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Why is Debian the way it is?

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Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#101

Post by asveikau »

rlpb wrote: post #97

"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.

I think either approach makes sense depending on who you are.

If your goal is to distribute software across multiple distros and operating systems, bundling dependencies makes sense.

If your goal is to maintain a distro, shared libraries that you can apply a security patch to exactly once is obviously better.

But these are two different people with either goal.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#102

Post by bfrog »

gorjusborg wrote: post #18
__float wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That they work reliably?

They work reliably with a lot of unseen work. Debian is a great distro as a user. The .deb packaging tools I found to be a huge hassle and made packaging up missing or updated or custom software a pain in the ass.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#103

Post by klysm »

switch007 wrote: post #31
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.

Deb packages just need reinventing by some younger people. I’m thinking: implemented in nodejs with a cli with emojis and animations. The GitHub read me should have a minimum of 80 emojis and a meme or two. The core dependency of the cli should be a 6 month old framework with 92 commits. When that library reaches 1 year old, it should be swapped out for something newer as the sole maintainer will have left their job…

Excellent straw man takedown

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#104

Post by pwdisswordfishc »

bostik wrote: post #53
dietrichepp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I keep coming back to Debian after trying out another distro for a while. There are some specific complaints I have about technical choices for Debian, like the way daemons autostart post install. But these complaints are outweighed by the benefits of using a distro with coherence across packages and upgrades. Apt is also just such a phenomenal package manager. It is fast out of the box, and supports some relat…

I'm a Debian user since 1998 and have had it as my personal desktop since that time. I'd think that counts for something. > Apt is also just such a phenomenal package manager. It is fast out of the box, This wasn't always the case. There's a good reason almost all guides first written before 2015 specifically instructed everyone to use 'apt-get' directly. For quite some time the more uniform 'apt' frontend really was…

For quite some time the more uniform 'apt' frontend really didn't exist at all.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#105

Post by klysm »

bfrog wrote: post #99
__float wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 fo…

Completely agree with your assessment of the building process. The majority of the complexity involved in the process is not inherent

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#106

Post by klysm »

bfrog wrote: post #102
gorjusborg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That they work reliably?

They work reliably with a lot of unseen work. Debian is a great distro as a user. The .deb packaging tools I found to be a huge hassle and made packaging up missing or updated or custom software a pain in the ass.

Exactly, this is why it takes literally years of human effort to get a new version released

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#107

Post by klysm »

Narann wrote: post #41
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.

> the .deb ecosystem still feels like its stuck in the late 90s linux era to me. Can you elaborate, please? What do you mean by this?

Quirky, clunky tooling with a bunch of arbitrary shit you have to memorize to use correctly. People enjoy that kind of thing after they learn it.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#108

Post by bscphil »

asveikau wrote: post #101
rlpb wrote: post #97

"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.

I think either approach makes sense depending on who you are. If your goal is to distribute software across multiple distros and operating systems, bundling dependencies makes sense. If your goal is to maintain a distro, shared libraries that you can apply a security patch to exactly once is obviously better. But these are two different people with either goal.

> If your goal is to distribute software across multiple distros and operating systems, bundling dependencies makes sense.

Of course, an important "exception to the exception" is when you're making software that can easily be distributed by distributions, e.g. because it's end user software and open source.

I think the optimal cases for bundled dependencies are (a) large closed source binaries that never change, like games, and (b) self-deployed software, e.g. something like a server written in Go that is compiled and maintained in its running environment by a single developer or company.

Re: Why is Debian the way it is?

#110

Post by tbrownaw »

fsflover wrote: post #2

> what was “free software” was defined by the Free Software Foundation, but in a way that left much to be interpreted I don't understand what the author means here. What is unclear about the four freedoms? To me, Debian's definition looks redundant.

Considering how the FSF's own AGPL conflicts with freedom #1, they clearly can't be that clear.
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