Firefox and gnome dependencies

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Abdullah Ramazanoglu">

> Maybe a stupid question: Is there a resource or link explaining the
> rationale behind maintaining separate archives instead of just tapping
> into Debian's? I guess some packages may need Ubuntuification, and some
> others not in Debian may be needed separately (for which a small separate
> archive would suffice), but a huge number of them could just as well be
> used from Debian repositories and we wouldn't suffer from heavy
> Gnomeification and wasted man hours to maintain a clone repository. What
> am I missing here?

Some of it is explained here:

  http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/relationship

Essentially, it comes down to the fact that Ubuntu is a rapid release branch
of Debian, with differing goals on occasion. For instance, we have KDE 3.4,
Xorg, GNOME 2.10, and many other crucial changes to the underlying platform.
Given all of that, which Debian repository would we point to? Sid? It is in
a permanent state of flux. Sarge? It is not stable or released. Woody? It is
a little bit old in the tooth. :-) The major reason why we have our own repo
is so we can make our own choices with regard to platform changes and
release management.

- Jeff

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linux.conf.au 2005: April 18th-23rd                    http://linux.conf.au/
 
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