Debian Domination, Unstable Fedora, Simple Elementary
With its founder's passing heavy on our hearts, Bruce Byfield listed seven reasons it's a dominant distribution. The Debian project posted a more detailed tribute to Ian Murdock to include some of his many accomplishments and contributions to technology and humanity. Last week someone, probably a troll, suggested to the Debian project and development mailing lists that Debian should be renamed. Elsewhere, Christian Schaller discussed Fedora's quest for stability and Elementary OS "dumbs down Linux." Mint has provided the upgrade path for everyone as well.
The loss of Ian Murdock is still making the headlines, but not much new has come to light. The police did issue a public statement, but didn't really say anything new. They acknowledged Murdock's arrests and subsequent suicide, but claim there is no connection and Murdock's injuries were self-inflicted. Murdock's family is still silent and requesting privacy. The Debian project yesterday posted a second memorial (third if you count the mention in last week's project news) to Murdock, this time remembering his contributions to Linux and the Open Source philosophy.
Probably as disgusting as the police attitude is this post from someone named benjamin barber suggesting that Debian be renamed from its racist, homophobic, and misogynist namesake to after the first black PHD Euphemia Lofton Haynes. Fortunately, many leading members of the development team were quick to point out that those allegations against Murdock were unsubstantiated and outrageous while others pointed out how rude it was to come into the house that Ian built and speak ill of the recently deceased. barber did not answer back to any replies and, in fact, I couldn't find where he had ever posted before.
On a bit of a happier note, Bruce Byfield today posted seven reasons Debian is a dominant (and base) distribution. He began with package management tools dpkg and apt-get saying, "They remain a nucleus of a large series of utilities for viewing and manipulating packages, and no equivalent offers so many options for resolving installation conflicts." He included "choice of risks" in the Stable, Testing, and Unstable branches and choice of "degree of freedom" in Main, Contrib, and Non-free software. He added documentation, community, and the current "flexible installer." Byfield also noted how many other distros are based on Debian including top dawgs Ubuntu and Mint.
In a series of tidbits today, the Mint project announced that the 17.3 upgrade path was available for all users including KDE and Xfce users. Bryan Lunduke is running for openSUSE board (and I think he may be serious). My Linux Rig interviewed Solus OS founder, Ikey Doherty, about his Linux setup and Neil Rickert re-examined Tumbleweed's NetworkManager. Christian Schaller discussed Fedora's commitment to stability and Jack Germain said Elementary OS may have gone too far in simplifying their distribution.
In related topics, The Free Software Foundation published a year-end review of 2015 in Open Source hardware. Scott Gilbertson introduced The Register readers to the new or improved features in GIMP 2.9.2. Lucian Constantin wrote that Linux.Encoder ransomware is so poorly written that it doesn't even work and ExtremeTech said "now that the PS4 had been hacked to run Linux SteamOS is an inevitability."