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Why is Debian the way it is?

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Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#91

Post by klysm »

VancouverMan wrote: post #26
cf100clunk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Left out another major chunk: the conflict that arose over the eventual systemd adoption. To me that conflict altered the concept of ''What is Debian'' permanently, for better or worse (depending on who you listen to).

Regardless of whether one likes or dislikes systemd itself, I think that unfortunate debacle can only be seen as causing harm to the entire Debian project. The politics of it certainly generated a lot of distrust and resentment among the users and contributors. The project's reputation was undoubtedly hurt. Perhaps most importantly where the technological impacts. It's one thing when a user can generally ignore the p…

I’m pretty convinced it was net positive in the long term. If Debian hadn’t gone with systemd, then where would it be today? Stuck in shell script hell?

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#92

Post by klysm »

arun-mani-j wrote: post #52

I personally love and use Debian exactly for its principles and stability. I have heard users of other distros and a few upstream complaint that Debian "modifies" their packages? Is it so? If yes, there surely must be a good reason. Can someone tell me about it?

Applying patches increases the cost of making changes.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#93

Post by klysm »

RetroTechie wrote: post #40
cswhnjidd wrote: post #21

TIL Debian is mostly packaging. Love it, Debian is amazing.

Packaging, and more importantly: package dependencies, are (imho) the essence of building a successful distro. Get this wrong, stuff breaks regularly, and one ad-hoc fix follows another, forever. Get this right, and everything Just Works™ (generally). Debian is very good in this regard (along with the BSDs, I'd say).

Debian is very much one ad hoc fix after another, to an incredible degree really. Go dive into the source and patches and you’ll see how much duct tape there really is holding things together. What’s so great about Debian though is it effectively hides all that pain from you (most of the time).

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#95

Post by rlpb »

arun-mani-j wrote: post #52

I personally love and use Debian exactly for its principles and stability. I have heard users of other distros and a few upstream complaint that Debian "modifies" their packages? Is it so? If yes, there surely must be a good reason. Can someone tell me about it?

Debian has a user-first philosophy as well as a focus on integration between packages. When required, that means patching upstreams that don't meet that expectation for whatever reason. The ability to do this is precisely the point of Free Software.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#96

Post by IshKebab »

larme wrote: post #35

Sometimes I daydream about getting a fuck-it amount of money. During this thought process I always make a plan of what open source software project I should donate, and debian is always one of the first several candidates. Now I just need the money! (meanwhile I donate to debian anyway)

Me too, but I'd do my own projects rather than donate. Much more fun!

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#97

Post by rlpb »

"Self-contained" and "No bundled libraries" are two very important concepts that a subset of our ecosystem decided was too much work. Then they re-discovered all the problems that result, and have now coined terms like "software supply chain" to describe them.

Meanwhile Debian doesn't suffer from any of this because it's been doing things so as to avoid these issues all along.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#98

Post by klysm »

hyperman1 wrote: post #49
bfrog wrote: post #3

Well certainly part of it is much of the .deb ecosystem still feels like its stuck in the late 90s linux era to me. But maybe I'm alone on that gut feel.

I'd like you to explain this a bit deeper. As a user from the '90s I am quite happy with it, but I might be stuck in my ways, who knows? So not saying you're wrong, but what are we missing exactly?

A few of my gripes:

* creating Debian packages is a difficult process to learn. There’s a bunch of tools and wrappers around those tools to handle inadequacies and it’s not clear how to do it “right”. For example, if I just have a binary and want to put it into a Debian package without pulling in some random shell scripts that aren’t part of Debian proper, it’s not immediately clear how to do that.

* Non-atomic and imperative install/remove/etc. hooks make it difficult to robustly handle failures. Since there is no file system manifest or sandboxing, there’s no real guarantees that removing a package will actually remove it.

* there’s no spec for a .deb package. This means the only way to correctly generate a Debian package is through the difficult tooling. I understand why this choice is made, and it has a lot of benefits for the continued evolution of the debian project. However, it makes it difficult to build better tooling around deb packages.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#99

Post by bfrog »

__float wrote: post #5
bfrog wrote: post #3

Well certainly part of it is much of the .deb ecosystem still feels like its stuck in the late 90s linux era to me. But maybe I'm alone on that gut feel.

"stuck in the late 90s" in what sense? Building them? Distributing them? (Dependencies?)

Have you built a .deb with debuild and debhelpers? Can you recall all the goofy rules about what needs to go in each file and what each debhelper does? How do you keep all of it in version control and build downstream packages that depend on the changed one? Have you managed to accidently sneak a local build machine dependency or piece of information by accident into the final .deb only to realize it much later?

I found it be a big ball of easily forgettable twine of rules tools and oddities myself that every time I needed to redo something was a hassle. With many foot guns that lead to odd package issues.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#100

Post by kosherhurricane »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #89
dsr_ wrote: post #4

LIW left out one major chunk: because Debian is a volunteer organization, and nobody can make a volunteer do anything that they don't want to do.

From the description, the Debian organization seems to be an anarchist one. A bunch of people, not coerced to be there, have created a diffuse rotating democracy for making decisions. Self-sufficiency is key to the organization, that emerges from thoughtful usage of resources.

Why would you consider an organization with a constitution anarchist?
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