Ubuntu and UserLinux to Combine?

An anonymous reader submits "With all the noise about Ubuntu, and no sarge release in sight, we haven't heard much from UserLinux in recent times. Even Bruce Perens has admitted that the "lack of a Debian release is becoming a critical problem". Now, Ubuntu has invited UserLinux to combine forces. More distro consolidation -- without a corporate buyout in sight!"

Comments

I'm Not surprised

[ciroknight]

The first one out with a working product tends to win the market, as long as their product is the best. And since UserLinux stagnated in a lot of trivial discussion, Ubunto got the one up on us..

That being said, I believe that the collaberation of the two products will be a great support to the cause!!!!

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

The first one out with a working product tends to win the market, as long as their product is the best

Wow, there's one for the business courses there.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[chris_eineke]

The first one out with a working product tends to win the market, as long as their product is the best.

*cough*Microsoft*cough*Windows*cough*

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

The first one out with a working product tends to win the market, as long as their product is the best.

What a vacuous statement! The "as long as theirs is the best" qualifier removes any significance to being first to market. What you've said is basically the one with the best product wins the market. Well, besides being false, it has nothing to do with your "insight" about the delayed release of UserLinux vs. Ubuntu.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone please give the moderators a "-5 Dipshits"

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing I wanted to throw out was the statements like "Well, what if you're the first to the market, but 90% of the buttons in the application don't work!!!". But of course, I had to type fast, as I was in the middle of class at the moment. ^_^

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Celestial Avenger]

The first one out with a working product tends to win the market

Ahem.. SEGA DREAMCAST.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Elranzer]

The first one out with a working product tends to win the market, as long as their product is the best.

*cough* PlayStation2 *cough*

Re:I'm Not surprised

[burns210]

"The first one out with a working product tends to win the market, as long as their product is the best."

That should be modded Funny, not Insightful.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[hyfe]

The first one out with a working product tends to win the market, as long as their product is the best.

The manufacturer releasing the best product, ahead of the competitors tend to win?

No shit! ... and in other news, people with loads of money tend to be rich, and people with very little money tend to be poor.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a saturn before I had a dreamcast. After all of those silly super nintendo and genesis consoles.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Jagasian]

*cough* REAL 3DO Multiplayer *cough*

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you're first to post, but your comment is utterly inane? Will you be modded up?

Re:I'm Not surprised

[aichpvee]

Yes.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[LPetrazickis]

*cough*CP/M*cough*GEM*cough*Apple Macintosh*cough*Desqview*cough*

Re:I'm Not surprised

[mmkkbb]

Think back one generation. First to market was the Sega Saturn, which BOMBED. Then the Dreamcast, which BOMBED (despite not having having a completely botched launch)

Re:I'm Not surprised

[ffub]

Well I think tha was kind of his point: it's obvious where they are missing the target. -1 for saying, "he's saying the obvious" when the article was about people missing the obvious. Pretty ironically trolling response.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Rimbo]

The manufacturer releasing the best product, ahead of the competitors tend to win?

He was right the first time.

Case in point: Apple Newton vs. Palm.

Palm was inferior to Newton in almost every respect and came out later, but guess which product won?

There's more to winning a market than when you come out and how good your product is.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

No doubt, it sounds like a Yogi Berra quote!

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Redundant? Clueless moderator is a fag.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, fuck you, I'm just helping this site out. Who cares if no one else posted that idea yet. Redundant! THE LORD HAS SPOKEN.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[freakmn]

Hmm, this discussion seems to have many replies, despite being the third post. Perhaps that is because it is the first that is completely on topic?

Re:I'm Not surprised

[torstenvl]

I don't find it appropriate that a moderator (apparently) would respond in this manner, complete with profanity and signs of a Messiah complex. I appreciate the complexity and balance of the Slashdot moderation mechanism, but I believe that too much potential exists for Mods with an axe to grind to use their moderation AS flamebait (okay so not technically, since its not in posting form) to lower others' karma. I think certain slashdotters really get a kick out of goading others on. If this were not the case, I suspect there would be fewer cases where people had good or excellent karma but periodic strings of -1 Flamebait (or Troll or Offtopic) ratings.

I wonder if the system would be better if it timed the duration the moderator spent on the Moderator guidelines page (which they'd be required to read before moderating, of course doing this server-side could be costly, and JavaScript is easily disabled, though it *could* be required to Moderate), or if MetaModerating were given more weight.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

All of you people sound awful.
Maybe you'd better stay home today.
And take some cough syrup.

Re:I'm Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* REAL 3DO Multiplayer *cough*

Am I the only one who's tired of these stupid '*cough* blah blah blah *cough*' posts? I hope not.

Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[alienfluid]

i personally think it is a very good move. Combining forces with UserLinux will not only increase its userbase but will allow Ubuntu to conform to the standards that UserLinux was established on. Ubuntu is a great distro that is good for the desktop and the server alike. You just got to love the apt-get. Visit Lafayette Linux Users Group at http://lug.lafayette.edu

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[alienfluid]

If you want to try a server running Ubuntu, here it is: Lafayette LUG

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[Anonymous Coward]

lafayette sucks!

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[Anonymous Coward]

yes ubuntu is great for a server , except it is meant for a desktop , includes X.org and Gnome, office suite and other desktop stuff that doesn't belong on a server, Why not just use Debian stable instead of spending the time tweaking a debian desktop derivative into a server ?

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[AvitarX]

I strongly disagree.

I tried to use Ubuntu as a server and it was disasterous. We have a heavy use "workgroup" server at work that needs to run Netatalk 2.x (1.6.x did not play nice with OSX). I had to apt a whole bunch of packeges to get stuff ready, and some of them were from debian even.

In the end I was unable to get netatalk to compile, but I found an apt source for it (jones.dk). I install it and all is fine for about 12 hours, and then files turn into folders before peoples eyes. And everything someone clicked on would turn into the same folder. So someone decided to delete the duplicate and we lost it obviously.

Long stoy short, I went back to my Mandrake image where netatalk was hand compiled, but I am dying to have a distro where it comes from a package and I am not stuck with stuff in /usr/local and a custom init script. It is just Ubuntu is definatly not that distro.

The oft berrated Mandrake has been far better for me.

Also the only thing I do without the console is adding printers (never quite made sense to me, and they kept changing the system).

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[DRobson]

Umm, isnt Ubuntu a primarily desktop system, designed to allow new users a safe and easy environment? Using it as a server seems like an idiotic idea to me. Choose the right tool for the job and everything will be a lot easier.

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[AvitarX]

I was warning poeple, it was idiotic, but I fell for it anyway.

It's a long story but penny-wise pound-foolish had me re-installing the server and I thought how could I go wrong with apt but also some newer packages.

Well I went really wrong, and wanted to explain it was not great for the server and desktop as the other poser implied. I actually hated it as a server, I had to add apt sorces to get command line tools I expected to have (I forget what exactly, maybe nmap). there was no compiler by deafault, and I was unable to get libdb installed (by apt or compilation) in such a way that netatalk would compile.

It was a mess for anything but desktop. And the console blew too with it defaulting to completly black and white with no color.

I wanted a "desktop" because I wanted cutting edge USB support, but that didn't seem any better then Mandrake's either. AI think USB must just still be a ways behind Windows still, I can live with that, but not toomuch longer.

I am not arguing with you, I agree 100%, but the great grandparent to this post implied otherwise, and I wanted to warn any other part time geek sysadmins from making my idiotic mistake (I am not and idiot, so other non-idiots may do the same).

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[DRobson]

I didnt mean to imply anything about your intelligence, sorry. Probably should have read the root post. Great to hear your story told in any case :)

Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server

[JamesHenstridge]

Ubuntu makes a fine server OS. What do you think www.ubuntulinux.org is running on? Remember that Ubuntu is basically a branch of Debian, which many people find okay to run on servers.

Securing it in a networked environment is also pretty easy -- the default install doesn't have any services listening on the network, so the only listening services will be the ones you install.

No story here, move along

[RevMike]

One person posts a suggestion on a discussion list. No one has yet responded positively or negatively. Ten minutes later it is a story on Slashdot?

I'm going to post somewhere that I'm taking over IBM. Let's see if "RevMike to take over IBM" becomes a story in the next ten minutes!

Re:No story here, move along

[winkydink]

This means that Ubuntu has joined the ranks of Slashdot LoveFest companions Google, Apple & Linus Torvalds.

Re:No story here, move along

[LiquidCoooled]

Don't forget the other lovefest companions Google, Apple & Linus Torvalds ;)

Re:No story here, move along

[xtracto]

Lol and the best thing, is your comment is moded as "informative", shouldnt it be more "Insightful?" ... darn, why am I still reading /.??

Re:No story here, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Was that supposed to be a joke?

Re:No story here, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

What ever happened to poor old Transmeta?

Re:No story here, move along

[desenz]

I don't get it. Was that supposed to be a joke?

Re:No story here, move along

[devphaeton]

One person posts a suggestion on a discussion list. No one has yet responded positively or negatively. Ten minutes later it is a story on Slashdot?

I agree wholeheartedly. And yet I have an Ask Slashdot about combatting and dealing with burnout that was rejected...

I guess my sense of priorities and relevancy are off the mark.

(yeah, i know you're not supposed to groan about rejected stories...)

Re:No story here, move along

[AvantLegion]

I'm going to post somewhere that I'm taking over IBM. Let's see if "RevMike to take over IBM" becomes a story in the next ten minutes!

Not only would it, but it would also become a story in 24 hours and 10 minutes too.

Re:No story here, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD

Re:No story here, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

From Ubuntu's site:

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Isn't this enough to make you want to switch? Now compare that vs RedHat (a corporation)... Ubuntu has cool name and a community benefit for all humanity slant. They don't have shareholders and beancounters to appease ahead of their userbase or common human decency. I don't want to attack RedHat, sorry guys, I'm just a little anti-corporate and considering the way some corporations behave I'm sure you'll understand. I guess I would say I fear the danger that RedHat could choose to go that route.

Re:No story here, move along

[SnowZero]

Oh, I thought "ubuntu" meant "nakedness in the default install."

Re:No story here, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop mimicing me!

Bruce is right...

[rk]

"If this goes on, there will be credibility for Debian or Debian-derived distributions in the enterprise setting."

How many times have Windows releases been pushed back? Microsoft has credibility. It seems Debian is working towards the same credibility.

Re:Bruce is right...

[Bruce Perens]

Ugh. Of course I meant "no credibility". But you're right, maybe we need a longer vaporware period in order to be taken seriously by business people :-)

Re:Bruce is right...

[ivan256]

There really is a lesson here beyond the humor. Credibility amongst business types doesn't come from a predictable release schedule, or technical superiority. If we start to see a regular release schedule for Debian, they might earn some technical credibility, but the only thing that earns credibility amongst business people is marketing.

The first marketing steps Debian should consider taking is renaming the 'stable' and 'unstable' branches. It's really hard to explain what they mean to people in an industry where those terms are only used to describe systems that only display blue screens, and systems that don't.

GNOME or KDE

[anandpur]

AFAIK GNOME is 1st class citizen of Ubuntu. Will there be re-run of GNONE vs KDE

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5475

Re:GNOME or KDE

[ultrabot]

AFAIK GNOME is 1st class citizen of Ubuntu. Will there be re-run of GNONE vs KDE

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Voila', first class KDE on Ubuntu. It works like a charm, switched it to default yesterday - mostly because it's faster than Gnome and konqueror rocks.

