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Is Ubuntu a Compatibility Nightmare for Debian?
An anonymous reader submits "Following Friday's release of Ubuntu Linux 5.04, Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian project, told internetnews.com: 'Ubuntu's popularity is a net negative for Debian.' He explained: 'It's diverged so far from Sarge that packages built for Ubuntu often don't work on Sarge. And given the momentum behind Ubuntu, more and more packages are being built like this. The result is a potential compatibility nightmare.' Ian suggests a method for averting crisis on his blog."
Survival of the fittest.
I'd call it evolution. I'm sure Neanderthals viewed the last evolutionary change in humans as a crisis though.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
This is definetely not what Linux as a whole needs. It's my personal opinion that Linux needs to rally behind 1 distro or at least make sure that everything is compatible. having different distros that won't run others code takes greatly away from the "power of linoox"
FP
For a lot of people, Ubuntu offers a better distro than plain ol' Debian. Now Debian is upset that Ubuntu is going off on it's own. Maybe if Debian released a better product on a faster scale, they wouldn't have their users being stolen by a better company.
And this proves it, eventually Ubuntu and Debian will be so seperate that very few of the Ubuntu packages will work with Debian, similar to Suse and Red Hat RPMs.. Debian is dying and nobody cares because they haven't released anything since I last used it 4 years ago.
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.
"I understand what the Ubuntu folks are trying to do, and they're doing lots of good work that will eventually find its way into Debian," Murdoch said.
The operative word there is eventually.
Sayeth Murdoch; "But what we really need right now as a community is for Sarge to be released."
You needed that at least a year ago. Fix your model so that Debian can keep up with the rest of the Linux world and you won't have to gripe about forks that don't exist.
Debian should be the foundation of a plethora of tailored distributions dominating the Linux market. The one and only thing preventing this is the fact that Stable is perpetually very obsolete. This is not Ubuntu's fault.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Translation: Provide the same horribly outdated packages we do.
And given the momentum behind Ubuntu, more and more packages are being built like this. The result is a potential compatibility nightmare.
Funny how two people can look at the same thing and see something different. My perspective was that; the result is a potential deprecation of Sarge and perhaps Debian itself.
Release a friggin distribution or just shut Debian down.
Seriously, they haven't had a stable release in nearly three years. Projects like Ubuntu were created due to the complete lack of leadership on Debian's part.
In the wake of Red Hat's withdrawl of a viable free linux distro, Debian should be thriving right now. Instead its fading away.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Maybe if they finally release testing, debian will start to pick up again. As it is, the (default) antiquated install system and old (default) packages are driving people to look for alternatives with some spring under its step. Ubuntu provides this. If debian users aren't happy about this, I think its just a case of sour grapes.
Debian just needs to start advertising itself using images of naked people, too. Then popularity will go up for Debian, until they achieve parity with Ubuntu, and more people will release packages that work well with Sarge.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Am I the only one who reads this as basically saying that Debian has been left behind because it has become stale?
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Perhaps an Endangered Distributions Act.
"Oops, there goes our last female".
Debian needs to get with the program and work with Ubuntu. Otherwise... well, we all know what happened to the dodos. It would take a lot of work to replace the Debian infrastructure, but it's not impossible to do.
Ubuntu is the only distro I'd reccomend for new users. It uses Apt for package management, packages are very stable and "just work", great hardware detection, easy installation, nice menus, uses hal + dbus for hardware configuration and such... Also the project has proper funding and is going in the right direction. That's why everyone loves Ubuntu. I don't use Ubuntu, because it doesn't fit my needs. I don't need my distro to configure hardware for me and such. I use Arch so I can have everything I want just how I want it: no more no less.
Perhaps someone could provide a Debian compatibility runtime and development environment for Ubuntu, and make the development environment the default environment? That way, when developers build packages on Ubuntu, they can be installed as-is on Debian as well? Provide a Ubuntu-specific development environment too, so developers can take advantage of Ubuntu-specific features that aren't in Debian yet, but only use those features when you absolutely must? Everyone wins?
I for my own believe that Ubuntu is by far to overhyped. A lot of announcments, a lot of marketing and a lot of hype. It might be a good distribution and gets people what they want but at the end it's just a distribution with a lot of financial background and pleasant marketing.
Packages made for sid don't even work on sarge all the time without pulling in extra packages from sid. That's the same thing that happens with packages meant for Ubuntu. When you have different sets of software installed on various computers, one single package isn't going to work correctly on all of them unless you're willing to mix packages from different repositories.
I don't think it's really fair to say that Ubuntu is a net negative for Debian. It's definitely a net negative for sarge, since very little, if any, of the work put in to Ubuntu has trickled down to sarge. However, it's good for Debian as a whole because when the ball gets rolling for etch, most of the work will already be done. Ubuntu puts out stable releases for three of the four release arches for etch, so I doubt much extra work will be needed there, although I don't really know that much about what additional work would be necessary.
Sure, Ubuntu's existence has various downsides, such as the proliferation of deb packages provided by developers that only work on Ubuntu, but would those people have made Debian packages in the first place? The packages are merely a byproduct of Ubuntu's popularity, and more people using Debian and Debian derived distributions is definitely a net gain for Debian. I don't see why he would write off all the benefits that Ubuntu provides while focusing on a few issues that are negligible IMO.
The packaging issue is one that's never really going to go away. On his blog, Ian cites software developers and ISVs as reasons for unifying Debian and Ubuntu packages. All free software developers have to do to get their software packaged by Ubuntu is request it. The Ubuntu packagers work fairly close with the Debian developers to make sure that the work trickles down to Ubuntu proper as well. For commercial software it's a bit harder, but that's one of the things to deal with in the Linux ecosystem. Like I said before, packages made for sarge wouldn't even necessarily work on woody. You have to target specific sets of available software, or just distribute binaries that install the software based on various LSB assumptions.
Well, no, everybody doesn't win. Providing compatibility with generic Debian would be a pain for Ubuntu, and would take energy away from more worthwhile work that people want to do on Ubuntu. Adding this kind of bag-on-the-side would be a win for generic Debian, and a loss for Ubuntu.
A better option might be for generic Debian to stop trying to support desktop users. The way things are stacking up now, generic Debian-stable is a great server OS, but a lousy dekstop OS. People who want to run the latest bleeding-edge version of Gnome or whatever are switching to Ubuntu. So what's the point of having generic Debian keep trying to support the latest bleeding-edge GUI packages?
I can't help thinking that this sounds like sour grapes on the part of Ian Murdock. The tone of his blog is like, "No fair, I don't want you to play with my ball anymore."
I don't think his comparison with RPM is completely apropos. RPM was poorly designed from the start, and was probably designed from the start as a tool for vendor lock-in. Apt-get, AFAICT, is well designed. If there's a problem maintaining compatibility between Ubuntu and generic Debian, it's probably because some of the desktop GUI libs are changing very rapidly.
Find free books.
This reminds me of when Mandrake forked from Redhat. Initially the RPM packages were fairly interchangeable. Eventually I learned to only use actual Mandrake RPMs on Mandrake. Somehow, the world kept turning...
Some settling may occur during posting.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/relationship/doc ument_view
?
"Ubuntu makes a release every six months, and supports those releases for 18 months with daily security fixes and patches to critical bugs.
As Ubuntu prepares for release, we "freeze" a snapshot of debian's development archive ('sid'). We start from 'sid' in order to give ourselves the freedom to make our own decisions with regard to release management, independent of Debian's release-in-preparation. This is necessary because our release criteria are very different from Debian's.
As a simple example, a package might be excluded from Debian 'testing' due to a build failure on any of the 11 architectures supported by Debian 'sarge', but it is still suitable for Ubuntu if it builds and works on only three of them. A package will also be prevented from entering Debian 'testing' if it has release-critical bugs according to Debian criteria, but a bug which is release-critical for Debian may not be as important for Ubuntu.
As a community, we choose places to diverge from Debian in ways that minimize the difference between Debian and Ubuntu. For example, we usually choose to update to the very latest version of Gnome rather than the older version in Debian, and we might do the same for key other pieces of infrastructure such as X or GCC. Those decisions are listed as Feature Goals for that release, and we work as a community to make sure that they are in place before the release happens."
So, who cares that it isn't compatible with Sarge? Is Sarge really compatible with Sid? I think not (if you are sane). Shouldn't Ian be saying that Ubuntu isn't compatible with his "componentized Linux" (http://www.progeny.com/products/components.html)
Apparently most of Slashdot doesn't realize that if Debian dies... so does Ubuntu.
Debian's packages are quite old. Ubuntu spawned from Debian's stable core, and created a newer, better distro. It sooms to be replacing Debian, so I don't think compaibility is an issue. Ubuntu is the new Debian.
(from tfa, so not exactly off topic)
Ubuntu today also released Kubuntu 5.04, which is a KDE 3.4 version of Ubuntu.
Great! Now I won't have to painfully rip Gnome out of and install KDE in to the install of Ubuntu on my laptop that's too old to gracefully run Gnome.
(Sorry Debian, Ubuntu rocks)
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Anyone try to run threaded Perl 5.8 on woody?
Anyone wonder by backports.org's Samba 3 backport hasn't been updated since 3.0.10 despite the # of security fixes and other improvements now in 3.0.13?
I've been trying to keep developers happy on several Woody based systems for some time. It's a nightmare. The versions of the dev tools they need are very rarely available or fully compatible with woody. Perl 5.8 for instance. Can't replace Perl 5.6, fine! But you also can't build a threaded Perl 5.8 on Woody.
Ubuntu is a God send, stepping up to the plate and delivering on the failed promises of the current (& past) debian maintainers. As another poster has said this is not a compatibility crisis for Debian, it's more of an evolution. Survival of the fittest in action. Christian Fundie's be damned. Evolution is a fact and we're watching it happen now.
It would be a huge problem for Unbuntu especially, because AFAIK, Unbuntu could not survive without the work that Debian provides. By usurping Debian (without giving back in any significant measure), Unbuntu might accidently obliterate the hand that feeds it.
for a dollar, I'll drop my two cents.
