The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.

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Re: Can I interest anyone in RPM?



Hello Bruce,

Let me first say that I have done with Debian that is not possible
with other packaging systems.  I work as assistant system
administrator in the CS Dept. of a local University.  There, we are
moving from Sun machines to Linux machines, in particular, Debian
machines.

Recently, I set up a lab of Linux PCs.  Each PC was to be configured
identically.  With Debian, this is very easy.  I set up one PC, ran
dpkg --get-selections "*" > /mnt/selections or so, and am ready to
install the rest of the PCs with the same configruation.

Additionally, I built a few local packages that are used to actually
set some config files.  It sets the xbanner used for the login screen,
the window manager system.fvwm2rc file, etc.  So, from the Win95 that
the computer ships with to a fully-configured Debian machine, it takes
about 20 minutes.

Another thing I like is Debian's source code format.  RedHat really
has none.  They just throw the stuff into an RPM and call it good.
(Basically, a large collection of diffs, tar files, etc. that the user
must assemble manually.)

Debian has a tremendous strength in the .deb format.  So what if
RedHat doesn't use it.  Slackware doesn't use RPMs either.  We support
RPMs.  They can get our package manager to support debs.  That should
be enough.

With utilities like deb-make, it is very easy to build a package.  The
diversion system is first-rate (that is how I was able to build local
packages containing some system configurations).  We have a nice
conffile mechanism.  I personally really like dselect -- I don't
understand the problems some have with it.  (OK, so it is not as easy
to learn as RedHat's manager, but it is much more powerful.)  

Bruce Perens <bruce@debian.org> writes:

> I think we should at least explore the issue of using RPM/GLINT, etc.,
> as it's now become the clear standard packaging system for Linux - we
> are almost the only holdout. I know it's not as powerful as

Why is this a problem?

SlackWare still uses tgz's, to my knowledge.  FreeBSD, another OS with
their own packaging system, doesn't use RPMs either.

> dpkg/dselect, but it's powerful enough to get along and we can add what we
> need. We aren't really getting anywhere by going in our own direction,
> away from every other Linux, writing new software to duplicate what already
> exists.

But debs have functionality that RPMs do not.  I should think that
trying to add our features to RPMs would be writing new software to
duplicate what already exists.

> 
> The last time I brought this up, perhaps a year ago, it started an
> awful flame-war. This time I'd like all of the developers to seriously
> consider it.
> 
> I don't think Debian is its packaging system. Debian is the open development
> paradigm, the volunteers, and the committment to free software. What we use
> to package that software is irrelevant.
> 
> 	Thanks
> 
> 	Bruce
> -- 
> Can you get your operating system fixed when you need it?
> Linux - the supportable operating system. http://www.debian.org/support.html
> Bruce Perens K6BP   bruce@debian.org   NEW PHONE NUMBER: 510-620-3502
> 
> 
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-- 
John Goerzen          | Running Debian GNU/Linux (www.debian.org)
Custom Programming    | Debian GNU/Linux is a free replacement for
jgoerzen@complete.org | DOS/Windows -- check it out at www.debian.org.
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