Re:GNOME or KDE

[SirTalon42]

I thought UserLinux already decided the same thing?

Re:GNOME or KDE

[aCapitalist]

Ubuntu is Gnome. Kubuntu is a community run effort to bring KDE to the Ubuntu platform.

I think Kubuntu has the opportunity to be big. I was running Ubuntu since about October or so, switching to Hoary about a month ago, but yesterday switched to Gentoo and KDE just to see what's happening in the KDE world after a couple years of running Gnome. Gnome isn't exactly zippy even on fast machines. I love Gnome, but KDE 3.4 is a freaking speed demon.

Re:GNOME or KDE

[Hercynium]

That question is unfortunately both very pervasive and very nearly irrelevant.

I understand that software preferences are often a 'blocker' to accepting one distro over another, or even linux at all, but there are so many good choices out there... who cares?

Want KDE installed on a Debian base? Look here:
http://www.mepis.org
or http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/Kubuntu
or http://www.kubuntu.org.uk

Or any other of a half-dozen great GNU/Debian/KGX distros out there.

I've grown quite fond of the group of people working on integrating KDE with vanilla-Ubuntu. Not only can you add it to an already GNOME-based setup, they've released an entire branch with KDE as the default! They've still got some work ahead of them but the current release is very impressive!

If you want KDE on Ubuntu, apt-get it from the universe repository. Yes, I know, that's less than obvious... The Ubuntu people are working on making stuff like that easier. Heck... when Hoary is released in two weeks (or so) you can just apt-get kubuntu-desktop.

Me? I'm typing this from a freshly installed Kubuntu system. It's purrty. Mepis is nice as well but I've found it's kernel to be a little unstable on my laptop. Nothing a recompile didn't fix, but I've decided to back Ubuntu.

BTW... the wine packages from wine.sf.net/apt aren't stable. Your best bet is to apt-build roll your own. I might contrib mine once I get some font issues worked out.

Re:GNOME or KDE

[poofyhairguy82]

Voila', first class KDE on Ubuntu. It works like a charm, switched it to default yesterday - mostly because it's faster than Gnome and konqueror rocks.

I second that. I use Kubuntu on my laptop (400mhz, 128mb RAM) and it almost feels as fast as my girlfriend's laptop (1.7ghz 256mb RAM) running the plain Gnome Ubuntu. I like Gnome more, but Kubuntu is the fastest Linux I have tried!

Re:GNOME or KDE

[eviltypeguy]

I love Gnome, but KDE 3.4 is a freaking speed demon.demon? No wonder I had to call out an exorcist to fix my computer after running KDE!

Re:GNOME or KDE

[Jesus_666]

I made the mistake of looking at the Ubuntu website for information about KDE. Enabled the Universe repos. Installed KDE. Absolutely zero integration, zero usability without enabling root... Whatever Kubuntu is, they should replace the default KDE packages with it, as with them the entire sudo-instead-of-su thing (IMO the main selling point of Ubuntu) doesn't work.

Re:GNOME or KDE

[Red Alastor]

They *are* working on that according to their wiki. It should theorically be ready for official release.

Re:GNOME or KDE

[kabz]

Yeah, I've been a Gnome user, but I've held short of recommending it to many people, mainly because of the whole spacial filemanager (nautilus) and the somewhat dated appearance. It does work pretty well though and for that I'm happy.

However, KDE is just a huge step forward in terms of visual zip and friendlyness. I already posted the gist of this, but it bears repeating, that every piece of hardware on my desktop was detected and sound, opengl etc., worked great from the get go.

I totally have no reservations about recommending Kubuntu to anyone who wants to see how good a GNU/Linux desktop can be. Even running from the LiveCD it feels fast, just with the odd annoying pause whilst the CD spins up.

Re:GNOME or KDE

[ultrabot]

Whatever Kubuntu is, they should replace the default KDE packages with it,

They did. In Hoary (which I'm running), KDE is in main and works & looks much better than KDE in Warty, from universe. Install Hoary now, or wait a few weeks for it to be released...

Re:GNOME or KDE

[Jesus_666]

No, I'll stick with Fedora for now; there are some other things I don't like about Ubuntu (like the weird places they like to put things like the $PATH definition). However, it's good to know that Hoary will have proper KDE support - it will keep me from telling people that Ubuntu is not a choice for KDE users like i did up to this point.

New name!

[Faust7]

Ubuntu and UserLinux

I give you... UberLinux.

Re:New name!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is damn good!

Re:New name!

[SmokeHalo]

I, for one, welcome our new Linux Uberlords.

Re:New name!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that's better than Ubuntnix

Re:New name!

[tsalaroth]

Yet another Godwin'd ./ discussion.

Re:New name!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was clever. How was it a troll?

Re:New name!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a negro, I think it should be called Ubunix (a play on Ebonics) *ducks*

As a lead syadmin, however, I'm proud to be an uber-geek, and find no anti-semitism in the term at all.

Re:New name!

[dtfinch]

Lets try to make it official

Re:New name!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they should trade names.

• Ubuntu
  • a distro for users
  • sounds like a corporate brand
• User Linux
  • a distro for corporations
  • sounds like a distro for users

Huh?

[Pxtl]

UserLinux? Wtf is that? The problem with all these desktop linux distros is that I never have any idea what the various merits and flaws of each are. The old standbys like 'drake and SuSE are easy, but with all these new ones sprouting up who can keep track?

Vector = old hardware.
Ubuntu = Debian unstable repacked as usable. Free CDs in the mail.
Yoper = fast, semi-friendly desktop linux.

but wtf are all the others? Ark? User? MEPIS? Ninnle (just kidding - where did that troll come from though)?

Re:Huh?

[Crashmaster007]

It is very true that there are way too many Linux distros out there, but staying informed about the top 10 is normally a good idea. Just go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ and check the list. Not that UserLinux is in the top 10, but still a good idea.

Re:Huh?

[SirTalon42]

AFAIK UserLinux is NOT a distro, its mostly just some guys that decided some stuff but never did anything.

Re:Huh?

[cintyram]

Vector is on of the most usable distros even on recent hardware. especially teh SOHO version is made with O3 mcpu=586 and march =686 ;

though your post doesnt explicitly say so, plz dont categorize it as only for old h/w ;
lookup VL even when you want a good fast general pupose distro with a great community; its like gentoo without the week's wait :)

Re:Huh?

[Danuvius]

HEY!!

I *treasure* that week! %)

Re:Huh?

[tabrisnet]

are you sure? -O3 can enable unsafe optimizations... plus march=i686 and mcpu=i586 would produce programs with instructions for 686 but instruction scheduling for 586. -march should promote -mcpu (tho it might not... UNIX does give you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot. However it would be a STUPID thing to do).

If I were to give you the benefit of a doubt, I'd assume you mean -march=i586 and -mcpu=i686 which will limit it to instructions that exist on the P5, but will schedule it for the PPro and PII series processors.

Re:Huh?

[naros]

I agree people should just stick with more stable and widely used distrobutions such as Centos.

Makes sense

[aCapitalist]

Maybe it should be Ubuntu assimilates the few users of United Linux.

I asked Jeff Waugh about this a few months ago on irc and he had said that Mark Shuttleworth and Bruce Perens had talked before, but nothing about a merger.

I think there's a natural synergy here with Bruce Perens being an "industry insider" and Shuttleworth having deep pockets.

And at this point in linux history I don't think a little consolidation of efforts is a bad thing.

Re:Makes sense

[ultrabot]

I think there's a natural synergy here with Bruce Perens being an "industry insider" and Shuttleworth having deep pockets.

It's not just about the personas - the ideas of Ubuntu and UserLinux overlap by 80+%, so this would make perfect sense.

I actually asked Bruce about this a while back but he didn't reply at that time.

Let's face it, it would be a marriage made in $OTHERWORLD_OF_CHOICE.

Re:Makes sense

[ryanvm]

I think there's a natural synergy here with Bruce Perens being an "industry insider" and Shuttleworth having deep pockets.

I too have a natural synergy with people who have deep pockets.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Awwww, are you a cute little baby kangaroo?

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Meaning you'll suck dick for $10,000 but not $50?

Re:Makes sense

[randallpowell]

Meaning you'll suck dick for $10,000 but not $50?

Don't insult managers. How else would they get paid?

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

> I too have a natural synergy with people who have deep pockets.

My pants have very deep pockets. Unfortunately, there no money in them.;-(

Since we're so synergistic together, do you might sparing me a few dollars?;-)

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a natural synergy with people who have deep vaginas or anuses.

Linux consolidations?

[zappepcs]

Any move in the industry to consolidate the myriad of distributions is slightly against the OS grain IMO, but OTOH, combining development efforts also increases functionality and user enjoyment. RedHat set a high benchmark. If all distributions were competing evenly with each other for part of MS marketshare, the collaboration they would bring to the marketplace would cause MS serious issue. This is something that I would like to see.

Re:Linux consolidations?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with merging distributions and seperate forks.

Take a look at the Don Johnson distro, it forked and forked and forked and forked until its bits were sore, but still kept merging and forking with the Melanie griffith distro.

Re:Linux consolidations?

[ultrabot]

Any move in the industry to consolidate the myriad of distributions is slightly against the OS grain IMO

This is not really applicable to Ubuntu vs. UserLinux, because there is very little new code in UserLinux - it's mostly about providing support services for Debian.

A management problem ?

[foobsr]

Part of this is due to the sheer ambitiousness of the Debian project. It attempts to do three times as much as any other distribution, and sometimes pulls it off.

May this be due to lack of some "management" implementing a philosophy (maybe an equivalent of CI) of "less is more" by proper "human engineering"?

CC.

P.S.: This definitely is not intended to be a troll.

I think at this point we can say...

[example42]

"lack of a Debian release is becoming a critical problem"

I think at this point it's safe to say this isn't a bug, but rather a feature.

"Debian users take pride in the fact that their distribution is always several releases behind the latest version of the kernel, but makes up for that by being more difficult to install and use."
From here.

Re:I think at this point we can say...

[Anonymous Coward]

why does everyone say it is so hard to install , I installed on one of my powermacs using a custom 2.4.x kernel and it was still easy install. I think anaconda has dumbed down everyone

pics of both

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu | UserLinux

Re:pics of both

[so1omon]

WooHoo!!! Pictures of Gnome and pictures of Gnome! I love pictures of Gnome.

server versus desktop

[bcrowell]

Although I run generic Debian on my desktop, my perception is that Debian is really meant for two things: (1) a distro for use on servers, (2) a generic basis for other people to build customized Linux distros on top of. Given that perception, I don't really see how the slow release schedule is "a critical problem." People using it on servers don't care if it has the latest prerelease version of KDE, they just want it to be stable, and they want security patches (which they get). People using it as a foundation for their own distro are going to build their distro after updating whatever they think needs updating.

Another perception of mine, which may be totally incorrect, is that UserLinux is a project that failed. Would any Slashdotters who actually use UserLinux like to share their counterexamples?

