Debian Working To Modernize Its Website, Rolls Out New Homepage

[cliff]

The debian website is still a mess. For instance most people need firmware files in order to get their pc fully operational. But it's almost impossible to find the proper download page from the start page. e.g. https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...ding-firmware/

I concur!
Maybe two installers would be in order. One non-free where most things are installed and a non free where it just works and you can install steam with a click and not have to try and install third party graphics, network and audio card drivers and 32 bit architecture.
This is part of what I had to do last time I did a fresh install.
add main contrib non-free to repository
enable 32 bit architecture
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
install nvidia-detect and run from terminal, install recomended driver
install steam from debian repository
enable sound card spdif out alsamixer tab to spdif and press m to unmute
Then get my ten year old printer working and don't even get me started on getting my space mouse working.
Why the printer was not in the default printers is beyond me? They did have my old 9 pin printer that I threw in the trash 30 years ago though.

[Danielsan]

This is the peak of stupidity. Debian is an operating system distribution and not a community, no matter how people want to spin it. Why the hell should the front page be split between the distribution and the team?

I don't care about the people behind the Debian distribution and their stories as long as they are not discriminated against and deliver Debian releases as they are expected to.

For me Debian is a community around a project that is the OS, and this is the only reason why I use Debian. I don't care particularly about each individual life but I care about the idea of community and groups of people working together toward a common goal and good, based on respect and cooperation in the values of the free software as in freedom.

[jf33]

Yesterday I downloaded a legacy release of Debian. I clicked around on their website for several minutes. Then I gave up and just googled it. First hit was what I was looking for. I am missing a download page where *all* downloads are listed: Current release, LTS release, legacy releases, CD and DVD images, all architectures, torrent and direct download and hashes. That page should be easy to find (without google) with a maximum of two clicks from the home page.

[Templar82]

The Debian project's current website has arguably a rather dated look and feel

I believe they call it 'Stable'

[reavertm]

Gitlab has too rudimentary issue tracker to be used by any major Linux distribution internally, seeing how many custom workflows we have implemented in Gentoo in Bugzilla. Gitlab issue tracker is only suitable for "customer reports/requests" at best.

[zxy_thf]

I agree that their issue tracker is awful, but GitLab is just as unorganized in my daily experience with it. I like the idea behind GitLab, but it's too cluttered and unorganized for me, not to mention that my fans start spinning every time I open a GitLab page (GitHub does not suffer from the same issue).

sourcehut can be a good alternative to GitLab. It's still in alpha, but consider the time required to migrate the whole community I think it's viable to evaluate this solution right now.

[cmsigler]

Well, if I were them, I would spend more time improving the wiki

Why? Most every quick web search will lead to an ArchWiki article anyway (Or Gentoo Wiki)

[DKJones]

Hell just froze over.

[baryluk]

I agree that their issue tracker is awful, but GitLab is just as unorganized in my daily experience with it. I like the idea behind GitLab, but it's too cluttered and unorganized for me, not to mention that my fans start spinning every time I open a GitLab page (GitHub does not suffer from the same issue).

Just using GitLab would not work for Debian. I don't think GitLab can be setup to handle so many sub-projects, and make it organized, etc. It is fixable probably, but I don't think in the current state GitLab can replace BTS for Debian.

[Vistaus]

I'm actually feeling some nostalgia for the old design and am in a way sad to see it go. It was refreshingly simple and old school. Free of the cruft of the modern web (though the new page is not too bad with respect to this either).

That said, the usability was less than stellar (especially on mobile). On the whole, it probably needed a replacement. And as direx said above, the bug tracker is catastrophic.

I like old-school, cruft-free websites too, but there's old-school and old-school. Debian's website was okay, but not great. There are far better old-school websites (still) around.