The Grumpy Groundhog - Ubuntu for Developers

**loki969** writes "Ubuntu is planing a "cutting edge"-distro, 'The Grumpy Groundhog', which will be aimed explicitly at developers. Here is a quote from their site: 'Upstream development in the open source world moves at a tremendous pace. Many developers like to keep up to date with specific upstream products, but the work involved in building from CVS every day is substantial. With The Grumpy Groundhog Project, Ubuntu provides those developers with a ready source of packages containing the latest upstream code. '"

Comments

Feline Poop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, all of you motherfucking LambdaMOOers, you! That's right, fuck y'all!

Forking A, man

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the apparently irresistable urge to fork? If I want to improve the man page for sort, I don't need to create a new distro, I can just contribute my diffs and have a positive impact on one of the existing distros. Is this really something that couldn't be fixed without forking?

Re:Forking A, man

[zbik]

If I want to improve the man page for sort, I don't need to create a new distro, I can just contribute my diffs and have a positive impact on one of the existing distros.

Maybe your patch would have a positive impact; maybe not. Maybe it would break something completely. The only way to tell is lengthy testing and QA. Some people won't want to use your patch until all the dust has settled, while others will want to try it out right away. Grumpy Groundhog is for the second group.

Forks are not always bad when you have two sets of users with totally different needs.

Re:Forking A, man

[ssj_195]

I don't see this as a fork, particularly, as it is intended solely to aid the development process e.g. not to compete with (K)Ubuntu.

Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[KiloByte]

Uh oh. If Hoary is a rough equivalent of Debian Experimental, then the developer-only Grumpy is...?

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[Bachus9000]

First of all, Ubuntu's development branch starts off from Unstable, not Experimental. Second of all, by the time that development branch (in this case, Hoary) is released six months later it is quite stable (or should be, anyway--I haven't really had problems personally). I'd say Grumpy would be more like experimental myself, but then again I'm not a troll...

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[FidelCatsro]

A squirrel-esque animal with attitude..
The ubuntu team do alot of good work , they managed to pull off release scheduals which Debian proper hasn't beeen able to achive and have it stable out of the door(not that debian unstable is that unstable).So i would expect it to be on par with Debian unstable Stability wise(Debian really needs to change the names for a few things )
(though i love the release names , i suggested Ahstmatic Aardvark but it was rejected)

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[KiloByte]

Yes, it's based on Unstable -- but with a lot of unofficial packages being thrown in. I personally learnt to trust random repositories as much as I trust rabid dogs. If it's anything more than a single package without any dependencies (like micq), the interoperability with other packages is usually shot. This applies to some degree even to Christian Marillat's packages, one of the best repositories.

Debian developers are extremely cautious. They don't usually package a given piece of software until months after it's declared stable by the upstream. This makes them picked on by the rest of Linux world for "outdated, ancient software", but thanks to their policies I can run Debian Testing on production servers, with the only thing borked being ISDN support (which doesn't work in Stable at all).

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[cortana]

And security issues... :)

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[EvilIdler]

Hoary is the current release. Consider it the same as Debian Stable
for all intents. It may differ in practice, though ;)

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[KiloByte]

Yes, that's a valid point. But, unless you have any local users, you're limited to just a few packages. It's a bit burdensome, but the @#$%^&* ISDN crap would take too many backports. I phased it out from all but one box so in theory I can downgrade to Woody, but, with the freeze promised in <10 days (yeah, sure) I'll just keep watching the security lists myself.

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[xenocide2]

Ubuntu may be based on unstable, but they add packages that are just now making it into Experimental, which is basically only used for GNOME & KDE, new gcc versions and other widely used products. Personally, I think that the experimental distribution should be eliminated, as this is what unstable is for. If that doesn't sit well with you, then I can only suggest using testing and enforcing the existing rules on entering testing.

