Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Grumpy Groundhog - Ubuntu for Developers

Posted by timothy on from the still-waiting-for-zippy-zebra dept.

**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. '"

13 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...? by KiloByte · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    1. Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...? by Bachus9000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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...

    2. Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...? by xenocide2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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!

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

    3. Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...? by xenocide2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

    4. Re:Unstable, experimental, Ubuntu...? by petermgreen · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  2. Re:Forking A, man by zbik · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

  3. Re:What about... by advocate_one · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  4. Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux" by Adelbert · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  5. Ubuntu continues to grow... by pdevor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Ubuntu continues to grow... by **loki969** · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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!

  6. Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux" by **loki969** · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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. ;)

  7. Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux" by Chromodromic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Chr0m0Dr0m!C
  8. Re:"You are a moron if you try this Linux" by v3rgEz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.