Debian flamewar (was: OpenOffice doc...)

[Benjamin Scott]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005, at 6:38am, neil at jenandneil.com wrote:
> It was a small comment that I didn't expect would incite such a banter,
> but let me throw a few words of explanation through here at least to try
> and settle the water.

  Hah!  You didn't expect a calm, reasoned approach to actually stop a good
flamewar, did you?  :-)

> The single-large repository part is what's important.  It takes a little
> longer to unify configuration ...

  No, it takes a **LOT** longer.  If the number of components in a
Configuration Management scenario is N, then the number of potential
interactions is (N^2)-N.  Think about that for a minute.

  Now, my original language is perhaps imprecise.  It's not so much the
single large repository, but the fact that the Debian project keeps trying
to get the *entire thing* tested for release *simultaneously*.  That's just
not feasible.

  It would make a *lot* more sense to get some kind of "base system"  
configured, tested, and released first.  Then the people working on the base
system could move on to hacking on the next release, while the people
responsible for things like X11 or whatever could get *their* stuff
configured and tested based on the stable base.  Followed by GNOME and/or
KDE.  And so on.  Build up.  You'd still have the large repository, but at
least there'd be a hope in hell of keeping it moving.  Right now Debian is
trying to perform synchronized cathedral building.

> As for the manageable chunks, I think the Debian offshoots are best at
> that.

  As soon as you switch to a "spin-off", you lose the benefit of the huge
Debian repository.

> Once more, servers don't need the latest greatest KDE and Gnome ...

  No, but it would be nice if they could install.  At this point in time,
the current stable is so badly out-of-date that I can't even depend on it to
see most of the mass storage devices I work with.

>  Sarge will be out soon and magically, those will be available.

  Yah, I get that a lot every time I try Debian.  "The next release will be
out Real Soon Now."  I believe that like I believe Red Hat claiming their QA
process eliminates most of the major bugs prior to release.

> And as for non-servers, just use Testing.  It's stable enough for any
> desktop.

  Further evidence that Debian zealots lack any concept of Configuration
Management.  :-)

  In the world I work in, "just use testing/unstable/etc." is not an
acceptable answer.  I like to say that CM is basically taking the aphorism
"Better the devil you know" and turning it into a science.  When you're
deploying tens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers, you need to be
able to keep track of what is where, and when.  If don't have a consistent
picture of what the configuration is (or was), support is an absolute
horror.  I think it's actually one of the levels of Dante's Inferno.

  And sure, there's nothing to keep me from performing my own CM on top of
testing or unstable or whatever.  But, of course, that really raises the
question: Isn't that what a distribution is for?

> I don't use dpkg enough to compare to rpm for speed, but I generally find
> apt far faster than yum.

  I could believe that.  It has been while, but from what I recall, while
APT wasn't a speed demon, it did seem a lot faster then I find yum now.

> And apt-source is an awesome source management tool.

  Hmmm, I don't think that existed the last time I looked.  Hmmmm, I can't
seem to find info on it now, in an admittedly very cursory search.  Got a
link?

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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