This is a page intended for brainstorming and outlining useful improvements to Debian as a whole, parts of it's infrastructure, it's packaging system etc. If the description of the specific feature gets long please create a new page and link to it instead and just keep the short description on this page (consider [wiki:HelpOnEditing/SubPages ?SubPages]). You might want to list "dependencies" and potential returns that this feature would provide. It would also be interesting to differentiate the low hanging fruits from the ones that require more work, so -- if you can -- you might want to add a tag like "big effort", "quick", "long term" or a timeframe you think might be appropriate. If you know people interested in working on this, even that could be useful to add.

A possible example might be Multiarch:


Multiarch directories

Using architecture, kernel and libc/abi specific directories to store libraries and plugins (e.g. /usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu). This way libraries and plugins using glibc and uclibc can be stored on the same system or kfreebsd and linux (since bsd can run them too), or mips and mips64, ....


Multiarch

Integrating mulitiple different binary architectures (e.g. i386 and amd64) in the same filesystem in a transparent way.


More Debtags support

[http://debtags.alioth.debian.org Debtags] is getting mature, and there are now working prototypes of [http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/ssearch/html smart search and navigation interfaces]. The algorithms are easy. Synaptic and Aptitude should benefit. Mail Enrico for instructions and help.


Faster Boot

Reducing boot and shutdown time, dependency/event based init scripts


Debian Desktop

The [http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-desktop Debian Desktop] subproject is composed now by members of pkg-gnome, pkg-kde, pkg-xfce and others. It has a common project and svn repository (debian-desktop) in alioth. Debian Desktop has input on desktop and laptop tasks package selection (tasksel project) and is working on common artwork as we speak (desktop-base package).


dpkg2

dpkg needs a rewrite and extensions


Translation Debs

Special packages that are language oriented. Each package has its own set of complementary .tdebs, one per each language. This feature was discussed lengthly during [wiki:I18n/Extremadura2006 the I18N meeting in Extremaduara] (Sept. 2006)

All localization information is split from the debs, allowing the binary packages to reduce their sizes to the minimum. The users get only the loaclization material (.mo files, localized sounds and images etc.) that they choose via specific settings, making [http://packages.debian.org/localepurge localepurge] obsolete.

This feature would be beneficial to:

Overview:


Less spamable addresses in Debian

It should be failry trivial to list in the web interface of BTS and Debian mailing lists non-spammable email addresses instead of the legal ones.