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Ian Murdock On 'Pure' Vs. 'Commercial' Debian
Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian.
The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would.
Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "
Actually, looking at the state of aptitude, people may do just fine with dselect and apt-get... that's why it hasn't been upgraded (I guess) in a lonnng time As I am the maintainer of aptitude, I can tell you that that isn't the case; the last version was released a few weeks ago. In addition, once I get the pre-Thanksgiving work crunch out of the way, I'll be putting out the first prerelease to a new stable series, which features a near-complete overhaul of the UI code. The Sourceforge page hasn't been updated because I became a Debian maintainer and started distributing aptitude from the Debian FTP archives instead of an unofficial site. Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
1) Because of the procrustean Debian install. It does walk you through each thing, which is nice. But you can't go back once you discovered you misunderstood something. And you can't go back if you fumble with your fingers. You must be perfect.
:) and Linux. Let's just call MBR 'unfriendly' and not call names.
The install program lets you back up if you make a mistake.
debconf, which is used for configuring some parts of the system, was introduced in the latest Debian release. Because of this, what you are seeing is a first iteration; backup support has since been implemented (file bugs against packages that should support it and don't!)
(I agree that the install is not perfect)
2) Because of the X configuration module. It is an X application, which is nice. It doesn't suffer fools gladly, which is bad. If you get something wrong, you are out of luck. Maybe you can run it again after the install has completed in a broken manner.
Branden has written a supposedly automatic X 4.0 configurator. I hacked an XF86Config-4 together with spit and bailing wire before it was fully functional, and so I can't vouch for it, but I assume it'll be improved as we progress towards woody release.
3) Because Debian comes with the lousy MBR program that sits on top of LILO. My laptop is intended to dual boot between Win98 (I get $$$ from some clients for consulting there
Bah, the real problem is the gross hack that is LILO. Hopefully we'll be Grub-based in woody or woody+1.
I don't understand how you could see the problem you report, though. The Debian MBR should be totally transparent unless you choose to use its ability to boot a different partition than the usual one.
4) Because Debian uses xdm for X-based logins (assuming you didn't screw up the install!). Not nice like gdm like Storm does.
Er, gdm is in both the distribution and Helix. If you install xdm, yes, xdm will be used.
5) Because Storm comes with reasonable versions of KDE and Gnome, already configured within gdm.
Define "reasonable versions". Would you prefer that Debian rush releases out to coincide with arbitrarily selected sets of other projects? (we really don't have as long a release cycle as claimed; the appearence is because we don't try to score marketing bullet points by rushing something half-broken out the door as soon as FOO 1.2.0 is released)
6) Because Storm comes with Storm Package Manager, a friendlier version of dselect capability. With dselect I've managed to screw up things, or not be able to prevent an installation of what I didn't want. Call it user error, but I don't make those errors or have those problems with SPM.
stormpkg is in woody.
There are several other package frontends in Debian as well, based on apt.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Actually, SPM doesn't buy you much compared to other modern frontends like aptitude (great, but text-based)
Could you explain the "but", please? >=)
Feature. !=. Bug.
Daniel (aptitude maintainer)
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Actually, he's THE founding member. Debian is named after he and his wife... Deb and Ian.
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"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
Ian is vouching to keep it in accordance with these two guidelines, so I can only see it as a very good thing.
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Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Oh, BTW, Conectiva, a commercial Linux distro from Brazil, is working on a port of apt that uses RPM instead of dpkg as a backend. Check it out, the guy working on it is a friend of mine ;-)
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Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
1) Because of the procrustean Debian install. It does walk you through each thing, which is nice. But you can't go back once you discovered you misunderstood something. And you can't go back if you fumble with your fingers. You must be perfect.
Er, which part of the Debian install are you talking about? During the boot disk part you can always go back to previous sections.
