Subject: bug#48023: download.html has better instructions for non-free systems

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 23:50:31 -0400

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  > > Of all those, the only one that is a free distro is GNU Guix.
  > > The others are nonfree distros that we don't want to promote.

  > I don't understand this

Promoting the free distros of GNU/Linux, in contrast to the others,
is an important goal.

There is more than one way to achieve this goal, but we need
to pay attention to it when we decide what to do.

                            given that we are fine with mentioning Windows
  > and macOS.

These two issues are partially similar, and partially different.

I can't be sure what you're thinking, but it looks like you've assumed
that the similarity determines the decision.

I speculate that your conceptual model is that we order all the
systems from best to worst, draw some line in that ordering, and
everything above that line is ok to promote.  That is not what we do;
it wouldn't give the best results.

The node References in the GNU Coding Standards explains how we look
at issues like this.  Mentioning Windows and MacOS can't do harm
because everyone who would read our pages already knows about them.
Talking about Arch might actually call readers' attention to its
existence.

I don't think you intended that diff as a serious suggestion, but looking at it
I see a serious conclusion to be learned from it.

Namely, _it isn't useful to mention the names of distros_ for which
'apt' is the command to use.  it isn't useful to mention the names of
distros for which 'pacman' is the command to use.  And so on.  There
are too many distro names, and mentioning them is best avoided.

It is more practical to list _only the commands_ that might be the way
to install Emacs.  Something like this:

   Here are some of the commands that various GNU/Linux distros
   use to install a package named 'emacs'.

                   <pre>guix package -i emacs</pre>

                   <pre>sudo apt-get install emacs</pre>

                   <pre>sudo pacman -S emacs</pre>

                   <pre>sudo dnf install emacs</pre>

                   <pre>sudo zypper install emacs</pre>

   On some systems, the package name must include the Emacs
   version number, such as  'emacs-27.1', instead of  'emacs'.

However, there is more complexity than this.  For instance, on
Trisquel you might need to do 'apt-get update' first.  Maybe on Debian
too.  Also, what about using 'apt' instead?

All in all, it may be better to say "see the package installation
instructions for your distro" rather than duplicating that information
from various distros here.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)