debian installs with years old emacs as default

debian installs with years old emacs as default

[Dan Jacobson]

>> I got debian woody and emacs is 20.7.  I thought debian was supposed
>> to real advanced or something, but why old emacs?

Chris> Um... install the emacs21 package instead of emacs20.  Problem solved.

1. The user pops in the debian install CD's, answers the questions
   e.g., in tasksel, and ends up with years old emacs.  Is this the
   case with all the other packages on debian, or just emacs?

2. I mean we read that even "RMS uses debian on his laptop" or
   something, so we would think that popping in those debian CD's
   would get us "in with the in club" in a hurry, and not some kind of
   historical state.  I mean what's the point of a "linux
   distribution" if one must need extra sensory perception to get any
   reasonably recent versions of software.  Yes, we are not as
   preceptive as you might think, we just answer what it says on
   install screens.

3. Therefore, make the default emacs to be installed for a new debian
   user the new one not the old one.
-- 
http://jidanni.org/ Taiwan(04)25854780

Re: new debian ships with non-new emacs

[Peter S Galbraith]

> I got debian woody and emacs is 20.7. 

I don't know why you are emailing this to gnu-emacs-bug instead of Debian.

>                                        I thought debian was supposed
> to real advanced or something, but why old emacs?

There is no Debian package called 'emacs'.  There is 'emacs20' and
'emacs21'.

$ apt-cache show emacs21
Package: emacs21
Priority: optional
Section: editors
Installed-Size: 40682
Maintainer: Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 21.2-1
Provides: emacsen, info-browser, mail-reader, news-reader, www-browser
Depends: emacsen-common (>= 1.4.10), dpkg (>= 1.9.0), libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4), libjpeg62, liblockfile1 (>= 1.0), libncurses5 (>= 5.2.20020112a-1), libpng2(>=1.0.12), libtiff3g, xaw3dg (>= 1.5-6), xlibs (>> 4.1.0), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)
Suggests: emacs21-el
Conflicts: emacs21-el (<< 21.2-1), w3-el
Filename: pool/main/e/emacs21/emacs21_21.2-1_i386.deb
Size: 12888244
MD5sum: fe2768a33eb43f5ee72acab139482dbf
Description: The GNU Emacs editor.
 GNU Emacs is the extensible self-documenting text editor.

Re: debian installs with years old emacs as default

[Peter S Galbraith]

> >> I got debian woody and emacs is 20.7.  I thought debian was supposed
> >> to real advanced or something, but why old emacs?
> 
> Chris> Um... install the emacs21 package instead of emacs20.  Problem solved.
> 
> 1. The user pops in the debian install CD's, answers the questions
>    e.g., in tasksel, and ends up with years old emacs.  Is this the
>    case with all the other packages on debian, or just emacs?
> 
> 2. I mean we read that even "RMS uses debian on his laptop" or
>    something, so we would think that popping in those debian CD's
>    would get us "in with the in club" in a hurry, and not some kind of
>    historical state.  I mean what's the point of a "linux
>    distribution" if one must need extra sensory perception to get any
>    reasonably recent versions of software.  Yes, we are not as
>    preceptive as you might think, we just answer what it says on
>    install screens.
> 
> 3. Therefore, make the default emacs to be installed for a new debian
>    user the new one not the old one.

1- I wished you'd stop using an abrasive and ridiculing tone in your bug
   reports.  Really, really.

2- You should have spelled out how you arrived at having emacs20
   installed the first time you posted.

3- You could have filed a bug report against the Debian package
   'tasksel' on the Debian bug tracking system instead of complaining
   about Debian on an unrelated forum (making Debian look bad to
   others).  What task did you select that wants to install emacs20 anyway?

Peter