.deb based distro releasing current packages that won't work with debian sarge.
Who cares. The ubuntu packages released this year wouldn't make it into the debian default install until 2015 anyways. Why is the debian crew acting like this is going to hurt their compatibility ? It seems that not keeping up is more of a problem than another
I advocated debian for a few years as the best distro back in the 90s. It had everything I wanted as an admin, but I eventually had to leave to get better integration with the versions of software I wanted to run. I suspect the problem with integration isn't ubuntu package maintainers, but something much closer to home.
Ubuntu is a natural response to Debian's slow development and release cycle. Add in a more friendlier face and multiple languages leveraging the Debian model of apt-get everything and you got a n always up to date linux distro that captures the interest of those who want to use linux as a desktop environment and those who want to be bleeding edge. Any Debian users up for some X.org action? (not that it's impossible, but I've seen work arounds that leverage ubuntu's repository for xorg).
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
for me to stay away from linux. Compatibility is the largest problem I had with linux when I used it and it still is. Sigh, things haven't changed in 5 years?
I've been always trying to convert from Windows from Linux, and had lots of problems when doing so. Mainly, I was unable to find a distro that was easy to maintain and actually usable. You know, practical.
:P), and Debian as well.
I tried everything from Red Hat (from 4.2 and up), Conectiva (2 and up), Mandrake (6 and up), SuSE (6.2 and up) and Gentoo (I was never able to determine the version I was using, because as soon as I finished compiling something, I had to emerge world again
The one I liked *the most* was Debian because it just works... well, at least that was the idea. Since there were no real distributions that worked for me (Debian did, but... hey, look at Woody and Sarge), I kept on using Windows.
Well, what's the point? I'm typing this on Ubuntu, which I've been using since january. It's exactly what I liked on Debian, plus up to date packages. Thanks Canonical.
The new "Sid'!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
ok i'm pretty new to debian/ubuntu, usually playing around in gentoo, but i've already mucked up my new Ubuntu install i think. just trying to get basic functionality and stumbling through the wiki's, i've managed to get some strange versions of libraries, so I can't install mplayer.. :-\ i'm sure it's fixable, but it's still a bummer. i guess its screwed up because i had to add a certain repository to add one package, but that repository uses different versions of whatever libs than the repository mplayer is on.
:-\
kind of a bummer.
i had hoped/expected that apt could solve these issues... i suppose this hassle is something i'll just have to deal with if i want support for proprietary formats.
For development tools, I had to install everything just like in windows. CVS, GCC, Autogen, .. the whole laundry list; you've got be kidding me.
And everything doesn't "just works", hello Oprofile install. Still looking for a good distribution setup for development that's not based on RedHat's customized kernel that causes headaches for kernel mods like Oprofile and preferably that will fit on a regular CD(650 MB).
A few years ago I may have agreed with Ian, but now? I've got to wonder if the world would be better off with Debian devs heading over to the Ubuntu camp. Seriously, put Canonical in charge of the core, and let the slavering hordes continue to push the Universe packages out. I never thought that Debian would make for a decent desktop distribution until I used Ubuntu--and I had tried other desktop-oriented Debian-derived systems.
Ubuntu's trying to push the envelope, and changes things in doing so? FOR SHAME!
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
...is the "Ubuntu spatial" mode hacked into Nautilus (and turned on by default) just a few days before 5.04 went gold, which makes Ubuntu's file and folder management different from every other Gnome implementation out there. Why was this done? Seems Mark Shuttleworth decided by fiat that this new way is better. People are not amused.
If you want to use debian use debian, if you to use ubuntu use ubuntu. Dont complain cause your baby is dying because you have been neglecting it though.
Later,
Phil
I dunno, KDE seemed to be working just fine in Debian testing when I installed it for a friend. I don't need those fancy desktop environments as I just use IceWM, so I don't feel that Ubuntu has anything to offer me. What's wrong with Debian testing?
-insert a witty something-
(k)Ubuntu is the new Debian. Plain and simple. In another 5 years I am sure it will look very similar to what happened with what is now Mandriva and Fedora back in the day.
Sure compatability between the two OS's will go to the way-side. But (k)Ubuntu has an chance here to comply with the LSB and silence any claims of incompatability by saying they are just following the standards more closely than Debian proper.
If nothing else this is just more proof that maybe Debian does need to change their focus to only releasing stable versions for the big three architectures and leave the rest in unstable/testing limbo.
It has been discussed before and I know a lot of people flammed it because they love Debian for it's architecture support, but Linux fanboys need to start realizing this isn't just about us anymore, this is about the market we are trying to convert.
Whatever brings us closer to that end is good. Even supposedly "forking" Debian into (k)Ubuntu.
[/rant]
Disclosure: I run Kubuntu as my desktop as dual boot w/ WinXP.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
I'm fickle about which distro I use, but at the moment, and for the past month and a half, I've been using on this machine Fedora Core 3, which came as the cover disk for an English Linux magazine. (Why don't more American magazines come with monthly distros?) It's not perfect, but it's certainly "viable," in my case ...
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
UPDATE IT YOU BASTARDS!
who cares that it isn't compatible with Sarge? Is Sarge really compatible with Sid?
This is an important question. Ian is complaining that Ubuntu, a released distro, is incompatible with Debian Sarge, an unreleased unstable distro. This is like Bill Gates complaining that Firefox 1.0.2 is incompatible with Windows Longhorn Beta 2. As long as Firefox released first, it is the second-comer who is responsible for playing catch up.
Can Debian Sarge keep up with "standards" created by Ubuntu? I doubt it; Debian is not renowned for its agile development..
cpeterso
Now imagine if Ubuntu had instead been a group of developers who decided to combine their efforts with the Debian group to improve Debian?
Yes imagine what 7 layers of bureaucracy could have done for the Ubuntu team. Warty Warthog would have been released in 2008 and Debian developers could continue to ignore that fact that they suck.
Ubuntu rox -
with Knoppix I could show people the power of Linux but install only an insecure hacked version of debian.
Ubuntu is just way better than windows, way easier to install, way secure OutOfTheBox, comes with apps preinstalled, and when you show windows users that when they want new software they can just apt-get free stuff, they go pale and grip the table edge and make NNN noises.
C'mon Ubuntu is so easy even ESR's granny could install it, and whoo would you trust Bill Gates Knight of the DRealM or Mark Shuttleworth Astronaut?
I thawte so.
Every piece of hardware I stuck into it just worked, USB stix, cameras - the only thing my dual boot menu with Doze is Photoshop and now with Gimposhop I'm making progress.
C'mon Debian you guys aught to know that the answer to problems is never to hold up progress.
Its like what is the holdup with Sarge anyhoo?
I mean no really does anyone know why its so late?
... pedantic commentary aside ...
...)
Ubuntu hoary: 3100+
Debian stable: 8500+
Debian testing: 12000+??? (prolly more? I don't have a box to hand
So the "value" might be proportional to N^2, but as any software engineer should know, problems due to to communication between entities is O(N^2) as well.
Debian needs to cut down the amount of packages it supports as "stable", otherwise some rogue bug in a bizarre package will hold everything else up.
Is Ubuntu a compatability nightmare? Why, yes, it is! It's the only Linux distro I've ever seen crash when trying to load the window manager - which is Gnome. While I admire what they're doing, it has to work.
Use AutoPackage and all will be well.
Or maybe not.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
no Ubuntu. Happy forking :)
(and this comes from a FreeBSD guy)
Really, I am amazed to see the willingness of all those useless non contributing critters to bite the hand that not only feeds but indeed.. breathes the very life into your upcoming corpse that made you become the little critters that would.
It's been 8 years since the first Linux desktop miracle, ok. None have galvanized. debian should be happy to be rid of a useless mass of fanboys.
Totally UN GRATE FUL, here's to debian!
ubuntus desktop focus, and essentially 'floating' above unstable will drive debian to only get better faster. how? like this:
1. it will attract (and is attracting) a huge userbase that will very quickly understand the benefits of apt and the benefits of debian. there is no better example of what a polished linux desktop can be than latest gnome/kde on top of sid (ubuntu), properly patched and configured for the user. this is huge and extremely exciting, it is the best example of 'how a linux desktop is not only workable but superior to the competition and can only attract more talent.
2. ubuntu's goal is not to 'fork' but to 'freeze and polish' every six months based on unstable. some packages must be forked for obvious reasons, not for the sake of forking but because ubuntu serves the desktop and not all 11 architectures - what that means is ubuntu forks packages only so long as they can safely be used on the desktop while being patched on the other architectures.
3. all the interest in ubuntu will eventually trickle down to interest and excitement in debian
4. all the development going into ubuntu will eventually trickle down to debian. the problem right now is simply timing. debian will only start to see the fruits of ubuntus labour after sarge is released, and when unstable become testing. then and only then will debian start to see an accelerated track as a result of this newfound excitement.
5. debian is the easiest and larges distro out there. ubuntu only seems like a negative from the perspective of sarge's release schedule and ubuntu just jumping into the scene. give it time, you will see debian kill suse and redhat to the point that i predict they will drop their individual efforts and simply adopt debian as their core and base their proprietary services around debian.
it is inevitable all shall be assimilated.
Newsflash: forking causes extra administration work! Also, the new Pope that they choose is likely to be a Catholic.
Seriously, is it possible that there was anyone at all out there who didn't realize forking causes extra administration work? Or do software developers just not think of the impact their software has on people who actually try to use it in the real world? (Having been a systems administrator, I can say first hand that software developers often don't give the slightest consideration to how their software will be used.)
Noboody complains that Ford parts don't fit GM cars.
The problem is simply that binary compatibility is hard.
Easy enough; it's the implications that are subtle. Like that building a key system library with different options makes it a different package. That changing a key system library thus changes the entire configuration management scenario. That a package that has different subcomponents, each with their own dependencies, is a package that depends on all of them. That auto-built dependencies tend to be even pickier then the real ones. That packages are only as good as their (builder supplied) metadata. And so on and so forth.
There must be something about this that is either hard to comprehend, or hard to accept. It gives a lot of RPM users trouble, it gives Debian users a sense of superiority, it's what makes BSD ports work so well, and it's largely responsible for making Microsoft Windows the unholy mess that it is. Clearly, there's a disconnect here.
