Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

wnpp.debian.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 151 posts

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#91

Post by LordDragonfang »

monoideism wrote: post #84
qbasic_forever wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's something to keep in mind that isn't super clear to newcomers, Linux != Debian. Linus Torvalds doesn't use Debian and nothing Debian does really impacts him or the core of Linux. Debian is just a highly opinionated take on Linux. You can totally dive in and be super productive with Linux without ever having to know about, use or, or care that Debian exists. (oh and Homebrew works great on Linux, give it a shot…

Debian is one of the distros that really takes package security seriously, which is a big plus for me. > It comes from an even older gatekeeping around "the Unix way". That's not gatekeeping, that's a very specifically-defined approach to operating systems.

I understand if you're taking issue with the term as a pejorative, but how is purposefully placing barriers for those that don't conform to the "specifically-defined approach" not definitionally gatekeeping?

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#92

Post by cauthon »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #91
monoideism wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian is one of the distros that really takes package security seriously, which is a big plus for me. > It comes from an even older gatekeeping around "the Unix way". That's not gatekeeping, that's a very specifically-defined approach to operating systems.

I understand if you're taking issue with the term as a pejorative, but how is purposefully placing barriers for those that don't conform to the "specifically-defined approach" not definitionally gatekeeping?

I think of "gatekeeping" as blocking access, especially for something that doesn't have a defined membership, like a fandom. e.g. "you're not a real star wars fan if..."

whereas anyone is welcome to contribute to debian, they just have to follow the rules. there's kind of no meaning to the term "gatekeeping" if any organization that has rules to follow counts.

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#93

Post by paxswill »

ivansavz wrote: post #75
IgorPartola wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could recommend something but I learned it years ago and I honestly don’t remember where from. I’ll try to put together a modern version of my old LUG talk on the subject to show people how to get started.

Yes plz. I'd be very interested to read about this (long time Debian user, but never packaged anything). I know there is an install, postinstall, and remove scripts but don't have a clear idea of when exactly they will get called and what "interface" they must implement. It would be really helpful to have a "package lifecycle" state diagram like this https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/instance.html#Lifecycle-Diagram that sho…

Like this? https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ap-flowcharts.html

I skimmed the New Maintainers Guide for a rough idea of what to do and then used the Debian Policy Manual with the various debhelper manpages for specific references of what each field/script meant. I also dig into the source of some packages to see how they were packaged (for example, when I was creating an archive keyring). The two areas I had the most trouble with were deb triggers and debconf, which only seem to be documented on external sites.

New Maintainers’ Guide: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#94

Post by wyclif »

qpiox wrote: post #52
janvdberg wrote: post #6

If you sort by Installs this is kind of disturbing. A lot of well known packages (Apache2 / OpenSSL / LibreOffice etc.) have no owner? https://wnpp.debian.net/?sort=installs%2Fdesc&page=1

I think the list of packages that need lovin', needs lovin' itself. It seems this list is abandonware. If you look into the details for some these packages, you will see that it is a dead discussion forgotten even by the person who initiated it, a decade ago. E.g. the discussion about Libreoffice is not about Libreoffice at all, but Apache Open Office, and you can see that there are people who have offered help, but…

When I looked at the list, my first thought was amazement that LibreOffice has no maintainer.

EDIT: Previous HN discussion about LibreOffice's lack of resources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793942

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#95

Post by shasheene »

cglong wrote: post #70

As someone who's thinking about moving to Linux and has made many non-trivial contributions to Homebrew, the contribution process for Debian packages scares me. The official documentation seems to be more of a reference guide than a tutorial, and community blog posts always seem to start with "That other tool is outdated; here's the new way to do it," making it impossible to know which method is the right one. IMO, w…

I found this article from 2 years a great read: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2019-03-10-debian-windin...

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#96

Post by nanna »

Quekid5 wrote: post #18
tacostakohashi wrote: post #10

I have been using Debian on and off since the late 90s, including some time creating packages. It was wonderful to be able to install a recent, working version of pretty much anything you wanted for the vast majority of that time. More recently, so many things I want to use are not available as a reasonably up-to-date package. Some examples are hugo and eclipse, where the versions provided are unusably ancient. https…

I think the future is probably something more NixOS-like. Now, personally, I've tried it and found it a bit wanting UX-wise (and for really niche stuff), but for providing cutting edge and the ability to roll back safely I don't think it can be beaten. If you have databases, etc. that might need to be rolled back things get more complicated, ofc. Right now, I'm running Arch Linux with a small smattering of self-compi…

It doesn't have to be one or the other.

I've been very happily using Guix as a package manager inside my Debian, thereby having a Debian with up-to-date versions of packages and access to all the other benefits of using a next-generation package manager (specifying release candidates, docker-like portable builds, plus emacs integration).

Just have to be slightly careful not to install packages via Guix that might cause conflicts, especially with Gnome. But if you do you can always just hop into a tty and `guix package --roll-back` to get back to a working build.

Maybe one day I'll migrate to Guix as a distro in itself rather than just a package manager within a foreign distro (Debian), but for now the setup works well, and it's also a nice way to get experience with Guix before diving into the deep end.

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#98

Post by hjek »

rixed wrote: post #88
qbasic_forever wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most things in software, it's ultimately just people and collaboration problems. I should be careful not to paint Debian in too bad of a light because ultimately it's what the people involved make it--good or bad. It's just that historically Debian enthusiasts have gravitated towards a lot of bad, old gatekeeping mindsets that have really made it difficult for the broader Linux community to grow. For example I t…

> For example I think back to all the drama with the early days of Ubuntu and how many in the Debian community were vehemently against the idea that someone make a distro that's easier for people to use. That is disingenuous. As much as I am annoyed by Debian gatekeeping, I am also gratefull that there still exist one Linux distribution that's serious about their users rights, aka software freedom, and that is able t…

> the last line of defense against appstores everywhere

Package management on Debian has started to look much like an app store (in a good way) with Gnome Software[0], just without all the non-free stuff.

[0]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Software

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#99

Post by vbernat »

ogig wrote: post #72

At page 3 there is apache2 with more than 300k installs. The maintainer stated no more interest[1]. This seems like low hanging fruit for a massive supply chain attack. [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=910917

The thread shows how supply chain attacks are difficult with Debian: random people cannot really contribute to something like Apache 2 because they need to be sponsored by a Debian developer and they are being asked to do "boring" stuff before that, like triaging bugs and fixing them.

The RFH is mostly here to get more people involved, by the maintenance of Apache2 in Debian is going well and the latest version is currently packaged: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apache2.

Re: Debian Packages That Need Lovin'

#100

Post by gautamcgoel »

loudmax wrote: post #66
piyh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a fairly competent Linux user and within 2 months had my Arch install broken to a point where I didn't want to invest the time to go down that "why is right click broken along with all these dependencies" rabbit hole. I went back to my mint/debian/Ubuntu safe space.

I installed Arch Linux on a ThinkPad in 2011 and it's literally running the same OS today, nearly 10 years later. I won't say I've never had anything break, but never anything major like audio or video or wifi. In my experience, Arch is one of the most stable OS's I've seen. But I suspect a lot of it has to do with what you're doing with it. First, ThinkPads are generally well supported in Linux. Also, I've never see…

I've been thinking about leaving Fedora and your comment intrigues me. Does Zoom work well with i3? Can you share your screen? Regarding PulseAudio, I didn't realize Linux users had a choice about whether to use it - is there an alternate audio subsystem available?
Post reply on HN