Is Ubuntu a Compatibility Nightmare for Debian? 638
An anonymous reader submits "Following Friday's release of Ubuntu Linux 5.04, Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian project, told internetnews.com: 'Ubuntu's popularity is a net negative for Debian.' He explained: 'It's diverged so far from Sarge that packages built for Ubuntu often don't work on Sarge. And given the momentum behind Ubuntu, more and more packages are being built like this. The result is a potential compatibility nightmare.' Ian suggests a method for averting crisis on his blog."
Ubuntu is a good thing. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think it's really fair to say that Ubuntu is a net negative for Debian. It's definitely a net negative for sarge, since very little, if any, of the work put in to Ubuntu has trickled down to sarge. However, it's good for Debian as a whole because when the ball gets rolling for etch, most of the work will already be done. Ubuntu puts out stable releases for three of the four release arches for etch, so I doubt much extra work will be needed there, although I don't really know that much about what additional work would be necessary.
Sure, Ubuntu's existence has various downsides, such as the proliferation of deb packages provided by developers that only work on Ubuntu, but would those people have made Debian packages in the first place? The packages are merely a byproduct of Ubuntu's popularity, and more people using Debian and Debian derived distributions is definitely a net gain for Debian. I don't see why he would write off all the benefits that Ubuntu provides while focusing on a few issues that are negligible IMO.
The packaging issue is one that's never really going to go away. On his blog, Ian cites software developers and ISVs as reasons for unifying Debian and Ubuntu packages. All free software developers have to do to get their software packaged by Ubuntu is request it. [ubuntulinux.org] The Ubuntu packagers work fairly close with the Debian developers to make sure that the work trickles down to Ubuntu proper as well. For commercial software it's a bit harder, but that's one of the things to deal with in the Linux ecosystem. Like I said before, packages made for sarge wouldn't even necessarily work on woody. You have to target specific sets of available software, or just distribute binaries that install the software based on various LSB assumptions.
Ubuntu Sarge (Score:5, Informative)
"Ubuntu makes a release every six months, and supports those releases for 18 months with daily security fixes and patches to critical bugs.
As Ubuntu prepares for release, we "freeze" a snapshot of debian's development archive ('sid'). We start from 'sid' in order to give ourselves the freedom to make our own decisions with regard to release management, independent of Debian's release-in-preparation. This is necessary because our release criteria are very different from Debian's.
As a simple example, a package might be excluded from Debian 'testing' due to a build failure on any of the 11 architectures supported by Debian 'sarge', but it is still suitable for Ubuntu if it builds and works on only three of them. A package will also be prevented from entering Debian 'testing' if it has release-critical bugs according to Debian criteria, but a bug which is release-critical for Debian may not be as important for Ubuntu.
As a community, we choose places to diverge from Debian in ways that minimize the difference between Debian and Ubuntu. For example, we usually choose to update to the very latest version of Gnome rather than the older version in Debian, and we might do the same for key other pieces of infrastructure such as X or GCC. Those decisions are listed as Feature Goals for that release, and we work as a community to make sure that they are in place before the release happens."
So, who cares that it isn't compatible with Sarge? Is Sarge really compatible with Sid? I think not (if you are sane). Shouldn't Ian be saying that Ubuntu isn't compatible with his "componentized Linux" (http://www.progeny.com/products/components.html)
Re:Ubuntu is great (Score:1, Informative)
Perhaps a "newbie to Debian" would be a more accurate description.
I tried it recently and as a slackware 'fancier' I must admit it didn't suit me. In fact, I've never been able to get used to the idiosyncracies of Debain based distributions, even though it's supposedly so easy.
I installed and am giving it the benefit of the dought - who knows, perhaps I'll become a convert and learn to love the Debian way as much as I like Slackware !
But Ubuntu a newbies distro ? - wow, maybe the LiveCD, but the i386 I tried is anything but !
Re:Everyone wins? (Score:3, Informative)
"I don't think his comparison with RPM is completely apropos. RPM was poorly designed from the start, and was probably designed from the start as a tool for vendor lock-in. Apt-get, AFAICT, is well designed."
RPM is not even remotely the same thing as apt-get. It's like saying an apple is inferior to a fruit salad.
AFAIK, RPM is actually ahead of DEB in certain areas. Yum and apt-get are reasonably close in quality, although I would give apt-get the nod for now.
-Erwos
Re:Debian is old.. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Kubuntu! (Score:3, Informative)
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
Then you'd have Kubuntu-current.
Fedora Core 3, working here nicely ... (Score:2, Informative)
timothy
Autopackage (Score:2, Informative)
Or maybe not.