No other distro I know of is using 2.6.10 by default, and 2.6.11 apparently isn't fixing broken things like laptop touchpads. I know that I'm personally having a problem with rebooting that I can only attribute to the kernel (nothing else should have the prividges to mess with data persistant across reboots, and Warty worked fine). Soft rebooting fails, but a powerdown and pressing the power button back on will work as normal. It's a bit annoying, but I can see the justifcation behind calling Ubuntu for what it is.

Really what I'd like is something closer to sid with Ubuntu's pragmatic approch to packaging non-free software. I'm not a big fan of huge six month updates, and there's about three packages in sid right now that I'd like to get ahold of. But it's not wise to mix the two, however possible it may be. Maybe this Grumpy guy is what I'm after!

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[joto]

This makes them picked on by the rest of Linux world for "outdated, ancient software", but thanks to their policies I can run Debian Testing on production servers

Whoa there... You shouldn't run testing on servers. Testing is a middle-ground between stable and unstable. Unstable gets all the latest and greatest fixes. Stable has a security team. Testing has none of the above.

If there is a security problem, the security team will take care of it in stable, and because unstable is the development branch, it will be fixed there as well. Testing will only get the fixes after the fix has been lying dormant for a few weeks in unstable...

If you are running production servers, please use a distribution where someone will look after security problems. Most main-stream distributions do that, but Debian testing is one of the few that don't!

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[petermgreen]

unstable is meant to provide a mostly usable system that automated scripts can feed into testing. (IE unstable should only be unstable in terms of the fact that is can change at any time sometimes with breakage not unstable as in unusable)

experimental is for trying out REALLY radical stuff like new x servers developement versions of apt etc

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[xenocide2]

How does a "mostly usable system that automated systems can feed into testing" help development? I recall some time ago that Debian held unstable hostage until a new stable was released, because developers were simply ignoring RC bugs. Unstable should not be considered a mostly stable system.

Really radical stuff should be tested before its even uploaded to experimental. Seriously, I think developers should be running testing. Every developer running unstable should be considered a vote to drop support for a stable branch. Experimental is a hack that recognizes a severe schism within Debian that has yet to be resolved.

Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...?

[petermgreen]

unstable is where most contibutions are uploaded so it seems perfectly natural for developers to run the system they are compiling and uploading packages to

testing was and will be (its not right now because debian is in final release freeze) the place where the next stable release is built up. Unless pacakges had problems then prior to the recent freeze they should have made it from unstable to testing in less than two weeks. Hardly an eternity.

i'm not sure what you mean by holding unstable hostage? sure in the run up to a release more care is needed with stuff that could affect propogations into a partially and later fully frozen testing (mainly stuff like shared libs and key system components) but i don't see anything wrong with that.

sure devs can test stuff before uploading to expermental but with something as core system as X or APT you can get a really fucked up system if something goes badly wrong with the program so an extra level of checking is needed.

What about...

[Gibberx]

What about Ubuntu's current way of putting out a new release every 6 months? If Grumpy Groundhog is going to be in a state of perpetual development, they'll have to come up with another funny hog name by October...

Re:What about...

[advocate_one]

no, the next release is Breezy Badger... Grumpy Groundhog is not intended for release. It is in the same situation as Debian's Sid... a perpetual testing ground.

Re:What about...

[thephotoman]

Exactly what I was thinking. Only...y'know, more fun (in the sarcastic sense).

Finally, a truly unstable Debian package repository that really is on the bleeding edge. Tried Debian Experimental, wasn't too impressed by the lameness.

Re:What about...

[ameoba]

It doesn't look like it's intended for anyone to run an entire system on but for people to pick specific packages out of. It lets package maintainers know about problems ahead of time and it lets those who want to be early adopters run the 0-day version & contribute bug reports. What's wrong with a few more people testing code?

Re:What about...

[jdowland]

So it's just sid? The way some of the media have described it as being a totally innovative idea, had me thinking maybe there was a difference...

Re:What about...

[thephotoman]

Nothing's wrong with more people testing code. It's something I'd like to do more of, honestly. I like fixing the problems and flying by the seat of my pants. My friends called me crazy when I changed my /etc/apt/sources.list file to read for Breezy the day they opened it.