It's like the joke that goes, "I don't have a drinking problem. I drink. I fall down. No problem." Generic Debian is doing fine on servers. People who run non-x86 architectures are presumably happy that Debian is continuing to support them. Ubuntu is apparently doing fine on the x86 desktop. Many desktop users (including me) run testing, not stable, and therefore don't have a problem with the slow time scale for releasing the next stable.

So what's the problem?

Re:server versus desktop

[claes]

I don't think that is what Debian is meant to be, but that is what it is actually used for. And this has become kind of rationalization for slow infrequent releases.

Re:server versus desktop

[RedHat Rocky]

Debian stable is "meant" to be just that: stable.

That attributte happens to be the prime quality one looks for in a server OS.

I don't think stable's use as a server OS is what drives the development schedule.

Re:server versus desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you 100%. Ubuntu is everything Debian Desktop should be.

If I want a desktop, I run Ubuntu, for my servers however I'll always go pure Debian, I can run Debian-* for everything!

Re:server versus desktop

[KiloByte]

The thing is, Ubuntu is an user distribution.

On the other hand, Debian is good for servers and for developers.

Ubuntu does far more handholding than Debian. This is exactly what the non-technical user wants.
On the other hand, the system doing automated things behind your back is an atrocity for sysadmins.

You also have freaks like me who detest graphical fluff. And, Ubuntu isn't the very best console system. Use it and be happy while I'm fooling around on my Debian Unstable home box (I admit, my boxes at work are Testing not Stable because I'm too lazy to backport new MySQL :p).

Re:server versus desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

People using it on servers don't care if it has the latest prerelease version of KDE, they just want it to be stable, and they want security patches (which they get).

But often they also want to run actual software on their servers. Oh, it requires more recent version of PHP? OK, I'll just grab it from testing. Oh, you want spam filtering? Well, the SpamAssassin is pretty old and doesn't do very good job anymore, so I'll just grab newer one from testing. And so on. Soon you're just running testing.

Oh, and I'm running testing and/or unstable on my servers. Works fine. But I don't tell anyone that stable is actually useful for anything else than maybe the simplest of tasks.

Re:server versus desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Debian Backports

Re:server versus desktop

[MsGeek]

Thing is, though, that so-called "Generic Debian" is just ducky on the desktop. The Sarge installer (debian-installer) *is* "ready for prime time" on sufficiently generic white-box PCs. It requires a little fiddling on more proprietary machines like laptops, but usually *any* install of Linux is fiddly on machines like that.

Ironically the safest way to run Debian is to run at the least a hybrid Sarge/Sid system, if not a full-on Sid system. Don't be frightened by the "unstable" tag...Sid is about as unstable as "normal" distros like Fedora and Mandrake. Sid also gets the latest security updates, something that Sarge doesn't get at this point.

So Sarge isn't officially released yet. BFD. It works for me and has for months now. Ubuntu is just too Gnome-centric, and what kind of installer does it use again? Oh yeah, the Sarge installer. Plain old garden-variety Debian is just as easy as Ubuntu is.

However, it *is* nice to have pressed installer disks. If you go to shipit.ubuntulinux.org you will indeed get pressed versions of the Ubuntu install disk and the Ubuntu customized version of Gnoppix. Not bad. Some old computers are allergic to CD-Rs, so Ubuntu giving away pressed disks is quite cool.

Re:server versus desktop

[bcrowell]

Ubuntu is just too Gnome-centric
Can you elaborate more on this? I use generic Debian and Fluxbox myself. Does Ubuntu have problems with KDE, fluxbox, etc., or is it just not the default? If it's just not the default, I don't see why it's a big problem -- just choose the one you want.

Re:server versus desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

There are problems with running three year old software on servers, too. See how much spam you can stop at your mail gateway with three year old spamassassin, for example. Lots of software wants to link against later versions of berkeley db, which isn't available. SASL on Debian stable is shit, so so is authenticated sendmail. Secure LDAP? Forget it. A modern database? Forget it. And on and on. You probably want to roll your own kernel, which means installing your own module-init-tools, etc. A new kernel on an SMP box will likely make want to upgrade your psutils and lots of other stuff too.

So can someone please explain to me where this "Really old software is o.k. for servers" mentality comes from?

Re:server versus desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

English tip: "use", and all the words that derive from it have their first sound pronounced much like the word "you". The 'y' sound at the front renders the 'n' in 'an' unnecessary.

Re:server versus desktop

[Catharsis]

Ironically the safest way to run Debian is to run at the least a hybrid Sarge/Sid system, if not a full-on Sid system. Don't be frightened by the "unstable" tag...Sid is about as unstable as "normal" distros like Fedora and Mandrake. Sid also gets the latest security updates, something that Sarge doesn't get at this point.

Yeah, I tried that a while ago. It was great. Unstable got broken by a major package upgrade and all of a sudden the repository was in an inconsistent state for several months. There were important packages that could not be installed, and when I went around asking for how to fix it I heard the same thing over and over.

Don't use unstable, noob. It's for elite haxors. Go back to stable and the year 1980. We'll call you when the Real Men are done.

The arrogance and cruelty of the people I came in contact with cannot be overstated. This is why I use Ubuntu now. When I have a problem, I go to an Ubuntu support group and I get friendly, timely help on up-to-date packages. Hell, even their unstable repository is at least kept consistent.

So yeah, all thanks to Debian. They are the engine under the hood of Ubuntu. And all thanks to Ubuntu for freeing me from the alternating abuse and neglect of those people. Now I don't have to feel like a loser because I didn't have a Unix mentor growing up.

I sign this with my name, and I stand by it. Burn my karma all you like.

Peter van Hardenberg

A match made in Penguin Heaven!

[Anonymous Coward]

When Bruce announced UserLinux, I liked what he talked about, but I was doubtful of his ability to gather a working community. The desktop Linux I'm using (when I can easily) is Ubuntu. There doesn't seem to be any misalignment in the two distros' underlying goals and philosophies. The main difference is that Bruce isn't a multi-millionaire who can invest a few strategically placed dollars in a small number of developers, infrastructure projects, and PR. This makes the difference for spreading the awareness of Ubuntu's excellence.

Re:A match made in Penguin Heaven!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce is no organizational genius. Witness his current "Slashdot for grownups" effort, "technocrat", etc. He's a smart guy, works hard, and has his head in the right place. But his passive-aggressive language constantly consists of subtle and not-so-subtle little put downs and classist chest thumping.

Historically, erstwhile great leaders often find themselves on islands, beheaded, or worse. And inconsequential misfits end up leading revolutions. Lots of people do lots of hard work every day, and make significant contributions to the world of software, computing, or the world in general in all kinds of different ways.

Leave the elitism at the door.

Kind of hard

[SlayerofGods]

To buy someone out when you don't have any money ;)

Re:Kind of hard

[Anonymous Coward]

To buy someone out when you don't have any money ;)

I hear cheetos and sixpacks were the medium of exchange for this transaction.

Re:Kind of hard

[ArsonSmith]

Not if they don't have anything of value.

my $.02 worth

[suezz]

I think it would be a great idea - I tried ubuntu and now it is all I use - hardware detection is second to none - can't wait till next release - got my apt-get ready - I hope unbutu sticks around for a long time - I plan on not doing another iso install ever - use debian on my sparc sun blade 100 at work - will never do another sun cdrom upgrade on that one either.

if ubuntu puts out a sparc edition I will get it on my sunblade in a snap.

Re:my $.02 worth

[nutshell42]

- hardware detection is second to none -

Depends, on my machine Knoppix and cds based on it have always worked better and I know I'm not alone, now perhaps that's different for you, I don't even want to imply that Knoppix is always better or even on the majority of systems, but you shouldn't make such claims without proof either.

Re:my $.02 worth

[Anonymous Coward]

http://sparc.ubuntu.com/

Ubuntu the new Debian

[affinity]

I would like to see..Ubuntu replace Debian as the base system for many of the current debian distros out there. I think with Ubuntu could promote other distros to focus work on the application and desktop layers while keeping better package compatibility.
This could be what UnitedLinux attempted to be.
No dis-respect to Debian or it's developers. I believe Debian as a base could have been managed better to take advantage of the many advances the "Deb based distros" have made.

I am not a professional developer or Software Manager so take this opinion as you will....

Re:Ubuntu the new Debian

[xeno-cat]

I don't think this is such a good idea. Debian is a good base because it is stable. primarily, but also has a massive bredth of packages. The "Debian based" distributions generally add value to Debian by providing more limited but current set of packages by pulling from the testing branches and doing their own integration. They also target some niche. This is why Ubuntu has value. It targets the desktop.

Debian does not really target anything, and that is good because it makes for a rich base to start from.

What would the value add be for basing a distribution on Ubuntu?

Kind Regards

Re:Ubuntu the new Debian

[at_slashdot]

Sorry but this is a bad idea, Ubuntu doesn't even have a complete KDE package yet.

What problem?

[Danuvius]

What exactly is the problem?

If you're happy with your distro X, you need not be concerned with distros A-W, Y, and Z.

If you are not happy with your distro X, go to DistroWatch.com and find out about some other ones. They have a nice big list on the right, and short descriptions on each distro pages with links to reviews and homepages.

It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

Since this story is about my project and it's a complete non-event, I'm going to make an off-topic announcement before I get to the meat.

We now have 4 paid editors at Technocrat.net and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out.

Now, about UserLinux: Debian will resolve its problems. We're trying to help. And the project will go on. There will be a commercially-supported UserLinux release about a day after the Debian release. There is nothing else but the Debian release on the critical path.

I have been acquainted with Mark Shuttleworth since the early days of Debian and fully support Ubuntu. UL will borrow from Ubuntu where appropriate. But UL seeks to do all development directly within the Debian organization, in order to achieve maximum transparency and public participation (a better explanation is in the UserLinux white paper). So, where UL borrows from Ubuntu, the result will be checked into Debian.

I would have liked everything to go a year faster, but I'm convinced that the UL rationale is still valid and is important to the future of GNU/Linux.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[CockblockTheVote]

I am unfamiliar with this "editors" concept. Could you elaborate on what duties and responsibilites would be?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[ultrabot]

There is nothing else but the Debian release on the critical path.

Here's an idea on getting a Debian release out in a timely fasion:

1. Wait a few weeks until Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog is released

2. Copy all of Hoary to Debian archives.

3. Rebrand the graphics and strings

3. Maintain the fork for as long as it takes to get the next release out. It might take a few years, but that might even be an advantage for conservative Debianists who don't want to upgrade every 6 months.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks kind of similar to the old (and now dead) Adequacy.org: News for Grown-ups site. I consider this a Good Thing.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[notque]

The design looks a little less professional all in all. I generally wouldn't take myself for someone who would care for those type of things, but it feels like it could use some editing.

Either way, I've joined.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[makohill]

But UL seeks to do all development directly within the Debian organization, in order to achieve maximum transparency and public participation (a better explanation is in the UserLinux white paper).

There are lots of possible valid criticisms of Ubuntu but I'm not sure a lack of transparency and barriers to public participation are among of them. As a member of both Debian and Ubuntu, I think I can speak to that.

Debian actively uses a private (developer only) mailing list. Ubuntu does not. Similarly, it it is much more difficult to become a Debian developer and get upload privileges than it is to get similar rights with Ubuntu.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There will be a commercially-supported UserLinux release about a day after the Debian release."

