2007-03-20 23:13:40
By Tim Brown
There have been lots of muttering recently regarding Debian, mostly writing it off. As a new Debian maintainer, going through the process (albeit as a user of Debian for over 7 years). I have considered whether I still find Debian satisfying?
There's no doubt that had I started out today I'd probably run Gentoo, but the old maxim of, if it aint broke don't fix it applies, and despite everything Debian still works for me. Having said that, Gentoo and to a greater degree Ubuntu, scare me. Technically, they're both very good. Why wouldn't they be, one develops the tried and tested concepts of BSD ports and the other Debian itself.
Well for me, it's about the ages of the communities. Neither of these distributions are steeped in FOSS quite like Debian and thus neither are as well equipped to protect it. They want the newest toys now, and they aren't fussy what they give up to get them. For me, in order to Debian to remain a worthwhile project it has to engage with others, to educate new users (no matter what distribution), to ensure those principles remain intact. I don't want a Debian that changes to follow the latest trends, I want the same tried and tested Debian I started off with 7 or more years ago.
I can't vote in the curremnt DPL elections, but I hope we end up with someone who understands it's no use pleasing the newbies, if you end up pissing off the old school hackers who actively contribute. Or to put it another way, keep the learning curve, keep helping users progress along it.
Mood: Sleepy
Music: Nothing playing right now
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