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Debian 12 “Bookworm”

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Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#211

Post by pabs3 »

blihp wrote: post #199
teddyh wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is the actor in this scenario who wants to change the status quo and therefore support the RISC-V platform in Debian? I.e. who are the people with the motivation to do that?

The Debian project has been historically a vocal proponent for open hardware/firmware/drivers etc. and here we are in 2023 having Debian somewhat controversially acknowledging that proprietary firmware may be required at least by some users, to some degree. So I am suggesting that if they really want to get there that they might need to help facilitate the change they would like to see. Is RISC-V the be-all, end-all?…

Even the open firmware that does exist has some major issues (like needing a proprietary compiler) or the hardware that it can run on it checks for Intel signatures, or only exists on archive.org, or is packaged in Debian but not properly built from source code, or exists but is only useful for obscure/ancient hardware that only people who want libre firmware buys, requires a forked compiler/toolchain to build, etc. Basically, open firmware is a hard problem and there aren't a lot of people with the skills and interest in doing it. I'm trying to at least document what exists on the wiki, anyone know of more projects?

https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#212

Post by pabs3 »

sillystuff wrote: post #108
pja wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d suggest testing over unstable as very occasionally broken packages get pushed to unstable. Testing has a week or two delay, which usually catches such problems.

If you decide to run testing, be aware that while testing does get updates that address security issues after those updates work their way into testing from unstable, it does not explicitly get security updates. Pinning some security sensitive packages to stable or unstable might be worth considering. E.g., if running testing on a client, pin firefox and extensions to stable + stable-security (note, globbing works to…

You can also automatically pin security updates from unstable. I'm doing this for years now, and doing updates 4x daily using unattended-upgrades.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting#Best_practices_for_Tes...

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#213

Post by Karellen »

realitythreek wrote: post #197
Karellen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux is typically not the first OS to be installed on any given piece of hardware. And because those are exactly the people that benefit from having a working PC I'm all for maximizing their chances. Choice is a luxury. But they don't have to choose Debian. If Debian had maintained a strict "Free" stance, people could still use their troublesome hardware out-of-the-box simply by picking another distro that did inc…

> If Debian had maintained a strict "Free" stance, people could still use their troublesome hardware out-of-the-box simply by picking another distro that did include non-Free firmware in the installer. This isn’t Debian’s niche though. Like many distros, Debian came with the free repos configured by default, but its had non-free packages available forever and they already had a non-free installation iso hidden away.…

> This isn’t Debian’s niche though.

Point 1 of the Social Contract[0] is literally "Debian will remain 100% Free"

Please explain how championing Software Freedom would not be Debian's niche.

[0] https://www.debian.org/social_contract

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#214

Post by jacquesm »

Karellen wrote: post #213
realitythreek wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Debian had maintained a strict "Free" stance, people could still use their troublesome hardware out-of-the-box simply by picking another distro that did include non-Free firmware in the installer. This isn’t Debian’s niche though. Like many distros, Debian came with the free repos configured by default, but its had non-free packages available forever and they already had a non-free installation iso hidden away.…

> This isn’t Debian’s niche though. Point 1 of the Social Contract[0] is literally "Debian will remain 100% Free" Please explain how championing Software Freedom would not be Debian's niche. [0] https://www.debian.org/social_contract

You are entirely free to use the narrow FOSS interpreted distribution. And other people are just as free to use the ones that include the blobs they need to get their hardware to work where there is no alternative available. And hopefully over time all of those blobs will go the way of the Dodo, but in the meantime Debian keeps mind and marketshare, which unlike absolutist stances are just as important to the long term survival of the distribution as is the core philosophy.

Because you wouldn't be pushing those users to an alternative linux distro, you'd be pushing them to Apple and Windows and that's far more damaging to FOSS than to include some firmware blobs. The issue was debated at considerable length, I've followed the debate (because I use Debian and Debian derived distros on all of my machines, including laptops, servers and desktops) and I'm happy to see this outcome because it shows a certain level of maturity. The world isn't easily defined in terms of black and white. Debian is doing a great job and this minor concession is only going to strengthen its position as the FOSS distro of choice because more people will end up being able to use it successfully.

