> > I think the answers to these questions are serious enough to decide > > whether Debian linux will grow or die. > > Actually, they are serious enough to decide if some number of people will > remove Debian from their systems and replace it with something else before > the Debian maintainers themselves become interested enough in these issues > to change them. Debian has reached the point where its growth does not hinge > upon technical features like the ones above so much as its user and > developer community.
I'd say the more immediate problem has to do with ease of initial installation and security issues. I'm still undecided as to which of RedHat or Debian to use on several machines currently running a hand-updated Slackware and I'm holding off because the filesystem layout, ndbm differences, etc. will make it difficult to switch later. There are several things I don't like about RedHat, but the install is a breeze and shadow password support happens with a single command (and most sites running INN had their non-shadowed password files mailed off to an attacker not long ago). So far I haven't gotten dselect to complete an install command over NFS without giving up with too many errors (but perhaps something is wrong with my mirrored copy) and I can't tell what you have to do to get shadow support built into everything that needs it. If I get past these problems and it isn't harder than maintaining Slackware by hand I can probably deal with anything else. Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