Take a look at some common misconceptions in the software world.
It appears a disproportionate number of Debian users carry a false sense of superiority about their package tools, when what really makes Debian win is the size of the distribution package pool. Specifically, that having such a large pool of configured, compiled, and tested packages readily available via "apt-get install foo" leads a lot of Debian people into think APT is somehow magic.
Likewise, RPM properly saying "I don't think you have the pieces you need for this to work" leads so many people into thinking that RPM *causes* "dependency hell". RPM simply reports it. YUM (and things like it) can help you with it. But the nature of binary software itself is what *causes* dependency hell.
And the fact that BSD ports downloads, configures, builds, and installs all specified components *from source* leads BSD bigots into thinking that the BSD ports packagers must be doing a much better job then Red Hat or Debian packagers. Rather, they just bypass the problem of binary compatability.
And, again, this is also largely responsible for why Windoze sucks so much. When everything is a binary which you have no source for, and no two packages share information on what is being installed, and you can only install one version of any given library at once time -- then, yah, it's a minor kind of miracle the thing ever works at all.
Binary compatability is hard.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Exactly that. It's testing. There are no security-fixes but instead daily massive upgrades.
Let's say that you'd want to install a Debian system for someone and have it autoupdated. With Debian Stable this works very nicely. You add a crontab entry and get just the bugfixes. With Testing or Unstable, you would get maybe 1G per week, clearly not feasible for all desktop-users.
having different distros that won't run others code takes greatly away from the "power of linoox"
:)
Takes away? Like if Linux distros were already compatible with each other?
Excuse me for a second.
*runs to the bathroom and ROFL's for about 10 minutes.*
OK, back.
With the great resources at their disposal how many operating systems does Microsoft put out at any given time. Maybe 3 server and 3 desktop operating systems supported at any given time? How many versions of each? At most between 2 and 5, but basically all the same just with capabilities switched on or off, or bugfixes added.
Now how many operating systems do Linux developers come up with? A few hundred maybe, and tens of these are "mainstream" distros. Often the basic admin tools, desktops etc. look and act differently.
Is it any wonder non-technical (and even some technical) users are turned off using Linux on the desktop?
Come on guys. Divided we fall!!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
...ten years ago. I stopped using it when the kernel hit 2.6 and Debian was still on 2.2. The whole "ultimate stability" thing is just an excuse--I think Debian can't get their act together and release an updated system.
All the more power to Ubuntu. It's a great system, easy to install and use, and really stable. If Debian can't keep up, let them die in an Darwinian haze.
How about the problems installing Debian binary packages on Ubuntu machines, with different API addresses due to different configs? These distros are worthwhile because apt-get works so well, even on complex interdependencies. If their packages are mutually incompatible, then Ubuntu is really a fork, and not the "good influence" and "accelerator" that its founders, "longtime, experienced Debian developers", assured us it would be.
--
make install -not war
Maybe they should call it something besides debian then? Oh wait... maybe like.. uh.. UBUNTU?
Ian should regard this as a fire being lit under Debian's butt. I switched to Ubuntu from debian because I got tired of being left behind again and again because debian just doesn't update nearly enough.
With Ubuntu, I get updates regularly, and I feel more like I'm closer to the up-to-date linux mainstream. Don't get me wrong, I realize Debian's contribution is huge, but if they continue to lag behind like this the net negative for Debian will be Debian, not Ubuntu.
I think it's unfair to complain about Ubuntu taking a great thing and making it better. They're showing initiative that Debian clearly lacks.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Etch? Is this the name that the new Testing will receive once Sarge becomes the Stable release?
Wow, they're really grasping for Toy Story-related names. Hmm...was Wheeze ever used? Gotta give the little penguin some propers before moving on to Bug's Life/Nemo/Monsters Inc./Incredibles-related names.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Seriously.
Yes, Ubuntu packages do not work on Sarge -- Ubuntu starts from SID (which is what I am typing this reply on and have been using since 2000 without a reinstall!). I do not expect Knoppix packages to run on Sarge, or Mepis or Ubuntu. Ubuntu, while closely tied to Debian is a different beast. SID packages are already high quality. Ubuntu just polishes they up a bit further, makes TOO MANY things brown, and pushes it out the door every six months. I run it on my work laptop, and it works like a charm (except the infamous Broadcom wireless grrr).
The reason Ubuntu is great for Debian is that they are paying Debian developers who ARE pushing back patches both to the upstream, and to SID. I believe that when X.org hits SID, it will be better because of Ubuntu than it would have been in Ubuntuless world. Ditto for many other packages.
Nothing even close to modern runs on Debian stable, and the compatiblity nightmare they call "testing" is just as bad. I've been defending (and using) Debian for a lot of years now, but they need to get their act together, stop complaining, build a decent project, and release it, or just shut up and die. Metaphorically, that is. Ubuntu is a net positive for the users. Whether it's a net positive for Debian is mostly up to Debian.
I think what Ian means is that Ubuntu is bad for his Progeny/Componentized Linux. You see, lots of projects, Guadalinex and Linex among them, were using Componentized Linux as their base and have now made Ubuntu their base distribution.
I run Debian on servers and would not change it for anything in the world. I would also like to see each Ubuntu release come out once a year and with 5 years of support, but I doubt that they have the infrastructure to support this. If they did, they would clean up the enterprise, home and SMB markets in a short two to three years.
It surprises me that they don't see the huge market that's awaiting anyone willing to provide security distributions for a distribution very cheaply for more than eighteen months.
KDE and Gnome are now at the stage that they are as usable as their proprietary counterparts if not more. All the ducks are nicely lined up waiting for Canonical to say we are going to continue to ship CDs and if you want security updates beyond the first 18 months, we will charge $50 a year per machine for the service.
That would rock!
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Well I really don't know squat about Linux and I am primarily a Windows user but I was able to get Ubuntu going without any fuss. In fact it works so well that if it wasn't for a little fear uncertainty and doubt on my part I could completely stop using Windows. When I say install a package it just does it. When you want to update it just does it. Heck I can't get Windows to do that as well as Ubuntu and I have been screwing around with it for years.
I am learning a little about Linux by using Ubuntu at that it uses apt from Debian that makes all this happen or part of it anyway. So it seams to me like they sort of need each other. Or that it would be best if they stayed around and both improved themselves. I can't say I have ever used Debian by itself but I have tried Mandrake, Fedora, SUSE they all seemed to work OK but sooner or later I would run into frustrating technical crap like on Windows that I just didn't want to contend with. Ubuntu, for me, really makes Linux something I can realistically use.
Okay.... now will all the Debian people figure out it's not deb that's better, it's how it's packaged!
Now that there is a major deb based distro out there, Debian people will understand the difference. Welcome to deb hell!
Just look how quickly XF86 became irrelevant and distros migrated to X.Org. Similarly, with a certain amount of refocusing on the server side of things, Ubuntu could actually become the new Debian, or at least provide a model from which such an entity could be formed.
Many distributions use RPMs and they are generally not interchangeable either. No big deal. If you don't know which distro you are running and don't know where to get valid RPMs, then it is just as well.
Ubuntu is a betrayal of Debian.
Canonical has hired a number of critical packagers and maintainers of infrastructure of Debian and paid them to do priority work for Ubuntu instead of work on Debian.
Ubuntu, keeping in mind, depends on masses of packagers and developers who have chosen to package and quality-check for Debian. Canonical, in turn, depends on providing paid support for Ubuntu.
Debian has built up a mountain of goodwill by supporting so many different arches with rocksolid stability, and leveraging that into donations of hardware and bandwidth for a world of mirrors for its pages and packages. A start-up for-profit commercial entity cannot hope to duplicate this success, is unable to do so as so many others have done in a relationship that can be described as mutualism or commensalism, and instead satisfies itself with being a blood-sucking parasite that will end only in its own destruction along with that of the host.
And you wankers who want the latest and best but cannot see past the inconsequential metric of a release date of a "stable" set of packages, are selling your souls and that of the best distro of Linux to ensure it will happen.
</soapbox>
Those who worte the slash dot and web articles don't know anything about Debian. Debian is really three distributions. Ubuntu is based on SID - the most buggy.
I think this thread is just Ubuntu hype - our logs don't see any trend. Please note there are SEVERAL other dist based Debian. I think Debina has more children than any other distro - says good things about Debian.
like debian could hurry up a little eh? like slackware releases faster than them... when is SID getting released anyway i need 2.6 kernel rofl.
Like most people I agree its a bit of a "duh" to have moved far away from sarge. It's difficult to remain compatible with something that is so far behind the times it will be obselete on release. Even sid has moved away in some regards; yet even it is obselete in many areas. There is no business sense whatsoever in being chained to the old sloth.
Part of the compatibility problem is on Debian's side: many maintainers are annoyed that Ubuntu exists and choose to not work with them out of pride/arrogance. This attitude is something I hope Branden breaks in his new tenure as DPL.
This is where I think it will be very interesting. Branden has always been a progressive and practical person, with extremely little time for the kind of political rubbish that has prevented sarge from being released. We know that the platforms Ubuntu has chosen are the ones that matter for their market, and the ones that matter for the near future in the desktop and server market (with Sun dropping UltraSPARC for amd64) in general. We know there's already been talk of refocussing Debian such that architectures like arm that usually hold everything up will no longer do so.
So the way I see it, there's a lot of hand-waving going on here that could be completely irrelevent in the future as Debian is architecturally focussed the same as Ubuntu which should foster greater cooperation. Of course Ubuntu is clearly on the desktop side and not the server, so I guess it will have more of the eye-candy and desktop apps while Debian has a far greater range of packages; though it doesn't necessarily need to be that way. It would be fantastic if Ubuntu is simply re-branding the Debian desktop packages in a co-maintenance fashion.