3) Because Debian comes with the lousy MBR program that sits on top of LILO. My laptop is intended to dual boot between Win98 (I get $$$ from some clients for consulting there
I'm not sure what you're talking about... I never noticed such a thing and I never had a problem dual booting with the default installation of lilo. (Of course, now I used grub)
If you want something stable, why are you using the unstable Debian distro? Think a little next time...
As an example of what frequently occurs try setting up an internet connection. Once you get something wrong, or press Enter by mistake, you can't recover until after installation is done.
I still don't see what you mean. By the internet connection, do you mean the general network connection? I just did an install and it did that part before the first reboot and I was free to go back and change it.
I think it's important that people who spend a lot of time doing something that improves all of our lives gets some kind of reward for that -whether it's free pizza, a pat on the back or enough money to buy themselves a brand new powerboat. People that wish to be marters to the FSF cause are most welcome to, but I think they deserve more than that. If a company can afford to support their effort - by paying for a bit of the OS they're using, for example, then that is surely a good thing. It seems that your main point is the route taken by the money - how does it get from me/my employer to John Doe the FSF genius?
Personally I don't care that much as long as:
I realise this is straying away from the general Debian issue, but I'm interested in your views about whether it would be possible to build a profit-sharing cooperative to generate code in a way that rewards developers with a little more than a pat on the back
With regards to the statistics, I agree with you that the original poll was extremely loaded. I also agree with your analogy... At least the form wasn't laid out so that it was really easy to click on the wrong checkbox
However, I think my point was the opposite of how you interpreted it - the fact is that 32% said they were willing to pay for something if it was good enough (given the nature of the questions, as you pointed out). This is quite an incentive for a commercial distro to work out how to make 'something good enough'. I think a more serious floor in my argument is that it assumes people always put their money where their mouth is.
Another point you hinted at was the way you perceive the attitude of non-Debian-aware users. The view that an MS solution is the only affordable one for the desktop is starting to be challenged in communities other than the Linux/geek chatrooms, and if things keep moving the way they are, the openeness to new ideas can only increase. Fingers crossed - lets just hope the associated cash finds a good home...
I like that one tank warfare game that comes free with the Force Feedback joystick.
Of course a majority of Debian users are the sort of people who would oppose any kind of commercial involvement in their distribution, because they're all hardcore Stallmanists who believe that communism onlt failed because of the oppression of evil American capitalism. But, luckily enough, all of these people earn enough $$$ to be able to spout such rhetoric from the comfort of their luxury homes.
I think you are either alienated by Debian fanatics or smoking crack.
I view the most wonderful thing about Debian as its attention to even very small packaging details. These are the sort of things that really add up in the long run, and get forgotten about in the push to get a new commercial distribution out the door.
The Debian packagers are NOT packaging for commercial reasons. In fact, the vast vast majority of them are packaging primarily for themselves, and because they benefit from others doing the same. Because of their motivation, the packages come out later, cleaner, and in general make administering linux boxes easier on the admin. That is what I appreciate about Debian, and I view it as a direct result of the lack of commercial push. In the end, I use Debian because my boxes run better, nothing more, and nothing less.
Communism is collective ownership and labor organization to the benefit of all. If that makes Debian communism, so be it. It is fairly obvious to me that aspects of commercial packaging work against the packaging being clean. It focuses more on feature completeness (a big selling point) and timely releases (another big selling point).
At least Dabian makes my boxes run more smoothly. It is going to take any commercial packager that is not Debian based at least two years to catch up to their thoroughness and care in packaging. And if that is the case I would be happy to use some other distribution. But for now I find Debian cleaner and more thorough than at least Mandrake and Redhat (and probably more than that too).
1) Because of the procrustean Debian install. It does walk you through each thing, which is nice. But you can't go back once you discovered you misunderstood something. And you can't go back if you fumble with your fingers. You must be perfect.
What version of Debian did you use? I've done three Potato (2.2) installs in the past month. I seem to remember that, after each step, you're presented with a menu of steps. There, you can choose to proceed to the next step, skip the next step, or any of the previous steps. (And perhaps future ones too, but I never tried)
2) Because of the X configuration module. It is an X application, which is nice. It doesn't suffer fools gladly, which is bad. If you get something wrong, you are out of luck. Maybe you can run it again after the install has completed in a broken manner.
