Comments on: debian madness

By: rvl

rvl — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:29:09 +0000

Actually gNewSense probably has all the GFDL manuals, if you can put up with no flash and no 3D acceleration for your video card. :)

By: rvl

rvl — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:25:45 +0000

I’m sure there is a really nice easy way to install the docs like “apt-get install your-missing-docs” but I never found it. It’s annoying, especially when you don’t know what the package might be called, but it’s still not enough of a reason for me to stop using Debian.

By: Jason D. Clinton

Jason D. Clinton — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:57:51 +0000

So you’re mad that you, a developer, didn’t type “apt-file search texinfo”?

BTW, here’s the output:

…
texinfo-doc-nonfree: /usr/share/info/texinfo-1.gz
texinfo-doc-nonfree: /usr/share/info/texinfo-2.gz
texinfo-doc-nonfree: /usr/share/info/texinfo-3.gz
texinfo-doc-nonfree: /usr/share/info/texinfo.gz
…

By: Buhrma

Buhrma — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:23:54 +0000

Ever thought of trying Foresight?

By: name

name — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:49:45 +0000

If you’d like Texinfo to have complete documentation, then your issue is with the GNU project — not Debian. Debian does not control the license Texinfo’s documentation is released under. In fact, Debian developers have been so kind as to re-write documentation for applications whenever they get the chance — such as the manpage for “tar”.

By: Chris Cunningham

Chris Cunningham — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:33:38 +0000

It is one of it’s main benefits over other so-called ‘operating systems’ like Windows

Another key strength is freedom of modification. When documentation is licensed in some way which makes this impractical (Stallman outright banned the XEmacs people from cribbing parts of the GNU Emacs manual for their own), you lose that freedom. Some people care if they don’t have to go cribbing through licenses before being able to do something as simple as distribute their changes to something.

– Chris

By: emil

emil — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:28:03 +0000

apt-get install texinfo-doc-nonfree

there you go …

By: David Adam

David Adam — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:50:14 +0000

*BSD people understand the value of documentation! :-)

By: fraggle

fraggle — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:44:14 +0000

“apt-get install texinfo-doc-nonfree”?

Also: http://fragglet.livejournal.com/6944.html

I do rather agree with you, though. I used to be a big debian fan; I switched to Ubuntu almost immediately after it came out. Rather than the documentation issue, my beef is with the management of the project. If we’re lucky we get a stable release every three years from Debian, plus with their massive bureaucracy it seems they are incapable of putting things which are necessary for a modern Linux distribution into their default install.

By: otte

otte — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:53:01 +0000

You are aware that your rant targets the completely wrong problem?