Of course, numquam negavi me insanum esse, but at the same time, it's the kind of thing that makes me cackle with glee.

Ubuntu's for kids.

[percussor]

Can't wait till sarge squashes ubuntu like the leach it is.

"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[Futurepower(R)]

How to have a release that gets only 7 comments in one hour on Slashdot: Give it a foolish-sounding name.

Why not go all the way and call it the "stupid idiot" release? Why not have a distro called "You are a moron if you try this Linux".

It would be good if open source developers would learn the rudiments of communication. It's sad when they are self-defeating.

Oh well, at least open source developers don't bomb people in other countries to get the oil profit.

Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[Adelbert]

Why not?

After all, its not the distro's name that matters, its what you can do with it.

If its good names you are after, go and play with Tao Linux. Else, don't rush and judge an OS before you know the first thing about it.

Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[**loki969**]

It would be good if open source developers would learn the rudiments of communication. It's sad when they are self-defeating.

it is not like they need to sell it. it is meant for developers, and i doubt, that they give a f$ck, what the distro is called, as long as it serves its purpose. i actually think, it doesn't really matter.

btw, the libranet articel only got 15 posts in 4 days! i guess, they really need to change their name now. ;)

Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[Chromodromic]

Uh. What?

I majored in English. I'd like to think that I'm aware of "the rudiments of communication".

So, I'd be interested in what you'd propose. Instead of "Grumpy Groundhog", would you prefer, say, "Electric Tornado Linux!" or "Silver Bullet Train Linux!!" or "Kung Fu Fists of Fury Linux!!!"? Maybe you were leaning more in the direction of "Ultra Rainbow Happy Linux of Most Excellentnessestness".

Or, perhaps, you're more in the made-up names camp: "Xinux", "Lazernix", "Mythix", "Dystro", "Majickx", or "UzerGlow". These, certainly, are more exciting than "Mepis", "Xandros", or the disaster that is "Mandriva".

Dude, personally, if I came across a distro called "Salma Hayek's Breasts Linux", I would use that in preference to anything else on the basis of the name alone. So, yeah, I agree, names have power.

In the spirit of that revelation I will immediately be uninstalling Mozilla, The Gimp, and all of my many Python libraries which have never gotten the "Py" + "Whatever-it-does" naming convention.

On a final note, I do agree with you to a point. It would be nice if developers paid a *little* more attention to names. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, bud.

Me? I happen to like "Grumpy Groundhog".

You? You are one.

Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd install Kung Fu Fists of Fury Linux...

in a snap.

Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[v3rgEz]

Ubuntu: Linux for human beings.
i.e.: They have names that make immediate sense, and are approachable.

You can see a grandmother over tea saying, "Ooh, I just upgraded from Warty Warthog to Hoary Hedgehog. It's much nicer. Do you want to see some pictures of my grandkids? I just had Charles upload them."

They rhyme, so are easy to remember. They are animals, and thus easy to remember and less frightening then MegaMachinaL33nux. The entire idea of ubuntu is to make complex computers part of a regular human existence, to put some actual DESIGN into linux, rather then bells and whistles. Yeah, some people hate the default theme, but it is very approachable and very non-intimidating. Calling the devel version "Grumpy" also creates a sense of "Maybe I should avoid that one and use the Hedgehoggy one."

Simple, intuitive, Ubuntu.

Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[thephotoman]

Perhaps nobody's told you of Lesbian GNU/Linux. Same idea as Debian, but uses the command "porn-get" to install programs/pr0n.

Of course, there's also LinuXXX, which, oddly enough, is Ubuntu-based.

Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux"

[l3v1]

Simple, intuitive, Ubuntu.

Well, different worlds I'd say. I never in my life would've thought about Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger or Grumpy Groundhog as simple, nor intuitive. I think whoever thinks these names out is just in an urging need of a good kilolitre of fine ale and a good sleep.