Ahh... Again, what version of Debian? Potato installed XF86Setup, which is a graphical X configuration tool. It can be run after the install has completed, and it also lets you do things in any order you like. I had some problems with it and my mouse, but that's because I've got a very wierd mouse.
3) Because Debian comes with the lousy MBR program that sits on top of LILO. My laptop is intended to dual boot between Win98 (I get $$$ from some clients for consulting there :) and Linux. Let's just call MBR 'unfriendly' and not call names.
Strange... As far as I can determine, this install of Debian includes nothing but LILO, and doesn't write to the MBR unless you tell it to. And my root partition is hda8, with LILO installed on hda4... No problems.
6) Because Storm comes with Storm Package Manager, a friendlier version of dselect capability. With dselect I've managed to screw up things, or not be able to prevent an installation of what I didn't want. Call it user error, but I don't make those errors or have those problems with SPM.
I'll admit that dselect isn't exactly the flashiest program in the world. Or the simplest. But after taking five minutes or so to read the help, I didn't have any problems with it. Sometimes the dependency stuff can be a bit brain-dead, but shift-q tells it to ignore dependencies and do what you say. And those situations are very rare.
Please note that I only have experience with Debian Potato (V2.2). If the one you're talking about is a different version, could you please say which one it is?
-RickHunter
Actually, I think there's an option you've got to set to get the prompt... Otherwise, you have to hit shift (left-shift, but could be right-shift too) to get it to prompt you instead of just doing the default boot.
-RickHunter
I'd be disturbed, and your overall optimism would be false, if the statistics were not so poor. Slaving away in an MS only shop, I'd be jumping for joy if any Free distro made it in, backed and supported by people with a clue. (It would be especially gratifying if those folks were contributing to the FSF codebase, though especially bitter if they started to close things off.) Who would not be happy about something like this? About 213 people, it seems, who answered some very leading questions:
Would you use a commercial variant of Debian GNU/Linux?
No, because it against my ideals.
No, because I support Debian only.
Yes, because it has better features.
Yes, but only a few apt-gettable packages.
I don't care.
Note the very negative first statement. You might as well have asked these 377 people if they would wear pant XYZ, and put as the first response, "No because they cause infertility." (cool, my own analogy) Note also the very small sample size. This can not represent a large portion of the Debian user community, can it? As it is, I don't think this poll reflects the willingness of the Debian community to adopt commercial Debian, and how big that base can become because of it.
Your company pay idea is right in line. It's not just individual systems that you should be thinking about for a comercial distro. A well organized company could make a killing off consulting services like this, without ever making a single non free application. Would'nt that just represent an enlargement of the developer base, funded by consulting fees? As an individual, I'm not willing to spend cash on Free software, just the media thanks. A good book, even donations to FSF are a different matter. So's company money. I would not hesitate to recomend the deployment of a comerical variant where I work, so long as it can be backed by training, service duplication or betterment and complete data recovery. Train the administrators, have packages set up to migrate servers and desktops and get it all done in a week. There's more than one company with MS money flowing down the drain that would jump at that.
the debian organization is just FINE the way it is. there isn't a single reason why debian cannot sell their distribution and distribute the profits among the developers.
Debian is essentially a non-profit syndicalist organization (whether their members know it or not). There isn't a single good reason why they should be non-profit.
Building a for-profit organization along the lines of a typical american heirarchical corporation isn't going to do anything for debian. No CEO's are needed.
There isn't any good reason why a for-profit organization cannot be democratically organized the way debian is - it's called a COOPERATIVE. The model they use has proven to be the best; they are the best linux distribution. Why not extend that into the economic realm? It works, and everyone involved is happier.
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Actually, he is still a founding member. For the time being, anyway.
