[CLUE-Tech] Arch Linux: Thumbs Up!

[Matt Gushee]

On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 04:09:51AM -0600, Nate Duehr wrote:

> > Secondly, I know about Debian's packaging system; it was one of the
> > major reasons I switched from RedHat to Debian 3 years ago. And it's one
> > of the major reasons I've gotten tired of Debian. See, I couldn't use
> > apt-get anymore, because every time I tried it would propose to remove
> > 91 packages. It wouldn't tell me which ones or why, and there didn't
> > seem to be any way to prevent the packages from being
> > deleted--positively Kafkaesque.
> 
> If you were running "stable" this is damn near impossible.  So you have to 
> preface the story by stating that you were CHOOSING to run the unstable 
> branch,

You're shouting, and your assumption is incorrect. I thought I said at
some point I was using Woody, AKA Stable. If not, well, I was.
However, I also used some packages from outside of Woody: in a few cases
I overrode dependencies, in most I built source packages--mostly from
Testing, a few from Unstable. So probably that was what caused the issue
with apt. But you know what? I don't care, because I've chosen another
path. Isn't that one of the great things about Linux--that we *can* make
those choices? May the best distributions win.

You also appear to incorrectly assume that I'm not inclined to take the
time to learn or to contribute to the community (if I'm misreading your
argument, I apologize). I won't belabor the point, but I have
contributed in my way: I've posted various tips on the Web, developed a
few small applications, and spent significant time on mailing lists
trying to help out new users--and I have spent *a lot* of time reading
documentation.  Could I do more? Sure, almost any of us could. But I
don't want my whole life to be about Linux. Does that mean I'm not
allowed to use Linux, or have opinions about it? Should I switch to
MacOS/X?

Anyway, I decided that Debian was no longer right for me. I was *not*
trying to say "You should not use Debian"--I'll let RMS handle the
You-should-nots. My main point was, hey, here's an alternative; here's
why I like it; maybe some of you will also find it worthwhile.

Isn't it self-evident that as a system (any system, including a Linux
distribution) becomes more complex, the effort required to use it
effectively (and by extension, the effort required to contribute to its
improvement) and the potential for failures both increase? That doesn't
mean Debian (or any other distribution) is objectively *bad*, just that
there's a tradeoff--and I decided that many of Debian's features weren't
very important to me, but its complexity was getting in the way of my
using the system in the way that I wanted to. That's not an issue of
this bug or that bug, it's a matter of design, and the suitability of
the design for a particular user.

I'm not going to say any more on this topic on this list. I think you
have raised some important points about the relationship between open
source software and its users/developers, points that I've been thinking
about a great deal. But it's getting off-topic, and my thoughts are (a)
not fully-formed, and (b) not very comfortable in an e-mail format. If I
can overcome my writer's block, I'm going to make it an essay.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Haven Rock Press            Horses bear manure through
Englewood, Colorado, USA        its fields;   
books at havenrock.com         When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)