[packaging] Meeting next week to discuss trusted third-party repositories

[Dan Kegel]

On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Peter Dolding <oiaohm at gmail.com> wrote:
> Basically the complete idea that distributions are trustable is not backed
> up with real world data.

Can we *please* stop bashing distros on this list?

Picasa has no beefs with distros.  We've been successfully
shipping for two years now.  It's true that we need to adapt
to new distros, but it's usually things that are well outside the
scope of the LSB.

Two recent issues that affect us are:
1) Gnome changed how it handled inserted media, forcing
Picasa to make a one line change to a script
2) Nvidia released a legacy graphics driver with a bug in it
causing corrupt font output on some apps, and it went into
Intrepid before anybody noticed the bug.  We haven't reacted
yet, but there is a registry setting we can make to hide the bug.
Nvidia admitted the mistake on Hallowe'en, hopefully they'll
release a fix soon.

In neither case is it worth shaking a fist at the distros and
saying "Bad distro!  Bad!  I shall never trust your packages
again!".   Let's say that we do, though.  That wouldn't help
either bug, since the problem was in both cases straight
from upstream.  In fact, the distro *insulates* us from
breakage caused by upstream in many cases.
- Dan