Weekly Edition
Return to the Press pageSponsored link
Vyatta –
Linux & Open Source
Alternative to Cisco –
Advanced Routing,
Firewall, VPN, QoS..
Free Download ->
| |||||||||||
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch
ponders
the fate of the Debian distribution.
"After my recent story asking the question, "Is Debian Dying?" I received several email messages. By far the best of them was by C. J. Fearnley, CEO of LinuxForce Inc., a Linux service provider, and a long-time Debian developer.
Here's what Fearnley had to say in defense of Debian:
You are correct that Debian infighting is not an isolated incident, but your interpretation that Debian may be dying is way off the mark.
From my perspective as a practitioner, philosopher, design science revolutionary, a Debian user and a Debian volunteer for over 10 years, my interpretation of the "infighting" is that it reveals, to the careful observer, Debian's strengths and not its weakness!"
(Log in to post comments)
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 28, 2006 21:15 UTC (Thu) by pfred1 (guest, #35195) [Link] Stick a fork in Debian its done!
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 28, 2006 21:38 UTC (Thu) by DiegoCG (guest, #9198) [Link] I don't agree with all he says.
Fighting is what stops Debian progressing many times. As some people said when the Ubuntu init replacement was announced, this thing would have taken too many efforst or would have been impossible to implement. You may want to replace init, but you need to convince docens of package developers to rewrite their initscripts to support upstart - if they don't like upstart, they may not want to help you and things are more and more difficult. Aditionally, you'd not be allowed to break init, because debian always takes the politically correct decision of not forcing absolutely nothing and leave users choose everything.
One of the reasons why Ubuntu (and fedora, and...) makes reasonable technical progresses is because they have a clear set of goals (aka: "specifications"). They have a set of goals and their mission is to implement them. Upstart was one of goals. There're others that are already implemented working, like separation of debug symbols and executables (instead of installing a -dbg package that replaces your normal package, you install aditional packages with symbols for those programs, and package symbols for all packages are created), apt support for translations of the "description" section of packages, a system to automatically send information about crashed processes to ubuntu developers, a system to automatically get kernel crash dumps...no other developers would stop you from implementing those features because they're the "goals",and the final distro release enables all those things by default.
IOW: Ubuntu has evolved more in 6 months than what I saw in Debian for the 3-4 years that I used it. Same applies for other distros. I don't see how this is showing the "strenght" of debian
I agree with all the article says about democracy and all that, but that doesn't means the *process* works. It'd be nice if debian adopted a aggresive goal-oriented style development like others did - and the goals can be decided more democratically than in ubuntu, for example. These days, debian has pretty much became a enormous packaging central that just provides new software versions with no distro innovation - when a new version is released, the "new things" are mostly "kernel version x, libc version x, gnome/kde version x, firefox version x", nothing else...
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 28, 2006 23:34 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] The inability to easily replace sysvinit with upstart is a feature. Upstart offers no big advantages to administrators, and is really Yet Another init system which just makes life painful for people trying to externally support most popular Linux distributions.
It is good that there are distributions which can change more rapidly and experiment more easily. It is good that Debian cannot make my life difficult whenever it feels like it.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 28, 2006 23:54 UTC (Thu) by lordsutch (subscriber, #53) [Link] Actually, you can easily replace sysvinit: apt-get install upstart.
But I suspect Debian won't make that the default any time soon, if ever.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 28, 2006 23:56 UTC (Thu) by mms (subscriber, #11532) [Link] > OW: Ubuntu has evolved more in 6 months than what I saw in Debian for the> 3-4 years that I used it. Same applies for other distros. I don't see how > this is showing the "strenght" of debian
Maybe you should have a close look at how Debian evolved in the past 6 months. Then you could argue seriously about strengths and weaknesses of Debian. What you describe are just vague, inappropriate concerns, IMO.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 8:45 UTC (Fri) by stef70 (guest, #14813) [Link] I have been using Debian for about 6 years on my desktop and Ubuntu for about a year on my Laptop. I somehow agree with both of you.
Ubuntu is clearly more reactive than Debian. The Ubuntu packages tend to be a lot more up to date.
On the other hand, I also noticed some improvements in Debian during the last year. 2 or 3 years ago, it was not unusual to have to wait 12 or 18 months before a Gnome or XFree release was finaly available in experimental or unstable. Nowadays, the delay is usually a few months and sometimes a few days or weeks if you are willing to take the risk of using experimental packages.
Debian is becoming more user friendly on the desktop even if it still misses the polish of Ubuntu.
One of the nice things I appreciate in Ubuntu is that the supported packages are clearly separated from the rest (universe).
The distinction between the important and less important packages is not so clear in Debian and that usually seems to lead to some endless discussions and delays because an obscure package is or could be broken.
More generally, having 19000 packages is nice but too much choice can become confusing. The pacakges will have to be sorted out before the overall apt system becomes unusable. What I would really like to see is a ranking mecanism based on the popularity of the packages.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 10:07 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Gnome I don't know if it's been much of a problem.
KDE has been a problem with all that C++ ABI nonsense. X is mostly a solved problem, with it being modular nowadays.
For people cheering on Ubuntu, which only the grandparent seems to be doing, you need to keep in mind that Ubuntu is able to do what it does is because it's building on a solid foundation of software created by Debian.
For all intensive purposes Ubuntu is simply a snapshot of Debian stable + updated Gnome and X. Pretty much that is it.