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You are a fucking moron.
I disagree. Motocross Madness 2 is the best product released by Microsoft. Anything else released by them I will only use if I'm forced to, but MM2 just plain rocks.
Hey,
I've given up trolling for good BTW. Anyways, I think that Debian rocks hard and I hope they stick to their guns, I respect them for beeing the one true free release. And yes, I'm talking about Gnu/Linux, I have traded emails with RMS (for real, he's actually very pleasant in email, try it sometime) and RMS has swayed me to believe we should call it Gnu/Linux.
I wrote a little perl-to-PHP conversion utility that I would love to see in the next Debian release include it but not any of the commercial releases. In fact I am going to set up the download so it checks the version of Debian you are using before allowing you to download or install it. Dirty pool, maybe, but when I told RMS I was going to do it he gave me his blessing ( in so many words anyways )
I put the emails from RMS on my (now troll free) website if anyone is interested.
Cheers
All the best,
--Bob
The neo-hippies are all technofetishists. Free love, free speech, free software! Never mind the Malaysian who assembled their PalmPilot*, or stitched their trendy but uniquely individual, overpriced clothing can't afford a chicken nugget, much less a PC to run this free software on. It's ideology without substance.
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*I know, PalmPilots are assembled in the US. If you can think of a better example of a technofetish device, insert it here.
The Storm install holds your hand, which is a good thing for mere mortals.
2) Because of the X configuration module. It is an X application, which is nice. It doesn't suffer fools gladly, which is bad. If you get something wrong, you are out of luck. Maybe you can run it again after the install has completed in a broken manner.
The Storm X configuration lets you try, try again until you figure things out.
3) Because Debian comes with the lousy MBR program that sits on top of LILO. My laptop is intended to dual boot between Win98 (I get $$$ from some clients for consulting there :) and Linux. Let's just call MBR 'unfriendly' and not call names.
Storm uses LILO straight, except for a graphical options selector ("Linux or Windows"). I don't understand why Debian complains so much about trying to set my root as hda6 (it uses MBR and hda3) and Storm thinks it to be just fine.
4) Because Debian uses xdm for X-based logins (assuming you didn't screw up the install!). Not nice like gdm like Storm does.
5) Because Storm comes with reasonable versions of KDE and Gnome, already configured within gdm.
6) Because Storm comes with Storm Package Manager, a friendlier version of dselect capability. With dselect I've managed to screw up things, or not be able to prevent an installation of what I didn't want. Call it user error, but I don't make those errors or have those problems with SPM.
All that being said, one of the first things I do with the Storm distro is to install the Debian 2.2.17 kernel from potato because the 2.2.16 Storm kernel doesn't support APM (grr...).
First, my rant about windows (hehe, this is bound to get me some carma ;-)
What's your best thing to test and compare operating systems? mine, as stupid as it may sound is to put it on a laptop and check what happens:
The more the system is processor hungry, the shorter the battery life and/or the warmer the power suply.
Agree with me or not, this is my opinion. I don't have all the figures, but bear with me.
Win 2000 on a tecra 8100 (tosh) is a dooggggggggg. I thought the power supply was going to melt! Deleted it straight away to install win98 on it and it was much better. If you change in your system.ini the shell to read:
it's slightly better. YMMV.Compare win to linux (Y-A silly comparison, and still on my laptop) The computer requirements are always low, unless you are hammering the computer with a specific task (running vim won't, starting solving some equation systems will).
Also, be careful what widgetset you're using... like, try pressing on something in xv and keep pressing: mhhh... where did this 100% CPU coming from?
Finally, just to get back in the subject of debian
I'm running debian and upgrading the kernel the debian way is as difficult as
(from somewhere in the debian docs)What Debian needs is not a prettier install (or maybe it does) it's an automatic one (... oh wait!)
