Once again we see one of those arrogant pro-Debian articles hailing a trivial piece of software (apt-get: holy ghost what is so difficult into querrying a database and doing transitive completion on dependencies?) as if it were a turnaround in the history of humankind and telling to 95% of Linux users they should bend to the wishes of a mere 5%. This precisely when dpkg's own authors no longer claim superiority.
Let's now take a look at Debian's history and what it has done for Linux. So Debian was started in 1993 and during four long years while young Linux struggled for survival the Debian people did nothing to help it gain critical mass: they were far too busy polishing their little distro in their little but well heated universities and to hell with Linux. Were it not for Yggdrasil, Slackware, RedHat and Suse, Linux would now be dead. In the same period while the first Linuxers were desperate enough to read sendmail's source in order to get the damned thing working the Debian people were caring only about adding a 99th web server to their little distro and to hell with users. And then when late 1996 the 9th wonder of the world was finally released it was found it had one of the worst intallers ever made and one completely unadequate for converting new people to Linux.
Now I know the objection: "it is good enough for me". Well Debian does not present problems for ME (after surviving to MVS no Linux distro can put much of a fight) but I have a dream, I have a dream where no person are held in software jails. But if we want Linux thrive we have to account for people whose job is NOT IT so they have little time and patience for reading HOWTOs or struggling installers. We have to account for people who have to self-teach (that is 99% of personal users) and thay are in the same situation than a baby who has to cross a jungle: not armed enough to face dangers and that is why decent installers, config tools and general userfriendliness are not toys for untermenchen but crucial tools for bringing to Linux those who have to walk the "blood, toils, sweet and tears" road. Hostile installers and editor-based configuirators are all nice and well when user has had a nice system adminitrator for fixing problems like in Universities but is it that what we want for Linux future? A chic club for those who have gone to University while the poor will have to pay the Microsfty tax? I don't and is that why I cannot but loath Debian.
However the worst in Debian is the image it gives about Linux with its users ever at the throats of other distros, so brainwashed they cannot question whatever there is in Debian (like the shitty installer), how they turn their eyes away when there is an embarassing bug (like the module problem who made NFS installations possible, then that Debian was relabelled beta in order to preserve Debian's image) or an embrarassing policy (like dropping security maintenance of old version a mere two months after release of new version) and that arrogance and quickness to dismiss as unmanly everything who makes Linux a bit easier to use. Like if be that reading all the HOWTOs is the highest thing you can do with Linux and that say a nuclear theorist should spend his time memorizing them to be considered a "real man" (TM). So due to the lack of concern about people, about Linux future I cannot but find Debian's project as something basically egoistic and immoral (let us happy few use Linux and too bad for rest of humankind) and for the image it gives about Linux I think Debian is a bad thing for Linux.
There was a positive thing in Debian: the idea that we need a comunity-ùmade distro, one who is not subject to temptations of commercial distros like demagogics or caring only about the markets who make money. And presently the problem is that only the server makes money so commercial distros who don't concentrate on the server are in great financial danger. People say that if Mandrake or Suse closed shop, if Redhat were bought (don't fail to reread the joyful reactions of Debian people whenever we have had news hinting at such possibilities) we still would have Debian but do you think it is with Debian that Linux could be anything but a small and endangered niche, that we could liberate people from software slavery? But why we would need to obey Mr Jackson's dream? Why not have a distro who would implement the dream most of us, a distro aimed at making Linux thrive and at helping users instead of Mr Jackson's dream of distro aimed at developers egos? Why not build our own community-based distro and let Debian shrivel and die since it does far more harm than good to the Linux and free software cause?
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