My greatest gripe with Debian over the past 6 years is how they seemed to have wasted time arguing over pathetic things like should this document licensed under the GFDL really be in Debian, and have hence fallen from their position as the #1 distribution on the ball technically, always up-to-date (at least in sid) with what's out there, to being so far behind its becoming very tempting to switch. Come on, the commercial distros used to be the last to get anything new, now they are becoming the first. Okay, so Novell *wrote* Beagle but the source has always been available, why is is still not in sid (even an old version?). Call me out for not packaging it myself, but neither have you so that's hardly an argument. That's just one minor example.
(and fwiw I did try packaging it myself, but the dependencies were also either not packaged or out of date and it became a much bigger and riskier task than I have time for)
I can understand Ian's frustration, he created Debian and then went on to found Progeny and I guess there's some angst/jealousy there over how popular Ubuntu has become in such a short time while Progeny hasn't quite seen that kind of success for however many years (most people forget it even exists unless prompted by some mention somewhere). Get over it. I've seen more cooperation from Ubuntu maintainers with "upstream" Debian than any other Debian fork as witnessed by changelogs of packages I use, I put their success down to this and their good business strategy/vision. Credit where credit is due. I hope this cooperation will increase in the future.
Matt
How could it?-
A. Sarge isn't released
B. Ubuntu is based on Sid.
Murdoch argues that if Ubuntu were truly compatible with Debian, all of the energy going into it could be directed at Sarge and toward getting it released, which is what would really benefit the Debian developer ecosystem as a whole.
Yep. Thats what Userlinux tried to do. Look how that went. Debian is too uncentralized to ever be more than a server distro (where slow is good).
"I understand what the Ubuntu folks are trying to do, and they're doing lots of good work that will eventually find its way into Debian," Murdoch said. "But what we really need right now as a community is for Sarge to be released.
There. He admits that Ubuntu is now more about helping out Etch (the release after Sarge) then helping out Sarge. But Warty should have helped Sarge a bunch, and Sarge has problems even millionaire Mark can't fix quickly.
"In that respect, Ubuntu's popularity is more harmful than helpful."
How is it harmful that Etch is going to kick ass because of Ubuntu's work?
I'll tell you how- each Ubuntu release is an embaressment to the Debian people. Two Ubuntus have been released before a Sarge. And if they don't watch out, it will be three. Businesses don't like that many upgrades usually, so a slow Sarge is good many say. But from the words of of Debian's founder is obvious that Sarge not being released it is turning into a bit of a joke...not good for Debian's image.
Thats the only way Ubuntu hurts Debian.
Open Source Sushi
So the nightmare is that they turned off spacial Nautilus? I may just become an Ubuntu user yet..
Spacial nautilus sucks. Its only a matter of time before the dev's realize this too.
From a linux "user": All I know is that when I tried to install Debian last summer, hearing about how it was the best, installation turned into a nightmare when I was asked from a command-line type interface where the mouse was...Ubuntu is a snap to use. Put it in the drive, easy install, looks great and runs great (except mp3 support). In the meantime however, I have used MEPIS quite a bit, which is also built on Debian as I understand. It has nearly everything I need already built in. Regarding the compatibility issue, I don't think it's as important as the usability issue, as in, if I can't install it I can't use it. Just my take on things.
This guy must be on crack. Debian is still the dist of choice for servers by a long shot.
If you use normal Debian all you have to do is borrow some ones package list that is doing similar things - and aptget later you should be pretty much set up.
There is a reasonably simple and very effective solution here. The Debian project supports, and in fact encourages co-maintainers for packages. This is a great way to get more manpower into the process and improve the quality of packages. The co-maintainer doesn't even have to be an official member of Debian if the maintainer sponsors the combined work.
I am a Debian developer, and one of the packages that I maintain has been patched by Ubuntu. I only found out about it by looking over the Ubuntu patch site. What I would like to see is the Ubuntu developer contact me, ask to be a co-maintainer, and get those changes directly into the Debian package. This is good for Debian - we get additional help in doing a good job. This is good for Ubuntu since they don't have to re-merge patches every six months. It helps the two groups act as a team, feel good about each other, and save on overall work. And, as the article points out, the increased compatibility between Debian, Ubuntu and all other Debian based distributions (including Knoppix) is a win for end users.
Now that Ubuntu is a rising star, and Debian has just finished Project Lead elections, I would like to see the leadership of the two organizations get together, discuss the idea, and hopefully agree that this is a good way to work together. The leadership can then promote co-maintainership as a 'best practice' within their own organizations, inform the userbase (i.e. get it mentioned on slashdot), PLUS appoint an interoperability liason. The liason's job is to hassle^H^H^H^H^H^H talk with individual developers to help make sure this actually happens. Branden, don't you think this would be a great first accomplishment as DPL?
Of course, there will still be some places where Debian and Ubuntu want to do something differently, so some packages will always be a little incompatible. But the bulk of the 'heavy lifting' across the thousands of packages is all about stuff developers generally agree on. Updating software, finding and fixing problems, improving quality. Ian Murdock is worried an impending 'nightmare'. I think if we can work together well, the upcoming Ubuntu/Debian relationship is going to be software distribution's finest hour.
1. Debian is not a company.
2. Debian has changed its release architectures after Sarge so that Etch is not slowed down by unknown, exotic and/or obsolete architectures.
3. Sarge is not ready NOW because of the large number of architectures. ARM has only 2 auto-builders now and hasn't even compiled the release of glibc that has to go into Sarge. After it finishes compiling, the archive will be frozen.
Everyone can start their own little distributions here and there, usually leaching off of distributions like Debian. They find a limited niche market and people start talking about "Debian dying". Well, I think we had that discussion before Woody as well.
Debian has a very large number of packeges available for it. As of right now, Sid has over 16600 packages. Distributions like Ubuntu do not maintain these packages. They are just managing the core (base) and a few other packages.
Anyway, release cycles every 3 or 6 months are not necessarly good. People using Debian want stability. Why do people on slashdot bitch about MS dropping support for NT or 98, yet they complain that Debian stable is 3 years old! Huh?
Woody ships with a 2.4.18 kernel. This kernel does not support SATA. Woody does not support 2.6.x kernels with module support out of the box. But you can install kernel 2.6 on woody. You can run woody on a SATA only system (can't install it from CDs though). Can you install NT4 or Windows 98 or Windows 2000 or even XP out of the box on a SATA only system? My latest, greatest XP installation does NOT detect my SATA chipset. I mean, WTF?
Anyway, as soon as Sarge ships, people will start trolling that it does not support PCE-48X or their modem or something.
People wanting RHEL software stability without the pricetag and still want to have security support would be using Woody for the last 3 years. I am using Woody on a number of machines. I don't have to worry about upgrades with unexpected bugs. I don't have to worry about sudden ABI changes or compiler changes or kernel changes or GUI changes or coputeguration changes or
So, why again is Slashdot population (I guess you can it that) complaining about Woody being stable less than 3 years, yet when it comes to MS, well, they release NT when? I think it came with IE 2!! And now that they drop support, people complain left and right about the need to upgrade..
Why are people here so hypocritical? You can run Sid with latest, greatest if you want. You can get latest Sarge installer here: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ There are many people that will be running Woody months *after* Sarge gets released.
</rant>
Many of the followups to this story seem to take for granted that Ian Murdock represents the views of Debian.
He doesn't.
In reality, the Debian and Ubuntu projects are building a mutually beneficial relationship based on building free operating systems. There is a certain amount of friction in this process, but neither project is predicting the imminent doom of another.
Progeny, on the other hand, seems to consider Ubuntu a threat to its survival.
The end result is Ubuntu - a fork. Unfortunately Ubuntu doesn't really tackle the packaging problem seriously: it improves on Debian by only stabilising a small base system, but this means you get to choose between (a) an out of date and small but stable repository (main) or (b) a large and up to date but often broken repository (universe). And I still haven't figured out WTF the "metaverse" is yet.
Actually, I've never had a problem with anything in the Universe, and I've never heard of anybody that did (and it wasn't some third party repo's fault). And I hang out on the forum a bunch.
The other part is the multiverse, non free packages such as the adobe acrobat reader.
Unfortunately the Ubuntu developers only go so far - they still believe it's possible for Ubuntu to package everything end users will ever need, even though at least in Warty, universe wasn't even enabled by default. I don't see any way for Ubuntu to stabilise universe without getting bogged down in the same mud that Debian did.
Its easy. The pay developers work on the main, release every six months and support a small base for their occupations. The universe is controlled by volunteers called the Masters of the Universe. This way the universe still gets support, but the main devs don't have to do it.
Open Source Sushi
Now it hurts me to say this, but a lot of what many other posters are saying about Debian dying off are true. Don't get me wrong, I like (K)Ubuntu - it's going to be the next distro I hop over to - but I love Debian like a brother - After disasterous misadventures with restrictive RedHat and Mandrake installs, Debian gave me just the right level of ease where I wanted it and power where it was needed. To me, RedHat and Mandrake just felt like an equal to Windows, but with Debian I genuinely felt more productive. I learnt my Linux skills on Debian and it still faithfully hauls my two main machines like a loyal pack-horse, but one I know is slowly preparing to lay down and go to sleep for that final time. Kubuntu is the next choice for my main work machine and will be slipped on next time I get around to doing it (which will probably be around August), and the reasons are simple;
- I want up-to-date packages. I want KDE 3.4 out-of-the-box, I want X.org and the full support for my graphics card it brings - I want all the things Debian doesn't have but with Ubuntu are just an apt-get away.
- I want to feel my system is modern. I know, I know, if I want cutting-edge, use Gentoo, but I don't want cutting-edge, I just want modern - with Debian I feel I'm being left behind.
- Better (easier) installation. I'm trying to prise my mother off of Windows, and while Ubuntu's installer still isnt GUI, it's not quite the CLI terror that is the Debian installer - how am I supposed to convert her to Linux when even the installer scares the shit out of her?
- More frequent updates. OK sure, they might have stupid names (Hoary Hedgehog?), but Ubuntu updates are frequent and on-time, and they keep things up to date - Debian updates seem very few and far between, and serve only to make sure the disto stays a good three or four years behind the competiton in the name of stability.
On the final point, granted, Debian is absolutely rock-solid, and for that reason if that reason alone I will be keeping it on my server box (sitting blinking in the corner as I type this), but as for my work box, it's getting Kubuntu as soon as I get round to it.
