Rev for Linux (was Re: iPadding around?)

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 03/02/2010 01:34, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
> The way you do Debian is, you stick with Stable, just getting the security
> and occasional really major application updates, for around 2 years.  This
> is done with
>
>       apt-get update
>       apt-get upgrade
>
> I do this every few months, and you get the base system and also the
> packages updated.  Also the packages, notice.  Warren Woodford noticed this
> with some surprise a bit ago, when Mepis moved.
>
> Then, when what is now Testing becomes the new Stable, you upgrade the
> distribution as a whole
>
>       apt-get update
>       apt-get dist-upgrade
>
> You do this every couple of years.
>
> Debian is very different from Ubuntu.  They both use apt for package
> management, they both are based on the base Debian packages.  But take a
> look at exactly what gets updated, when and how, and where it comes from.
> There was a reason why Mepis left Ubuntu and went back to Debian.  Find out
> about it.  I'm not just fulminating.  Or connipting either!
>    
An awful lot of the Distro world looks a bit like Bulgarian politics to 
me; lots of
hairy-chestedness.

Our whole 'disagreement', if that is really what it is, revolves around 
our attitude to
updating; and they are rather different because we  live and work in 
different worlds:
yours is much more 'computery' than mine is; mine largely consists of 
static machines
in my school running one particular type of RR standalone, and a dozen 
or so other people
who use their machines as glorified typewriters and internet exploration 
devices.

Ubuntu serves my 'world'; I am not for the life of me going to suggest 
it serves yours

[Surely that is the super thing about Linux - it is rather like 
Hinduism; something for
every one, rather than a monolithic system that crushes all in its path.]

I do think that things would be easier for RunRev and us (that means 
Thee and Me)
if we knew which 'strains', 'genotypes', 'types' of Linux the RR linux 
release worked on
before, say, installing a distro on 75 machines and then finding our 
standalone
will not deploy successfully.

> The idea some people advocate here, that Rev should somehow standardize on
> Ubuntu, or that the world should for that matter, is a misunderstanding of
> Linux, and its also just plain wrong about the standing of Ubuntu as a
> distribution.
>    
Cough, cough, cough . . .

I would not advocate that RunRev be standardised "on Ubuntu", but I 
would suggest
that a list of distros that the product is known to work on be supplied 
'on the packet'
of RR for Linux. While Linux distros are, to a certain extent, 
ephemeral, beyond
the 'mother-ships' such as Debian rather than listing: " works on 
Bloblinux, Sloblinux,
Floblinux . . . Uncle-Tom-Cobbley-linux' it would be sensible to put 
something of
the sort:

"Tested on Debian and major Debian derivatives."

Richmond.