Unstable package list

[Jonathan Jefferies]

Nick Moffitt wrote:
> 
>         Is it just me, or did someone forget to build the Packages
> file on http.us.debian.org?  More specifically, the unstable main
> packages file.  I've been downloading debs by hand for a day, now, and
> it's driving me batty!

To be truthful I've been having major rethinks about the debian
distribution in general.  The latest versions that I've gotten,
2.0 and 2.1 have given me major headaches.  My wife keeps asking
me if I'm ever going to get linux up and running.  This has been
a not so funny joke for some months and I've re-installed more
times than I've ever had to do with windows.  The reason for 
re-installing is that it's very difficult to figure out what the
dependencies actually are.  The deb package which is supposed to
take care of all that appears to work for the generic packages
but the specialty, i.e. non-free, packages it sux's big time.

All I know is that the local, non-free packages are apparently not
in the 2.1 released cd's.  What that has meant is that netscape is
apparently not on the 2.1 release.  There is a "netscape-remote"
base-4 but not the actual netscape.  And I've not found any documentation
or explanation of why not.

> 
>         Who's in charge of that?  Is there some way of remotely
> generating one?
Are you sure you want one?  Wouldn't it be just as easy to install
the application and not worry about the deb?
> 
>         But moving on to Bay Area Debian, how difficult would it be to
> do a bit of a tutorial on building deb packages?

Or how about some comment on why certain things seem to be being left out,
like netscape, staroffice, wordperfect.  I monitor the debian users
list but the posts there are pretty confused and abbreviated.  Which
is probably what you would expect of a help desk like situation.

Jonathan Jefferies