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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."
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.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/relationship/doc ument_view
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"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)
That is most definitely not the case. There was considerable discussion on the debian-devel list following the release team's proposal to limit the etch release to 4 architectures. While the proposal may still be implemented, it also may still undergo significant changes. People have been suggesting all sorts of counter proposals to try and keep all the architectures in sync.
Personally, even though I've run Debian on MIPS, MIPSel, Alpha, and Sparc (all of which would be dropped under the Release Team's proposal) I still support the proposal and would like to see architecture support scaled back a bit. There are those, however, who feel that Debian would be giving up too much if they were to drop some platforms.
noah