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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”)?

#251

Post by digi_owl »

falcolas wrote: post #194
majewsky wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - It's effectively a black box that nobody but the systemd team really understands; and the response by said team to problems with systemd too often defaults to "you're doing it wrong" I'm seeing this attitude a lot. Just last week, at our Linux User Group meeting, someone brought in a notebook with Debian 9, which didn't boot up correctly because drives were not detected. The issue turned out to be really simple (…

So, the "impossible it was to diagnose anything with systemd" comes about because "systemd-analyze plot" and "journalctl" have no meaning prior to systemd. It's a whole new toolset which needs to be learned. It doesn't follow any existing patterns, which makes it harder to learn if you're already familiar with troubleshooting init prior to systemd (troubleshooting which would have started with a quick trip to /var/lo…

Also, where before one could mark1 eyeball what the bootup was trying to do, and reason fixes from that, now one have to rely on an analyzer to tell what the sequence will be. And if said analyzer can't be used, what then?

And similarly the journal format is something that can only be read with the journalctl tool. plain ascii you can throw just about anything at.

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

#252

Post by amorphid »

guillemj wrote: post #205
amorphid wrote: post #191

HEADLINE: list apt package dependencies DESCRIPTION: something like 'apt-get deps ' returning a list of all deps for a package. This would be super duper when trying to install a standalone package file on a system where the deps aren't already present.

There is already «apt-cache depends » or even «apt-cache depends --recurse ». Perhaps those are missing something?

To clarify, I'd love to see a raw text list of just the packages, without header text and/or other things.

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

#253

Post by sgala »

kurgan wrote: post #214

HEADLINE: No Systemd DESCRIPTION: Systemd is creating far more issues than benfits. Everyone knows it except for its author, L. P. Still Debian has chosen to go down this road, and the result is that people had to fork and to move to Devuan. Go back to a sane, simple, stable init system. This is expecially true for a server-oriented distribution. ROLE: Fabio Muzzi, freelance linux sysadmin since 1995, loyal Debian us…

+1.

Systemd failures are under our eyes https://twitter.com/systemdsucks and are not acceptable for a server distribution.

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

#254

Post by nwmcsween »

jancsika wrote: post #116

- HEADLINE: transactional upgrades and package installs - DESCRIPTION: This is a feature of the guix package manager. From their website: "Each invocation is actually a transaction: either the specified operation succeeds, or nothing happens. Thus, if the guix package process is terminated during the transaction, or if a power outage occurs during the transaction, then the user’s profile remains in its previous state…

This works for guix because it doesn't follow FHS (if it's like Nix) which I doubt would ever happen in Debian. The alternative is to namespace via the FS.

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

#255

Post by vinlinux »

HEADLINE: Regression fixes from upstream

DESCRIPTION: GCC 6.4 will be released soon (July). I wish Debian will get all the regression fixes that this update will bring (according to the new numbering convention, version 6.4 does not mean new features, so no breaking-changes, only fixes). Same for CUDA 8.0.61 (already available for ~5 months) which is a maintenance update after version 8.0.44, the one available in Stretch. I'm saying this because Jessie never got the latest bug fix release (4.9.4) for the 4.9 series of GCC, not even in the backports (it still offers the 4.9.2 instead). I wish there was a policy that allowed regression fixes from upstream to be ported and with the same priority as security fixes. GCC and CUDA are only examples, the same scheme would be applicable to any other package as well. In my view, this would foster Debian adoption on desktops at a higher level. If this can't be done for the current Debian Stable, I hope my (and other people's similar) concerns will be taken into account in the future. As a developer, I care about this level of support. We all love Debian, we'd just like to make it better. Thanks.

DISTRIBUTION: Debian Stable

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

#256

Post by rahimnathwani »

willvarfar wrote: post #238
rahimnathwani wrote: post #139

HEADLINE: Easy way to use multiple screens with different DPI DESCRIPTION: Many laptops (e.g. Macbook Pro) come with retina screens, but most of us use 'regular' monitors. Even after setting org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor and playing with xrandr, it can be difficult or impossible to get a single external non-retina display set up in the right position and without one screen containing tiny text (or huge t…

Pssst: since you mentioned mbp, you might know ;) Is mbp retina supported? All my attempts to get things to look right (using XUbuntu) failed :( Any cheat sheets?

