Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)?

DESCRIPTION: Debian unstable still has elixir 1.3.3. It looks like the "official" path forward is to add Erlang Solutions as another apt repository and install packages from there. However, this feels wrong to me as a user. I want to get packages from Debian.

I can't remember which distribution it is, but IIRC one of the other ones has developers upload builds from their personal machines and they are signed with GPG. I don't like this because it is opening yourself up to problems. Perhaps someone uploads a malicious binary build. Or perhaps their developer machine is compromised and someone else uploads it for them or infects their upload.

All of this would go away with 100% reproducible builds in Debian and when it builds on Debian infrastructure. That's not the case when Erlang Solutions is setup as the provider.

I realize this is a minor point as few people will install it, but I was surprised that other distributions include the latest Elixir but Debian does not. The latest is 1.4.4 and I couldn't find anything related to 1.4.x in the upload queue or bug reports. It seems like the package maintenance has been outsourced to Erlang Solutions.

DESCRIPTION: Any time you do a web search for anything regarding Debian, the search results include a huge amount of official but outdated information. Normally for Linux-related questions I refer to the amazing Arch wiki, but there are topics that are Debian-specific, and then sifting through all the detritus is a huge waste of time. There's a wiki, a kernel handbook, a manual, random xyz.debian.org pages, mailing lists, user forums, the Debian Administrator's Handbook...

Granted, it's a huge effort to clean all of that up, but perhaps there's a way to incorporate user feedback, so that pages can be marked as "outdated" by users, or updated by users (wait, there's a log-in page- does this mean I can edit wiki pages? Did not know that...:( ), or otherwise made more systematic.

In particular, it would be great to have more complete information on the installation process: which images to use (RC, ..., or weekly image?), how to put them on a USB stick (why does my 32GB stick now say it has 128GB?; you mean I can just copy the files to a FAT32-formatted drive?), what the options are (for hostname, is any name, a FQDN necessary?), etc. For every single clarification, there will be a hundred, thousand, ten thousand people who are helped; that seems like a worthwhile investment. Everyone is a beginner at the beginning, regardless of knowledge outside this specific domain, so why not make it easier.

All that said, have been using Stretch/testing for a few years, love it, love the Free/Libre Software ethos, love what you guys do, keep it up, thank you!

DESCRIPTION: Recently had to reinstall my Debian system for the first time in a while, and was struck by how user-unfriendly the installer still is compared to many of the alternatives. I don't think it's necessarily a problem that it's ncurses, but it could use some more explicit hand-holding. I remember one point where I needed to select some options from a list and there was no indication of what operation was required for selection, for example (I think I needed to hit '+'?). I'm pretty familiar with command lines and curses-type UI's and this was unintuitive for me, I can only imagine how frustrating it might be for a more desktop-oriented user.

I also recall a very confusing UI paradigm where the installer steps are a modal view and there's a hidden 'overview/master menu' you can back out into at any time, and it's not clear to me how those two modes are related and what state it leaves your installation in if you back out and then jump into the installation at a different step.

Generally the explanatory text is quite good at telling you what decision needs to be made, and providing necessary info to research that decision if necessary, but how you make those decisions I think could still be improved.

DISTRIBUTION: Stable