On Monday, August 10, 2015 07:32:40 PM Steve Litt wrote:
> Hi golinux,
>
> I base this reply on the assumption that the idea of a base
> system is relevant only to the initial install, and that Debian would
> certainly continue to have packages for xorg, Xfce, LXDE, Openbox,
> *box, Windowmaker, IceWM, and of course, for those who like to boot
> straight to GUI, lightdm.

Yes that is exactly what I meant, Steve. I'm just looking at the standpoint
of rather than trying to work on the entire repository at once, that the world
could be done in sections.

I personally think that Devuan *should* be done differently that Debian, and
segregated up into smaller divisions, with a more specific focus for each: KDE,
XFCE, mailserver, webserver - whatever. Special teams could provide a really
quality experience for each by having a user/task oriented focus rather than
the hodge-podge that is Debian. Rather than providing 20 options for each
thing, I would rather see 5 options that work out of the box without my having
to muck about for 2-3 days to get everything working together.

Debian tries to do everything and be everything. As a result, they seldom do
any one thing very well. Many times I have to tweak something just so it
behaves properly.

To me at least, the end goal with software is not a "bazaar" approach with
dozens of choices, only half maintained. It is to take a few things and refine
them so that they are useful to a task: stable and ubiquitous, and more
valuable as whole. Software is a tool, not an end to itself.

Take KDE4 is an example. The desktop is nice, but each iteration still has
longstanding Plasma bugs as they add new features. I would rather see them
fix what is broken on their DE first: Kmail, etc before going out of their way
to create a new version of Plasma - in this case Plasma 5 - with an entirely
new set of problems.



>
> If my assumption is correct, the only way making the base install tiny
> affects you is that you do the following instead of one big install:
>
> * base install
> * apt-get install xorg
> * apt-get install xterm (if not installed by xorg)
> * apt-get install Xfce (or whatever)
> * apt-get install lightdm

In this, we agree wholeheartedly. Building in layers rather than just one big
slop means that you can test each carefully, and do a much better job.