And Duke Nukem Forever the day after that!

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[lspd]

I have been acquainted with Mark Shuttleworth since the early days of Debian and fully support Ubuntu. UL will borrow from Ubuntu where appropriate. But UL seeks to do all development directly within the Debian organization, in order to achieve maximum transparency and public participation (a better explanation is in the UserLinux white paper). So, where UL borrows from Ubuntu, the result will be checked into Debian.

This is a good point. Mention of Ubuntu on a Debian mailing list often results in accusations that Canonical Ltd has bought control of Debian by hiring key Debian Developers. Everyone has a right to make a living, but if people are being hired because they are a Debian FTP-master or member of the Debian technical committee....there is a conflict of interests.

If you want to involve large numbers of Debian Developers in a project or company outside of Debian, keep things completely transparent. Conspiracy theories are impossible to disprove once they have been started.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

I haven't invested much in the slashcode and its themes, because I'm replacing it with a ruby on rails re-implementation. That doesn't use tables for layout and isn't wired into the web server, and has a lot more isn'ts and doesnt's that make it easier to maintain than the slashcode. I may get that to the point where I start showing it to people today.

Bruce

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

>We now have 4 paid editors at Technocrat.net and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out.

Yes, but you're reading Slashdot.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

sure it looks different, but it still validates like slashdot:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3 A//technocrat.net/

This page is not Valid HTML 3.2!
..and a few hundred errors

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[mr. marbles]

2. Copy all of Hoary to Debian archives.


3. Maintain the fork for as long as it takes to get the next release out. It might take a few years, but that might even be an advantage for conservative Debianists who don't want to upgrade every 6 months.

Is that really stable enough for a Debian stable release? The two projects should fulfill different needs. Some linux users don't want a desktop distro which has been tested for a few weeks on the server. Some linux users want rock solid stablity, if not why not just go to fedora? Fedora tries to be everything from server to desktop and does a moderate job of fulfilling both needs. Debian should be concerned with making a rock solid distro.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[sanityspeech]

"...and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out."

A while ago, I gave consideration to abandoning Slashdot due to the number of immature posts. I was looking for alternate sources for my news fix. Your "Slashdot for Grown-ups" tagline was definitely an appealing one.

However, here is one problem you might want to fix that kept me from switching:

As far as I can tell, there are no POCs avaialble on the website. I typed my email address incorrectly when I registered, and there is no way I can complete the registration without it.

If any contact information is available, it definitely is difficult to find. I decided to stick with Slashdot after that episode. Soon enough they got their act together and made it more confortable users like me to stick around.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

Having spent a lot of time reading slashdot, I am unfamiliar with this "responsibility" concept and I thought "duty" was a waste product. If you can explain those terms I'd be glad to help you.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

Well, one thing you could do is register with a different user name. But the POC is bruce at perens.com .

Thanks

Bruce

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[ultrabot]

Some linux users don't want a desktop distro which has been tested for a few weeks on the server.

Well, follow and test Hoary for a few more months before releasing. Hell, wait through all of the 6month release cycle to see that it really is stable enough, taking bugfixes from Ubuntu and own developers as appropriate.

Debian should be concerned with making a rock solid distro.

The most important part of Debian is that it's completely free and independent. The 'rock solid' quality is to some extent a myth; Debian stable mostly gets security fixes, not other bugfixes that happen in upstream versions.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[sanityspeech]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. It is greatly appreciated.

Well, one thing you could do is register with a different user name...

That is true, but I use a single username for convenience... Is there not a way to correct the mistake I mentioned?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>We now have 4 paid editors at Technocrat.net and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out.>>

Considering the quality of editorial on the news items today, this is not impressive. I would think something for "grown-ups" would at least aspire to objective journalism rather than anti-corporate rants.

I'd be happy to offer my services linuxyay at yahoo dot com. I have a law degree and 99% of a journalism degree from real universities!

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[stevey]

So, where UL borrows from Ubuntu, the result will be checked into Debian.

In what way do you propose the changes from UL will be made part of Debian?

Ubuntu appears to publish the patches they make against stock Debian packages, although lots of them aren't terribly relevent to Debian's versions (such as changes to the output messages from init.d scripts, for example).

Do you propose to do more than merely share your patches, such as reporting bugs, and submitting patches directly to package maintainers?

I'd like to see things flow back, but I'm not sure I can believe maintainers with little motivation to serve another, external, userbase will have the motiviation to accept all patches.

As a seperate question are you currently paying or planning to pay Debian developers to work on your distribution in the way that Canonical are? (And guess why I asked that question? ;)

In any event the best of luck to you, Ubuntu, and Debian.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[mjg59]

We're trying to help.

That's an interesting thing to say. You haven't posted to debian-project or debian-devel this year. There are only three Debian bug reports mentioning Userlinux - two are by the same person and turned out to be due to a bug in Vmware, and the third is from a Userlinux developer who wants some extra fields in the default Samba config file. He didn't supply a patch. In fact, I can't find a single case of a patch being submitted with a note stating that it came from Userlinux.

So, what are you doing to help? What solid technical improvements have Userlinux made to Debian? Will the money earned by offering certifications and support go into improving security support in Debian?

I'm already seeing Ubuntu gain adoption and support by commercial vendors. They've also put a great deal of code and money into Debian. What real, tangiable advantage will Userlinux provide over them?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't reinvent the wheel, you control freak. For rabid anti-establishment viewpoints on banal open source gossip, we've got Newsforge.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

We now have 4 paid editors at Technocrat.net and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out.

Anonymous posting is a very attractive feature.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO needs to win the IBM lawsuit ...

... otherwise they will run out of money. Apparently they are missing another report, causing the Nasdaq to issue yet another warning.

SCO represents the worst of capitalism. Rather than a) reinventing themselves in an inventive way; b) folding their cards and honorably calling it quits, they resort to cashing in on real or imagined intellectual property rights.

I just hope people realize that when a corporation's back is against the wall, they will resort to any means they have to in order to survive. It is in the nature of the capitalism. No company is benevolent, though they certainly can appear so when the money is flowing.

I'm confused how this is anything for grownups. Their writeups sound like they're written by 5 year-olds, and that's pretty sad when you're worse than the /. summaries...

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[guet]

Hi,

I just went to have a look at your site and have a few questions.

Did you consider hiring a designer to spend a few hours doing a design for the site? Did you have a look at some of the competitors?

Did you consider using something other than slashcode? Admittedly editors missing in action is the biggest problem here, but the quality of the design/HTML is also a bit of an issue.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you, the kind [king?] of vaporware?

Actually, I think of him of as the Jesse Jackson of open source. Wherever there's a parade, you can count on Bruce to jump in front of it.

I wonder how long it would be before Technocrat.net banned me if I was advertising a competing site in my .sig?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

> We now have 4 paid editors at Technocrat.net and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out.

Meh. A random spattering of articles with half written in the first person. Looks like some kind of personal blog. I failed to see much in the way of comprehensive coverage, let along journalistic rigor. Linux Weekly News was geek news for grownups. What is technocrat aiming at?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[ThogScully]

He basically answered those questions in
this post over an hour before yours:

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[jusdisgi]

Thanks, Bruce, for the authoritative ratification of my hunch...that some (fairly pompous, as it happened) random guy on the mailing list basically saying "You guys should cash it in and just help with our distro" was in fact not causing revolt in the UL ranks ;-)

Seriously. That fellow's tone is all wrong. That's not much of an invitation; "come check all your packages into Ubuntu so we can kipe your work."

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[jusdisgi]

Is that really stable enough for a Debian stable release?

No. Glad I could help.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

slashcode? tables? why?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Peter: Now kids, there will be no swimming unless there'e a lifeguard on duty.

Duty...Diaharea...Hey Lois, Diaharea.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Feztaa]

Bruce, I wish you luck with Technocrat.net. I registered a while back (uid #65! w00t!), but quickly lost interest as there wasn't much content being posted (relative to /. anyway). It's good to hear you've got some editors now, hopefully I'll be able to get my daily dose of news from technocrat and not the slashdot drivel that I've become accustomed to.

Tell me though, what plans have you put in place to stop technocrat.net from becoming just as troll-infested as slashdot is? Or is your goal simply to be "slashdot, but with better editors", trolls be damned?

Thanks.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

NO ANONYMOUS COWARDS and editors willing to boot the trolls off. CT has odd ideas that he shouldn't "censor" that way. My feeling is that refusal to provide someone with a podium is not censorship, they can go elsewhere and say whatever they want.

Bruce

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[at_slashdot]

So, you want the imature Slashdot crowd to go check out your Uber Technocrat.net... well, you can count me in :)

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[bigsmoke]

I've just signed up for your website.

Very nice job on both the look-and-feel and the content!

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[stevey]

Thanks, it's only been running for a few months but I'm pretty happy with the way that it's working out :)

Of course more authors would always be a good thing!

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

Sure. Just tell me the details. bruce at perens.com

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[fanblade]

"My feeling is that refusal to provide someone with a podium is not censorship, they can go elsewhere and say whatever they want." The fact that they can go to a place without censorship makes it not censorship? People said the same thing in segregated Georgia -- it's not racism if the blacks can go to another laundromat. It sounds more like you're saying censorship is OK (which is a valid opinion).

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

I dug up a number of installer bugs in the UL development and emailed them directly to Joey Hess. Currently, I have redirected volunteers from UL to Debian. We don't need them at UL until the Debian problem's off the critical path.

Bruce

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

My feeling is that the presence of trolls is itself a form of censorship that penalizes intelligent discourse. I am not locking you out of the laundromat, there are 10,000 other outlets available through your browser. I'm just making sure that the shows put on in my theater are the highbrow ones.

Bruce

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[sploxx]

Yes, but you're reading Slashdot.
Very true. Although many are complaining about /. and advertises own alternatives, for example kuro5hin, advogato or technocrat.net, and everyone is complaining about unfair moderation, duplicate posts, slanted editors etc., /. is still the source for technology news and discussion. And not only for kids.

I'm not saying that the efforts are worthless (competition is good :) - but with nearly 1e6 registered users, slashdot has a lot of inertia. (Or gravity ;)

Simply because of that, many will probably stay here.

This is not really an opinion about any of the sites, just my observation.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[killjoe]

Bruce is and has been a tremendous contributor to open source and free software. What have you done?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[mjg59]

Ok. Not to suggest that your efforts aren't worthwhile, but that doesn't really put you in the league of Ubuntu, the Debian-edu backers, Progeny, Linspire or any of the other groups that spend money on employing Debian developers. Is that something that's going to change in the future?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[mjg59]

Why not ask Google?

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing that AC's can bring is comments that they may not want to share with the organizations they deal. For example, if I were critical of the way a software vendor treated the GPL, I might not want to have my name attached to this criticism because they are a vital supplier to our company and I wouldn't want to get cut off.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[tooth]

We now have 4 paid editors at Technocrat.net and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out.

Bruce, I read technocrat through the RSS feeds, just a few quick comments.

