Debian flamewar (was: Hello?)

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Fri, 2002-08-09 at 15:24, Ed Lawson wrote:
> bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
> 
> >  
> >
> > I wish the Debian community would stop acting
> >like Debian is God's Gift to Linux!
> >
> >
> >  
> >
> It is of course with some trepidation that I respond, but upon reading 
> my post I am unable to discern what language therein could lead a person 
> to reasonably conclude that I have espoused or acted in a manner which 
> suggests "Debian is God's Gift to Linux".  Or even that it is better to 
> anything else.
> While these are doubltless not the last words to be seen on the topic, 
> they are my last words.
> 
> Ed Lawson
> Said in good humor

  Okay, so it's said in good humor.  But I see exactly what Ben was
talking about.  What you posted was a fix for a vulnerability in mailman
that was back-ported by the Debian team and released as part of a
security advisory.  In that message you proclaimed that this was another
reason to like Debian.

  Ben's point, I believe, is that it is a bit strange to proclaim as a
reason to like Debian, something that not only is not unique to it, but,
according to the example you gave, an area where it fell short -- the
fix was released two month's after another popular distribution's fix
for the same problem.

  Several months ago, I set up my brother-in-law with a dual boot
Windows 2000 / Red Hat 7.2 system at home.  He works for HP as a VMS
principle firmware developer.  He has an ia64 system at his office at
work with Red Hat 7.1 (which is what he use for some VMS development). 
Just a few days ago, he was having trouble figuring out how to download,
install, and configure wu-ftpd.  After hours of research, he gave up and
finally sent me some email.  Here is a quote from him as someone who
hasn't had all that much exposure to Linux:


"...All I can find are tiny bits and pieces of information here and
there, some of it conflicting. And then there are the Debian zealots.
Oy! What's got into them?"

  No initial biases, just some personal experience.

  Your message would have been much more effective and kept the focus on
the discussion about mailman without the uncalled for Debian comment.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets