Shuttleworth Says Snappy Won't Replace .deb Linux Package Files In Ubuntu 15.10

darthcamaro writes: Mark Shuttleworth, BDFL of Ubuntu is clearing the air about how Ubuntu will make use of .deb packages even in an era where it is moving to its own Snappy ('snaps') format of rapid updates. Fundamentally it's a chicken and egg issue. From the serverwatch article: "'We build Snappy out of the built deb, so we can't build Snappy unless we first build the deb,' Shuttleworth said. Going forward, Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu users will still get access to an archive of .deb packages. That said, for users of a Snappy Ubuntu-based system, the apt-get command no longer applies. However, Shuttleworth explained that on a Snappy-based system there will be a container that contains all the deb packages. 'The nice thing about Snappy is that it's completely worry-free updates,' Shuttleworth said."

Comments

How?

[khasim]

"The nice thing about Snappy is that it's completely worry-free updates," Shuttleworth said.

I don't think it was the PACKAGE that caused people to worry about an update.

For example, Shuttleworth said that if there is a security vulnerability, like a Heartbleed flaw, the way Ubuntu fixes the issue is with a .deb package.

Isn't that an issue with the code itself?

The great thing about .deb packages was that the OFFICIAL ones underwent a lot of testing to try to catch problems BEFORE they were deployed. NOT because they were magical .deb packages.

Re:How?

[0123456]

I've seen software that depends on bugs to function

Back in the 90s, I had to intentionally reproduce Microsoft bugs in my Windows drivers, or various apps that had never been run with non-Microsoft drivers would fall over...

But, yeah, let's make Linux do things the Windows way, so you have sixteen copies of different versions of zlib.dll spread across your disk, all with different security holes. Because you know it makes sense!

The Linux community is destroying itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time Linux user, I'm dumbfounded by how the Linux community has basically turned on itself over the past 5 years.

It's not Microsoft, nor SCO, nor Apple, nor any other external entity that's destroying the usefulness and practicality of Linux. It's the Linux community, as a whole, that's doing this!

Systemd is the obvious example of this. Never have we seen a piece of software so divide and devastate the Linux ecosystem. Whatever small amount of convenience it may bring for the maintainers of Linux distros is more than offset by the many problems that systemd has caused the users of these distros. It doesn't matter if, say, the Debian maintainers' jobs are made easier if Debian itself suffers from reliability problems thanks to systemd that drive the most important Debian users over to FreeBSD.

But that's not the only example. We've seen the usability of Linux on desktops and workstations devastated by awful desktop environments like GNOME 3 and Unity. This mad rush to target "normal" users has been an utter disaster. No normal users have actually decided to use Linux due to these changes, but many long time Linux users have been forced to find alternatives.

If we go back 10 years, to 2005, I never would have expected Linux to be in such dire straits, and all due to problems that the Linux community has imposed on itself. It's really unbelievable how much harm the community has done to itself as of late.

Re:The Linux community is destroying itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

You, and people like you, exhibit the mentality and attitude that is responsible for the ongoing destruction of Linux.

Long time Linux users who use Linux for critical systems repeatedly describe the problems they've encountered with certain pieces of software, such as systemd and GNOME 3. Instead of listening to these users and trying to understand their problems, you and your ilk deny that these serious problems exist, and then attack these users for daring to mention these problems (by wrongly accusing them of "trolling", for example).

Treating users in such a horrible way never ends well. These users just won't put up with it. The most talented, experienced and knowledgeable Linux users have already moved to FreeBSD, or are in the process of doing so. These are the kinds of users who are needed the most by Linux; they're the ones who push for its adoption and use. Linux won't disappear all at once, of course, but a gradual decline is inevitable now that these critical users have been forced out.

We only need to look to Mozilla and Firefox to see what happens when users are treated like dirt. Firefox was once a very popular web browser, with well over 30% of the browser market. But then the Firefox developers stopped listening to what Firefox users wanted, and instead forced unwanted junk on Firefox's users. Even worse, the Firefox developers did not listen to the objections of Firefox's users to these unwanted changes. After several years of treating Firefox's users so poorly, we can see the awful results. Firefox is now under 10% of the market. The users who propelled Firefox to success have moved on to greener pastures, which even include modern versions of IE, as unbelievable as that may be. Now Firefox is seen as a joke browser, rather than the powerhouse that it once was, just a few years ago.

I sure hope that what we've seen happen to Firefox doesn't happen to Linux, but things aren't looking encouraging. There are just too many people like you, who are incapable of seeing the big picture, and more important, incapable of listening to the users of Linux. Not listening to these users and their concerns is perhaps the most harmful thing that can happen to Linux as a whole.

Re:The Linux community is destroying itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Whereas the systemd supporters can actually point to real, tangible benefits.

Dropping syslog messages, stderr, and exit statuses are not benefits! They're a hindrance to managing servers. It's obvious that the systemd guys lack real world experience, or they would understand why these things are important.

Re:The Linux community is destroying itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

...broken the kernel repeatedly, a decade of log collection

Not just the kernel, but also syslog. Poettering just doesn't have enough experience to understand why syslog is so critical. After over thirty years managing UNIX servers and nearly twenty-two years managing Linux servers in production, I can state simply that I could not have been as successful as I have been without syslog. Not swallowing syslog messages is critical for security. systemd's policy to drop them makes servers less secure and much harder to troubleshoot.

Re:The Linux community is destroying itself.

[Sarten-X]

Long time Linux users who use Linux for critical systems...

Oh hey, that's me.

...repeatedly describe the problems they've encountered with certain pieces of software, such as systemd and GNOME 3.

Well, yeah. I'm a cranky old fart.

Instead of listening to these users and trying to understand their problems, you and your ilk deny that these serious problems exist...

Now wait just one Turing-completing minute there!

The problems aren't serious. They don't break my critical systems, because I'm not going to be deploying systemd into production until I've tested it thoroughly. My old init scripts will get a wrapper or a rewrite to fit the new OS as needed, but the software interface won't change very much at all. Now, if you want a serious problem, find a vulnerability in a basic system utility, like bash or OpenSSH. Those problems are already out in the wild, deployed to production systems. When a new one of those problems is found, there's a notable increase in the use of profanity around my desk.

A new startup system, or a new package format, or a new thing that does this thing different than how the old thing did that thing... none of those bother me. I'll wait, running my old-but-stable critical systems, until you short-tempered folks settle on exactly what you want to do. I'll then work around whatever issues remain, because that's my job. I'm a sysadmin.

Re:The Linux community is destroying itself.

[Antique Geekmeister]

An appeal to ridicule is a logical fallacy: if it were an entertaining appeal to ridicule, it might be amusing, and I wouldn't expect pure logic on Slashdot. But please note that it doesn't address or even acknowledge a single one of the issues I mentioned. Many of those issues are architectural and core to systemd development.

And no, I don't "hate systemd with a white hot passion". It does a few things reasonably well, and there are some real benefits to getting faster boot times and kernel logging. The network integration is problematic, but shows some promise.

But systemd really needs to _stop_ trying to replace core system functions with yet another add-on module. And yes, it's trying to take on software packaging, as well.

Re: why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very funny. After 36 years of managing UNIX servers, I think I'm finally going to move on to something else. The fact that systemd drops syslog messages and hides stderr has made my job near impossible. I'm tired of dealing with it.

My theory

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I swear to god, there are times when I think that Pottering is a secret, deep-cover plant by Microsoft whose job is to disrupt the Linux community, fragment the OS by introducing shit like systemd, and generally make a hash of the Linux ecosystem.

This whole systemd fiasco has caused a boatload of infighting, dissension among what should be cooperative members and teams, and it makes the process of administering Linux systems that much harder. I'm no dev guru or Linux wizard, but even I know that swallowing stderr messages and mucking with long-time, well-established syslog formats is a Bad Thing.

If he's not a secret, deep-cover plant owned and directed by Microsoft, he should be. Microsoft should be paying him handsomely for all the trouble he's caused.

* No, I don't think he's really a Microsoft operative, but damn...he may as well be.

Re:why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Now i really am starting to get why people hate this guy.

Re:why bother?

[serviscope_minor]

No they don't fall down. I've heard this claim and it's frankly not true (or rather, true in a very very limited set of cases).

For first party packages (distro provided) it's business as usual: ubuntu seems to have no trouble tracking the latest firefox builds and there's a fresh deb available via apt-get update && apt-get upgrade in a very timely manner. Likewise there's the fresh and still LO packegs available depending on whether you want stability with timely security updates or bleeding edge.

So, demonstrable, fast moving packages are not a problem.

What about third party ones?

Basically it's the same. Add a PPA for the third party repo and it just works. Now, if the third partd dev doesn't want to keep up to date with system libraries which may change, then they might choose to ship their own .so files. That has the downside of not tracking security updates, but since linux package managers are the only system where arbitrary packages tend to get security updates to arbitrary libraries anyway all that does is lower the performance to that of every other OS on the planet.

And some programs do this: they provide a third party .deb or PPA and dump files in /opt/foo completely isolated from the system files in/usr. That works very well too.

One of the ways that packaging falls down traditionally is for multiple versions of the same package installed concurrently. Part of this is because some programs themselves are not build for that (e.g. expecting files in /etc), however most package can be persuaded otherwise and there are in fact package managers that solve this problem.

The other way is if a program needs a complex system relying on multiple non-default configured packages to be set up. At that point, it's often easier to ship an entire system image.

However, doing system images for everything seems a tad wasteful.

The other thing that is hapening is Zawinski's cascade of attention defecit teenagers. Yeah, I know packaging isn't perfect in general and deb is not perfect in a number of specific ways. But the people who want to dump everything and start afresh often seem to be quite unaware of teh state of the art. The results is that the new systems are usually better in some ways, but inevitably worse in a number of ways that the author didn't think of but have been hammered out and working well for 20 years in other systems.

It's sad because to someone who's around for a long time, software doesn't so much as advance as take an awful lot of steps sideways. You get big fat brand new shiny systems which just plain do a bad job of previously solved problems.

This seems to be the same: many of the reasons for doing away with packages are flat-out wrong which strongly implies that the people replacing packages don't really understand packages properly and are therefore likely to make a bunch of new mistakes which have previously been solved perfectly fine. So even if they solve some problems (I have no doubt they will), they'll also unsolve a bunch.

Re:why bother?

[squiggleslash]

It's a troll because it's another pointless slam at systemd, which is entirely off-topic here.

And Pottering isn't announcing anything on his blog, he's discussing improvements he and other systemd developers think could be made to the way GNU/Linux software is distributed. That would make his comments slightly more on-topic here, given snappy is (apparently) a change to the way GNU/Linux software is distributed, but his comments don't directly relate to snappy and appear to be vague concepts.

Nor is there any suggestion that systemd is about to integrate a package manager or package management system replacement - he's obviously interested in how future software distribution systems might work with systemd, but that's not the same as proposing an actual system.

I'm guessing if the topic was diversity in IT, and you found Pottering wrote an article about the topic, you'd have suggested systemd is going to integrate actual black disabled lesbians (using some kind of mind-interface one assumes) into its next release. Right?