1. Firstly I think the theme is pretty bad, but I can live with that.
2. Secondly the FAQ needs updating, it just points to the slashcode faq. Maybe even just a little "Hi, this is technocrat and is run by x and y." Mayby something to build a community?
3. Umm, thirdly .. dammit, I had a third point but forgot it. I think I was mainly just looking for a "about" page mentioned above. It doesn't quite have a finished feel to it and you might get more people joining (I just created an account and my uid is only 1500 or so, which isn't too bad, but given that you are connected with it I thought the traffic would have been higher.)

Anyway, sorry for this rambling off-topic post.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Pros_n_Cons]

We now have 4 paid editors at Technocrat.net and we're running Slashdot for Grown-ups. Please try it out.

Refresh...
Refresh...
Refresh...
Take that hippy!

Not sure if this is funny, but that was its intention.

Re:It must be a really slow news day.

[Bruce Perens]

Oh, right. I am part-owner of Progeny. They helped too. So there. :-)

If the UL project brings in enough support $$, you will see it pay for people to do maintenance work directly into the Debian repository. If it doesn't, you won't. I think it's worth a try.

Thanks

Bruce

Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[melted]

So I downloaded this newfangled Ubuntu distro, fired up VMWare and started installing. Installed everything, launched Gnome and internationalization is nowhere to be found! Not just that, there's no keyboard layout chooser either. If you speak French or German or Russian, you're required to RTFM intensively.

I'd like to remind you, folks, that it's year 2005 we're talking about here. Every god damn Windows app can accept unicode, and Windows itself can accept any language in five mouse clicks. I do realize Windows is $300, however, Fedora Core and SuSE offer these capabilities out of the box.

For me that's what differentiates the work of professionals from work of amateurs. Sorry, Ubuntu folks, you gotta have full support of languages other than English these days. Majority of the earth's population doesn't speak, read or write the language of your distro.

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, when you run the install CD, it asks you what language you want to use, and what keyboard layout you want. You CANNOT install Ubuntu without going through these 2 screens, so I'm guessing you skipped past those and then complain? You're 100% wrong on this. Sorry.

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[makohill]

I'd like to remind you, folks, that it's year 2005 we're talking about here. Every god damn Windows app can accept unicode, and Windows itself can accept any language in five mouse clicks.

Try the preview of the new version released several weeks ago. A Unicode world has been both the default and assumed everywhere in development Ubuntu for nearly six months now. You can select a language at the GDM screen and get it up and running with full internationalization quite easily. The language-support and language-package project that Ubuntu is running is doing great things for l10n but help from those communities that speak the language and use the input methods is going to be essential.

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[melted]

I haven't skipped it. I _want_ the UI to remain in English. However, I also want to be able to type in my native language. In FC3 I can do this in three mouse clicks by adding another keyboard layout. In Ubuntu I need half a day of RTFM to do the same thing and then it's not guaranteed to work everywhere.

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[LnxAddct]

Heh...I've used both FC3 and Ubuntu pretty extensively, trust me just stick with FC3. It is more stable and solid to me. Always works and has nice config utilities. In short, FC3 is just easier while leaving a ton of power in the user's hands.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. Apparently a lot agree with me, Fedora has grown 122% in the server arena over 6 months, many times higher then any other distro.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[moranar]

I use ubuntu in italian, with a choice of either italian, spanish or english(US) keyboard layouts. Unicode across the board, just by installing as some said, and by a right click on the GNOME bar. How the hell did you manage to miss them is your problem.

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[Foz]

I'm running hoary, not warty, so I'm not sure if it makes a huge difference... Especially since Hoary is slated to be released April 6th or thereabouts.

However, I can go to system->keyboard layout and select any damned keyboard layout I want from the list.

There's some valid bitches about Ubuntu, but that isn't one. Try upgrading your system, you might be amazed at what is out there. Hoary is quite a bit more polished than warty. It's also relatively trivial to upgrade from warty to hoary.

Oh, and as for working KDE as well? Again, update your system and try the kubuntu-desktop meta package.

-- Gary F.

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[LWATCDR]

How many people will ever want to do this? I mean why not have the UI in your native Language? Also how often will switch?
Why deciding what should be easy to do vs what you have to read the manual to do typically you look at.
How many people will want to do this.
How often will they have to do it.
I would put your requirement as not many and not often.
But if you do not like Ubuntu stick with FC3. That is why choice is a good thing.

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[Nagus]

How many people will ever want to do this?

I do.

I mean why not have the UI in your native Language?

My country's native language is not supported by any distribution. Thus I prefer to use an english desktop.

But this country also has a large community of french-speakers, as well as some german-speakers. The keyboard layout that is used most here is swiss-french, since it has both french and german accented characters. So it would be nice if everyone could use their language when they log in, while the keyboard layout needs to stay fixed.

Ideally, the keyboard layout should be choosable at installation time, while the interface language should be per-user (choosable at first login, then changeable through a nice obvious control center option).

Re:Ubuntu and why it didn't work for me

[LWATCDR]

You kind of proved my point. Your country has twice as many people as the county I live in. Small number of people need this function so it is low on the list.
However you seem to be missing the whole point of Open Source. You say FC-3 will let you do this. So if you want Ubuntu to do it get the source from FC3 that does what you want and port it to Ubuntu!

In Open Source their should not be a line between "users" and "developers". If something is missing add it yourself. That is supposed to be the whole point of Open Source. You are not held prisoner to the "developers" priorities. Who knows you could be the first person from your company to contribute code to Ubuntu!

And Bruce said as much on /. a few days ago

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Right here.

No.

[Doc Ruby]

UserLinux answers "no" (in European).

Re:No.

[xutopia]

I'm not sure I understant that "rowing the boat together" methaphor. What is Ubuntu doing wrong exactly?

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

That argument seems to have nothing to really say. They're crying about some crap in Europe? As if the world is centered in EU? I'm confused. I could have sworn there's more to FOSS development than the EU. They also lack real reaons/examples of this non-cooperativeness comming from Ubuntu. It sounds more like somebody doesn't want to pitch their pride over stagnant work that they've done and work with the guys who ACTUALLY HAVE A REAL PRODUCT TO SHOW.

That's just my interpretation. YMMV.

Re:No.

[Doc Ruby]

I'm not really sure. It has something to do with joint marketing of Ubuntu by others at the recent Euro conventions mentioned in that thread. At least some people think that Ubuntu was handling that partnership "undiplomatically", like exploiting it without giving any value in return. I'm not sure I agree with either side's assertions (historical or logical) in that thread. But it does seem that the invitation to which the Slashdot story linked was very hasty, and the immediate reply, to which I linked, was "no".

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

UserLinux answers "no" (in European).

For those of us who do not understand European, here is Babel Fish translation to American.

Human thanslation in progress, will be posted as soon as it is finished.

Re:No.

[Doc Ruby]

We've got translations to regional American dialects, both Redneck and Ebonics.

Re:No.

[Doc Ruby]

If their project weren't worth it to Ubuntu, they'd hardly be courting UserLinux. And if either side in the proposed merger felt the way *you* do, about the other, then that merger would be doomed to fail. That post is about teamwork. You're trying to pitch it into a competition - if you're right, then they're even more right to decline. Yours is hardly a uniquely American attitude, but it's certainly fashionable here - and just as counterproductive across the board.

Long way to go

[mr. marbles]

I've heard so much about Ubuntu for so long and being a long time Debian user I felt I had to try it. Allow me to be the lone voice of descent here but I really think this has a long way to go from becoming a user oriented desktop. I think what Ubuntu gives you is sane defaults, faster releases, and tested unstable, this is great for a regular Debian user who has to configure Debian to make it more useful for desktop use, but for a regular computer user or even a new computer user I still don't think it's anywhere near ready. Synaptic is still too complex a procedure for average users to install software with, a normal user wants to click "Software to do my taxes" and have it ready, not struggle with package management. The system administrative tools are still so immature I find myself constantly retreating back to hand configuration, if the install made a mistake configuring hotplug and it slows down my boot process there was no way to disable that from my bootprocess graphically. A default install will wipe a user's drive unless they know how to repartitian a drive on their own. Which makes me worried to ever give an inexperienced user a CD.

For experienced users the one thing that really annoyed me was the complete lack of GCC in the default install. They had time to package a windows version of openoffice on the install cd and didn't deem it necessary to have basic development tools. When I boot Knoppix I can compile an entire LFS system while running on the CD alone, I can't do that with a default install of Ubuntu.

Having said all that there are things Ubuntu is doing right. I like the disabling of Root and enabling the user to do more with the desktop. I can't remember how many times I get pissed off by Debian when I can't do something necessary like configuring a printer, or looking up my IP, without become root. I like the small install size, though what is up with all the python tools? I like that they package only the most useful desktop programs in default install thought I wished they'd give you more options to add programs on the default install. And the hardware detection for a Debian distro is one of the things every Debian user pray for.

Re:Long way to go

[ultrabot]

Synaptic is still too complex a procedure for average users to install software with, a normal user wants to click "Software to do my taxes" and have it ready, not struggle with package management.

I assume you don't consider Windows users average users then? The current approach is still much easier than searching the web for the program, downloading it and installing it (only to stare constant shareware nag screens and tolerate limited features).

For experienced users the one thing that really annoyed me was the complete lack of GCC in the default install.

Experienced users should be able to use apt-get or synaptic to install gcc. gcc is still completely supported ('it's in main' as they say in UbuntuSpeak).

what is up with all the python tools?

Ubuntu aims to be a premium development platform for Python developers. Python is one of the priorities of Ubuntu, which is one of the reasons why it will be swiping the floor with other distros RSN ;-).

Re:Long way to go

[mr. marbles]

I assume you don't consider Windows users average users then? The current approach is still much easier than searching the web for the program, downloading it and installing it (only to stare constant shareware nag screens and tolerate limited features).

On the contray I believe windows doesn't do software installation perfectly at all, but at least because so many companies support them people can get their software from a nicely packaged CD with everything they need in it. I think we want computers to be useful, and whether we need to copy windows to do it or think of better ideas of doing it the goal is just to make computing better.

Ubuntu aims to be a premium development platform for Python developers. Python is one of the priorities of Ubuntu, which is one of the reasons why it will be swiping the floor with other distros RSN ;-).

I like python a lot, but would a regular desktop user really use all this? Or is it just wasting space? It'd be nice if I can just select up front before installation began what kind of work I want to do with my system with some of them checked by default. Like I'd like to just click "Python development" and have that in my install or "Build essentials" and have that installed, rather than having to apt-get them afterward. What's the point of doing installs if I have to do so much reinstallation afterwards?

Re:Long way to go

[ultrabot]

I like python a lot, but would a regular desktop user really use all this?

The python libs are needed for running apps that use those libs. So I guess the idea is that you can easily start using various third party python applications 'out of the box', without the need to install anything else. That's going to be important if there is no net access which is the case in a lot of the third world.

It'd be nice if I can just select up front before installation began what kind of work I want to do with my system with some of them checked by default.

That's the Debian 'tasksel' way. I prefer the current approach, where you can expect the default install to be pretty much set in stone.

That doesn't mean my personal installation doesn't have tons of crap from 'universe' and other places ;-).

Re:Long way to go

[Abattoir]

For experienced users the one thing that really annoyed me was the complete lack of GCC in the default install.


This FAQ describes how to install development tools on Ubuntu, which any experienced user, particularly developers, should be able to accomplish. The absence of gcc and other dev programs was a design decision. I can't find the conversation, but it was on the forums or mailing list.

