First page Back Continue Last page Overview Graphics
Notes:
The undefinedness of the user base and of the purpose of use
<picture of different people
We can't compute a "number of debian CD sold"
We can't get back "registration cards"
It's hard to have a picture of who our users really are
Talk about user analysis (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200304/msg00503.html)
How do you make an operating system without knowing who will use it?
Installation can belong here, since different kinds of users have different ways of installing the distro
There are a lot of decisions you can't take:
Offensive material: ship it? don't ship it? what is offensive anyway?
Correctly writing descriptions: be technical? write them so that they can be understood by anybody and his dog? Be technical or avoid technicalities altogether?
What should be the default settings for packages?
We now have a solution to these problems:
metadistros/subdistros/flavours allow us to distinguish general, universal package maintenance work and user-targeted packaging.
In fact, we can finally start doing the latter (so far we've just hacked up something supposerd to work most of the times).