The Problems Debian Is Facing In 2020

[Paul Frederick]

"Debian isn't pretty enough".

How pretty can a black terminal with white text get?

.

A black terminal with white text can get very pretty. It really is all in what font you select to use. Right now I am using urxvt -rv -fn "xft: Hack:style=Regular" and it is looking good to me. fixed turns me right off though. The fixed font takes me right out of the mood. A fixed font in a terminal is just like a cold shower. I mean what bundling board using puritan thought using fixed as the default was a bright idea? There's just no amore there at all!

[skeevy420]

They could even run stable with a newer kernel. But you'd have to know what you're doing to pull that off. That's the problem with Debian, you have to know what you're doing in order to use it successfully. Debian is not inclusive enough with ignorant people. That's a giant segment of users we're missing out on too. That's not a problem just Debian faces either. There's a lot of this you have to know what you're doing thing surrounding Linux in general. It's holding us back!

I never found I had that problem with Debian. Their documentation was good enough and the Arch Wiki was a good supplement so figuring out how to do A or B was no harder than figuring it out on any other OS. My problem with Debian, and this is coming from someone who used Debian for the first 8 years of my 19 on Linux, is that I could either pick Stable and have an outdated desktop that doesn't run games or pick Testing and have a somewhat stable desktop that's somewhat close to being up to date...but will then be out of date as soon as Debian gets close to a new release where I'd then be flooded with a bunch of updates and stability tanking until usually a reinstall.

Based on comments, the problems I had with Debian then are the same problems most seem to have with them now.

[Paul Frederick]

Debian Stable isn't intended for that use case. However, you can easily run Debian Testing. It's basically like Arch, but with six times the packages.

They could even run stable with a newer kernel. But you'd have to know what you're doing to pull that off. That's the problem with Debian, you have to know what you're doing in order to use it successfully. Debian is not inclusive enough with ignorant people. That's a giant segment of users we're missing out on too. That's not a problem just Debian faces either. There's a lot of this you have to know what you're doing thing surrounding Linux in general. It's holding us back!

[skeevy420]

Debian Stable isn't intended for that use case. However, you can easily run Debian Testing. It's basically like Arch, but with six times the packages.

No, no it isn't. They don't even compare.

[neuralgya]

I've been using Debian sid (unstable) in my desktops for years. Yes, sometimes some things get broken, but that's not usual. For me it's a small price for having a up-to-date distro. And having some skills with apt usually solves the issue.

Debian with KDE it's not ugly at all. GNOME is ugly.

But the main reason for me is having a universal OS for all.

- Desktop -> Debian sid+Liquorix Kernel+Deb multimedia packages.
- Server : Debian stables
- Rapberry Pi: Raspbian
- Old servers with IA64 architecture, Debian old old stable.

Added to this:

- You can repackage debs easily download the sources. (can change compilations flags and repackage)
- It's quite easy to make custom backports (Download sources from sid and repackage for buster)

[abcde]

Timely updated documentation would make much bigger impact than any statement regarding BLM which is completely unrelated to Debian project.

[SilverFox]

As much as i like debian, This last year i've found my way back to gentoo and absolutely love the freedom of the distro. If debian thinks it needs changing then they should in my opinion have two choices of distro, Server - Desktop, Instead of the one fits all model. With the release of debian 10 and secure boot, A lot of people simply dont know howto either disable both parts (bios + mok) or enroll there own key. This, while being good for security has exacerbated debians problem. People simply look at Ubuntu, fedora and think "It's got what i need" without the learning hassle.

If they want to keep debian as is then a complete overhaul of there website and wiki is going to required. Make it more user friendly, Approachable and intuitive, And yes i'm going to say it, More like Arch wiki. At present most replies for improvement from debian devs is "Why don't you do it" or "If it aint broke...."

[cen1]

Debian should just continue what they do best, provide a stable, server-focused distro.

[NateHubbard]

BLM ?

Mr Carter, do me a favour and stop virtue signalling from your moral grandstand.

I really fail to see how this is going help with distribution stability ?

At this point, it's a given that any sort of organization has to make a statement that they support Black Lives Matter, without anyone actually caring about whether or not anyone else lives or dies.

[david-nk]

"Debian isn't pretty enough".

How pretty can a black terminal with white text get?

This refers to the Debian desktop only. A different default system font would already go a long way. It's as if they intentionally chose the worst looking font/font size combination they could find, at least when I last installed Debian on a desktop computer, which was a few years ago.

The BLM thing was just an example for the slow processes that Debian sometimes faces.

It hardly matters, because it's not a valid example for a slow process. They couldn't have been "too slow" to put out a statement, because they never had any business putting out a statement in the first place. An open source software project like Debian has nothing to do with weird and convoluted American internal politics.