XPost: linux.debian.bugs.dist
Hi,
sorry for not responding, real life got to me after four weeks of
holiday and DebConf.
I spend some additional hours searching for old bugs and suggestions on
the frontpage and also on the debian-about page [1].
On 21/08/17 17:13, Paul Wise wrote:
On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 4:10 AM, Laura Arjona Reina wrote:
I like your proposal.
Likewise, however a couple of things Clara and I forgot when preparing
it are the social contract, the constitution and the code of conduct,
I wonder if we should mention them in the introduction somehow?
https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
https://www.debian.org/social_contract https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
So i think there should be a couple of sentences that are catchy and
encourage to read more about debian and give a generall information.
Like a mix of the abstract of a paper (from science) and an elevator
pitch (from marketing).
The part of the kernel I would change it a bit,
because we have ports based on other kernels too.
In practice these aren't widely used though.
Debian is ported to many devices with different computer architectures,
using the <a href="https://www.kernel.org/">Linux kernel</a> or others
I think this might be too technical and that it would be very hard to
convey to non-technical people exactly what a Debian "port" is.
Perhaps this would work though:
yes port is defenitly to technical, type is good.
Debian can be used on many <a href="ports/">types</a> of devices and
is based on the Linux kernel, other kernels and over
<packages_in_stable> other <a href="distrib/packages">packages</a> of software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your
machine.
I thought about choosing "computers" to de-emphasise things like tablets/smartphones/watches, which we cannot yet support in any sane
way. OTOH "devices" would be future-proof if the situations around
those or other devices like cars/tractors/fridges/etc change for the
better.
I think the phrase "packages of" makes the sentence more
understandable since it relates the word "packages" to the real-world non-software use of that word.
In case we don't want to mention other kernels, we could replace "the
Linux kernel, other kernels" with just "Linux" as many people who have
heard of "Linux" will not know what a kernel is or that Linux is a
kernel.
package is good and it is important to introduce the word
device i like better than computer, because it still is useable in the
future and good to understand
i think the idea with Linux and other kernels is good - 1) nowbody will
be angry, that the other kernels are not mentioned, 2) people who know
what linux is, and are not further interested will just read over the
phrase kernel, 3) people who know what Linux is and are interested can
read about "what is a kernel", "which other kernels are supported", 4)
and finally people who don't know what linux is, can find out via the link
Notes:
(1) I'm not sure if it's good to link to the www.d.o/ports page in the
word "ported" or not, because that link appears later in the page, in
the "Getting Started" section.
It should be fine to link words in the intro to links that appear
later, for folks who like to click while reading. The list of links is
useful to those who prefer an organised list.
I also think the ports section is very technical and the text needs
some rewriting but maybe it is OK to link to it now and improve it
later.
I would also link more than less
about the technical, some page need work in this part, but i would link
them now and then go from page to page with changing ;-)
(2) While in the beginning of Linux distributions Debian really made a
difference because of the easiness of installing packages (hence the
mention "software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on
your machine"), I think nowadays everybody takes that for granted (both
in Linux distributions and in other operating systems, look at the app
stores in mobile OS for example). Maybe it's time to change that
sentence for another "killer"-feature(s) that we provide, related to
packages? I'm thinking for example in that we provide source packages
for... the whole archive? (I'm not sure), or that a major part of our
archive builds reproducibly. Difficult to shrink those in a sentence,
but I'd like to know opinions about this, and if we decide that's the
way to go, later we can try to find the correct wording.
Source packages and reproducible builds are fairly common now though,
at least in the FLOSS world.
Mentioning killer features is also not future proof, we would need to
update it often as Debian takes on new projects and ideas.
I don't know if "Linux" itself has still the widely spread preconception
to be complecated. A lot of my colleges still think that Linux in
generall is only for "computer professional".
I like about the centence, that it explains that the packages are the
smal parts which in total make a distribution. But i also like the idea
to put key features in the introduction.
Maybe a next good step would be to go through the about page and make a
list, what we think should be mentioned in the intro - here also the
thinks from the other bugs could be put on the list and other people
could also put items on the list, if they want to contribute.
Then check what is already in the "new" text we talked about just now,
and we can cross it of the list. And then think about how to include the
other points on the list.
I would try to start such a list in the next week.
Cheers
Clara
[1]
Debian Bug report logs - #634995
www.debian.org: please add a link to the Debian Constitution in the
front page
Debian Bug report logs - #614233
www.debian.org: Debian = "Debian GNU/Linux" + "Debian GNU/kFreeBSD"
Debian Bug report logs - #720742
[www.debian.org] Confusing qualifiers for people on intro/organization ("current" *and* "member")
Debian Bug report logs - #616471
www.debian.pages to org: Merge /intro/ and /intro/about pages
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