>One of the reasons I chose Mepis is because of
> it's Debian based, non-commercial nature.
The main question that comes up for me is why create all these Debian-based
open-sourced distros? Why not just work toward improving Debian itself? I
think the answer is because it seems that working within the Debian project
structure is stifling for very productive/innovative people like Warren and
Klaus that don't want to be tied to just maintaining one or two packages.
The distributions we've been discussing, Mepis and Knoppix, have the
commonality that they are KDE-based, user-friendly, Live-CD (with potential
hard disk install) distros that use the apt repository to update/retrieve new
software. And somehow in the web of thought that is Gnu/Linux, this is
somehow in present convergence with Perens' notions of the need for a
fool-proof corporate linux desktop (thus his Gnome-based UserLinux). But
Debian is currently working hard at making a KDE-based UserLinux version.
Lots of fractious behavior going on, but I think it's good and I think it's
heading somewhere. That would be toward a bunch of small GPL'd distros (like
Knoppix, Mepis, and whatever comes next) or larger (like Debian) that
leverage the apt repository/server infrastructure (which is in essence the
open-source community for download), but that implement different desktops
(Gnome, KDE, Enlightnmn't, etc.), and serve a different target user
(corporate desktop users, home users, linux enthusiasts, etc.). Where does
RPM fit into all this? It doesn't; it's too much work maintaining all those
packages for all those different commercial distros. If Suse/Red Hat
Enterprise want to do all that work to control their releases, fine, but it
adds no value to their distros, but is a convenient way to keep proprietary
code (like Suse's Yast) in it's own distribution channel while still making
some selected open source available to users. If they make RPM a wrapper for
both their proprietary channel and for the regular apt repository, that keep
them from having to make so many self-packaged RPMs of most of the stuff in
apt. One thing I'd like to see is more integration of the Debtoo project
into Debian where one could choose on the fly to either download a binary deb
or compile an optimized package, learning as much as possible from Gentoo's
experience. Sorry for the rambling. -Eric
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked
Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages
posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 19:56:37 EDT