Re:Problem? (Score:3, Informative)
It would seem that the Ubuntu people are already more or less doing this:
Many Ubuntu developers are also recognized members of the debian community. They continue to stay active in contributing to debian both in the course of their work on Ubuntu and directly in debian. When Ubuntu developers fix bugs that are also present in debian packages -- and since the projects are linked, this happens often -- they send their bugfixes to the Debian developers responsible for that package in debian and record the patch URL in the debian bug system. The long term goal of that work is to ensure that patches made by the full-time Ubuntu team members are immediately also included in debian packages where the debian maintainer likes the work. From Ubuntu's Debian and Ubuntu [ubuntulinux.org] page.Re:Here's a way to avert a crisis: (Score:3, Informative)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Problem? (Score:1, Informative)
You make it sound like theres somewhere around 3 developers working on Debian. Each package has a maintainer. For the most part theres a 1:1 ratio, though some related packages are maintained by the same person, and there are quite a few maintainers who take care of some small packages on the side. Every now and then a maintainer goes AWOL and the package ends up in the small pool of unmaintained packages until someone else picks it up and cares for it.
The problem would be easier to solve if everyone learned to write platform-independent code, but the whole interoperability and platform independence thing seems to elude most OSS authors.
Re:Everyone wins? (Score:3, Informative)
If you are going to make a comparision either compare the RPM *package format* with the DEB *package format* or compare the yum *package management tool* with apt *package management tool* ::sigh::.
Obviously someone that has not touched a rpm based distro in the last two years.
BTW apt does not handle multi-arch systems like x86-64 properly unlike yum. Both yum/rpm and apt/deb have their warts depending on one's situation.
Re:Everyone wins? (Score:2, Informative)
It's a stupid statement. No two ways about it. dpkg and rpm are pretty close to functional equivalents; apt and urpmi and yum (ugh) are more or less functionally equivalent; but comparing rpm to apt is just plain dumb. They work at different layers.
Obviously you don't know about apt4rpm either; since its very existence contradicts your assertion.
Re:repositories? what? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, you've got to have the proper dev packages to do that, but it'll tell you if it's missing something. Keep a persistant root terminal open to apt-get anything it'll say you need.
Re:That's what happens (Score:3, Informative)
Ubuntu wants to work with debian, to make a better debian, but the goals of Ubuntu and Debian are different. debian aims at a pure FOSS os, while ubuntu aims at a viable commercial desktop linux distro. A viable commercial Linux require a lot of 'free as in beer' software to run properly (java/nvidia-ati drivers, etc) Even though i have sarge, i installed both of the above, 'free as in beer' because I needed an accelerated X-server to play mpeg-4 streams at certain resolutions without 'skipping' and java's vm was needed to run p2p apps. in my experience p2p apps run about 20% greater efficiency under a default linux config, vs a 'default' xp config, so obviously linux is the os of choice for p2p users.
Debian has always had a problem keeping up to date, I still use it, because it seems like the only viable alternative to it is gentoo, which would take a week to install on my current system
If debian was already using torrent technology, all ubuntu would have to do is set up it's own tracker, and the farther they diverged from debian, the less bandwith of debian's mirrors they'd use.
Re:Problem? (Score:2, Informative)
I disagree. Debian and Ubuntu serve different purposes. Ubuntu forks off Debian sid, then tweaks and patches, in order to provide the shiny new stuff everyone wants to play with. Debian stable eschews the bleeding edge in favor of reliability. I use both. Debian goes on my servers. I don't care if my server can automount a USB stick. I don't care if my server runs KDE 4.0. I want my server to consistently, reliably deliver email to a few thousand users 24/7. Or whatever. It so happens that I also have Debian Sarge on my laptop right now. It's not the absolute latest stuff, but for now fresh enough that I'm not annoyed with it. Probably in a year or so I'll start lusting after some whizbang feature, and upgrade my laptop to Kubuntu. Maybe sooner. But my server will still run Debian.
Personally, I think we may witness some symbiosis here. If Ubuntu takes pressure off the Debian project to be all things to all people, then perhaps Debian can refine it's core competency (being the best server distro); which might help it stay a little more polished and up-to-date.
Especially as both projects seem committed to Free software principles, I don't see how anything is lost by Debian letting go a little...
Re:hypocrisy (Score:5, Informative)
That is most definitely not the case. There was considerable discussion on the debian-devel list following the release team's proposal to limit the etch release to 4 architectures. While the proposal may still be implemented, it also may still undergo significant changes. People have been suggesting all sorts of counter proposals to try and keep all the architectures in sync.
Personally, even though I've run Debian on MIPS, MIPSel, Alpha, and Sparc (all of which would be dropped under the Release Team's proposal) I still support the proposal and would like to see architecture support scaled back a bit. There are those, however, who feel that Debian would be giving up too much if they were to drop some platforms.
noah
Re:Funny thing, perspective. (Score:4, Informative)
And it doesn't have to -- Ubuntu isn't out to beat Debian. At all. They are using different release methodologies, and are essentially forking Debian Policy where they see fit. But in their effort for short-term usability improvements, there's the danger that they'll create a difficult to maintain system -- and Debian's fundamental maintenance abilities are probably its best feature. And probably why Ubuntu is based on Debian.
Re:That's what happens (Score:3, Informative)
BT is not very good (ie. kind of useless) for most of the packages in Debian. Most packages are less than 500kB. Very few run more than a few megs.
If you want to use BT to download Sarge (hopefully before Woody turns 3 years old), you'll be able to get them here,
http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/ [debian.org]
Debian will also release on DVDs (I think it will have 1x and 2x density disks) so you don't have to download so many images.
After Sarge releases and the torrent gets on slashdot, that is when BT is best. BT for `apt-get upgrade`, well, not so great.
PS. For apt-get, use your local mirror http://www.debian.org/mirrors/ [debian.org]. Please, all of you should not be using the main http.us.debian.org mirrors :) Most secondary mirrors are just an hour or two behind primaries. Many are listed as secondaries just because they only host a limited architecture set (eg. only i386 and powerpc).
Re:Problem? (Score:1, Informative)
Depends on what you are doing with it. I have been using Debian for various headless servers for years (DHCP, Samba, Mail, home directories, network monitoring, DNS, gateway/firewall etc...). They run great and there is no need to do anything but security updates. If it ain't broke or you do not need the fuctionality of version X+1, there is absolutely NO reason to upgrade.
An extreme example.. I left my last job over 4 years ago and they are still to this day using the RH6.1 (Cartman?) machine I set up with Apache, Samba, and auto ncpmounting of some Novell servers on their local network. Yes, someone on the local network could hack into considering it has not been updated since I left but it is still running along fine.
For my own Linux desktops? I use the distro of the month or pretty much anything but Debian stable.
Re:Crisis, what crisis? (offtopic) (Score:3, Informative)
Today's humans are believed to be decedents of Cro-Magnons which were primitive humans that at some point lived in the same time period as Neanderthals.
Re:Funny (Score:3, Informative)
the self-styled high priests of #debian are free to abuse whomever they want on irc, and to have contempt for newbie-user-friendliness in their software, but they shouldn't cry when their own actions and attitudes help drive a migration to ubuntu.
that said, i use debian exclusively. the technical arguments outweigh the personalities. but i still lament the loss to the community caused by these arrogant assholes on #debian.
X.Org and Debian (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a link that may help, straight into the Subversion repository where Debian's XFree86 packages are developed:
What are Debian's plans with respect to X.Org and XFree86? [deadbeast.net]
The current text of that FAQ entry follows.
Re:Thank you! (Score:5, Informative)
Now here's my concern: I have no idea who Deadbeast is (There isn't a top level page -- which is wierd), how do I know it's not just wishful thinking?
Well, I'm Branden Robinson, and deadbeast.net is my vanity domain. If you're easily amused, you may want to look up deadbeast's WHOIS record. :)
I'm glad the pointer to the FAQ helped. I admit I didn't foresee that sarge would take this long to release when advocating that Debian stick with the tried-and-true XFree86 4.3 (even if hacked up and patched to support more hardware than stock 4.3 does), but the trouble is, the longer the sarge release drags on, the more disruptive it would be to try to cut over to X.Org. So I continue to believe that the best solution to this problem, as with many others, is to kick sarge out of the nest so we can focus our full attention on disrupting the hell out of unstable for a few months. :)
Idiots (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Problem? (Score:2, Informative)
Something to think about is that people look at BSD and love how stable and secure the different flavors are. Debian tends to be as stable as possible because of the testing that is done.
If you want to go with the latest features, nothing is stopping you from installing them. Production environments are almost never about having EVERY new feature, they are about stability and security.
In addition to this, if you need a specific package, you can generally just get that package and any packages it depends on, compile the application yourself, or upgrade to one of the development releases. You do NOT need to wait for something to be added to the latest released version of the distribution.
If you are a true system administrator for a production environment, then for security reasons, you should be more than able to compile and install any specific requirements for your needs anyway. If you can't, and MUST have things done for you, then your production environments will always be at risk of being broken into due to some configuration setting that doesn't work well with your environment.
Most people don't lock down their systems, they take an easy install method like "web server", without editing the package list before installing. What this does is to allow access to your machine in ways you arn't even aware of.
Which web server do you want to use? Do you really need ftp access to the box, or do you use ONLY ssh/scp to transfer files to the machine for security reasons? How about other little features? Do you NEED a GUI on that machine at all, and why since a command line should be enough? Have you checked the configurations to make sure they point to the right places? How about locking down any remote access methods to make sure that ONLY the machine and perhaps the subnet it is on gets access to the configuration interface(if you have one)?
And last but not least, the kernel is something that EVERY system admin should manually compile for their system. Instead of just using kernel modules, compile in what you need, and don't bother with support for things your system has no use for. Distributions put in as many modules as they can into the kernel for compatability with all the different systems, but once you have the machine up, why not custom compile your kernel for the purpose of the machine? If you don't use NFS for example, why should you bother with NFS support in the kernel unless you may want to use it at some point?
So, sarge is pretty much there. You can upgrade to it, and since you arn't installing from scratch, you don't need to wait for the installer to be tested/upgraded. Going to a
Re:That's what happens (Score:2, Informative)
1) *Ubuntu* is not a company, Canonical is.
2) Canonical actively encourage companys to provide support for ubuntu.
3) 52% of developers voted in this leadership election. if you peruse http://www.debian.org/vote/ you will see that this is the usual percentage that vote.
Quit the FUD.
Rob