Note that far more people care about whether or not a distro works on their machine than whatever narrow reading of 'The Word' causes it to malfunction. Builders are few, consumers are many and I'd much rather see Debian succeed in the long term than die on the hill of FOSS purism.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#215

Post by realitythreek »

Karellen wrote: post #213
realitythreek wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Debian had maintained a strict "Free" stance, people could still use their troublesome hardware out-of-the-box simply by picking another distro that did include non-Free firmware in the installer. This isn’t Debian’s niche though. Like many distros, Debian came with the free repos configured by default, but its had non-free packages available forever and they already had a non-free installation iso hidden away.…

> This isn’t Debian’s niche though. Point 1 of the Social Contract[0] is literally "Debian will remain 100% Free" Please explain how championing Software Freedom would not be Debian's niche. [0] https://www.debian.org/social_contract

I already did explain. You stopped reading after the first sentence. :)

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#216

Post by still_grokking »

igetspam wrote: post #201
still_grokking wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are of course some niche distris that aren't based on the "big ones". But I'm not sure Slackware is still at this point relevant enough to be named in a row with the others I've mentioned. Of course the sampling was subjective, and I didn't intended to marginalize any not mentioned distris. I just thought the others are too niche to be included in such kind of pick.

I want to downvote you for sentimental reasons. I won't but I want to.

Do it, and tell the world how I mistreated all kinds of interesting (but small) projects, if it makes you feel better. :-D

Here a list of almost all the OS distris I've left out:

https://distrowatch.com/search.php?ostype=All&category=All&o...

Besides mentioning Slackware for historical reasons I should have also mentioned NixOS, which I forgot.

The former was the first Linux distri, the later gained some respectable user-base in the last years, I think.

Ah, and there is also Alpine which you can see sometimes here and there. (People using it in containers for reasons I've never understood as that's imho a recipe for trouble.)

But if you look at the rest of the list most of the stuff is really obscure. (I've tried some Solaris derivatives and Exherbo in the past but didn't even heard of all the other names.)

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#217

Post by teddyh »

pabs3 wrote: post #210
teddyh wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian is not a general advocacy organization. Debian produces the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, and that’s mostly it. The incentive to do the work necessary to add a new architecture to Debian must, in general, come from outside Debian itself. Debian will probably not, as a project, go around looking for new architectures to add. Debian depends on other people doing the work and presenting it to Debian, which will…

The RISC-V port of Debian was driven by internal Debian contributors, not by external actors. Similarly for Debian kFreeBSD and some other ports. OTOH, for LoongArch and ARC, those ports are driven almost entirely by the companies selling those chips. So I would say it is a mix.

> The RISC-V port of Debian was driven by internal Debian contributors, not by external actors.

Yes, but my point is, they weren’t doing that work just because they were Debian contributors; they had their own additional reason for doing it. They were not assigned the work by Debian central command. Therefore, asking Debian why Debian does not do some work or other is usually the wrong way to get something done.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#218

Post by bacchusracine »

ech0plex88 wrote: post #88
bacchusracine wrote: post #16

Does anyone know if Bookworm includes the Ubuntu-Mate version of the Mate desktop?

Unfortunately no, the panel layouts aren't there by default. However, I've written some guides that can help close the appearance & capabilities gap. https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/12gyjpg/debian_mate... https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/13ueaub/debian_12_m...

Thank you for those links, since tomorrow I expect most of Reddit to go dark I took the liberty of archiving them so I can be sure I can go into more depth then.

https://archive.is/iH9un

https://archive.is/R0oBe

https://archive.is/IKViC

https://archive.is/1Pyzs

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#219

Post by gsich »

stracer wrote: post #172
gsich wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

systemd is the superior init system.

How did you came to that conclusion? In my experience, sysvinit comes with less bloat, and hangs randomly much less than systemd. I've worked with both old debian (sysvinit) and current centos (systemd) systems, and if I had a problem with init, it was always with systemd. If something related to disks or user login sessions fails, with sysvinit most of the time things proceed promptly, while with systemd, you're in…

Because it works and writing init files with startup dependencies is cumbersome.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#220

Post by stracer »

gsich wrote: post #219
stracer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you came to that conclusion? In my experience, sysvinit comes with less bloat, and hangs randomly much less than systemd. I've worked with both old debian (sysvinit) and current centos (systemd) systems, and if I had a problem with init, it was always with systemd. If something related to disks or user login sessions fails, with sysvinit most of the time things proceed promptly, while with systemd, you're in…

Because it works and writing init files with startup dependencies is cumbersome.

Sysvinit also works. How is writing init files cumbersome? Writing startup dependencies is easy - there is the Required-Start header in the ### BEGIN INIT INFO block where you put the required services.
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