Also, we-need-a-better-dselect! (oh, wait again!) Actually, looking at the state of aptitude, people may do just fine with dselect and apt-get... that's why it hasn't been upgraded (I guess) in a lonnng time
I think debian is great, linux is cool especially on a laptop and that when it comes to windows, yeah YMMV! If you like it and can do anything you like/want in it, go for it... mmhhh uhhh and talking about 'doze in good terms on /. is bound to get you flamed anyway ;-)
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"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
Your post is just flamebait. However, the blind RMS and open source bashing on Slashdot has gotten way out of hand, so I feel obligated to respond.
> they're all hardcore Stallmanists
Not true at all. Debian is an Open Source movement, not a specifically Free Software movement. There are plenty of packages in Debian that are non-GPL. But *all* of them must conform to Debian's guidelines, which basically coincide with the Open Source definition. I would say that Debian, as a whole, shares more ideology with ESR than with RMS. How does this make them "Stallmanists"?
> who believe that communism onlt failed because of the oppression of evil American capitalism.
Blatent troll here. I follow Debian, and I have never seen any discussion that smacks of Communism, just solid software design and openness. Sharing source code is not at all the same thing as sharing material items, let alone *enforced* sharing of material items. If you honestly believe the sharing nature of free software is fundamentally evil, then there is really nothing I can do to reason with you. If you don't want to share your software, don't contribute to open source projects like Debian. But don't deride them for having beliefs.
> Unfortunately this is spoilt by its overeager adherents who are all too willing to bash other distributions for not being as "pure" (a term that brings to mind connotations of eugenics and ethnic cleansing) as they are.
Who are you arguing with? I haven't seen any such comments around here. Debian wants to ensure that their distro is completely open. That does *not* mean that they are attacking anyone else. Does their mere existence threaten you?
And the last point, RMS himself has no problem with businesses. His problem is with closed software. If a business (such as Red Hat) produces and uses Free Software, there is nothing for "Stallmanists" to get upset with. I am on Debian-devel, and I see plenty of support expressed for the Debian spin-offs. I have *yet* to see an attack on corporations basing their distros on Debian.
--Lenny
I think you'll have to take different types of users into account to find an acceptable answer.
The first type of user can be described as the purist. The poweruser who knows Linux inside out and has chosen Debian for exactly that reason. This type of user knows what he wants, and chooses his software for exactly that reason. He/she likes to tinker with it, and loves to spend hours and hours tweaking his system.
For instance: among the readers of this reply there are many people who probably choose Window Maker 'cause they like the way it behaves, that you can configure it to behave in the way that YOU want, etc... there will be many others who choose Enlightenment because it's flashier, etc... We didn't have the window manager discussions for no reason.
The other type of user is the corporate kind. The user here has lots and lots of work to do, and doesn't want to spend hours and hours on installing and then maintaining the OS of his choice. Even though the user might like this, and want to do this, his time is expensive and sparse.
The last type of user is the kind who sees an OS as a tool, he wants to spend as little time on it as possible so he can get on with other tasks, that he finds more important. Take a gamer for instance, he doesn't want to spend hours on installing and tweaking, but wants to get down to playing his games... Or a video editor, who wants to fix up his latest video project. Or a coder...
In conclusion, it is great to have a choice! If there are people who'll choose debian because there's a commercial version available that facilitates setup and management, why not? I think the people that'll choose Debian in stead of RH, because they HAVE the choice, they'll be better off.
4) Because Debian uses xdm for X-based logins (assuming you didn't screw up the install!). Not nice like gdm like Storm does.
You might want try woody together with helix gnome, you will get the nice graphical login from gdm, and you get to apt-get upgrade your GNOME desktop!
5) Because Storm comes with reasonable versions of KDE and Gnome, already configured within gdm.
Ditto, plus you can use KDE2 with woody.
6) Because Storm comes with Storm Package Manager, a friendlier version of dselect capability. With dselect I've managed to screw up things, or not be able to prevent an installation of what I didn't want. Call it user error, but I don't make those errors or have those problems with SPM.
