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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."
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!
"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.
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.
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
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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)
I realize the point is to provide stability and not upgrade willy-nilly like Mandrake or some of the other distributions, but for crying out loud, if your last release was more than 18 months ago you really need to get one out the door. I don't consider the minor updates they've done to Woody to be sufficient... they need to make Sarge stable pretty soon or they'll lose even more people to Ubuntu and other Debian-lookalikes.
It's rather embarassing anymore even suggesting installing Debian Woody on anything at work since it's such a joke. We're going with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 instead which actually has a sane upgrade schedule. So, I'm not meaning to downplay the contributions of the Debian community, I love it to death at home when running testing or unstable, but suggesting a business run such out-of-date software on their production servers is absolutely ludicrous.
So what's the point of having generic Debian keep trying to support the latest bleeding-edge GUI packages?
A question that really needs to be answered is "What does Debian see as its role?" They've said that they want to speed up the release cycle. How much? At a certain point, won't it be redundant given Ubuntu releases with a six month release cycle? Who is going to use Debian proper? Who does Debian want to use Debian?
I think Debian functions exceptionally as a platform to base derivative distributions off of. Why make actual releases if other distributions are making releases that are more attractive? There are a few good reasons to, but I think alternative solutions would be better.
1) Ubuntu's support period isn't long enough.
Ok, so instead of making a release, pick up an Ubuntu release after it is deprecated and support it for another year.
2) Ubuntu's value comes from its corporate backing. We can't change the fundamental processes that we have going in the non-profit Debian world because Ubuntu could disappear someday.
The work that Debian proper does is far more than the few Ubuntu developers do. They just build on top of what is already there. If Canonical decides to stop supporting Ubuntu, just adopt it as part of the normal operations of Debian. Think of it as another branch.
I think once sarge gets out, some discussion needs to occur about what the future holds for Debian so its users can make choices accordingly. There are better ways to operate than what's currently proposed.
Now imagine if Ubuntu had instead been a group of developers who decided to combine their efforts with the Debian group to improve Debian?
The people-who-control-Debian isn't always friendly towards new users, novice developers, or people ask simple questions like 'Why is x.org NOT in Debian-unstable?'.
More often then not, if I ask a question in a Debian forum, IRC channel or here on Slashdot, somebody will basically tell me to shut up and live with it.
It's this additude which has kept many people from using Debian, and is the same reason why many people are now reviewing Ubuntu.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Working with the Debian people can involve more bureacracy and red tape than working with the federal government, and some developers can't stand that. The philosophy of "Choice is Good" when it comes to users having a choice of desktop environments, word processors, etc. is often made, but don't forget it applies to FOSS developers too. Don't like the way a project is organized? Work on something else. Don't like the direction it's taking? Fork it. Choice keeps devs happy.
Not really possible. The IMHO biggest differences between Debian and Ubuntu are their release schedule and package inclusion policy:
So, if you want to create a nice, up-to-date Debian based desktop system, you can either try to convince the 1000 (?) Debian developers that they should change their ways, change the release procedure, and change the criteria for deciding the inclusion of packages. Or, you can just start a new distro, and do as you please
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
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.
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
I don't think that the "server" release cycle should be any different than the "desktop" release cycle. As an enterprise Debian admin, let me tell you that stable is just as outdated on servers as it is on workstations. Users are particularly unhappy about MySQL and PHP versions. As postmaster, I'm saddened by Mailman, Exim, Horde, and Cyrus. In all cases, those server apps are so horribly outdated in stable.
I think the big difference is that enterprise users need longer support cycles, not longer release cycles. That is, a stable release needs to be supported for a long time. That does not preclude the release of another, newer stable release. The problem with Debian is that, except for a short transition period (one year, when woody was released) there's only one supported "stable" release. You're forced to upgrade to the new stable when it comes out, or else you're stuck running something unsupported.
As an example, Redhat announced a while back that they'd support a given version of RHEL for, what, 3 years after its release? That's what enterprise/server users need. RHEL will release newer versions, and we as users can upgrade when we see fit to another supported version. With Debian, that's really not possible.
Unfortunately, Debian is having a hard enough time getting people to work on the security team supporting just one release. Trying to support something like 3 releases at once is not likely to happen given the volunteer nature of the organization.
noah
Debian stable eschews the bleeding edge in favor of reliability.
