DebConf 16 Cape Town Is Happening In Less Than Four Months

[phoronix]

Phoronix: DebConf 16 Cape Town Is Happening In Less Than Four Months

Debian's annual conference, DebConf, is taking place in July this year in Cape Town, South Africa. Valve is among the sponsors for this year's Debian conference...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DebConf-16-Registration

[Tomin]

At the same time post installation takes 8 steps to make debian more compatible with the world and easier to use:flashplugin-nonfree, pipelight-multi and wine-staging could be preinstalled and lightdm and synaptic autologin enabled.

Having non-free software preinstalled would be so badly against Debian's policies that it won't ever happen. There isn't even that much need for those anymore, unless you happen to be watching certain (often DRM or otherwise protected) videos online. Maybe there could be an unoffical spin of Debian that would have them. Also, I don't think that wine belongs to default installation.

What is synaptic autologin? I don't think automatic login to desktop is something that everyone wants. At least I wouldn't. The password is there for a reason. From all the people I know, those that prefer autologin are also the ones that don't install or maintain their computers and they wouldn't do that even if it was easier.

[Tomin]

type to the terminal:
su root
leafpad /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic.policy
Change the following lines:
<allow_any> yes </ allow_any>
<allow_inactive> yes </ allow_inactive>
<allow_active> yes </ allow_active>
Save the file.

That didn't exactly answer my question as I don't know what those lines do, but I guess you don't want Synaptics to ask for a password.

What is the reason for home computers? Is your living space open for all people? Do you leave your mobile stuff availabe for strangers?

No my living space (home) is not open for all people, but I'm not the only one living there. I think that for example my emails are private and to keep them that way I want to have a password on my computer. And that doesn't mean that I'm not trusting the other people, because I do, at least most of the time. Also if I have visitors, I might not trust them as much.

It's not that likely that a burglar would break into my home and steal information from my computer, a simple password can't protect from getting it anyway if the burglar has the needed skills. But against anyone that doesn't have the time and skills, a simple password helps a lot, which is the case for most people close to me.

I'm not sure what you mean by leaving my mobile stuff available for strangers. I do not tend to leave my phone laying anywhere if that is what you meant.

I still think that there is a need for autologin, but I don't think that Debian should use it by default. I've set up some of my relatives' computers to login automatically because that is the way they want it to be. All of those relatives are people that aren't interested in maintaining their computers, so it doesn't really matter to them what is the default. They wouldn't (re)install their systems anyway.