Debian should ditch releases altogether

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Ubuntu is apparently doing fine on the x86 desktop. Many desktop users (including me) run testing, not stable, and therefore don't have a problem with the slow time scale for releasing the next stable. So what's the problem? >>

Ubuntu is not only more up-to-date than Debian stable OR testing, it's more up-to-date than Debian unstable which I and many others use as a desktop.

The "push" to release a new stable (or should I say nudge? vibration?) results in freezes and fights and delays over getting new stuff into unstable.

A release every six months is soooo much better. If Debian can't do it, maybe it should abandon releases altogether and simply act as a two-stage package repository (ie. testing and unstable) for other distros to make into server/desktop versions.

Does it make sense for Ubuntu (based on Debian unstable) to be way ahead packaging Gnome 2.10 which isn't even in Debian experimental? Why not have Debian packaging Gnome 2.10 (and other new technologies) into unstable and Ubuntu (and other Debian-based distros) focusing on testing, bug-fixing (to move packages to Debian testing) and distro work?

Thank GOD

[bonch]

Finally...a case of consolidation of efforts. Now if we could only get the GNOME/KDE factions to combine, we could set an example for the rest of the community who is hell-bent on forking and reinventing the wheel every time they have a beef with some dev. Right now, just running KDE, a GNOME app, Firefox, and OpenOffice at once loads up four entire sets of widgets to get things done. Seriously, think of how many times a single string class gets invented between those four projects.

I know the "choice" argument, but I think combining efforts would, in the end, provide a better choice.

Re:Thank GOD

[be-fan]

This isn't really any different from, say, Microsoft. If you're running Visual Studio, MS Office, and Visio, that's four widget sets right there (counting the regular WinXP one). Throw in Firefox, and that's five. That application set isn't even contrived --- I ran exactly that combo while working on a Windows app. The only big OS that is really free of having a plethora of widget sets is MacOS X, and even then some apps (like Adobe's), include a lot of their own widgets.

Re:Thank GOD

[jswalter9]

Now if we could only get the GNOME/KDE factions to combine,

And in a perfect world, that would mean Gnome goes away.

Looking at the graph

[fozzmeister]

on http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ it looks like debian stable isn't going to be done till at least 10/05 at best or 01/06 at worst. Jesus how long has it been. I really love debian, But the longer you leave the stable distribution, well stable, the longer it gets behind testing/unstable and makes the upgrade to the new stable unimaginably worse.

I always try to keep to stable, but I recently had to swith one server to testing coz I needed some updated programs which could not run under stable. To say it was a mess is a major understatement. It trashed my ldap and my mail configurations, the ldap had to be restored from ldif's! Heck the only thing that stayed working was NFS which was generating warnings.

I really think testing should be kept at a "just about ready to go stable" stage, whereas stable should be "run this for a year (or whatever is deamed to be reasonable), it won't change".

Re:Looking at the graph

[benjamindees]

I'm not quoting any of your post because the whole thing hits the nail on the head wrt the problem with Debian releases: Testing is broken.

The sad thing is, nobody can fix the problems you encountered because a month from now the packages you're using from Testing will be replaced with new ones from Unstable. Despite it being the design goal for the Testing branch, it's impossible for Testing to ever be "almost ready to release" because it's never frozen. If it's never frozen, no one will be able to contribute to stabilizing it, even UserLinux developers.

Check out the release proposals wiki for more info.

Re:Looking at the graph

[0racle]

Testing is broken

It is? Damn, I better go shut off my Debian testing box then.

Gentoo wouldn't go from roumor to story in 10 min

[Matt Clare]

Gentoo wouldn't go from roumor to story in 10 min. It'd take a really long time to sync and compile two whole distros!

On the serious side....

[Kjella]

...I think some might actually manage to be offended by it. The german word is über, not uber. Anyway, it has gotten a lot of negative connotations from the Nazi era. "Deutschland über alles" = literally "Germany above all" as a national pledge, but mistranslated as "Germany everywhere". "Überrasse" = superior race, i.e. the ayrans and so on.

I doubt anyone will actually be offended by a distro called UberLinux but it'd certainly be consider tasteless and flirting with nazi jargon. So despite being an obvious troll, I think the parent has a point (don't worry, I'm sure it was an accident).

Kjella

Re:On the serious side....

[FictionPimp]

Its common MMORPG slang too, I would be hardpressed to find an EQ fan boy who doesn't use the word uber to describe everything.

Re:On the serious side....

[aichpvee]

So using any words in any way derived from, related to, or part of the German language is now "nazi jargon"? It's not like someone suggested they call it "UberLinux: The Final Solution". Would it similarly be "tasteless and flirting with nazi jargon" if some Germans put out a native Linux distro called "DeutschLinux"? Because I seem to remember hitler saying that all the time too.

Why not just join the debian team?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see why the Ubuntu people and the UserLinux people don't just join the debian organization.

That way it would just be 'debian' and we could all move along. If they joined the debian group maybe the releases wouldn't take so long, ya know with more developers and all...

If they are already a part of the group, why aren't their ideas being used in debian mainstream?

If Ubuntu/UserLinux has a nifty graphical install package, why isn't it incorporated into the proper debian packages? The new debian installer is nice, but it just seems like a lot of splintered development. We don't need 1000 different OS installers. We just need one good one.

Re:Why not just join the debian team?

[crimsun]

The core Ubuntu team is very small - closer to two handfuls. Nearly all (if not all) of that team _are_ Debian developers (DDs). The universe team currently is as large or larger than that core team, but this latter group is volunteer-based (there are a couple DDs among us). As part of this team of "masters of the universe" (MOTU), it has been tremendously daunting to attempt to wade through nearly fifteen thousand packages for Hoary's upcoming release. We have great support from the core team, however, and we (our universe team) are as tight-knit as we are warmly welcoming of freshmen. Of course, the user community is lively and respectfully helpful, which ultimately is a rather significant impetus to join the larger Ubuntu team either as a member or a maintainer. Ubuntu makes the process of getting involved straightforward.

Ubuntu uses Debian-developed tools and contributes modifications back to Debian. Nearly everything that Ubuntu develops and uses is fed directly back into Debian - the core developers, again, are DDs. Universe's new bug tracking system, Malone, will facilitate this integration between Debian's BTS and the Debian and Ubuntu pools.

Through Hoary, the Ubuntu installers largely are based on the revamped Debian Sarge installer. There's no pretty gui yet. The Ubuntu installer aims to be streamlined and unintrusive - a few questions and you're on your way.

End-wise, however, Debian and {K}Ubuntu pursue different courses. Debian is not outdated. {K}Ubuntu {are}is not going to make Debian outdated.

Ultimately, we're using a Linux distribution. Diversity isn't a killer; it's a feature!

What?

[Sparr0]

How is the lack of a Debian release any sort of problem? I am very happy with up-to-the-minute Debian Unstable (not to be confused with the actual adjective 'unstable', which it isnt) packages. I know of quite a few servers running Debian Testing, and even a few running Debian Stable. I dont know a single person or sysadmin who runs a Debian "release" version.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

For UserLinux they want to do enterprise installs, with consistent settings for user and admin alike, both within and across corporate customers.

i.e. They want a little more of that "juice" corporates get from having "Windows XP Pro SP2"/"MS Office"/"Outlook" on every desktop, and Exchange and MS SQL on every server.

Much as I'd hate to have Windows XP Pro SP 2 on my desktop, if I supported 10 companies with 20 users each, I certainly wouldn't want some people running unstable to do one thing, and other running stable to get a packaged trafstats.

In principle UserLinux could just snapshot the Debian repositories, and base the install from there, and use apt to wait for Debian to catch up. But that creates a whole new distro, and UserLinux doesn't really want to go there, especially the security patching, they want to take from the limitless pool that is Debian know-how.

Imagine installing unstable on 100 desktops, and no keeping it patched without breaking things. Actually the mistake is probably trying to patch, but that is another topic.

Re:What?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Isn't that a problem? Maybe testing should be the new stable. The idea is I would not ever run anything labeled unstable.....no matter what it means. If unstable means it's unstable because it can crash, that's one thing. If unstable is unstable because it's constantly being updated, that's another problem. Some of it is politics. My boss would never let me load anything labeled unstable because, well, it's a political thing...;) Like it or not, good manipulation of office polotics makes you look better when things are bad and not going to get better and when things are good, it makes you look extremely good. I hate playing it, but if I want to get that server upgrade when I want it instead of when I am under the gun to make things better, I have to play the politcs game.

KDE with Kubuntu, is the a Kedora, i.e. KDE-Fedora

[Jagasian]

Since Ubuntu got a KDE by default varient called Kubuntu, will Redhat match it with Kedora, a KDE based Fedora? I am thinking about switching to Kubuntu because I prefer KDE and apt, and Redhat seems to want both of those moved to second class citizenship in favor of Gnome and yum respectively.

Sure KDE and apt can be had on Fedora, but it isn't a default first-class thing as exists with Kubuntu.

Hmmm

[poofyhairguy82]

Well, it doesn't sound very likely. Bruce loves Debian, and Mark has invited him on before. He said no, and that was that. Doesn't matter-Ubuntu is Debian's new (and very needed) steam- Bruce is going to have to follow Ubuntu one way or the other.

UserLinux would do well to jump on Ubuntu's popularity though, before Debian officially becomes "the distro you build others on."

As discussed upon reading this

[KingBahamut]

I find that UserLinux is itself more of a Standardization group over a distro provider. I feel its more likely that Ubuntu will get some interesting development from such a relationship. I feel that Ubuntu has already proven itself amongst normal users , by normal I mean run of the mill standard Linux users (if there is such a thing called that). That be said, I feel also that Ubuntu is alsmost safe enough to put a non Linux user in front of it and with some nominal instruction.

I do aggree with prior opinions stating the non existence of certain packages(GCC and so forth), but thats easily remedied by a handy apt-get call. Of course its the opinion of some that you shouldnt have to do this, but thats a half a dozeon of one and six of the other fight, something not easily addressed.

Of course I think the biggest complaint about Ubuntu is the good old KDE Gnome fight. Of course this is why Kubuntu exists, have to make users happy I guess. I lead a relatively "Cholestoral Free" life myself.

Okay there is a lot of ignorance here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I'm anonymous(ish) - my take on the current state of affairs.....

Ubuntu is lacking something, that is install models. It is on their roadmap, but no one has thought much about stuff beyond release a Debian variant with GNOME.

UserLinux IS Debian, it is a small, loose alliance of people who think Debian needs to be turned into the business OS of choice. UserLinux hasn't done much technical stuff apart from pick some favourite apps, and build a few metapackages (Bruce did a lot of this) to include these favourites so you have "tiny", "server", "desktop" (Ubuntu sort of has Desktop), install one of these packages and you get a sensible set of Debian apps for a business user.

UserLinux does have buy-in from some big corporate players who will be happy to support a Debian business OS, but want some more structure.

UserLinux was founded with the idea of getting Sarge out with a reasonable GNOME version, and a 2.6 kernel that can hot plug hardware nicely. So Sarge being so late has hit the momentum of the project terribly.

The big issue here is that opting for Ubuntu would be distro fragmentation, not consolidation, a lot of the UserLinux crowd are Debian hardliners, and the idea of switching to a Debian derivative would be difficult for some of them to accept. Not least Bruce I suspect.

