Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Help users to verify their downloads

[bill-auger]

On Fri, 2018-06-22 at 19:05 +0200, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli wrote:
> Would such thing be welcome on the Libreplanet wiki?

its a wiki so you can add anything you like to it; but no one will see new pages
unless there are links pointing to it from elsewhere  - so probably the more
important question is: "where might such page it fit among the network of wiki
links?"

i responded to this because it reminded me just a few months ago someone made a
"distros comparison" page on the parabola wiki that was very much as you
described - it was brought to my attention when someone posted a freedom bug
because it compared and linked to non-FSDG distros such as devuan and fedora -
the thought of such a table had cross my mind in the past; but upon seeing one
filled out, i realized that it was not as valuable as i had imagined

most of the distinctions such a table can make are only interesting to advanced
users (such as the init system), or else utterly vacuous (such as the default
desktop); so it probably would not have the value you are imagining - aspects
that are meaningful to casual users will tend to be of the superficial or even
fallacious sort like:

  Parabola - Minimalistic, bare-bones, nerdy
  Trisquel - Intuitive, full featured, users-friendly

just to be clear, i mean that this is fallacious because in a single command
(install MATE), one could transform their parabola system into one that is every
bit as "Intuitive, full featured, users-friendly" as a default trisquel system -
and conversely in a single command (remove X), one could transform
their trisquel system into one that is every bit as "Minimalistic, bare-bones,
nerdy" as a default parabola system - that is really not a very important
distinction to make, yet there is little more than that to note that is of
significance to most users

IMHO the only distinguishing property of most distros that is any real
importance to most users is the release cycle - but parabola already had a
dedicated article explaining that general topic[1] (Rolling-vs-LTS); so in the
end i decided that there was little value in the information that such a table
presented and deleted it entirely 

at the time, i did co-incidentally mention that this sort of comparison
table may be suitable for the libreplanet or FSD wiki, if someone wanted to re-
create it there omitting the non-FSDG distros - the wiki code is still there is
you want it

my suggestion would be to simply denote each FSDG distro as "rolling", "lts", or
"static" directly on the FSDG distros list page beside their logos, perhaps with
a link to an external article explaining that distinction - the parabola
article, for example, does not mention read-only "static" live distros (such as
dynebolic and musix); but it could be easily expanded to include that class of
distro

the main topic of this thread (verification) is perhaps deserving of a dedicated
article; but a simple table on its own denoting for example, guixsd as having
the "reproducible" property would be not very meaningful without a corresponding
article explaining the concept at some length such as the 'rolling-vs-lts'
article


[1]:https://wiki.parabola.nu/Rolling_vs._LTS

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