oneline article: "Debian Alliance on The Horizon"

[Ed Cogburn]

John wrote:

> Ed Cogburn wrote:
>> John wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>Ed Cogburn wrote:
>>>
>>>Warty to Hoary. Possibly, installing KDE in the middle confounded
>>>things, but I think it _should_ have worked.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Trust me, when you're doing a dist-upgrade, *nothing* is assured.  :)
> 
> So I'm learning. None of the Debianista will admit that of course:-\


Sigh, it seems every distro has a few fanatics that do more harm than good. 
Honestly, while these guys keep going on about apt-get, I don't see how
anyone could really use Debian/Ubuntu without something like aptitude or
synaptic in a desktop environment (read: changes on a regular basis).


>>>Considering its parentage it works remarkably well. I do have regular
>>>problem with the desktop locking for a few seconds when I select text;
>>>that happened in Sarge too.
>>>
>>>Also the mouse goes funny at times: I can move the cursor but clicks
>>>don't register and the cursor doesn't change. Ususlly, it comes good
>>>when I navigate around the screens and close some windows. That happened
>>>in Sarge too.
>> 
>> Never saw these two myself (I was using Sarge when it was still unstable)
>> but they both sound like some problem with your mouse or its driver.
> 
> Hm. For sure I've had the problem with USB Logitech and a3tech meese.
> Odds are good that it also happened with a Microsoft intellimouse (with
> a ball, not optical).


I've got a black Logitech-branded USB optical mouse that identifies itself
as an "Areson Wheel Mouse".  Works fine for me, both gpm and Xorg are happy
with it, and no freezes.  

I really have to use something like it because most mice if connected to the
back of my machine don't have enough slack to reach where I want them on
the desk.  With a USB mouse, I can connect it using one of the front USB
connectors on my machine and place it anywhere on my desktop area.

Besides, I'll only touch an optical mouse now, no more cleaning ball mice
for me, no sir!  :)


> I have boxes of used keyboards and mice: I'm likely to use anything that
> comes to hand on occasion.


Not me.  I'm very particular.  Especially keyboards.  If it isn't based on
the old legendary Northgate OmniKey design, I'm simply not interested. 
Call me a curmudgeon, I don't care, but I still think God intended the
function keys to be on the left!  :D


> For some time I've used an IBM USB keyboard that came with a Netvista:
> it has a hole for a PS/2 mouse (which makes said mouse hot-pluggable).
> I'm pretty sure I've had Microsoft and IBM mice in there.
> 
> Sometimes, I have two mice (like right now).


Now that I've never tried, you got me there.  Ambidextrous?!?


>>>I think it's time for the KDE folk to settle down to some refinement,
>>>particularly of the core elements. It performs very poorly in 256 Mbytes
>>>of RAM, and not brilliantly in 512.
>> 
>> What concerns me is they aren't stopping at all.  3.5 will be the last
>> version of KDE as we know it, and 4.0 will reinvent several wheels all
>> over again (complete rewrite of desktop/panel/taskbar interaction called
>> "Plasma").  Ok, granted, they're using the switch to Qt4 as the excuse
>> for this, but still, it means lots of new code and lots of new bugs, on
>> *top*
>> of the new bugs introduced by Qt4.  :(  Obviously, 3.4 works for most of
>> the devs, but unfortunately its never been quite stable for me (KControl
>> hasn't worked since 3.3, and Konqueror is now very fragile), and now the
>> devs are moving to KDE4.  Sigh.
> 
> It's true that something in KDE sometimes crashes, (Gnome too for that
> matter), but I don't recall any KDE or Gnome app taking anything else
> out; the dist-upgrade did mean that the desktop had to be restarted but
> that's different.


Same here, but I distinctly remember a *stable* KDE in the past, where
something might occasionally crash but not frequently.  Was it a dream? 
Right now I'm getting frequent (multiple times per day frequent) crashes
from Konq and Knode, and KControl doesn't work at all, artsd/amarok flips
out often when my CPU changes speed, and kate sometimes crashes on the file
open dialog.  I'm tellin' ya, its enough to make a believer go back to just
(x)emacs(*), mc, lynx and mutt!  :)

(*) I'm not exactly a fan of the emacs God, but with all the important
keystrokes mapped to easier-to-remember one-stroke function keys, and a
better buffer manager, it does become somewhat bearable.  It still has the
best (smartest) syntax highlighting mechanism I've seen yet, and that
comparison includes kate and kdevelop.


> In retrospect, something like Ubuntu had to happen. There was enough
> dissension within the Debian ranks that there had to be a significant
> body of people willing to "leave" (I can't think of a better word atm),
> to do something more aligned to what the users want. The surprising
> thing about it to me is that those developers who have followed another
> path appear to remain committed to Debian.


Well, many of those developer's aren't interested in "end-users" anyway (or
anyone concerned with using Debian as an end-user would, i.e. a desktop
environment),  they are the ones who are first to espouse the "Hey, there's
always Ubuntu, send the lusers to them!" mentality (not realizing that
among those "lusers" is the next generation of Debian-for-the-Desktop
developers) .  As long as that mentality remains, along with the
server-side dominance, among the DD's, Ubuntu will continue to reap the
rewards, even as the Debianista's keep griping about Ubuntu's existence,
completely oblivious to the fact that they themselves made something like
Ubuntu an inevitability.


> It seems to me that for a DD joining the Ubuntu team, it's like getting
> a new job: all the excitement is for the future. I'm sure that Mark's
> commitment to contributing to the Debian project helps, both in getting
> DDs to work on his project, and keeping focus on putting back.


Right now, anyone seriously wanting to work on a Debian for the desktop now
has a choice:  Debian, where that idea is not exactly accepted
enthusiastically, or Ubuntu, where that idea is the real name of the game. 
The choice for most (and their consequences to Debian) are fairly obvious.