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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!"
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.
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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?
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
>>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?
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.
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...)
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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?
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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?
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.
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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.
I strongly disagree.
/usr/local and a custom init script. It is just Ubuntu is definatly not that distro.
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
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).
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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.
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