For production servers, I agree with you.
But for desktops and developmment servers, I don't agree.
x.org is not included in any official Debian repository. I don't consider it to be 'bleeding edge'. It certainly isn't well-tested and stable, but it's not bleeding edge. The alpha- beta- or latest point release of a package is 'bleeding edge'-- so just exclude those latest packages if it bothers you.
Either way, packages like this should have be in some sort of Debian test version. The Debian devs say they need to postponing x.org so that it won't interfere with the latest release of Debian. But this shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Debian release cycle.
If Ubuntu takes pressure off the Debian project to be all things to all people, then perhaps Debian can refine it's core competency (being the best server distro); which might help it stay a little more polished and up-to-date.
I think you are right on the money. Debian will probably focus on server stuff, and Ubuntu will focus on desktop. It's a good possible symbiosis.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Sorry, I didn't mean it that way.
Out of the box, right after the install on Kubuntu, I can plug in a USB keychain and have it working. My video card drivers are correct and xorg.conf is working. I have a working office suite, web browser, etc. I don't have any further config files to learn, master and then tweak to get X working or my digital camera to connect or to get CDs burning. I've a good out-of-the-box functional system for what most end-users need.
To many power-users, these features are pointless fluff, but I really like having all this working when the install is done. Knoppix does this but it installs a ~lot~ of extra stuff. I just noticed a Braille TTY server (Brittle?) running on my Knoppix box last week! The Ubunutu family gives you a much thinner, but still very "end-user" usable distro. And that's what I want.
My life is so busy with work, family, two kids now, open source work, writing, that when I turn to ~any~ operating system, be it Linux, Windows, Mac or whatever, I don't want to get a bare system and tweak it out. I just want to get in and drive.
Ubunutu/Kubuntu save me hours (or days) setting up a new box. That time is worth something to me. If you have time to setup a new box, hand pick your installs, run them by hand, tweak the settings, etc and so on until the box is "your own", then go for it! That box is worth something to you. We each pursue what we value the most. There's room for both, right?
In case you are wondering, I have seven computers in my home. A MythTv client, a MythTV server and my laptop all running Kubuntu. My desktop and "server" box (web, cvs, svn, file sharing, etc) both run XP. My wife and kid are on XP. I'm sure if it's relevant, but I'm a big fan of "what works".
There are things that you can only do in Windows, like run the Shrek Match game for my kid or use Quicken to synch up with my bank, or play the latest video game.
There's a lot more you can do in Linux, but I'm not we have a compelling app yet that can pointed to as superior and an average consumer recognize it. Perhaps a free install with an operating system, Office Suite, graphics tools and a few games is a part of that equation?
Agile Artisans
Debian isn't a company. I don't think Ubuntu is either, but I'm not sure.
Ha! This is the greatest Freudian slip in the whole thread. Ubuntu absofuckinglutely is a company.
Who do you think pays all those Debian developers to work on Ubuntu instead of Sarge? Mark's money will run out sooner or later, but I'm sure he's invested enough in Canonical that when it does run out, they'll be sitting pretty with exclusive control over Ubuntu support.
Meanwhile, Bruce Perens and Ian Murdock have to rethink their businesses based on Debian support. Instead of working with and within the Debian project like Progeny and UserLinux, Canonical has purchased the Debian project and is letting it rot to draw users and developers to Ubuntu. This doesn't bode well either for Debian or for the people who work within the project to make their living, if that living isn't tied to Canonical.
In the end, I'd expect Ubuntu to turn into something like Fedora, with the free distro really only being useful for people who like to upgrade every six months and one company (Canonical) monopolizing support for anyone who needs a longer life, security updates, stability, or even third party software support. That seems to have been their inspiration all along. Everyone but beta testers will get to pay and, if they do it right, Debian will no longer be a viable option. Two birds, one stone.
So far, unfortunately, it seems they are doing it right. Only half of the eligible Debian developers voted for the new DPL. Sarge is way late with no end in sight (it still hasn't even been frozen). And it seems like the process of adding new developers to the project (who might upset the balance of power or actually work to release a stable version) has come to a grinding halt.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"