Fwd: [Debian-hebrew-common] libhdate uploaded

[Baruch Even]

kobi zamir wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've just installed an ubuntu to a family member :(, because I did not
> want to install
> a debian stable (old desktop, no OOo2) and did not want to have a
> headache explaining why some things do not work with testing/unstable
> - is testing usable for newbies ?

IMO testing is definitely usable, a few peoples here are new to Linux
and use a Debian Testing machine. They don't feel its outdated because
they don't care. Things work for them and they are more into having
things work for them rather than having the latest version of Gnome.

> more questions:
> 1. are we basing the install on stable or testing ?, packages in the
> disk are stable, repository is set to testing ?

The CDD framework did not support testing based install CDs, so the
install CD was based on Sarge. In the future I hope to have this based
on testing.

apt sources is set to testing so the user will upgrade to testing after
the initial install. This is our way to guarantee that his system will
be too much out of date.

> 2. needed (hebrew) packages not in testing, do we add out repository ?

We need to add them to unstable from which they will trickle to testing,
otherwise we'll need to maintain a repository for unstable and a
repository for testing. We don't have enough manpower for that.

> 3. needed (non-hebrew) packages are not in testing - what to do ?
>   a. openoffice2 (hebrew support is much better in this version)
>   b. firefox 1.5 (we can't install linux without this app)

testing has firefox 1.x and it should be good enough, we can install
linux without ff 1.5. ff 1.5 will come to unstable soon and to testing
from there. I'm not going to maintain a special package for
Debian-Hebrew. The downside of being a sub-project of Debian is that we
depend on Debian for the larger packages, the upside is that we don't
need tens of volunteers to keep a sane system relatively up to date.

OOo2 will also trickle to testing soon.

We do nothing since we simply can't. I do not recommend unstable for new
users, unless it's an install done by someone who knows how to solve
problems and then the user will not normally upgrade.

> 4. can we suggest installing debian-hebrew at install-parties ? its
> the welcome to linux season.

We can suggest, I did try, but most people are of the mindset that
Debian is not for a newbie. I'm not interested in arguing about this things.

Baruch