[Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Olav Vitters (2014-08-11 11:21:14)
> On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 11:10:50AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>> Quite a few places in the World have poor and/or expensive internet 
>> access.  Larger default desktop will hurt the most in developing 
>> countries: non-techies gets discourages to use Debian at all, or when 
>> using it may apply security fixes less often.
>
> How poor is poor?

Poor enough that they bother visitors coming from different places in 
the World asking them to please consider bring install data "by 
sneakernet" (e.g. on CDs but could just as well be floppies or uSD 
storage embedded in iPhones - physical media type not important).

I call it "bother" not because I have experienced actually being 
bothered by such request, but because I have experienced being treated 
like a king in India and Indonesia yet asked that - surprising to me - 
requst.


> I've been participating since having a theoretical 64KB/s cable 
> connection, which in practice only did 3-5KB/s (provider: BART in 
> Rotterdam)! A cd would take about 24 hours to download (net install 
> was sometimes unreliable, so I preferred a cd). Having a poor 
> connection means you get creative. I shared the cd's I downloaded, 
> used rewritable to push the cost down, etc.

How poor was that example of poor?


> I've checked http://explorer.netindex.com/maps which shows the Speed 
> test results across the world. According to that site, the minimal 
> speed I can see in various African countries is at least 0.75 Mbps. 
> Much higher than the speed I was used to.

How expensive is such average speed?  Not measured in dollar, but 
measured in something more locally tangible, like "work hours"?


> Always having a slow connection changes means you're tolerance level 
> is different. I used to download a cd in 24 hours. Nowadays the same 
> takes maybe 35 seconds.

Still you are talking about cost in time.  Few I have met in developing 
countries were poor measured in time available.


> I don't get the doom and gloom unless you're more clear.

Please elaborate what is unclear.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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