As I said, I love Debian like a brother, but I'm growing to love Kubuntu like the hot girl down the street (and no, not through a telephoto lens) - you love them both for different reasons, and while all your family loyalty might tell you to sit in with your brother, reality has to step in and tell you to go off with the sleeker, sexier option.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I maintain the speedtouchconf.sf.net project, and have just been told that, amongst the many /etc/*conf*modules*conf* files, Ubuntu instead uses /etc/modules.
It's hard enough keeping track of the flavours, without people (apparently) randomly introducing new stuff... okay, I can add support for /etc/modules as a config file, unless someone else introduces /etc/modules/ as a directory.
Support isn't just a problem for commercial distro's (in fact, it's less of a problem for them) - it creates problems for hundreds (thousands) of volunteer developers worldwide.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
If I remember correctly, Homo sapiens are not descendents of Neanderthals. I'm pretty sure Neanderthals and humans just have common ancestors.
To bring Linux down from geekdom to the secretary's desktop we need exactly what Ubuntu offers... easy install and, most importantly, a decent live CD distribution that they'll mail you for free. Heck, they'll send you twenty production-quality packaged distros for you to hand to the PHB's so they'll be impressed. It's got a desktop, office apps, and some browsing and doesn't throw a bunch of "colonel who's?" at the newbies who just want a Windows alternative to do everyday stuff.
Let Ubuntu be Debian unstable...
they concentrate on a base install, and allow the other distro's to work on the niche features...ubuntu for gnome desktop, kubuntu,yolinux for kde desktop, knoppix for live cd stuff, etc.
I believe that Debian can still be a great force, however I also believe they need to relegate some of that responsibility to other distro's to avoid fragmentation to the point where they no longer are a factor (ok, extreme case in the distant future).
With all the debian distros out there I feel alot of repetative work is being done. If the Debian leadership would "officially" ask other debian based distro's for assistance on creating a new path for debian and I think that many of the larger distro's would agree as it would allow them to accomplish more of their own work.
It's late and I need sleep...
no sig yet
Unless you have a link to a site that tracks package lists to show, and in particular one that includes a development package list, saying to just crib off of someone else is a hollow suggestion.
Hmm...I guess I never thought about it that way, as I'm not on dial-up. I quickly get upset with stable distributions because gaim gets out of date really quickly; I guess that's why I quit Mandrake way back when. Here's to testing!
-insert a witty something-
I've got a method for averting crisis: how 'bout if Debian would actually release something once in a while? I don't mean to sound harsh or mean, but honestly, people don't like waiting until Real Soon Now (tm) for software. They want it now.
I know the Debian folks really want to get Sarge right, but honestly, let's get a move on!
I wonder what would happen if somebody takes a snapshot of Debian testing every 6 months, make sure nothing important breaks, and claim it a "release". I'll call it "Testian". The quality of packages in Testing is generally high enough to be "released" anyway.
What's up with all you guys grudging against Debian Woody anyway? <flamebait>At least it's "newer" than Windows XP.</flamebait> For that matter, most popular linux software have stabilized to the point that releases every few months doesn't make much diffferent. Frankly, GNOME 2.4 doesn't feel much different from 2.8, and I don't expect much difference from 2.1x either.
Not everybody wants to live on the bleeding edge. And most who do don't need to.
As a simple example, a package might be excluded from Debian 'testing' due to a build failure on any of the 11 architectures supported by Debian 'sarge', but it is still suitable for Ubuntu if it builds and works on only three of them. A package will also be prevented from entering Debian 'testing' if it has release-critical bugs according to Debian criteria, but a bug which is release-critical for Debian may not be as important for Ubuntu.
I believe you gave a crystal-clear explanation with one of Debian's deepest problems. Why must all the packages in all those architectures be in sync? It's artificial. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Until it does. Period. Put a machine-readable info somewhere about this status, and comparison charts on the web. Tough luck, no developer resources/interest/time enough, and keep the dharma wheel moving.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Wellcome to "vive la vida Linux"
Suddenly you don't feel the same way about RPM based distros anymore, do you?
errera hunamum ets
Mod that up, it's insightful! And, IIRC, testing is about 15000.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
What about debian as a server distro? I would want my production hardware to get security updates for about 3 years from release. A long release cycle makes sense to me on a server.
I'd like to hear what anyone else thinks about Debian as a Server distro.
Michael
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
If they released a distro that worked on modern PCs and actually worked for once, people wouldn't run from thier half-assed attempt to be geeks.
Troll. Right there.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
That is a quote from the Ubuntu page which I linked to.
The reason it has to be "in sync" for all of those architectures is because that is a fundamental element of Debian. Debian is supposed to work the same on all advertised supported architectures. This is a Good Thing in the server market where you might not have the luxury of picking the hardware yourself. However, it is also a Bad Thing because it slows down the release cycle which in turn makes the distribution unsuitable for the average desktop user. If you have a clue, and don't mind fixing things when they break, then Sid is quite fine for a desktop operating system.
Personally, I have been using Debian since Slink and using Sid for a majority of the time. I am currently moving files around so that I can reload my desktop with Ubuntu. The release cycle has really started getting on my nerves; the Sarge freeze has held up major packages in Sid because new packages in Sid will still affect the Sarge release. I am to the point where I want a system that "just works," doesn't require me to do arcane things from time to time, and has a reliable release schedule.
Debian is Dead.
They have the space and time to waste adding windows apps but not setup development tools? What crap is that? What's the point of a distro if they leave all the distro building to the user? Really, all I wanted to do was beat the shit out of the retards for wasting my time.
How many times does it need to be explained to you how wrong you are about this before you start listening? I've seen this explained to you in painful detail several times on multiple mailing lists, and previously on slashdot. Autopackage is not a good idea, and it does not deserve to be in any sane Linux distribution by default. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and opens the Linux world to the world of malware and other shit that Windows users are used to.
I've seen you waste the ubuntu dev's time on this by you repeating yourself over and over again, long after they showed why you are wrong and how they don't think Autopackage works for their distribution. Give it a rest already, eh?
501 Not Implemented
I'm currently running Debian sarge on my desktop with a few sid packages here and there, and I haven't yet had a good opportunity to take a proper look at Ubantu. Sarge presently works really well for me as it is, and I keep it updated with recent packages. Apart from perhaps a more streamlined installation process and a more recent "official" release, what does Ubantu offer? I'm not trying to criticise -- I'm just interested in whether it's worth me switching.
Personally, I'm not hugely motivated by the official support that Debian offers for stable, although I accept that some people might treat it as important. Being my desktop machine, it's not absolutely critical to me that it doesn't break from time to time. If it does break, there's still substantial unofficial support out there from both the debian package maintainers, and from the upstream open source community.
Does Ubantu offer much over Debian sarge apart from a more recent official release? I'm wondering if it's worth my time and effort to rebuild my sarge workstation as Ubantu.
Linux is improving so fast beyond Windows that we're bickering about loyalties to a product that's free to use, and just one of many. Windows is toast all, and thanks for Debian for helping that along. But now, what will take Windows out once and for all is the fact that there are 5 new (versions of) linux distros out a week. MS can't keep up, and that's why we still have no Longhorn, because it's behind us, and will be an embarrassment to the company that only knows how to innovate suing, and lobbying weak governments against the free growth of technology.
I had the same issue! I once went to #debian on freenode, foolishly thinking that Debian people might want to help me double-check my CUPS article on Wikipedia. Instead, I got a lot of abuse, and after watching the channel members abuse some other guy (for who knows what), I decided this wasn't the channel for me and to leave.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you compile from source, then you dont get these problems. You also dont need to split your packages up into "dev" and "non-dev", and get into that whole can of worms. Im not even going into the multitude of versioning problems that exist with binary packages.
Unix is designed with source in mind. Win32 is designed with binaries in mind. Going against the fundamental nature of either system leads to problems.
Sounds like a homoerotic Army porno.
Yeah, type one letter wrong there, ouch :)
Lucky c not next to b!
Not Free SF Reader
Lovable and cuddly monkeys?
Today's humans are believed to be decedents of Cro-Magnons which were primitive humans that at some point lived in the same time period as Neanderthals.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Wow, what an asshole.
That's exactly what I was talking about. I ask a question, and you bite my head off. If this is such a trivial question, then why isn't there a simple solution?
Perhaps you should try some of your solutions yourself, instead of blindly assuming they work well. A quick Google search does not show any Definate answers. There is no obvious, definitive answer on debian.org.
I see some mailinglist posts made by people who I don't know. I also see a bunch of sites which have no obvious authority in the Debian project. Where's the offical word from the Debian leaders? Why should I trust what some stranger says on the mailinglist?
This is why people keep asking.
If the Debian devs want people to stop asking this frequently asked question, perhaps they should drop the elitist additide and put it in the Debian FAQ-- that's why we have a FAQ.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Strangely, Windows is outdoing linux on a fairly important point, though it does a lot of work to attain this. As one of the commenters noted, few people run Debian stable. To really use debian you need unstable now, and that's true to a lesser degree for a number of other distros.
Because free software is free as in beer, packagers assume there is no big burden in making their packages depend on the latest versions of dependencies they have around at the time they build. They don't do the hard task of testing and building packages with older dependencies even though they would run fine on them.
On the other hand, developers for the W operating system tend to try to make their package run on as many versions of it as they can, and they test it on as many versions as you can. What that means is that a very large amount of the time, you can install the latest version of some software package on Win98, often even Win95, and almost always the 5 year old Windows 2000.
Try to have a 5 year old version (with security updates of course) of just about any linux distro and try to install the latest version of some hot new package you want. It will rarely work. It may not even be available in your package manager, and if it is, it will want to upgrade vast numbers of packages in your system that you don't actually truly need to upgrade.
And like it or not, even though upgrading is good, upgrades are scary. They are scary for ordinary non-guru users and they are scary even for guru users who are trying to run production systems they depend on. Upgrading should happen regularly, but it should happen on the user's schedule, not at random because I want to run some new software.
