I don't know if it's dying, but it does need some internal restructuring for certain. Hopefully this conflict will bring about a catalyst for positive change within the distribution's primary contributors. It worries me to think about Ubuntu carrying on the legacy of Debian, since the Ubuntu team has made such strange decisions in regards to the security of their distro.
I wish Ubuntu would become more of a proper Linux distro rather than a GNOME suck up. By that I mean that they tend to oversimplify things at the expense of good functionality. It's not bad, but get a few issues of "assuming your user is an idiot" sorted out and its very good.
I have great respect for debian but if they can't get it together then let them die. It has become too political and polarized to go on as it is. This is another reason why BSD style core development is better than the 'melting pot' that is debian. :chk: Sorry, had to say it.
I'm not ready to give up on one of the oldest and most etablished existing Linux distros just yet, especially one who has spawned as many successful forks as Debian. FYI megamaced, *ubuntu is still heavily dependant on Deb for upstream packages. They still do relatively little development of their own. If Debian tanks right now, *ubuntu (and any forks thereof) would be in pretty rough shape for some time. Also, I am currently running Etch, and I can say that I am receiving quality updates on a very regular basis, and the distro seems to be right on track for release. I hope they can get the political stuff sorted out in a timely manner and with a permanent solution, as Debian is one of the best distros out there. The OS functions beautifully, and the community should also. All it may take is for a developer or two to rally the troops around a common set of goals, and Debian could be stronger and more unified than it's ever been.
I can't see debian sinking overnight but it is in some troubled waters right now. It sounds to me like the developers can't work in a fully democratic environment. Democracy is good and if your opinions are out-voted then sit down and shut-up don't rant on about how you are right. With democracy the developers are just going to need to deal with what the majority rules and move on. Maybe then they can get somewhere and not be a bunch of screaming babies. Another problem is the goals of debian. I think that refining and reducing the overall set of goals would make the project more streamlined. For instance ubuntu has a small, succinct set of goals and achieves those goals regularly. Focus is needed. EG: is debian for servers? is it for desktops? is it for grandma? is it for you? is it for them? so on... What is it, who is to use it, why are we developing it, how do we achieve those goals? Just a thought.
One of the strengths of debian IMO is that it isn't soley targeted at grandma, or the sysadmin. I can run a debian web server, yet also run it as my desktop OS. It's suitable for both purposes equally.
True, a shorter and more direct list of goals would go a long way to solidifying the core developers and indeed the entire Debian community. In fact, that's exactly what I'm hoping will materialize as a result of this nasty problem with the governing body. If the new mission plan is elegant enough, Deb could conceivably come out of this mess healthier than it was beforehand. And if Debian's goals were simply to be as flexible, powerful and free as possible, I'd say they were already doing very well to live up to them. A side note to naysayers: remember Mozilla. Everybody thought they were dead, then Firefox came along... It wasn't originally called "Firebird" for nothing. So while Debian may not survive intact (if there was a serious enough problem, I would expect at least one major fork; not many of the core devlopers totally agree with the Ubuntu way of thinking), it's not at all inconceivable.
I'm sure Debian isn't going away completely. Forking could be a good solution to the core problem. Maybe something like desktop deb, server deb, embedded deb, freedom deb (for the unwashed) and so on. Being a jack of all trades and master of none doesn't seem to be working for debian. Ubuntu, Mepis and others are doing the legwork for creating a good desktop OS with debian core.
Debian makes a fantastic desktop OS, for a power-user. The only real difference between Deb and *ubuntu on the desktop is that Ubuntu gives you zero options about the specifics of the initial installation, and Debian gives you 100. I don't like Ubuntu because it gets in my way and it has a really stupid sudoers implementation (yeah, I can't say enough bad things about that). Otherwise, it's basically just Debian. That leads me to another point... I wonder how Ubuntu will do in terms of quality and timeliness when they are totally isolated from Debian? Right now, they are simply repackaging mainstream Debian packages with a stripped down installer and calling it Ubuntu. An oversimplification, but not at all untrue.
Right, I'm not saying that it's a bad desktop OS. "Desktop OS" means a different thing to everybody and I was refering to 'desktop' as an approachable, easy to use OS for the majority of people. I think that freeBSD makes a good desktop for myself but I would not recommend it for everybody, just as I wouldn't with debian. There are plenty of good desktop OSen based on debian that don't use sudo. I doubt that ubuntu would do well if debian vanished. Maybe they have the resources to handle things on their own but I doubt it.
I don't expect Debian to be extremely mainstream-marketable in terms of the "look, Grandma installed it by herself" factor. I think Ubuntu does pretty well to fill that need. But it's nice to have a powerful, mature distribution that's available also, for those of us who don't necessarily want grandma's OS. ***Nudges at kenji san's BSD desktop***
I think if SuSe can work a few issues out, they've got a fantastic Debian distro. The setup is pretty intuitive, but let's you choose a n00b setup if you want, meaning it will use a predefined package list for you. I believe Mandrake had something along similar lines last time I played with it, and I assume that was rolled over into Mandriva (haven't played with that yet).
Actually, Suse is an early Slackware-based distro. See here: http://www.kde-look.org/content/files/44218-linuxdistrotimeline-6.9.png Suse has also chosen to use the RPM package format, a heritage of Red Hat.
Interesting. I'd simply understood SuSe was a Debian distro, but I guess that source was wrong (I thought I'd seen it in some Linux mag). That's a great visual link.