Also a core idea in UserLinux is the service companies have a level playing field with an OS from a non-profit, non-competitor, and it is not clear if Ubuntu (more precisely Canonical) would be an equal player in such an alliance (perhaps it might, but that is between Martin and Bruce, and not I suspect Jeff's call).

The upside is that Debian Sarge isn't out, and Ubuntu has got to it's second release.

I can see why Ubuntu needs UserLinux. But I think from the UserLinux camp this is a much harder decision.

The Ubuntu people can of course take the UserLinux metapackages and use the software selections as the basis of their different installations. I doubt it is so "Debian specific" that the geniuses at Ubuntu couldn't make the changes (indeed I believe Jeff or someone already did this to prove a point).

Personally I think if Canonical had sponsored Debian Sarge's release, rather than put effort into building their own repositories etc, Sarge would already be out. Don't get me wrong many of their efforts feedback to Debian's benefit.

And if UserLinux abandoned Debian for Ubuntu, it will be perceived (rightly or wrongly as Bruce Perens abandoning Debian for Ubuntu - and I doubt Bruce wants to be seen doing that). Even if it were a good move for UserLinux.

Re:Okay there is a lot of ignorance here...

[poofyhairguy82]

Personally I think if Canonical had sponsored Debian Sarge's release, rather than put effort into building their own repositories etc, Sarge would already be out. Don't get me wrong many of their efforts feedback to Debian's benefit.

Yeah,but instead Ubuntu has almost had two releases and have fixed big future problems for Debina (Xorg for one). I'd rather have two Ubuntus than one Sarge.

Enter...

[pizza_milkshake]

Usebuntu!

Loads

[fozzmeister]

Of people are saying that Ubuntu is Debian done right. I agree for the most part too, But its only desktop. I'd love to see a server based distro taking the same way. It largely doesn't matter if _everything_ isn't in debian, I reckon 70-80% of desktop [GNOME] users would be happy with ubuntu even in its current reasonably immature state. I'd expect this to be > 90% when it becomes more mature.

A server version that achieved the same thing would be amazing. I've been trying to run Debian Stable on my Development + File/General/Workgroup server but I've just upgraded my File/General/Workgroup server to testing because somethings were just impossible. My Development is staying stable coz its going to stay the same config as my Live internet server that is not moving off Debian Stable. I so want to start developing using Mono tho, its painful staying stable.

If this were done Debian stable could disapear, and we could get a good up-to-date server. the last 10% of people who don't have all the functionality they need can compile. Heck compiling packages is easier if you have an upto date distro, significatly easier than trying to get a modern program currently is on deb stable.

Re:Loads

[BenjyD]

I run Ubuntu Warty as a server and it seems to be fine, although there have been a few teething problems in updates. Security updates have been timely, but one kernel update broke the NFS server for several weeks, leaving the only alternatives as downgrade to the previous insecure kernel or have no NFS.

Other than that it runs great.

Re:Loads

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is designed to be a server as well as a desktop.

Re:UBUNTU IS FOR FAGS

[Anonymous Coward]

lol!

Don't blame the developers for YOUR IGNORANCE

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem genuinely pissed off that so many people are doing their own things and it's too much for you to handle. Go do some research rather than wasting your time telling us how ignorant and incapable of using google you are. If it's really an issue, do the world a favor and write up the results of your research.

Re:Don't blame the developers for YOUR IGNORANCE

[Pxtl]

Look on their websites - there is no "about" on most of them. The "faq" answers technical problems. Distrowatch provides an excellent source of information on distros, but their own websites rarely do.

Usually, from their own sites all I can glean is "We made a really good desktop distro" which sounds exactly the same as others. When I am shopping around for what to load onto my other box, that is not the kind of information I want.

But, if you're happy with a slough of ambiguously defined, generic distros that simply confuse the casual user like me (and about a hojillion others) then go ahead and flame.

Re:Don't blame the developers for YOUR IGNORANCE

[Red Alastor]

This is why the future is with LiveCDs. I don't think I'll switch from Ubuntu any time soon but if I switch to something, I'll start shopping at distros who have LiveCDs that let me test drive them and get a good feel of it without having to do the whole install process.

Re:Don't blame the developers for YOUR IGNORANCE

[Pxtl]

Yeah - that's why Ubuntu isn't on my machine, actually - the LiveCD booted my ATI All-in-wonder into TV-Out mode instead of my monitor display. Not a good sign, and would be more trouble than its worth to fix after installing.

Re:Don't blame the developers for YOUR IGNORANCE

[Red Alastor]

The last release (Warty) used Morphix hardware detection on it's liveCD. Hoary uses the same hardware detection as the actual install. You might be interested in trying again with it when it will be out next month.

I like this because...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I want to write a program called Cthulhu, I can release it as "Cthulhu UseUbuntu."

Slow release schedule

[mr. marbles]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the main problem with Debian releases is that it supports so many platforms? And if that's the case isn't the logical solution simply to release a rock solid distro for the more dominant platforms first and allow the other ports to catch up to current release?

Re:Slow release schedule

[Cochonou]

This isn't as much the amount of platforms supported that slows down debian than the number of packages in the distribution.

Check out what Steve Langasek has to say about platform porting:

The four most common porting problems for software are endianness (differs between i386/amd64 and powerpc), word size (differs between i386/powerpc and amd64), char signedness (differs between i386/amd64 and powerpc), and use of non-PIC code in shared libs (which is a problem on *all* non-i386 platforms). A fifth, less significant portability issue involves arm-specific weirdness with floating point handling, which affects only a handful of packages that try to do their own direct manipulation of floats.

So which portability problems are the ones that we waste time fixing code for?

a "critical problem" for whom?

[sfjoe]

I've been running email, web, ssh and samba services under Debian Woody for quite a while now. It is still humming along nicely and not giving me any problems whatsoever. In fact, in all the time I've been running stable, there have been exactly two instances where a feature I wanted required that I install newer versions of software. Security issues are still being promptly plugged and I have had no issues along those lines. I'll grant you I may not be typical but I would MUCH rather the release took a few more months than have to contend with problems caused by impatience at not having all the latest, "gee-whiz" features.

Re:a "critical problem" for whom?

[benjamindees]

It's a critical problem for those who are pushing Linux onto business desktops, instead of just being content with keeping it on servers.

In the words of Derrick Coleman

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoop-de-damn-doo.

RE: CP/M

[djdavetrouble]

Get on the Bus! The S-100 Bus baby !!

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

*cumshot*

Re:If two worthless distro combine

[randallpowell]

If Sarge is released, will it make a noise?

Need a new name: UberLinux

[EmbeddedJanitor]

A nice meld of the names. A nice statement of intent.

Re:KDE with Kubuntu, is the a Kedora, i.e. KDE-Fed

[PitaBred]

I switched to Kubuntu since it was the first LiveCD that actually worked well as a 64bit distro on my laptop, and I'm a fan of KDE. Haven't looked back.

A desperate plea to them both...

[gt_swagger]

I don't want to stray too far off topic, but they will probably go over how they do things and package their distros... this is a great chance for them to make a subtle but important change... PLEASE embrace LSB and try to make it stronger. If Linux could have a strong and comprehensive core platform it would solve ALOT of problems. LSB in it's current form is very very weak. I think many distros make it optional... only distro I've seen in awhile with it as an upfront option is Mandrake. A brief rundown of things a strong LSB would help: - Finding things. Where did distro X stick important app Y? No more! - Driver support. No need to greatly complicate engineering a driver for Linux by accounting for the various ways distros place and configure things. - Ease of use. Take a Linux newbie and swap distros on them. Odds are they won't be happy when some things are mysteriously gone or put elsewhere or changed around. I realize Linux by it's very nature tends to have endless variations... but driver support and familiarity would essentially "force by choice" many distros to comply if they want added userbase and drivers, etc.

Re:A desperate plea to them both...

[Jesus_666]

True. I hate it when I'm looking for a file only to find that the computer's distro has the file in a different place, under a different name or even entirely missing. Or, even worse, when a distro decides that /etc/profile is a bad place to store the global setting for $PATH.

One thing I like about Linux is that system tweaking is made a lot easier, as the configuration files usually have to be stored in a sensible location and designed to be human-readable. It's usually easy to find out where a particular value or option is. That makes the fact that these places vary from distro to distro even more annoying. The fact that one of the things that make Linux more comfortable than Windows for me is kind of... broken.

Especially Ubuntu does this a lot - one of the main reasons I didn't like Warty when I tried it out.

Re:Gentoo or Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting you attribute your speed increase to KDE3.4 and not gentoo system underneath. Hey come to think of it i dont even believe you got kde compiled only starting yesterday!

There Is No Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

and you are absolutely correct in pointing this out.

Debian provides an outstanding foundation for the greater Linux community. Debian's contribution cannot be overstated as Ubuntu and their ilk are little more than cake decorators in comparison.

Personally I'm offended when parasitic tier two re-distributions in their collective maggotry begin whining that the host isn't succulent enough. Clearly the Linux community is at no loss for psuedo developers hard at work individualizing their splash screens, backgrounds and icon sets while cherry picking the source tree.

This is not to discount the value added efforts of others, including Ubuntu, but I've read quite enough in the disparaging remarks department today. Failure to acknowledge and respect the importance and overall contribution of the Debian team including the relative unimportance of release dates is foolish, counter productive and frankly, dangerous.

The next release of Debian will occur when it is ready.

Re:There Is No Problem

[benjamindees]

Nice that I'm responding to an AC, but heregoes.

Debian provides an outstanding foundation for the greater Linux community.

Debian has a great packaging system and dedicated volunteers who do a better job tearing apart source and putting it back together in a usable fashion than any other distro. Check.

Debian's contribution cannot be overstated... blah blah... psuedo developers hard at work individualizing their splash screens, backgrounds and icon sets while cherry picking the source tree.

I don't see the actual authors of the 10,000 odd pieces of software in Debian complaining about Debian being parasitic "redistributors". There's value added by all parties: recognize that.

There Is No Problem

Everyone left using Debian says that. Know why? It's because anyone with a halfway decent idea of improving the distro left years ago after being told "we don't care" enough times. The people left have Woody on a couple of servers and could care less if Debian ever releases again. The new Debian motto should be "10% of the server market is fine for us" instead of all that crap about "universal operating system". Hell, half of the *major* distros out there today wouldn't exist had Debian not dropped the ball in several major areas, most prominently in the "human relations" department. I see that problem still hasn't been fixed.

Failure to acknowledge and respect the importance and overall contribution of the Debian team...

Where are you coming from here? These "parasitic redistributors" of whom you speak would mostly *love* to work within the Debian project. Bruce has stated over and over again that that's a major goal of UserLinux. The problem is: they can't. It seems they can't even work *outside* the Debian project either because paranoid nimrods think that somehow they're stealing Debian's thunder by taking a ridiculously unmanageable OS and trimming it down to offer support.

including the relative unimportance of release dates

In UserLinux we have a group of people who are willing to work directly on Debian to help stabilize the next release and provide security updates, and all they ask is a relatively predictable release schedule and that their work not be replaced every ten days by something from "Unstable". The question should be: "What the hell is wrong with the Debian project that they view this as a threat rather than an opportunity?" There are developers on Bruce's mailing list talking about freezing a snapshot of Testing themselves because Debian refuses to do so. A distro that doesn't even make an effort to stabilize it's tree, let alone release, is the very definition of "broken".