Ideally upgrading should not be so scary, but it is. Things break. More than once I have had a major upgrading result in a day of downtime, and I think I know what I'm doing.
It is not satisfactory to tell your senior citizen mother to run unstable and upgrade regularly. It's not going to happen.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
There are two (or more) really different kinds of users that Debian serves - desktop/SOHO and production/enterprise users. Desktop users run unstable (or testing if they're conservative) and users needing stability and security over features go for stable. Everyone loves being able to apt-get update; apt-get upgrade. Everyone loves having a huge package archive that's accessible without hunting the web. However, the only people happy with the release cycles and maintenance processes are the users who want to run stable. That's why ubuntu has gotten popular - it's filling the desktop niche a bit more. I think though that ubuntu is too specialized for me to like. Eg, their website says that it's GNOME based, but what if I want to run KDE instead? I also don't like installing much out of the box - I want to pick and choose only what I want; Debian lets me do this. I'd love to see:
:)
- The Ubuntu and Debian folks get together to build an awesome base system framework to build around (eg. kernel-package, hotplug, installer, etc)
- Try to make it easier/more popular for developers to package their own stuff and put it in contrib. Make it more like freshmeat but with storage.
- Debian people can maintain stable and follow their current release concepts, but maybe scale back on the number of packages offered. Do stable users really need games and P2P packages, for example?
- Ubuntu project can be to build from and extend Debian Unstable.
I would use Ubuntu if it were Debian with more and more up to date packages. I think it makes sense for Ubuntu to be that, although maybe with a prettier installer (please don't take away my ability to start from clean slate). It makes sense that the Ubuntu project would want to derrive Debian packages as they do now, especially if Debian were to scale a bit back. Debian has, in Unstable, main, contrib, and non-free (repositories" (right word?)). There should be an Ubuntu "repository" as well. Eg, say ubuntu patches xmms to add https mp3 streaming. They would put that new package in the ubuntu repository in Debian unstable. The package would have a higher version number than the package in main and would be tagged as having a derrivation (some unique id number or name - eg "ubuntu-https-stream" [perhaps a convention is needed as for version numbers]). The package versioning mechanism would need to be extended so that once you have installed a package with a derrivation, "apt-get upgrade" will not upgrade to a newer version of the package unless the package includes the derrivation. If you wanted to upgrade any way, there could be a command line switch on apt-get to specify that.
Ubuntu would become a new "repository" in Debian, plus media with a tweaked install process. Upgrading a debian unstable box to ubuntu should be as easy as adding an apt sources line and running apt-get update; apt-get upgrade.
This way ubuntu packages can do what they want, will be compatible with Debian unstable, and Debian people will have an incentive to include changes. Debian can focus on their core and the ubuntu project can pick up the juicy desktop parts of the system. I also really liked the collaborative maintainer idea - that would promote the migration of derrivations from the ubuntu repository into unstable.
Just some ideas... I'm quite happy with Debian and I've never found an out of the box Linux that satisfies me in the flexability domain. Too much or wrong stuff installed by default, too little support for weird configs, etc. I mean, my desktop machine doesn't even have a hard drive in it (boots off of a file server in the basement), and setting that up with Debian was a breeze.
An important anthropological correction: homo homo sapien did not evolve from neanderthals, neanderthals were a different branch of the hominid tree (according to dentition and skull structure in the fossil records). Neanderthals were probably too busy munching seeds to notice too much about the other hominid branches. :)
I've used Debian since I picked up on Linux some 6-7 years ago and it has served me well. Especially on the server side. But as far as desktop's go, I tired of Sid breaking every week. The bugs were relatively easy to fix for a seasoned Debian user like me, but I tired of configuring stuff manually. Ubuntu is the most polished Linux distro I've used, bar none.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Maybe you should shut up... and deal with it. ;)
You do realise that there are more then a handful of Debian mantainers that are also X.org developers, right?
The XFree86 that gets shipped with Debian is NOT the same XFree that existed when XFree and X.org split up. It's VERY heavily patched and improved on.
The reason, even though it probably seems stupid to you, for Debian still using XFree is that that desgin is very monolythic in nature.
There is no way to seperate the libraries that programs depend on vs The actual X server. And there is not autotooled compiling or anything like that.
So the argument is that deb is behind in releases and unbutu are making their own pakages.... Sarge is called TESTING....SID is unstable and guess what Unstable = Unstable/ Not ready Testing however does not mean unstable I am not sure why sarge is not classed as stable as of yet but having said that i dont care its easy to install works great and has everything i want. Unbutu/KDE version of Debian project will build the Desktop setup and thats fine also.... the Sources for apt are different...no problem use unbutu for a desktop if you like but debian will do both server and desktop stuff... theres little clash in my mind... as long as they share bug info etc its all good to me...
WTF - Speak in acronyms already, i can't figure out what you mean otherwise boss
There are a few Developers that work on maintaining Debian packages that are also X.org developers.
There are very real, and very technical reasons why Debian still is using Xfree.
But also realise that it's VERY heavily patched and updated version.
You know that http://keithp.com/blog/ Keith Packard is A OFFICIAL DEBIAN DEVELOPER?
Don't think that this is a Debian VS Ubuntu thing. It's not.
Here's a link that may help, straight into the Subversion repository where Debian's XFree86 packages are developed:
What are Debian's plans with respect to X.Org and XFree86?
The current text of that FAQ entry follows.
Address-collecting spam robots don't know how to crack ROT13. Do you?
"standards" created by Ubuntu
Hell, I alost puked my breakfast on my monitor. Don't make me do that again.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Thanks for the informative post. That clears things up.
I think I have found that page in the past, but back then I was just searching for some help with X.
Now here's my concern: I have no idea who Deadbeast is (There isn't a top level page -- which is wierd), how do I know it's not just wishful thinking?
If there was some link on debian.org's FAQ to the Deadbeast FAQ, then I would be less confused.
Although, I see Branden's page has alot of these links.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
apt-get install build-essentials
After years of hearing about how superior Debian's package handling is and about how Debian never has dependency problems, Debian finally gets its just reward.
Now Debian users can get the same joy RedHat users always had of trying to make an RPM fit into a system it wasn't intended for or trying to build a RPM to install on all systems.
Serves all you self satisfied Debian users right. Muahahahahaaha!
Whats w/ the comparison talks between the 2 as if Ubuntu is a fork? I'm refering to the comments people are leaving which refer to Debian as stale and old... A dieing distro etc... Ubuntu is based on Debian, as so many others are as well.
As for the article, why does it matter if the Ubuntu packages are compatible w/ Sarge? If you want to use Ubuntu, download it and install it clean. I don't see any reason to use Ubuntu specific deb's on Debian.
(AC gags)
So this discussion is pretty much moot. First, we must acknowledge that this thing we call "Debian" is nothing more and nothing less than the penultimate GNU(Linux/Hurd/what have you) Distribution. In order to have this discussion, one must recognize the near religious implications the Debian distribution imparts on Linux, on Software Development, and on the world as a whole.
It's model, it's packages and it's community are not perfect, but they stand for the greatest principals. That warm and fuzzy feeling you get from running Debian (at least until you start adding proprietary sources to your repository) has everything to do with something so free being so good.
Woody/Sarge/Sid are all part of this wonderful creation.
Ubuntu complements Debian in incalculable ways. The natural philosophical extension of Debian into the world needs an interface. It's not a GUI, it's not an installer. The interface is a man with a clear grasp of the principles that have brought us this far and a vision of how to deliver those ideals to the rest of the world.
Ubuntu is not a threat to Debian, it's a validation of the efforts and principles of the entire community. If you are a sysadmin, and you install Debian for your employer, you of course customize it and bring in newer packages from here and there.
Ubuntu is doing the same thing, but Ubuntu's boss is my grandmother.
At the rate Ubuntu is growing in popularity, with NO actual marketing, I think it says something about the marketing industry actually. Why pay somebody a fortune to come up with a weird and wonderful brand and name when all you actually need is a great product?
Actually according to Seth Godin, all marketers are liars.
build-essentials misses a ton of essential shit needed to build the bulk of the projects out there, like the aformentioned autogen(and autoconf, and automake, and cvs, and..).
When it's easier/faster to setup unix development tools on windows(ala mingw) over a linux distro, there's a problem.
the problem i see is that ubuntu's main goal is conflicting with debian.
Mark Shuttleworth has said that he doesn't wan't ubuntu to be a mainstream distro that everyone uses, but he wan't it to be seen as a framework for building other distributions. Which is kind of what debian has become.
I really like ubuntu, but it would be a shame if it veered so far away from the debian path as for it to become incompatible.
i wish i was but oh well
I heartily agree with most of the replies here. Debian is an excellent, stable server O/S but on the desktop I'm afraid it's utterly stale. It's so out of date it may as well be touted as a historical edition (Debian "Prehistorux" ?)
Ubunutu on the other hand is the best thing that's EVER happened to desktop Linux. It's the most user friendly, best specified distro yet and actually looks like it was put together by someone who uses it for their day to day desktop. e.g. Instead of installing 500 apps for each purpose there's just one best of breed for each.
And after using the wonderful little "hoary after install helper" script to get your mp3, DVD and w32codec needs sorted (see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=22860 for details) it's simply a pleasure to use. A sheer pleasure.
In fact if it wasn't for a couple Windows apps that I can't do without (and that don't run under Wine) I would switch full time to Ubuntu. No question of it. It now makes me sad to boot to Windows when I could be in Ubuntu.
Maybe if the Debian guys got off their asses and updated the packages to more recent versions then Ubuntu wouldn't be so popular?
I don't get it. This is just a variant of the "unite all developers to create one super distribution" scheme. Forget it, i, for one, don't want that.
;-)). If Ubuntu wants to continue to use Debian packages they are the ones who should be concerned about compatibility, not the other way around. That's just plain silly. Now go back to whatever you were doing before.
What has Debian to worry that another distribution isn't compatible to it? There are many Debian-based distributions out there that don't maintain compatibility and let's just think for a moment about RPM based distributions... what? They are not Debian compatible? Shame!
Debian is doing fine (just slowly
(First of all, why in the world is the parent post modded "insightful"???)
