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

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

#61

Post by Ianp5a »

jopsen wrote: post #39

HEADLINE: Lower barrier for contributors DESCRIPTION: Have a git repo for each package with a simple issue tracker, like GitHub/gitlab, a flow for accepting pull-requests and automated CI. Also move away from message boards and IRC to more user friendly tools. Currently, it's too hard to report bugs, inspect debian source packages, propose fixes, etc. The overhead to making a simple contribution is too high. Note: th…

Yes. See that KDE makes this easy with bug reporting built in to applications and desktop tools.

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

#62

Post by TekMol »

avar wrote: post #47
TekMol wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted this even though I am of two minds regarding this issue. Missing wifi support is my number 1 reason why I don't use Debian on the Desktop. On the other hand, I don't like non-free software and like the concept of Debian to not include it. An alternative could be to put more effort into supporting all wifi hardware by writng free drivers for it. I will post that as my Feature Request.

The drivers are free and already in the kernel. I'm talking about firmware support. You can still use Debian on the desktop, it has all the WiFi support e.g. Ubuntu has. It's just the installer that doesn't have parity since it's 100% free, working around it is a bit of a hassle as I described, but a one-time pain.

What does "firmware support" mean? Is it not about installing software?

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

#63

Post by RVuRnvbM2e »

hsivonen wrote: post #50

HEADLINE: Repurpose testing as a rolling release positioned for not-just-testing usage DESCRIPTION: There are users who'd like to use a non-corporate community distro but who don't need or want software to be as old as software in Debian stable. The standard answer is "use testing" (e.g. http://ral-arturo.org/2017/05/11/debian-myths.html ), but 1) security support for testing is documented to be slower than for stabl…

Have you seen Backports?

https://backports.debian.org/

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

#64

Post by hsivonen »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #63
hsivonen wrote: post #50

HEADLINE: Repurpose testing as a rolling release positioned for not-just-testing usage DESCRIPTION: There are users who'd like to use a non-corporate community distro but who don't need or want software to be as old as software in Debian stable. The standard answer is "use testing" (e.g. http://ral-arturo.org/2017/05/11/debian-myths.html ), but 1) security support for testing is documented to be slower than for stabl…

Have you seen Backports? https://backports.debian.org/

I have.

From the FAQ (https://backports.debian.org/FAQ/):

"Q: Is there security support for packages from backports.debian.org?"

"A: Unfortunately not. [...]"

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

#65

Post by lamby »

Dunedan wrote: post #2

HEADER Python 3 as default DESCRIPTION Just to quote from the packaging manual: > Debian currently supports two Python stacks, one for Python 3 and one for Python 2. The long term goal for Debian is to reduce this to one stack, dropping the Python 2 stack at some time. The first step for that would be of course Python 3 as default Python version and I'd like to see that for buster, as Python 3 nowadays offers way mor…

The "lintian" packaging static-analysis tool has been issuing an info-level message about new packages that introduce Python 2.x packages. I've just upgraded this to a "warning" level, so we should at least curb the influx of additional Python 2 packages unless strictly necessary — I suspect most of them are simply included now out of habit.

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

#66

Post by RVuRnvbM2e »

jopsen wrote: post #39

HEADLINE: Lower barrier for contributors DESCRIPTION: Have a git repo for each package with a simple issue tracker, like GitHub/gitlab, a flow for accepting pull-requests and automated CI. Also move away from message boards and IRC to more user friendly tools. Currently, it's too hard to report bugs, inspect debian source packages, propose fixes, etc. The overhead to making a simple contribution is too high. Note: th…

The problem with a git repo for each package is that not every maintainer uses git..

I realise that integration could be better, but most of these things do already exist:

CI: https://ci.debian.net/

Tool for reporting bugs: reportbug (CLI) / reportbug-ng (GUI). This is also the way to submit patches.

Inspect debian source packages: apt-get source

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

#67

Post by bgladx64 »

TekMol wrote: post #62
avar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drivers are free and already in the kernel. I'm talking about firmware support. You can still use Debian on the desktop, it has all the WiFi support e.g. Ubuntu has. It's just the installer that doesn't have parity since it's 100% free, working around it is a bit of a hassle as I described, but a one-time pain.

What does "firmware support" mean? Is it not about installing software?

Drivers are software that runs in the kernel to interface with hardware.

Firmware is software that runs on the actual hardware itself, in this case it runs on the microprocessor on the WiFi card

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

#68

Post by rahiel »

HEADLINE: enable AppArmor by default

DESCRIPTION: AppArmor improves security by limiting the capabilities of programs. Ubuntu has done this years ago [1]. I'd like to see profiles for web browsers enabled by default.

I think AppArmor is the right choice of default Mandatory Access Control for Debian because Ubuntu and security focused Debian derivatives like Tails [2] and SubgraphOS [3] have already committed to it.

[1]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase/AppArmorP...

[2]: https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/application_isolati...

[3]: https://subgraph.com/

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

#69

Post by kebolio »

TekMol wrote: post #62
avar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drivers are free and already in the kernel. I'm talking about firmware support. You can still use Debian on the desktop, it has all the WiFi support e.g. Ubuntu has. It's just the installer that doesn't have parity since it's 100% free, working around it is a bit of a hassle as I described, but a one-time pain.

What does "firmware support" mean? Is it not about installing software?

firmware support involves supplying the binary blobs that the driver needs to upload to certain peripherals like intel wireless cards.

personally i would like to see non-free software kept out of the main disc images but the images including firmware being more visibly advertised and it made clear on the download pages what hardware requires it and who needs it.

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

#70

Post by humanrebar »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #66
jopsen wrote: post #39

HEADLINE: Lower barrier for contributors DESCRIPTION: Have a git repo for each package with a simple issue tracker, like GitHub/gitlab, a flow for accepting pull-requests and automated CI. Also move away from message boards and IRC to more user friendly tools. Currently, it's too hard to report bugs, inspect debian source packages, propose fixes, etc. The overhead to making a simple contribution is too high. Note: th…

The problem with a git repo for each package is that not every maintainer uses git.. I realise that integration could be better, but most of these things do already exist: CI: https://ci.debian.net/ Tool for reporting bugs: reportbug (CLI) / reportbug-ng (GUI). This is also the way to submit patches. Inspect debian source packages: apt-get source

> ...not every maintainer uses git.

I can't think of a valid reason for people to avoid learning git. Is there one?

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