On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 07:16:25PM +0200, Michael Bütow wrote:
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> +1 for not changing the defaults at this time.
>
> I feel this could start a multitude of little holy wars (editor, mta,
> etc.) which we don't need right now that the first goal - "Debian, but
> without systemd" - is within grasp.
>
> Expert users can adapt from the Debian defaults to do what they need.
> I'd find it more valuable to have commonality with Debian here that
> sysadmins can automate customisation on both with the least amount of
> difference.

After reading this entire thread so far, here's my take. I agree with
the above. The initial goal of devuan as I understand was debian
jessie without systemd. I think we should stick to that goal which is
ambitious enough for devuan 1.0.

As for defaults, I'd say leave the editor and MTA as is. I use mostly
emacs-nox, but also do use vim-tiny at times as well. Having
said that, I've gotten used to having nano as part of a fresh install,
and have learned to work with well enough until I get to the point
where I install whatever editor I want. Also, I do believe that nano
is newby-friendly. Those of us who are more advanced and don't want
nano should also be advanced enough to replace it with whatever we want
.

As for the MTA, I usually replace exim with postfix if I want to do
advanced things, but configure exim to send through a smarthost if
that's all I need.

Finally, I would propose modifying the installer for releases of
devuan beyond 1.0 to ask the user what they want as default. Somewhere
in the "select and install software" section ask the user "select
default editor to install," or "select default mail transport agent to
install," followed by a list of what is available. If the user doesn't
know what to choose, just install nano and exim4. We can extend this
methodology to any other section where there are multiple choices. If
we want to give users choice, I think this is the optimal way to do it!
For those who don't want to go through picking all this software, and
just want an install with the defaults, they can set debconf priority
above a certain level, and avoid all those questions. Just my $0.01
worth.

Greg


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