.deb form before they reach Unstable, at least for Ubuntu's architectures.
I think Mr. Murdoch stirred up some trouble for no reason in this case. It is not particularly relevant whether Ubuntu packages work on Sarge. There are plenty of Sid (Debian unstable) packages that don't work on Sarge, or Woody, or any other Debian version without pulling in a lot of dependencies. As a Debian user, my only "compatibility" request/suggestion/wish to the Ubuntu project would be to consistently use Debian Unstable as the base, rather than bringing in packages (notable examples being X.org and KDE 3.4) before they reach Unstable. This would ensure that any Ubuntu package could be installed on a Debian system (perhaps with the use of dist-upgrade).
Or maybe not - I guess Ubuntu could also benefit Debian by getting things like X.org and KDE 3.4 into reasonably tested
At any rate, Ubuntu is nothing without Debian. If Debian went away, there wouldn't be any more Warthogs, Hedgehogs, etc. The "survival of the fittest" comment is a clueless wisecrack, and those who modded it up to +5 need to reconsider.
sorry
Hi Mike. You make good points. Fedora has done a great job of weeding down a base set of packages and integrating them with the polish they deserve. Linux was sorely in need of this, and all distros will benefit from it.
But to say that Debian's practice of taking "all comers" as packagers is unscalable is factually incorrect. For each package, there is a maintainer. It's even been proposed that each package have two maintainers; and there is still a long line of people willing to be Debian Developers.
If anything, the mess of Fedora's third party repositories should be ample evidence that volunteers will branch out on their own if necessary to package the programs they have interest in. While RedHat has mostly just paid lipservice to it's community with Fedora, Codeweavers is even beginning to make use of the vast potential of a large group of people who, though they may not have coding skills, can make great testers, or packagers, or translators. It's in every distributions' best interests that these people are welcomed and encouraged to work within the distro.
Whittling down the number of packages isn't even on the radar screen for Debian. As others have noted, a majority of Debian developers even reject the notion of whittling down the number of architectures. From what I can tell this is because, while the large number of architectures was a huge burden on Sarge due to the massive work done on the installer, it is not an ongoing problem.
At a certain point, unless you take all comers, someone will always fork your distro to include, say, KDE (Kubuntu). As many of the candidates for DPL have said, Debian needs instead to identify bottlenecks in the processes that hinder progress. This could be the security team. Perhaps security updates should be limited to a segment of packages. This could be space on mirrors. The new bittorrent downloads were quite fast for me, but perhaps other limits can be placed to fix this problem.
Overall, Debian Developers have undying faith in their technical abilities. And, given the proper infrastructure, the number of Debian Developers can grow with no end in sight. Debian seems willing to make the architectural changes to speed up and improve it's release process, and to attract new users and developers. But Debian is rightfully unwilling to sacrifice the Universal OS moniker in order to do so.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Come on people, remove you heads out of your fucking asses and read the links. For those who are too freaking stupid to understand basic English sentences (which appears to be most of you) here's the problem. Debian creates and maintains literally thousands of packages. It has a whole goddamn infrastructure in place to do this well and to make sure it works on a shit load of architectures. A lot of people contribute to debian. Almost all distros based on debian, including ubuntu, actually take packages from the debian project developed by debian contributors. Then they wrap it with their installation system or whatever, and distribute it. If there is any package they make significant improvements/developments on, they give the improvement back to debian, so that it's available for all architectures and other projects. All this works out well. Now ubuntu came along. Mind you, ubuntu just takes snapshots (copies, for idiots) of debian unstable every six months and then distributes it, so ubuntu *needs* debian and the *huge* effort behind debian. Now ubuntu packages are incompatible with debian (sarge, the distro debian is working on now). Not only that, ubuntu is also drawing a lot effort away from debian because of its popularity. This is breaking the fucking system. In the second link (you know, the one which you were supposed to fucking read?) he says "If you want a glimpse of what will happen, take a look at the RPM world, where software developers and ISVs have to build a different RPM for every RPM-based distro (either that, or the ISVs have to choose the one or two most popular RPM-based distros to the exclusion of all others--or perhaps that's what you have in mind?)." Debian and based distros were compatible. Until now. Now ubuntu might break it. All the debian-based distros stick to one standard - debian. The distro which does most of the work for other distros. Even Ubuntu derives so much from debian. So only if ubuntu stuck to the standard too, incompatibilities will be non-existent. Just because you use Ubuntu and someone is saying something not entirely positive about ubuntu doesn't mean that they're disapproving you. They're not saying that you have a small penis. Grow up.
#debian on freenode is one of the most abusive irc channels I've ever seen. It's definitely gone down the whole "hostile to ignorance" path further than I've encountered it anywhere else. It has in fact metstasized into not only hostility towards ignorance, nor just presumption of ignorance, but an attempt to prove ignorance when unwarranted in pretty much all cases, and then "righteously" dump hostility on that.
I'd love to know where the reasonable user support forum for Debian is, as I've been a Debian "testing" user for some 3-4 years now, and still have yet to find a good forum. Sure, there's the stable mailing list, but I don't run stable, and Debian's spam sheilding on its mailing lists leaves a lot to be desired.
-josh
Now it's true that Fedora is a bit of a mess when it comes to 3rd party package repositories, maybe this will start getting sorted out with FC4 when Fedora Extras is enabled by default, but still ... fundamentally Fedora seem to be bombing down the same path that Debian/Ubuntu are, and quite apart from whether or not this can scale the usability implications are serious.
Personally, I'm not convinced it can. While more and more people can dump packages into the Debian pool with no real limits, it's not just the number of packagable programs that are increasing exponentially, it's also the number of distributions. Maybe this system could work if people only used Debian, but they don't - the community is not increasing in size so fast that every distro can have every possible package and keep it up to date. Something has to give.
Now, let's say that Debian did formally decide to disconnect the bulk of its packages from itself. Maybe they'd spin off into third party repositories, or maybe they'd disappear entirely and be replaced with multi-distro packages developed by upstream. The total number of people attacking the problem doesn't decrease, in fact if you go for packages that work on any distro the amount of testing increases because a bug in the package can be picked up much faster.
For instance, in Wine there are a large number of packages and nearly every one has its own quirks. Fixes from one don't migrate to another, in fact often packages sprout new bugs as distribution packagers try to improve them with no real understanding of the software. If most Linux users got the software from a single package, it could be sensibly maintained in CVS like the rest of the code, worked on by the entire community and so on. Effort can be combined to produce a better quality package.
I've got a DVD at home that came with Sarge rc1... it's rapidly approaching one year old... and the final release still hasn't happened... that's the bl00dy problem with Debian...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Hopefully Ubuntu will help motivate the Debian group. I installed Debian on a thinkpad, and just getting X to work was a royal pain. Although its a great learning experience to get things working, at times its consternating. Trying to go to a 2.6 kernel was close to impossible. Again, a great learning experience, but frustrating.
That said, its also something of a concern that packages get updated often enough to satisfy security concerns. Some do and some don't. It seems debian is better suited to headless, limited-scope servers as opposed to desktop functionality. That's not a bad thing, of course.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
debian is too slow in certain fields, so they still have no gnome 2.10 packages in sarge and sarge is still not released as stable. Not to mention Xorg-Xserver vs. Xfree86 etc.
...
ubuntu on the other hand is closer to the bleeding edge of versions. For most users this is good enough they can live with a smaller package base and they have no problem with minor glitches.
Because debian wants to be bullet proof which takes more time to achieve. And because debian is available for allmost any hardware plattform. These two distributions will differ more and more.
A possible solution is to produce multiple distributions for different purposes. As this is the idea behind ubuntu, it is not the idea of the debian project right now.
I would prefer to have a debian base distribution, which contains only basic functions.
- Kernel
- Hal
- Fam
- Primary Services
- gcc
- bash and perl (because so much of debian uses that)
On top of that we shall have several sub distributions.
- Services: cups, mail, web, servlet
- X11
- gnome or kde
And finally distribution collections:
- Desktop (some from services; X11; gnome/kde)
- Server (apache,...)
Well this idea is not so new. I know. And it is not finalized yet, but it might still be a solution to the problem.
"Debian Sarge, an unreleased unstable distro"
I don't understand why people are so fixated on whether or not Sarge is "released", seeing as how for Debian a version is just as available before a release is after. In this context, "released" and "stable" mean "static", with no further changes apart from security fixes. That also means that no new apps or features are *ever* added to a stable release.
A frozen, static distribution is not the way many people use Linux on the desktop. It is great for servers, and could be good for highly managed desktops where the user isn't asked his/her preferences or allowed to change the system independently.
I wish people would quit complaining about how old Woody is for the desktop and just accept that Testing and Unstable *are* the desktop versions of Debian.
"Unstable" does not mean "crash-prone" - it means "frequently updated". It is perfectly stable (in the commonly used sense) enough for desktop use. Sometimes things get broken, but not very often. I certainly find it easier to keep a Debian Unstable box working properly than Windows, for example. Keep in mind that the upstream software is pretty well tested before it is even packaged for Debian, and that the Debian packages are first put into a version called Experimental, which is mostly for Debian devs. They only get moved into Unstable once they seem to work properly. Unstable is thus more like a late beta release.
Testing consists of packages that have gone 14 days in Unstable with no serious bug reports. Testing is way more stable than desktop users need, but can have some snags with dependency problems when major projects (cough ***KDE** cough) go through big upgrades.
For God's sake, people, it's just one line!
Woody is starting to really lag in the server market as well. Here are a couple of examples:
1) I have to use several backports on my router at home to get wireless working properly.
2) I assume that if you are running a web server with extra functionality like PHP, and are trying to use the Debian packages, then you might not be too happy with Woody either. I can't really speak to this case because I build Apache and PHP myself.
3) Woody is a constant problem with newer applications such as the recent builds of Unreal Tournament 2004. There are always threads popping up on http://www.unrealadmin.org/forums/ due to people not being able to run the binary on a stock Woody machine. The latest builds rely on a newer version of libc6 than Woody ships with. Recommending that they upgrade to Sarge is just plain bad advice.