Actually, SPM doesn't buy you much compared to other modern frontends like aptitude (great, but text-based) or gnome-apt (needs some work, but is quite useful). I think many people here will agree with me when I advise you not to use dselect! It is evil, plain and simple.
Notice that most of the perceived advantages of Storm comes from you're comparing it to potato. You might have a different opinion if you try woody.
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Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I would not go for one of the variants not because someone somewhere is making money off of them. That does not bother me. But simply because none of them to date really offers anything to me or I think most Debian users. Most people these days come to Debian kind of how I did start out with something like RH gain some knowledge and skills get pissed off at something look at Debian see the answer (In my case the fact that if you don't buy the RH boxset up2date is broken and that apt is a dream) Now the other distros based on Debian Corel (shudder), Storm frankly I ,and I think most Debian users would agree with me, don't need the pretty install. As far as Ian's new venture goes if he is able to repackage Debian sell it and support and make money doing it more power to him. I will stick with regular Debian for myself but I can also see how this might get it into more server rooms. So to sum up it is not ,for me, about whether one has a person behind it who wants to make money or one is regular Debian it is about which one meets my needs the best and for now regular Debian does very well thanks.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I personally think that it would bring debian to the masses...
Linux users, who are using RedHat, just have a lot of trouble moving on to debian after they have worked on RedHat (ppl might differ on this) but i'm talking of not so geek linux user.
So a commercial debian, which simplifies the installation a bit, and gives the same power of debian to the users would be more than acceptable, and would include one more distro available in the linux arena..
I really like debian. Apt-get is very cool. However, for me, finding support for debian was a bit more difficult than finding support for Redhat. For instance, for 2 days I attempted to get my 3dfx card working with debian linux. Every time I attempted to compile the driver, I would get a bunch of undefined symbol errors. At linux.3dfx.com, they have fancy rpm installations available for specific COMMERCIAL versions of Redhat. I switched to Redhat 6.1 and had the 3dfx card working in about a half hour. I also could not get my sound blaster live working under debian. Same problem as 3dfx, a bunch of undefined symbol errors when compiling. Under Redhat, it compiled and loaded right away. The point is, the more commercial a product gets, the more likely hardware vendors will support that product. I want apt-get for Redhat!
i only fear that progeny has come into the game a little late. i will talk a little about some of the good things progeny will bring to debian. first and foremost they will remove some of the mystisism about using debian. many new linux user's don't use debian due to the more archaic installer, and also because the documentation is harder to come by. progeny will sport an easier install and better hardware detection, which will inturn attract more users. progeny will also provide the latest software from woody, but in a stable form. i imagine the selection of software will probably be similar to the current, but little known, testing version of debian. having the newer software that redhat, mandrake, and other distributions have released will increase interest from users of other distro's that previously would not use debian due to the thought that it is out of date.
what interest me most about progeny though is their linux now (network of worskstations) project. linux now will be a highly scalable implemenation for managing distributed computing enviroments. it will be an out of the box solution for easier system administration. it does this by creating the appearance of a single computer which will actually consist of many. this gives a consist look and feel to both the end user and the administrators. it is supposed to be simple, and highly configurable. something one doesn't often find in the same piece of software... the neatest feature though will be the ability to use process migration to minimize lost cpu cycles, and provide more cpu power.
i am not ready to make the switch to progeny yet, but i will definately keep my eyes open.
Not to be flamebait, but what's the big deal? One of the nice things about open-source operating systems is if you don't like one version, you can use a different one. No matter what happens, some people are going to use the commercial version, and some aren't; that's a given.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
If 32% of people, used to getting something for free, say they are prepared to spend cash on a commercial variant, then doesn't that sounds like good news for the companies involved?
Whether that's good for Open Source, Unix etc.. is a different question, which, I think, might have been discussed sometime before on Slashdot. :-)
As someone who spends an unhealthy amount of time infront of my computer, anybody who can help make that experience more enjoyable for me is going to be my friend - I might even ask my company to pay them for it....