When I'm just using the internal retina screen, all works fine on jessie and stretch, and I don't recall doing anything special to make it work. Perhaps I used gsettings to set gnome scaling to 2 or something.

On jessie, using one external screen results in the problems I described. Using two external screens additionally results in one of the monitors not working at all (even though the same configuration works fine on OSX).

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

#257

Post by coma_ »

coma_ wrote: post #227

HEADLINE: improve website/doc to ease install process DESCRIPTION: installing Debian should be a straightforward process for average Joes and Jannes, that's not the case currently. The process to acquire the proper ISO and have it on a bootable USB stick/SD card is overly complicated (because the information is hidden, missing or incomplete). As an average Joe, when you visit debian.org there is no obvious place to c…

Case in point (from /r/thinkpad): https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/6goe9h/just_order...

(check the whole thread)

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

#259

Post by vinlinux »

captainmuon wrote: post #218

HEADLINE: Keep selected packages up-to-date on stable DESCRIPTION: If you are using Debian, especially stable, you have to put up with outdated packages. This is especially a problem with browsers, although you do include security updates and track Firefox ESR, if I understand correctly. But things like Webkitgtk do not recieve updates, and lack feature and security wise after a while. I think keeping up-to-date vers…

I partially agree. In the sense that I would port regression fixes constantly (THIS is important security-wise), I would NOT like to have updates to major releases, as this means breaking-changes and it's against the whole Stable philosophy. GCC 6.4 is going to be released soon and I hope Debian Stable will get all those regression fixes that update will inevitably bring to the table. After my experience with Jessie (which still offers GCC 4.9.2 although version 4.9.4 fixed an impressive list of bugs and it's not even available in the backports), I'm not going to be so optimistic. This is so important it should not be left to the volunteers' will.

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

#260

Post by captainmuon »

icebraining wrote: post #240
captainmuon wrote: post #218

HEADLINE: Keep selected packages up-to-date on stable DESCRIPTION: If you are using Debian, especially stable, you have to put up with outdated packages. This is especially a problem with browsers, although you do include security updates and track Firefox ESR, if I understand correctly. But things like Webkitgtk do not recieve updates, and lack feature and security wise after a while. I think keeping up-to-date vers…

I disagree. Stable should mean fixed, except for security bugs. You say "no breaking changes", but the Debian devs can only test the base system, they can't ensure that it won't break whatever software is running on the user's machine. In fact, my system may have a workaround for a bug that shipped with stable, and which might break if the bug is fixed later! Stable is stable, (non-security) bugs and all. Plus, the p…

I haven't used Debian in a while, so yes, maybe "stable" is not the right branch for me.

I would have been looking for something that you install once, and then it just works without intervention for a long time. But at the same time I also want to have access to some latest software, without relying on third party repositories (because the chance of breakage is very high) or compiling myself (because then I have to track versions manually).

When I think of a "stable" system, I expect that the underpinning is stable, no structural changes. Don't laugh, but Windows XP was a bit like that for many people. Install it, confirm the occasional update, and it just keeps running for a decade. (Of course, not with the level of security I would expect from a Linux system...) If I really want a frozen version of an app, I can just pin the version or compile it myself.

I think this is a very general problem in the Linux world today, you can choose between "frozen" (stable, LTS) and "unstable" (frequent releases, rolling). There is no "stable underpinning, fresh apps" distribution, although the Linux/glibc undersystem is incredibly backwards compatible. If you compile all the neccessary libraries, you can install almost everything on a distro a few generations old. But it is very odious, and would be great if you didn't have to do it.

Probably you're right and I should give unstable a try next time. Or maybe an alternative would be to make backports more self-contained, so that they would pull in dependent packages (thereby breaking other apps)? Maybe containers like snap etc. are a solution?

[Edit: cut down verbosity]

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