Woody is old. It _needs_ to be replaced and not just because it can't be viably used for a modern desktop operating system.
Debian is awesome. I love Debian. However, I am getting tired of the truly long release cycle. The release cycle needs to be fixed if Debian is going to remain worthwhile.
Funny, I got abused on #debian 2 years back, and it was one of the reasons I didn't stick with Deb for too long. I had some noob questions, I didn't understand why I couldn't dnld a sarge iso, and yes, I read the site and tried to understand why before I asked. I got some a*hole responses, finally figured it out myself, but I was very cautious when asking questions. Once I had mixed stable/test/unstable packages and borked my desktop, I drifted towards Gentoo, and the friendly support via forums and IRC was awesome. Thus began my work on the Gentoo project. I would have done the same for Debian, but I don't want to be all high and mighty and not answer any questions from noobs; we were all there at one time.
bo
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
THAT'S for all the short, unhelpful, condescending, a-hole answers given to people who come to the Debian world looking for help but they have failed to phrase their question to your liking.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I'm glad it's not just me. I've been totally shocked at the scene in #debian on many occasions. It really is, for some unknown reason, a magnet for assholes and egotists.
My special favorite is their little insult bot. What an evil piece of software that thing is. I mean, when you find yourself writing some of the stuff they put in that thing, where is the reailty check? Just, leave the channel, leave IRC for a while, go outside, eat a hotdog or something.
I've had many discussions with people about it and they all say the same thing, "they're lazy, they're stupid, they deserve it because they're whining for free help."
HELLO! ITS A *SUPPORT CHANNEL*! WHY NOT JUST (drumroll) STAY SILENT, OR EVEN BETTER, LEAVE, RATHER THAN BE A COMPLETE COCK SMOKER TO EVERYONE WHOSE QUESTION YOU DON'T LIKE.
This is not bitterness of someone who got insulted there; I went there out of curiosity and spent most of my time _answering_ questions. When I don't feel like doing it, I leave. Why is it so hard to understand?
Help, or don't help. Don't be a fucking jackass.
Breakfast served all day!
I got told, repeatedly, that I was a troll when I asked for some specific information about CUPS (I forget what I asked now). When I protested, I got told to read the manual about that information - ever tried to read CUPS documentation? It can be extremely difficult! I might note, also, that I had read up on the doco extensively to write that article. Then I got told that debian people didn't deal with CUPS issues - fair enough I suppose, however there was no need to call me a troll to start with and so much for the "niceness" of people there.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've seen it myself! Obviously, others have also.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Emotively citing a monopoly doesn't invalidate the point that standards are good.
Shoudl we have five different versions of web standards so we can all pick and choose which ones we want to use?
But the only people I've ever seen complaining about spatial mode are geeks at places like Slashdot. And WTF does bash have to do with Nautilus?
Yes, that must be the reason MS Windows is (for most application) binary compatible FOR ONLY PAST TEN-TO-FIFTEEN YEARS!!
I'm guessing you're trolling, but you do touch on some points in my original post worth expanding upon. As I said, Windows has these issues, too.
Have you ever noticed that the more software gets installed on Windows, the more likely it is to have trouble? There are a number of reasons for that, but the biggest is known colloquially as "DLL Hell". As I said, Windows only allows you to have one version of a shared library installed at a time. So you get all these crazy dependencies where program A requires library version X, but program B requires library version Y, so you can't have them both on the same system at the same time.
My personal favorite example of this is how if you install Microsoft Outlook 2000 (the Exchange client) on your Exchange 2000 server, you will cause the Information Store to stop working until you replace a certain set of DLLs (and thus break Outlook). Fifteen years of binary compatibility? Hell, Microsoft can't get it to work in the same year!
The ability to have the system load and run-time link an executable image does not mean that binary compatability issues don't exist. Linux has had that all along, too. But in Windows, you don't even get the warnings that RPM (or whatever) gives you. You just get screwball behavior.
This is why in Microsoft's ".NET Framework". Microsoft has implemented to so-called "managed code assemblies", which reference the specific libraries they were built against, and call those versions in. Of course, this is a radical departure to how Windows manages shared library and run-time linking. Everything has to be restructured to make use of it. I'm not sure how that qualifies as "compatible", either.
Microsoft isn't exempt from this reality anymore then Linux or BSD is.
I'm not going to bother responding to the Linux flame-bait.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Survival of the fittest it is, and the fittest in this case of endless finger-pointing and forkind seems to be ... Microsoft.
Well, there are a few nuts on #debian, but plenty of us help people day-in, day-out on there. If individual people on IRC are being asshats, that's what /ignore is for. Then, phrase your question in a way that allows people to help, and you'll get it.
Did you want me to put every single active participant on /ignore? Exactly what would the point of that been? No, I just left the channel alone. Haven't been back either. I guess that was the equivalent solution to your /ignore suggestion.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Yep, it was a Sunday! I don't use IRC anymore (life is too busy!), but I appreciate that a good mod might be on the board. I'm sorry that a few bad apples are causing #debian problems :(
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"I'm not trolling, because everything I've said is true..."
Well, one can say nothing but the "truth" and still be looking to incite an argument, but that's another discussion.
Let's look at a few things here.
In terms of actually running a program, I can take a very old Linux binary, statically linked, and run it on my modern Linux distro (assuming it doesn't care about kernel functionality). Same with Windows. The executable format itself is still well supported. It's the shared libraries that are the issue.
On either OS, if I try to run a program linked against some library, and I don't have that library, I will get some kind of dynamic linker/loader error. Linux or Windows. Windows isn't magic here.
Now, on Linux, this is often caught at install time by a package manager. Failing that, the error will be from the shared object loader. In both cases, the computer is doing what it is supposed to: Tell you that you don't have all the pieces.
On Windows, it is usually up to an "install program" to make sure all required shared libraries (DLLs) are present, and install them if not. From what I've seen, most install programs simply dump the DLLs *they* want in the Windows System directory. It is assumed backwards compatability is always perfect, if the question arises at all.
That's great when it works, I suppose. The problem is also causes all sorts of weird failures and conflicts, of the type I described previously. It makes configuration management an absolute nightmare. Hence the whole "clean install" practice in Windows-land, where blowing away the OS and installing from scratch is considered normal. Blech.
I've certainly encountered no end of software that cares about this or that dependency on Windows. Some random examples:
- Adobe Reader 7 won't install on Win98
- The latest Symantec Anti-Virus requires a root certificate update from Microsoft
- Countless things that require Internet Explorer 6
- Office 2003 requires Windows 2000 or later
- Exchange 2000 won't work on Windows 2003
- QuickBooks hates Windows XP Service Pack 2
And so on. I don't find Windows nearly the compatability dream you find it to be. I suspect you're content just because your granny only wants one "special" program, so you don't have to worry about how said program clobbers all the shared libraries that other programs care about.
Now, there are some differences in the "community" of Linux vs Windows. As already mentioned, Windows programs tend to include many of their dependencies with the install package. Not so much on Linux. I suspect this is largely due to the fact that so much "freely available" software is used on Linux; you can just download everything and don't have to worry about license fees.
Linux does tend to change more rapidlly then Windows. This has obvious benefits, but it does mean the "churn" in package pools can be an issue. Indeed, that's what kicked this Slashdot article off. Of course, when Microsoft decrees the version of Windows you have to be "dead", then you're equally stuck. Getting support for 98 these days isn't a picnic, either.
I'm am most assuredly not saying Linux is immune to the problems I describe; quite the opposite. But I am saying that Windows is not immune.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I find the way OS X handles this interesting in contrast.
.app files are actually folders with a file structure inside them), and link to it directly, without worrying about interaction with other applications.
:
:
On OS X there is a small subset of Apple supported frameworks and binaries that will be on a system with each point release. This doesn't usually change between point releases, so you can safely say 'Requires OS X 10.3' and know the user will have a certain set of libraries/binaries at known versions.
If a developer needs to use another library/framework/unix binary (or a more up to date version of one that's installed) they can just put it inside the application bundle (because
Advantages
It's unusual for Apps to need admin privileges on install
Apps often don't need installers as all required files are inside them
No library conflicts or overwritten libraries
Disadvantages
The OS may take up more space, because more libraries are included as standard.
Apps sometimes take up more disk space, as occasionally a library will be duplicated.
I think it's worth sacrificing a little extra disk space for the freedom from worries about conflicting libraries when you install, or having to use a package manager to look for dependencies.
My knowledge of Linux is sketchy so perhaps there are equivalents to this in Linux-land? You said binary compatibility is hard, but isn't that really more true on Linux than elsewhere (because of its origins and the emphasis on compiling from source and installing libraries in different locations)?
(Hopefully that's not also Linux flamebait, it's not meant to be : )
"My knowledge of Linux is sketchy so perhaps there are equivalents to this in Linux-land?"
The basic Linux equivilent would be a statically-compiled executable. Such binaries don't use shared libraries at all; they contain everything in a single file. Of course, that file is often huge compared to the same program dynamically linked.
This doesn't so much solve the binary compatability problem as bypass it. When you bring everything with you, you don't have to worry about what others provide.
The downside, aside from the size issue, is that when a library is upgraded (either for bug fixes or nominally backwards-compatible enhancements), the application doesn't notice. You have to rebuild the app and redistribute to gain the benefits of the updated library.
"You said binary compatibility is hard, but isn't that really more true on Linux than elsewhere (because of its origins and the emphasis on compiling from source and installing libraries in different locations)?"
Not exactly. Binary compatability presents the same problems, regardless of platform. But it is certainly true that the effects of binary compatability being hard are seen more on Linux.
The biggest reason binary compatability looms large in the land of Linux is that Linux doesn't come from a single person or organization. Each distro has their own ideas and their own set of options. Contrast that to the world of Macintosh, where Apple has always excercised tight control over all aspects of the platform. That helps keep everything working together. You may have less choice and less variety, but what you have feels more closely knit together.
Like most things in life, there's a trade-off involved.
"Hopefully that's not also Linux flamebait..."
That was directed at the OP's remarks about how there's no point about talking about Linux desktops.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.