Re: [LI] Linux India and Debian

[RAVIKANT K RAO <ravikant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mail Start Time : Sun Nov 21 13:18:34 IST 1999

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On Sun, 21 Nov 1999 skhader@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> This is about a User Group being specifically created for Debian Users in
> India.

Hmm...

> Flames welcome to me and not to the list.

I'd rather we discuss this over the list and not in private , for linux
itself was one whole project discussed over usergroups / mailing lists
etc... 
Besides , if we're willing to "waste" bandwidth over inconsequential stuff
, we might as well spend some more on this project.

> * warning * Extremely hot Stuff - Handle with care

Precisely.

> This has been going on secretly till today,

:-(  ... Then why make it public ever ? The whole funda is everyone gets
to pool into resources... You might as well setup ilug-debian and be a
part of it with no one else in the group , keeping the whole thing
hush-hush .... 

  Okay ,
<rant>

   My point is this ... there are _NOT_ as many debian users on LI as
there are RedHat users.How many would you say are "active" debian users ,
meaning , how many actually send posts to the list ( LI) ? For instance ,
for all my mails , I had replies from , you/thaths/shanu/raghavendra bhat
. Period . Other than you 5 , There's prolly Manoj Srivastava in the
"guru" group but is too busy understandably being a developer  himself and
all that ... hence not making any contributions to the "newbie" but by
doing more than that in actually maintaining/developing packages [ the
list of packages he's handling are so freaky and large in number ... ] 
   The rest of the debian users on the list are relatively "newbie"s ,
which would include me , gnana [ i'm assuming he's a newbie because he's
not emailed the list at all , thats all ... ] and prolly ... 10 more
people ? at the maximum 20 ? thats puts in all a MAXIMUM of 30 guys ... so
do we _really_ want to fork off ? 
  If you noticed , half the queries under redhat were answered with gusto
by you/raghavendra bhat/shanu/thaths too ... and if you were to quit LI
and get into ilug-deb , you would prolly stop mailing LI with answers ...
and then it would be left to a very very few core people to do the
answering ... given each guy has his own quota of work/fun/play/linux ,
would we all really want more mails , more usergroups ? one more www , ...
www.ilug-debian.org and so on? I don't know of Atul/Raju use debian/have
ever used debian or whatever... but fact remains that they've _NOT_ posted
anything on debian at all , ... Its perfectly fine for them to stick to
answering queries on redhat alone , which after all IS linux too .
  Granted that debian has an entirely different approach in that its
policy is different etc , its _still_ an ext2 file system with the same ls
etc ... If you checked out even debian-user [ prolly _the_ largest debian
user group ] , it wouldn't do more than 20 mails a day on an average.

  To quote Atul from a long long time back when someone cribbed that PCQ
was "lousy" in not propogating Debian , Linux is Linux ; PCQ is for
promoting Linux , not Debian or redhat or caldera in particular.. With
slink taking 2 CD's in just the binaries , and potato - god knows how many
CDs its gonna take , PCQ for obvious reasons _cannot_ propogate debian .
Redhat is also _obviously_ "user friendly" ... And with Corel coming in
now , touted to be far more "User friendly" , to the point that the user
gets to look at a Corel Symbol during boot time instead of boot messages [
very similar to windows ] ... and that corel is based on debian too ,
people _might_ start migrating toward Corel too ... 

  Do we really want to split into ilug-caldera , ilug-debian ,
ilug-slackware and ilug-redhat ? the number of subscribers [ based on the
queries/answers posted to the list ] IMO would be 0 , 20 , 0 , <size of
LI> , which is say 500+ ?

  Of course there are prolly some names I've left out , in fact very
likely , but that is because they're not emailing the list about debian
.... 

  Well , one should _still_ not be destructive in one's mentality , so I
won't say "Don't go for Ilug--Debian" ...and of course I will most
certainly join the group too ... but IMO , I think we should _still_ stick
to LI for a few ... 

  To contradict myself , this would have _some_ advantages too , in
bringing together only debian users in that resource - sharing could be
better organised etc. .... but *I* still think the trade off isn't worth
it ... stick to LI for now .

</rant>

  Of course , on a different note , we could seriously big time think
about starting ilug-sis where the only talk could be say SiS cards and how
much of a pain in the <substitute favorite censorable word here> they are
... and IMO that would garner > 100 ;)

  Regards,

- Ravi "die-hard debianer" Rao.


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Mail End Time : Sun Nov 21 13:33:09 IST 1999


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