Well, I might not be quite objective her e:) but I really like Sid, Woody and Sarge :)

Ubuntu continues to grow...

[pdevor]

I'm using Ubuntu right now as I type this. I think that if Ubuntu keeps growing at this rate, it will cause some other distros to die off. That's good because if the linux community is less divided among different distros, we won't be reinventing the wheel as much.

Re:Ubuntu continues to grow...

[**loki969**]

i think you are right about the growth of ubuntu. it really is a fine distro. but i don't think, that this will kill of any other distros. and in my book, having less choices, isn't a good thing either!

Re:Ubuntu continues to grow...

[suitepotato]

Like Knoppix, it sort of tried to work on boot. Installing it is another story. Once on a hard drive, I come at it from the position of a newbie from Windows land and judge them then once the "boot from a CD coolness" has gone away. Knoppix is like shaving with a dull Mach 3 razor and Ubuntu like shaving with a dull Mach 3 razor that is missing one blade. (Side observation: sounds unpleasantly like Ububu, and the implied haughtiness of using an African name is cheesy marketing at best. You could use any non-English name and I'd not buy into it based on the name any more than some tech-chem name like Optizoft or Citruvex.)

Fedora OTH, with everything installed and everything upgraded through YUM, works like a charm and does pretty much what I expect under Gnome or KDE and with great stability and no real contradictions or strange behavior.

Knoppix OTH changed from English to German all by itself one day and I could not find a way to switch it back. Ubuntu randomly decided not to play with my wireless mouse.

Fedora's quirks are at least consistent. Nothing random, pretty well behaved.

I think the attraction of these distros is the flash and bang they give simply by booting a CD. This is great for enticing those who are competent Windows users who can learn the technical ins and outs of Linux. They don't seem to be the thing for actually running Linux day in and day out.

Re:Ubuntu continues to grow...

[pdevor]

Hmm, there definitely is something to be said for having choices of distro... On the other hand, there is the choice of having one really great distro supported by an enormous community that increases the number of people using linux or having many smaller distros that are good, but not great. Maybe the answer is a compromise--kill off only some of the distros, thus providing both an excellent distro(s) as well as still providing a decent amount of choice.

Backwards thru the alphabet?

[spineboy]

First came Hoary Hedgehog, then came Grumpy Groundhog.

What's next Frantic Ferret or Floppy Frog..

Re:Backwards thru the alphabet?

[Stevyn]

I was thinking along similar lines. But they're doing all this work for no cash. Yeah, most distros are too, but it's still a good thing. I threw this on my little sisters computer so she'd have something to type papers on, use gaim, and surf the web. It works, and didn't cost much. And the computers old so it'd go to waste otherwise.

Re:Backwards thru the alphabet?

[borsi]

Floppy Froghog!!!!!!!!! :P Errrmm wait--

Re:Backwards thru the alphabet?

[MrWim]

Rampant Rabbit?

Re:Backwards thru the alphabet?

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

My money's on horny hamster.

cflags?

[dtfinch]

Will these be bloated unoptimized debug builds? Or small optimized builds?

Re:cflags?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a real distro and set your own CFLAGS, bitch.

Re:cflags?

[poofyhairguy82]

Its the development version, so probably the first one. Just like Hoary when its was in the development branch. Same concept, they just decieded to give that branch a name so that future names of Ubuntu releases only refer to stable versions...

Is there a server-oriented Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm interested in using Ubuntu but I primarily use Linux on servers.

Is Ubuntu appropriate for use on servers (their website claims so, but I'd like to hear from others)? If so, what are its advantages over say, Centos 4.0 or Debian Sarge?

Re:Is there a server-oriented Ubuntu?

[poofyhairguy82]

Is Ubuntu appropriate for use on servers (their website claims so, but I'd like to hear from others)? It has a server install that I've heard works well (it is the minimal install). If so, what are its advantages over say, Centos 4.0 or Debian Sarge? Well, it has a release unlike Sarge (and has a few newer packages). And if you need them there are many more debs that CentOS has RPMs...