It doesn't do anything that you can't do with Debian. It's never realy done anything you couldn't do with Debian. What they do is good marketting and a very nice default install suited to the desktop.
Instead of letting people choose what they'd like to use..
Ubuntu:
The very reason that Ubuntu is able to spend their time polishing their distro is because Debian is very solid. If Ubuntu had to build everything themselves and maintain everything and all that then users would only be provided a very small selection of software and there would be a lot of things missing or unfinished behind that pretty brown desktop.
Both Ubuntu and Debian are complimentary. One would be less without the other. For example.. Debian works on maintaining, supporting, bugfixing and improving it's 18k worth of software packages. Ubuntu spent a lot of effort beta testing X.org and developing packages. So then Ubuntu gets to slap a bunch of deb software packages into 'universe', leaves it unsupported mostly and people praise them for it. In turn Debian puts some polish on Ubuntu's X.org packages and incorporates them back into unstable and etch.. all pretty well beta tested. A classic win-win situation.
And you hear things about Sun teaming up with Ubuntu to support Sparc.. Guess what orginization has been working on maintaining a Sparc port for who-knows-how-many-years?
That is not to belittle what Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical have acheived with Ubuntu. What they acheived in making a decent Linux desktop by default is something that Debian never would have produced and yet is about pretty much what people have wanted for years now with Debian.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 10:07 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Whoops I ment a 'snapshot of Debian unstable', not 'stable'
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 13:34 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] Your using Gnome. My using gnome what? Most of your sentences are incomplete. (KDE? Bah. Good luck on that one) I'm using kubuntu. No problems at all. Probably the best kde distro around. Mark Shuttleworth uses it on his desktop. how to setup the unsupported repostories. No harder than setting up Debian repositories of any kind, supported or unsupported.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 14:42 UTC (Fri) by pfred1 (guest, #35195) [Link] You want to just drop in a CD and install Linux? Ubuntu! You want to install this that or the other thing? Synaptic in Ubuntu! I got an Ubuntu system with Windowmaker as my window manager. You want unlimited archaic cruft? Debian! An unrivaled byzantine group of maintainers? Debian!s/Ubuntu/Linux-O-Matic/g; s/Debian/Dinosaurux/g;
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 30, 2006 12:01 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] It makes sense except for fact that Ubuntu depends on Debian. Without Debian Ubuntu would be nothing. No package management system. No universe or multiverse repostories. No synaptic.
It would be just another rpm-based distro.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 15:13 UTC (Fri) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link] It's interesting how many of the improvements you listed as being things that Ubuntu invented thanks to their oh so superior working environment were actually implemented by Debian developers. For example, I added support to debhelper for separated debugging symbols; it was based underneath on support in objcopy and gdb that were developed with the help of DD Dan Jakobitz. Translated package Description fields were worked on by many DDs to get them to the point they are now.
This tendancy to give Ubuntu all the credit is more likely to kill Debian than anything else, IMHO. Why should I work on some useful new feature if my work is used to promote a distribution that I don't even like?
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 17:32 UTC (Fri) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link] Thanks for pointing that out Joey. The users need all the help we can get to understand.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 28, 2006 22:15 UTC (Thu) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] Who are these people who see conflict within Debian and think that "Debian is dying" ? What planet are they from? Don't they face conflict in their daily lives? Don't they have to work out issues with their spouses, parents, co-workers, friends, neighbors, and relatives? Does everything just magically work in their lives like a fantasy-land story? Do they go through life conflict free?
What makes them think that building an OS distribution should be any different than doing anything else? If we judged everything else by their standards, every relationship, business, government, and organization of any kind is "dying".
I think people that write these articles need to get out of the house more.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 28, 2006 23:36 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] I think it is true that the friction from infighting slows Debian's progress and growth. However, I think this is unavoidable in any communally run project, and I'm not sure that the price is so high that it is worth dumping the idea of a communally run project.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 30, 2006 1:36 UTC (Sat) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] That was my point. Every relationship, be it a business, organization, or personal relationship, has friction from infighting that slows its progress and growth. It's not anything isolated to Debian. So, articles about it are very silly and meaningless, in my opinion.
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 29, 2006 18:12 UTC (Fri) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link] I see a lot of armchair quarterbacking and precious little analysis. While Chris Fearnley's message can be faulted for appearing to be more enthusiastic than objective, the proper rebuttal is not floating pessimism of the stripe exhibited by Vaughn-Nichols and some commenters here.
A proper rebuttal places Debian in context and attempts inductive reasoning based on the history and fates of other Free Software projects.
While a rigorous academic approach is the most convincing, any readers of this article who have been involved in a now-defunct FLOSS project and are also familiar with Debian can likely make a reasonable stab at answering the question posed by this article's title.
What are some examples of dead FLOSS projects?
What are some examples of "dead" FLOSS projects that "aren't dead yet"?
One may choose to quibble with my diagnoses of the life-status of the projects above. But that's fine. The point is that I think we can learn more through comparing and contrasting Debian with other FLOSS projects that have been declared dead or on life support than we can with comments like:
Who wants to take a stab at elevating the discussion?
Debian's in fine health? (Linux-Watch) Posted Sep 30, 2006 3:56 UTC (Sat) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] every project has conflict. debian just exposes theirs to the public.
wouldn't you be more concerned if people working on a project were
|
|||||||||||