g., a developer responsible for Debian GTK (or whatever) might add some backdoor code. Or there could be an even more subtle attack wherein one developer adds partial code to one package, a second developers adds partial code to a second package with the

  • Hacking the Whip (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @08:29PM (#14189928) Homepage Journal
    "Ready to ship"? How about if they just do more shipping? Better promotion of idle/orphan projects and tighter project management would keep Debian releases at a useable speed while retaining their valuable stability. One valuable technique would be promoting bugfixing on neglected packages to more active projects which depend on them down the chain. That is already in the interest of the dependant projects, but coordination from overall Debian management would produce more cooperation across projects, especialy in that productive "upchain crossroads". It leverages open source, open projects, and mutual selfinterest along with expertise in the code in question. That counts as "internal processes", though not as internal as focusing only on the core Debian team.

  • Ubuntu and Debian (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dartarrow ( 930250 )
    So much said here about Debian and Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu. Yes its a spinoff from Debian but Mandrake was a Spinoff from RedHat before it went solo. Ubuntu is good not only because of the cutting edge technology it gets from Debian but also because of the management, marketting, and administration. A well engineered hybrid of technology and usability. Which sure as hell beats replies from Debian elitists who mostly go "RTFM. F-cake!" (i'm still hurting from that). With the experience Ubuntu gets from Debian,
    • With the experience Ubuntu gets from Debian, it would not be surprise if they able to go on for a long time even if Debian drops off.

      I doubt about it, at least with the actual staff. But if they'll start to recruit hundred of developers...

  • I think a person would move to Debian because they want to enjoy power over their computing experience.

    If the point of Debian is to give users power over their computing experience, why do they 'standardize' on a brain-dead interface like GNOME?

    KDE has more flexibility and integration, with both it and QT being GPL.

    The only reason I can see for this is politics. The Copywrite to QT is owned by Troll Tech, and the FSF can't control it. And the FSF is all about control, that's why they asked the maintain

    • i love debian and kde, so what i do is boot from a knoppix cd then run
      knx2hd
      as root. this brings up an installer which gives you the choice of a knoppix like system or a debian like system. either way you get a kde desktop.
      heh, you can even read slashdot during the install (i always do) as it runs from the desktop, how mad is that

Slashdot Top Deals

Please go away.

Close