Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Moves To Debian For In-house Linux Desktop (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the to-each-his-own dept.

Google has officially confirmed the company is shifting its in-house Linux desktop from the Ubuntu-based Goobuntu to a new Linux distro, the DebianTesting-based gLinux. From a report: Margarita Manterola, a Google Engineer, quietly announced Google would move from Ubuntu to Debian-testing for its desktop Linux at DebConf17 in a lightning talk. Manterola explained that Google was moving to gLinux, a rolling release based on Debian Testing. This move isn't as surprising as it first looks. Ubuntu is based on Debian. In addition, Google has long been a strong Debian supporter. In 2017, Debian credited Google for making [sic] "possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software." Debian Testing is the beta for the next stable version of Debian. With gLinux, that means it's based on the Debian 10 "Buster" test operating system. Google takes each Debian Testing package, rebuilds it, tests it, files and fixes bugs, and once those are resolved, integrates it into the gLinux release candidate. GLinux went into beta on Aug. 16, 2017.

2 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Ubuntu seems to be faltering by PvtVoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Having been a big Ubuntu fan (yes, including Unity) for quite a while now, I have been severely underwhelmed by the 16.04 LTS. The thing that really gives me pause (in addition to the basic instability of what is supposed to be a stable release) is the show-stopper bugs in major projects that have gone not only un-fixed, but unaddressed for nearly two years.

    Here's one (Status: confirmed / Importance: High / Assigned to: Unassigned)
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

    Here's another one (Status: confirmed / Importance: High / Assigned to: Unassigned) :
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

    Both of these examples are _major_ bugs in _major_ packages in the distro. And nobody has bothered to work on them, at all. This suggests to me that Ubuntu is too short on manpower to actually maintain the distro at an acceptable level.

    Canonical, WTF?

    1. Re:Ubuntu seems to be faltering by Rutulian · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sympathize, but...

      Your first link is to an issue encountered during a release upgrade. Release upgrades are tricky and nearly impossible to get perfect, especially when the software involved (in this case mysql-server) is complex and had an upstream change that affects configuration settings. There will always be edge cases that fail in these situations, and it is not necessarily worth it to try to fix every edge case as long as it doesn't corrupt data and the user is able to fix the problem manually. In this case, the upstream mysql-server change was noted in the release notes, so users upgrading should have been aware of potential problems going into it. The packaging of mysql-server-5.7 itself is not broken.

      In your second link, the problem is an issue with the OpenGL rendering support in libreoffice and is likely hardware/driver dependent. It is not something Canonical is in a position to fix.

      Also, both of these packages are in the universe repository and not officially supported by Canonical. So what you are getting from these bug reports is community support, which is why they are unassigned and don't receive much (if any) attention by a Canonical employee. I agree Debian is much better in this regard, but there is only so much a single company with a handful of employees can reasonably do.