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On 30/08/13 17:42, Simon Waters wrote: > Version 1 syndrome? It is easy to fork Debian, create some newer > packages, and/or run a more lack view of copyright or freedom, and > have a distro. It is slightly more work to maintain it, and no where > near as much fun. So most distros end up trailing behind the Debian > they forked from. Debian tried to help that with PureBlends, not sure > how successful it was. Maybe if Debian had a release which would adopt > stuff quicker people might be more motivated to contribute there, but > it is a role mostly fulfilled by "testing" . Perhaps if we renamed > "testing" as "exciting" people would use it more, and worry less that > they don't understand the name, and it wouldn't be any worse than Arch > by the sounds of it. That's actually not a bad idea - people tend to shy away from Debian Testing as they presume it's going to be a dangerously unstable proving ground for new technology... whereas in actuality, it's still a very stable, conservative system. I've never had a Debian Testing distro completely collapse on me (although even I no longer try to maintain a Sid install as my main OS - I have done several times before, and although it's great fun, eventually Sid *will* turn around and bite you hard). Trust me, nothing in the Linux world is worse than Arch. I think I've probably admined every single distro out there by this point (except SparkyLinux apparently!), rolled my own LFS versions, the lot: faced with a Win8 box or an Arch one, I'd unhesitatingly jump on the windows machine, install cygwin, and be off and running seconds later. Hell, I'd rather use a Mac than an Arch system and that is really saying something. For fun I just googled "Arch sucks" and read through the first page of so of results - hugely amusing and highly recommended. Nearly every single one revolves around a horror story regarding updates killing systems without warning, and sensible people jumping ship to something sane. One guy even switched from Arch to OpenBSD *because it was easier*. Just let that sink in for a second... if you ever find yourself compiling -current from CVS on an OpenBSD machine thinking, "Ah, that's better", then whatever system you have just jumped from must have been truly, spectacularly awful. Regards PS: slightly disappointed that no Arch fans have jumped in to defend it - would be nice to hear something from the other side of the argument in the interest of fairness -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq