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

why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

The functionality will be built in to the next version of systemd.

Re:why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is this modded troll?
Lennart the great mastermind has announced it on his blog: http://0pointer.net/blog/revis...

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.

[Grishnakh]

I'm not sure it's "the community" that's to blame as much as certain large entities in the community (*cough* Red Hat *cough*).

First, about systemd. Exactly what "problems" has it caused the users? On a normal distro, it runs in the background and should be transparent. sysvinit was ancient, and not even Solaris (the last true UNIX) uses it, it switched to SMF ages ago. All the anti-systemd hysteria I've seen has only been about vague possibilities, or whining about "the one true UNIX philosophy" (which again, apparently real UNIX doesn't even follow), etc. Whereas the systemd supporters can actually point to real, tangible benefits. Now admittedly, at home I'm a longtime user of Linux Mint which still runs on upstart for the moment, but I've been using CentOS 7 machines at work and I haven't run into any problems there (except for fucking Gnome3, more on that later). systemd seems to me to work just fine.

However, with Gnome3 and Unity, you're exactly right. The two most powerful and influential distros (Fedora/RHEL and Ubuntu) both changed to awful DEs, which certainly can't be attractive to new users who aren't looking for something that's a complete sea-change from the UIs they're used to. By all rights, KDE should be the default DE: it's reasonably fast, it's pretty bug-free at this point (compared to Gnome3, which is full of bugs in my personal experience with CentOS7), it's full-featured, it's highly configurable to do whatever you want, whether you want it to be more like Windows or like MacOS, and it's a familiar paradigm. Yes, the "semantic desktop" stuff is useless, but it's actually turned off by default on many distros now I believe, and if not, it's easy to disable and simply ignore--I do. So why Linux distros are pushing minimalistic DEs, I dunno. But I'm certainly not the only one who doesn't like them: there's a reason Mint has become so popular, and so many people have switched to Cinnamon and MATE.

Honestly, the big misstep that started most of this crap was the founding of GNOME back in the late 90s, due to the licensing issue with Qt. They should have abandoned Gnome when Qt finally was released under the GPL, then we wouldn't have these issues now.

Famous Last Words

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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

Any time anyone says something is "completely worry-free", that's your cue to worry. Ask me how I know.