Debian Declining?

SabreWolfy · 2012-10-19 19:50:13

Raphael Hertzog recently asked via his email newsletter if Debian is "declining". He linked to this post, which indicates a steady decline in the number of Debian bugs filed, since 2006. Raphael infers that the reason is that there are fewer "direct users" of Debian, adding that "more and more admins are annoyed by the need to upgrade every 2 years and have switched to Ubuntu LTS releases with 5 years of maintenance". He concludes on a positive note by saying that there is no decrease in the number of Debian contributors.

Comments?

sqlpython · 2012-10-19 20:00:09

asked via his email newsletter if Debian is "declining"

Answer: No

VastOne · 2012-10-19 20:10:40

No! It could also infer that better devs, communications, teams and community have caused the amount of bugs to drop. I think the number of people using Testing and Sid has gone up dramatically also, which means more triage gets done by more people.

SabreWolfy · 2012-10-19 20:13:48

^ That's an interesting perspective smile

zalew · 2012-10-19 20:24:01

> more and more admins are annoyed by the need to upgrade every 2 years

what's exactly that 'need' and who is upgrading every 2 years? most servers I come across are still on lenny or etch and I feel like the most popular approach of sysadmins is: if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

VastOne · 2012-10-19 20:29:44

^ That too! .. smile

pvsage · 2012-10-19 21:05:58

VastOne wrote:

No! It could also infer that better devs, communications, teams and community have caused the amount of bugs to drop. I think the number of people using Testing and Sid has gone up dramatically also, which means more triage gets done by more people.

Exactly my thoughts - fewer bug reports, to me, just means fewer bugs to report. (If you ask me, it's almost a tautology.)

VastOne · 2012-10-19 21:17:26

^ No almost about it IMO, it is a tautology! wink

el_koraco · 2012-10-19 21:20:44

It's just the Debian perfectionism. How can we make it even more awesome and stuff.

pvsage · 2012-10-19 21:26:23

^ lol Well colloquialised!

smoki · 2012-10-20 00:07:35

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/20 … 00160.html

Interesting thread, but who cares - i will be the last DebianOS big_smile

Digit · 2012-10-20 03:08:24

my perspective is that debian is going from strength to strengther. ;D

^ and i say that as a statement befitting of it in it's own right.
...
when you then start comparing with other distros... ... i shant name names, but some of them, particularly this past year... borkages. oh lordy such borkages. ^_^ debian looks on solid ground. i see no fall of debian. happening now, or the forseeable future.

rizzo · 2012-10-20 03:49:04

God bless the mothership smile

VastOne · 2012-10-20 03:50:10

^ +1

That is a keeper. smile

lcafiero · 2012-10-20 03:56:15

omns wrote:

God bless the mothership

Amen to that.

To answer the question in a word: No.

SabreWolfy · 2012-10-20 06:42:19

smoki wrote:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/20 … 00160.html
Interesting thread, but who cares - i will be the last DebianOS

Thanks for the link.

From the replies here, it would seem that Debian is not declining then wink

joek · 2012-10-20 09:44:03

zalew wrote:

> more and more admins are annoyed by the need to upgrade every 2 years
what's exactly that 'need' and who is upgrading every 2 years? most servers I come across are still on lenny or etch and I feel like the most popular approach of sysadmins is: if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Which, of course, could be another reason that there are fewer bug reports. By this time in its life, Etch has been around for long enough that all noticeable bugs have probably been noticed, and non-expert users are less likely to report bugs, I would imagine...

kd5ob · 2012-10-20 22:45:47

Debian is #1 in linux servers for quite some time now, edging out CentOS.

merelyjim · 2012-10-21 03:03:12

Um... maybe.
Right now, the majority of the buzz from new distro's is all about Arch.
Or, Arch itself. Frequent breaks, but always the latest and greatest.
Not that I'm going to jump off a cliff and install it myself, but can't ignore the foothold it has in the Linuxverse.

VastOne · 2012-10-21 03:06:07

Arch on a must have gotta keep running like a cockroach server? Nahhh...

merelyjim · 2012-10-21 03:18:27

Not so much on servers, but take a look on Distrowatch... The Arch-based distro's are on the rise.
I would submit that *we* are a bit biased when it comes to our objectivity. I know I think Debian is better, but someone running Bridge (Arch with Xfce) thinks I'm smoking crack and might as well be using Ubuntu.

VastOne · 2012-10-21 03:21:39

^ I agree... and it is an interesting debate.

But the meat of Debian and the numbers no one can get close to are all of the servers that is running it.

I try to avoid Distrowatch... If Mint is number one, something just ain't right... wink

merelyjim · 2012-10-21 03:28:23

^
Granted. +1, sir...

mynis01 · 2012-10-21 03:47:57

There are people that run Arch on production servers. Sometimes packages being too old can cause just as much instability as being too new. If you want that debian stability on an Arch Linux system, just wait two years to do a packman -Syu.

smoki · 2012-10-21 03:54:59

Distrowatch is just one advertising site with pseudo statistics. Anyone can buy some imressions and clicks.

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=advertise

Inspect how they inform users about Debian releases and you will see that according to these Debian has just 2 releases in 3 and half years:rolleyes:.

Just look on Ubuntus on the Release day for 12.10... they advertised Ubuntu in one day 6 times which is more than Debian got in about 4 funckin YEARS lol . And it is not only for
Ubuntu, OpenSuSe is clean winner in advertising there, etc...

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2012-10-19 19:50:13

Debian Declining?

#2 2012-10-19 20:00:09

Re: Debian Declining?

#3 2012-10-19 20:10:40

Re: Debian Declining?

#4 2012-10-19 20:13:48

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#5 2012-10-19 20:24:01

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#6 2012-10-19 20:29:44

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#7 2012-10-19 21:05:58

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