Ubuntu is fine.

[Futurepower(R)]

Ubuntu is fine. "Grumpy Groundhog" is not. Not if you want to attract new users.

Choosing a bad name is self-defeating, pure and simple.

Re:Ubuntu is fine.

[Dan Farina]

...Like Hoary Hedgehog and Warty before it, it is simply the name of the branch. Don't get too tangled up--it all turns into Ubuntu when ready for public abuse.

(Although the repositories still contain their namesakes, eg warty or hoary or...grumpy, I guess)

Re:Ubuntu is fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

grumpy is not meant to be run by users.

grumpy will probably break you system and be full of bugs.

grumpy is meant for developers to try out a package of some software that is to buggy to be in a release, or even the prerelease branch.

users should be running hoary now, then in 6 months time upgrade to breezy.

devs should probably be running hoary with a few breezy and grumpy packages, or breezy with a few grumpy packages.

Re:Ubuntu is fine.

[v3rgEz]

They chose a bad name on purpose ... they ARE trying to disuade new users from using the DEVELOPER version. So you put words like "Grumpy" in there.

The target audience, coders who know a lot about linux, already knows about Ubuntu and isn't going to drop it because of the name.

Grumpy isn't for new users.

[Anonymous Coward]

New users shouldn't be attracted to grumpy. As the link says, this is for developers and perhaps even interested users that want something from the bleeding edge.

New users would use the latest release, which at the moment is Ubuntu 5.04.

Grumpy is not going to be a fluffy rabbit of linux distros. It will more than likely be badly broken most of the time, but it will be new and shiny.

Wait for it....

[word_virus]

It's Breezy Badger!

That doesn't work.

[Futurepower(R)]

That doesn't work. In fact, it gives many, many people a bad impression long before they think of trying the distro.

To see this more clearly, just exaggerate. Suppose they called the developer release "stupid idiot". Many, many people who don't know anything about Ubuntu would learn to associate Ubuntu with something negative. Then, when the release version is available, there would be a huge amount of negativity associated with it, even if they call that "happy days".

Re:That doesn't work.

[v3rgEz]

Yes, because people always here about the "quiet" developer versions of software before they hear about the main, publicized versions, especially when two of those main versions are already out there.
How is this different then closed-source nicknames given to software, such as Windows city naming convention?
Oh geez, they named XP "Memphis." I'm not going to go and buy it because it reminds me of carjackings...
No, no, no. People who hear about the devel name are the ones who check 50 different tech sites a day and know the background to them. These people will grin: "Ahh, grumpy groundhog, heh, heh."
The "mass" of people who hear about Ubuntu will first hear:
"Ubuntu"
"Hedgehog"
"Hoary Hedgehog"
"Warthog"
"Warty Warthog"
And then, having gotten used to the silly but reassuring naming convention (And seriously, how can it be worse than Mandriva? Mandriva???) they'll see "Grumpy Groundhog."
And your point about exaggeration: developer releases, if you have any experience with them, also have names like "Accounting's Whore of a Mother (AWM)." It creates a sense of community for the devels. These "negative names" change as the projects become bigger (compare Windows code names 10 years ago with the buzz-work "Paladiums" of today), but Ubuntu realizes its youth, "warts" and all. But Christ, if you know enough about Ubuntu to check out the name of the developer version, the name of it is not going to affect your platform decision. Now, for pete's sake, get off your anti-African high horse and accept the "humanity" of Ubuntu, silly naming conventions and all.

logo

[l3v1]

Ahem, just one quick: if this is an article on Ubuntu, then why is there the Debian logo beside the title ?

Re:logo

[FlashBac]

Debian and Ubuntu are linked, ie Ubuntu Linux is derived from Debian Linux; and Ubuntu and Debian share developers and/or former Debian people are involved now with Ubuntu.

Even FOSS needs marketing communication.

[Futurepower(R)]

Your position is just not how the world works.

Anti-African?????