Look at the other areas, like software and hardware developing: bugs, incompatibility, integrity and consistency problems. Everything is developing with a so rapid pace, but are we ignorant enough to neglect our responsibility over it?

Man, informatics is SCIENCE, not some casual stuff! Are you blind not to see how much depends on it? Such carelessness can result in a ten times greater catastrophy than Hiroshima. In 10-20 years almost all knowledge of humanity will be stored in digital format. We might risk losing the whole history because of fad or business interests.

Yes. I’m talking about that you everyday people, home users, influence even the enterprise areas of IT by your computer habbits.

“I want to use the newest Gnome destop” – someone might say, but he/she is not qualified to understand the deeper aspects what such mentality result in. I don’t say that everyday people shouldn’t use computers, I say that they shouldn’t be involved in, and shouldn’t affect the CORE of the IT development. But today that happens, when a stable/conservative project like Debian depends on the aknowledgement of an unqualified and fad community, who has the only expectation to use some new transparent taskbars.

What if… I don’t know if there is any bank systems based on Debian, but let’s say there is. Now imagine that in the haste, project leaders yield to the pressure of the community and ship release that “too strict” beta testing. AND – thanks to a bug – YOUR family’s account vanishes.

Now you might say that’s a very unlikely example, but I hope you get the picture. Debian was made to be a reliable freeware server OS in the first hand, and it may not fit the needs of a home user. You don’t need to use it for your dekstop.

See, on the other hand, I wouldn’t be happy to see that my bank stores my account on a Windows based system.

Debian is one of the few perhaps only distro putting the free software ideology, stability and portability above marketing, ease-of-use and ‘innovation’. Accept this and move on…

Debian is about Free Software and will never ship non-free stuff by default.

Debian is about doing the right thing. If you want the latest and greatest Firefox use klik or backport it. Mozilla does not play that well with Debian Security.

Debian is not about a slick Desktop. Use Ubuntu!

The fortunate thing for Microsoft is that the buck stops somewhere. Imagine if all the distributions’ resources were concentrated into one distribution, it would be amazing, a single force which could make apps and package managment systems all work so much easier. this seems to be what you’re asking from debian. But alas the linux community is too diversified in terms of philosphies.

So if all religions were able to be integrated, which they are not on the basis of basic discrepancies, then how will it be done for the differing linux philosophies. One distro cannot be all to all, unfortunately. The upside is that if linux eventually conquers the desktop, it couldn’t be monopolized in the same manner as M$, because of this very thing and the gpl of course.

Lots of manufacturers will only have binary drivers for their hardware (at best), and that sort of thing goes against the very philosophy of Debian. That’s where other distros with a more “pragmatic” outlook come in to play. Also, the UI polishing and bugfixing that happens in distros like Ubuntu do return to Debian, because the patching occurs in the upstream application source.

Also, if you want to play with the newest software on Debian, try using testing instead of stable. A constant stream of updates, and they don’t usually break your computer (that’s what unstable is for).

Debian stable appeals to folks like me who use it to run servers, precisely /because/ the software isn’t constantly being updated. More frequent releases means more work for the security team; or, you force people to upgrade more often, which means more work for me.

Many people are genning their distro off Debian, but not returning the benefit back. They may think, so what if it’s an older stable release? I can take the newer alpha release, approve a bunch of junk my way, swap packages and the like, and re-release it as my own distro. That’s what Ubuntu has done.

To those who continue to do this to Debian, without returning enough back, I think it will backfire some day. The makers of Ubuntu will go back to the Debian site and it will say, “This site is down until further notice.” At that point, a lot of people will have to take a long, hard look at what has happened here.

There needs to be an incentive at the Debian commune. The builders need payments to excite them enough to quit their day jobs and focus on this full-time. Since selling Linux software is bad form, they’ll need to take the Mozilla model. That means a foundation, a tech support center, great marketing, a fantastic website, partnerships with other communities and companies, and bounties. At that point, they would be looking a lot like Ubuntu and Canonical.

Ubuntu and Canonical might as well just take over the Debian project, then.

I think it is a crime that all that Debian needed was a little love and GUI continuity. Your right, Debian is great, but it could be the greatest.

Debian fans, please try to understand, as you’re being defensive about your distro, we are expressing concern for it’s well-being. I have used and loved grml, Knoppix, and Damn Small; all of them based on Debian. Half of Linux depends on Debian, come to that. So we have dozens of distros getting to be the bride, and Debian brings up the rear as the bridesmaid. There’s something wrong with this picture, and pretending there isn’t doesn’t help.

Debian could care less about Open Source. Please take the time to study the difference between it and the Free Software Movement.