This is not to discount the value added efforts of others, including Ubuntu

Ubuntu doesn't add shit to Debian other than dependence and confusion. On the one hand, you have people offering Debian support that have to warn users how incompatible Ubuntu is, and on the other it's Debian devs calling to drop releases altogether and "let Ubuntu release for us". Ubuntu is great for their users, but it ain't Debian.

Re:There Is No Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't kid yourself. The debian dev team has made no conscious effort to be as tardy as they are. They would absolutely like to be able to release more frequently, and are embarrassed that they haven't. The release schedule is not part of some grand vision of how to manage a "foundation" or "server" or "insert-silly-idea" distribution.

Debian has overextended themselves, and suffered as a consequence. It's certainly a noble effort to attempt to provide every significant free package out there for every architecture, but there are simply too many opportunities for slowpokes to hold up progress.

Debian is a volunteer effort. Lots of packages depend on other packages. See the problem? If I'm lazy, that may slow other people down, and the problem dominoes. The lowest common denominator rules. It's not quite that simple, but that's gist of it.

Personally, I think the solution has to involve being more aggressive about how the project handles slackers. Just because you're a volunteer doesn't mean you can't be fired. It's not a personal thing at all. Get back in line, and you can get back on the bus. But self-managed people need to, well, manage themselves. If they require too much ego-stroking and pushing and pulling then they are wasting other people's time. Cutting these folks loose might seem like a setback, and indeed, it might cause some short term pain; but in the long run, it will make the Debian team stronger.

No, it's not

[bonch]

You're not the first one to make this error. Office isn't loading entirely new GUI libraries into memory. It's using owner-drawn menus. It is still a standard Windows control but with an overrided Paint function that draws the blue squares around each item.

That is completely different from what is going on in the OSS world, where actual multiple GUI libraries are being loaded for individual apps and environments. The equivalent to Windows would be if all those apps used GTK but with custom visual themes. That's still one GUI library in memory.

Re:No, it's not

[be-fan]

That's really no different than Firefox drawing it's own chrome onto blank GTK+ widgets. If you consider Firefox to be using a different toolkit, then you also have to consider Office to be using a different toolkit. Further, Office, at least as of 2000, used it's own file dialog too, among other things.

In any case, Visual Studio and .NET still use their own toolkits, so your "visual themes" analogy doesn't stand.

Wrong question

[kjj]

Will sarge evere be released.

Ah, who cares just run Debian ultrasid (God edition)

Sarge is just around the corner

[petteri_666]

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005 /03/msg00012.html Some info about the upcoming release.

Looks like unstable is going to get some boost after sarges release, major package changes coming up: gcc 4.0, python 2.4, xorg-x11 6.8.2, apt 0.6.

There's another one

[melted]

Where's SELinux? I'm not gonna expose a server on the web without SELinux running on it.

Re:There's another one

[Foz]

It's being worked on:

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/SELinux

-- Gary F.

More Distro Consolodation?

[SunFan]

Ubuntu is a name I've heard only recently, and then there's all the Red Hat spinoffs (Whitebox, e.g.), and Gentoo has come around in the last few years. Is there really a measured consolodation?

I suspect it won't be that simple

[aurelian]

Lots of the 'immature' posts here don't come from ACs or 'trolls' as such. There are a lot of students and schoolkids posting here which gives it a significant USENET flavour. And then there are all the grown-ups who never really got past Freshman level in their view of the world..

But Slashdot's problem - to the extent that it has one - is its success. If technocrat.net gets as popular, my guess is that you'll get the same S/N ratio there aswell.

Re:I suspect it won't be that simple

[1u3hr]

But Slashdot's problem - to the extent that it has one - is its success. If technocrat.net gets as popular, my guess is that you'll get the same S/N ratio there aswell.

I disagree, I think the biggest problem with Slashdot is the carelessness of the editors. Dupes, spelling, grammar, hoaxes published with no checking. (Whatever happened to "Slashback" to review recent stories (and mistakes) -- used to be regular, did it get to embarrassing?)

Surely the comments are infested with stupidity and trolls, but one thing that does work is moderation, the crap generally disappears quickly (unless you get the gun nuts or creationists started, which can lay waste to the whole discussion).

I hang around for the comments, a lot of interesting and useful stuff comes up there. For instance, now I know about Technocrat, it looks good.

KDE-RedHat

[Anonymous Coward]

I run apt-get (for RPM), freshrpms and kde-redhat. This may not answer the question in as nice a way as you wanted, but if you're going to run a RedHat/Fedora box they can be life-savers:

FreshRPMS
KDE for Red Hat Linux

Re:KDE-RedHat

[Jagasian]

I am already using FreshRPMs, which is great, but KDE is still a second class citizen. The OS admin applications are still using Gnome's toolkit, etc.

Heh

[theantix]

And then you do the same thing you criticize when you imply that Debian does all the development. Should Debian take credit for all the hard work the developers of the wide variety of Linux applications they package?

To a user like me there is a lot of credit to go around. Credit to the software developers, for writing awesome software I use every day. Credit to Debian and the Debian developers, for packaging and assembling this huge variety of software and managing the complex dependancies and providing infrastructure. And finally credit to Ubuntu and their developers, for taking what they see as the best bits of that software, adding QA and a predictable release schedule and some other goodies, and making Gnome/Linux/Debian available for free and easy to use.

Do any of these groups deserve all the credit? Of course not -- they all work together, it's a very rich ecosystem and they all benefit by working together. Why start a pissing contest about who does more or less than the other?

YOU ARE A TARD. STOP COMPLAINING.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a tard, stop complaining.

The statistics speak for themselves

[Trejkaz]

It would figure that "Slashdot for Grown-ups" would have at most 12 comments on each story, given the average mental age of Slashdot readers.

Sarge is stable enough... has security updates now

[Anonymous Coward]

And keep the sarge entries in sources.list it will automatically be stable when the official release arrives.

Debian is pre-occupied with the DPL election right now.. so don't hold your breath.

debian

[XO]

If it wasn't for the fact that I would have to spend a couple of entire days fixing a different distribution if i install it, every day I use my Debian box, is every day that I get more and more pissed off about how stupid it is.

apt-get sounded great, but if you don't use "unstable" or newer, you have basically unusable software, if you need to keep up to date on anything. And the package dependencies are a living farking hell. I love "apt-get install *someprogram*" and it tells me it needs to download 300MB of completely unrelated junk to make something work.

Re:debian

[Stinking Pig]

the dirty little secret of dependency management systems is that they have to be managed. As a desktop user or server administrator, you have very little control over that management process. In other words, you're putting your trust into the distribution's package management team. They need to package sanely, define dependencies sanely, and handle changes sanely. This is a lot to ask for a distribution that follows the current state of Linux; it becomes brutally difficult when the same people are trying to track current state plus everything that's happened in the last three years.

My own distribution of choice, Mandrake, illustrates this problem well -- stick with the current release, and your packaging problems will be rare. The biggest challenge I face in maintaining my current Mandrake systems is keeping my mirror list up to date. However, if you let a system fall back a release or two from current, even while still in the "supported" window, you've got a problem. Package naming and numbering conventions change, people quit being so careful when building update packages, and the "screw backward compatibility" decisions of hundreds of FOSS developers start to add up. Eventually, there's nothing for it but to upgrade to current or wipe the system drive and reinstall.

The tool used to interface with all of this is irrelevant. urpmi, apt-get, emerge, make (port), cast, yum, red-carpet, whatever. Might as well compare the quality of hammers when the question is whether the boards to be nailed are actually lined up.

Re:debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, automatic handling of package dependencies is such a pain. I *so* prefer reading the INSTALL file, finding and downloading everything I need, and installing it all by hand.

You're an idiot. Seriously.

Debian switch

[K.Bu]

I cant agree more, for the moment...

I sell linux based server installation, config and maintenance for small and medium businesses as a side job. Debian was great for this. Secure, reliable, free ("gratuit"), long release cycle, supported, painless upgrade. The debian "stable" model is certainly the reason why linux can take a hold in SMB backend server market. No need for somebody babysitting it all the time, it can be done by a remote part time admin more easily than with any other "free" distros. Enough of technology zealotry between distributions, Debian is great because of its stable model alone.

However the client side was more than messy (unstable, testing and all the rest of it...). Well no problem there, there was mandrake for the desktop. Where applicable (in the very tiny SMB) it was a great solution, but when the guy who look after IT in these companies (no real IT staff) was trying to figure out why on the servers you had the great APT-GET stuff and on the client you had the RPM hell, it usually blew their mind. Having a Debian based distro for the desktop, back in that time, would have come handy. But eventually Mandrake did its homework and provided solutions. However my clients still feel that "Linux" is fragmented (And I did not introduce them to the GNOME / KDE battle).

Then came the savior, Ubuntu, MEPIS and so on. I looked like a great attempt. It came close, and as soon as I learned about Kubuntu, I though I had the killer couple.

And then comes the news... - Debian wants shorter release cycles

WTF? they are killing the great thing about their distro (its "stable" model)?

I dont get why Debian doesnot stay as it is, providing a rock solid distro for servers, and let others use it as a base for a client side distro (Kubuntu or Mepis, as KDE is my choice, for the moment). Shortening the release cycle is detrimental to Debian (Sarge can wait ! Take the time you need to provide the same rock solid quality distros debian is know for!) on the server side, and provide nothing on the client side since Kubuntu is there to fill the gap (or Mandrake or Suse or whatever...)

Shall I start looking at other distros that are reliable for more than 3 years somewhere else? Sad news if true, since Debian was starting to finally enable SMB (no IT money business) with a very workable solution for both desktop and servers.

I just dont understand what is the point of changing the debian "stable" model

language corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

[offtopic -> posting AC]

Thanks a lot. Being just a dirty foreigner, my English is imperfect.
In the circles where I live, every deviation from correct Polish is chastised in a cruel way. I bet a lot of English speakers share that view, and thus, I sound like a moron to their ears.
All corrections are really welcome.

That's ponderous!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you normally apply for a job from Company A on Company B's message board? That's ponderous!

MOD ME DOWN: -1, TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

[bunch of liberal feel-good mamby-pamby crap.]

Isn't this enough to make you want to switch?

It's enough to make me want to vomit.

don't do it

[Anonymous Coward]

If Ubuntu mates with Debian, Debian will get AIDS

afrolinux

[Anonymous Coward]

United Afrolinux, er... United Ninux!

(Can't be too careful these days, the Thought Police, er.. Political Correctness Watch might not like words like "Afro", because they have "negative cultural heritage from the days of slavery")

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/ServerTeam

[jonasj]

Ubuntu provides a fine base for your server. I run http, ftp, and smb on Ubuntu at work.

Just select a server install on the initial boot screen of the install cd, then you'll only get the base system without any desktop, and you can apt-get your way from there.

Only problem is that a few packages commonly needed for some servers (for example, PHP's MySQL modules) are only available in universe (unsupported), but more packages are being moved to main with every release - check out the Ubuntu Server Team's page.