Debian GNU/Linux = Lies, Lies, Lies!

"linuxiac.com

30 Years of Stability, Security, and Freedom: Celebrating Debian’s Birthday

Happy 30th birthday, Debian! Inspiring generations, you shine as a symbol of open-source ideals, innovation, and community.

By Bobby Borisov

On August 16, 2023

In the dynamic realm of today’s technology world, where trends change faster than the blink of an eye, staying relevant for three decades is a feat achieved by a rare few.

Debian, the venerable and iconic open-source operating system, stands proudly among this elite group as it celebrates its 30th birthday.

Debian… ok, I know, Debian/GNU Linux is an operating system that emerged from the brilliance of a passionate software developer, Ian Murdock, on August 16th, 1993.

Today, 30 years later, it is no exaggeration to say that it is the most respected Linux distribution, deservedly so. In all that time, Debian has released 17 major and 123 minor releases, establishing itself as a bastion of predictability, security, and reliability.

Its most recent version, Debian 12 “Bookworm,” has only cemented this status, with the potential to become the best Linux release of 2023.

But what is most importantly, Debian never failed its users. It has become a measure of stability, a symbol of freedom and community strength, all in a niche dominated by corporate interests where financial statements are the only recognized measure of success.

Debian is like one of your best old buddies. Whether someone out there somewhere along the way has let you down, fallen short of your expectations, or even betrayed you, you know that you can always come back to that old friend who will welcome you with a warm hug, giving you much-needed reassurance and security to move forward.

We could go on and on about how wonderful it is, but that is not the point. All we want to do is express our heartfelt gratitude and respect to the countless Debian volunteers, without whom we would not be able to enjoy this fantastic operating system.

Thirty years of history and counting – only a few Linux distributions can boast this! And the brightest shining star among them is that of Debian. So, Happy Birthday, Debian! You are the inspiration for all of us; you are the best!"

https://linuxiac.com/30-years-debian/

Lies, Lies, and more Lies!

"Release Notes for Debian 12 (bookworm), 64-bit PC

[Debian 12.0 was initially released on June 10th, 2023.]

Chapter 5. Issues to be aware of for bookworm

5.2.3. Limited hardware-accelerated video encoding/decoding support in VLC

The VLC video player supports hardware-accelerated video decoding and encoding via VA-API and VDPAU. However, VLC's support for VA-API is tightly related to the version of FFmpeg. Because FFmpeg was upgraded to the 5.x branch, VLC's VA-API support has been disabled. Users of GPUs with native VA-API support (e.g., Intel and AMD GPUs) may experience high CPU usage during video playback and encoding.

Users of GPUs offering native VDPAU support (e.g., NVIDIA with non-free drivers) are not affected by this issue.

Support for VA-API and VDPAU can be checked with vainfo and vdpauinfo (each provided in a Debian package of the same name)."

https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#vlc-ffmpeg-5

VLC, the free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files, and various streaming protocols, that plays more formats than any default player of any operating system in existence, is one of the best known and most widely used software programs on the planet:

"VLC surpasses five billion downloads"

https://www.lowpass.cc/p/vlc-five-billion-downloads-vision-pro-app

So Debian and Fedora, which are widely considered to be the two most important Linux distributions around, asked themselves: why not break VLC? Yes, that is a great idea, it seems, they told themselves: now, hundreds of millions of computers will be using at least 20% CPU power instead of 2% when viewing videos, and that will be our contribution to Eco-friendly computing!

According to RPM Fusion, without which Fedora is just an utterly useless attempt at an operating system, this move was totally unfriendly:

"RPM Fusion

Common Bugs

Fedora 39

VLC Moved to Fedora

Bug: https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6816

With vlc been moved to fedora on f38+ and epel9, the build will lacks support for x264/x265/faad2 (mostly encoders) and VAAPI (as built with current ffmpeg instead of compat-ffmpeg4). Please note that this move was done without any coordination with our project and as such is totally unfriendly."

https://rpmfusion.org/CommonBugs

"Issues with RPM Fusion packages published for Fedora

Bugzilla - Bug 6816 - VLC moving to Fedora

Reported: 2023-12-15

Comment 3

Nicolas Chauvet

With this communication occurring just after the package is imported this just say long about the disregard on the project and it's users.

Some could have volunteered for a vlc-freeworld package to complement the fedora one, or any unexpected issue induced by this move. But by enforcing the introduction of the package in fedora without proper advertising "ahead of schedule" you are violating many contributors fine work and end-users testing hability.

Enforcing "major Importance" for feedback also while this could have been properly coordinated can be perceived as harassment.

As I'm concerned I find this behaviour disgusting and hateful. I'm not going to further comment on this as this already exceeded my time."

https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6816