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LCA: Disintermediating distributionsLCA: Disintermediating distributionsPosted Feb 6, 2008 21:52 UTC (Wed) by TRS-80 (subscriber, #1804)In reply to: LCA: Disintermediating distributions by tzafrir Parent article: LCA: Disintermediating distributions As you say, getting upstream to make packages for distros seems like an enormous waste of time, unless you tacitly admit there's only a few distros worth caring about. Integration is what distros do, and is driven by the overarching decisions of the distro - do they allow the user flexibility (Debian), or do they shortcut and say "my way or the highway" (Ubuntu)?. Should developers have to know about the idiosyncrasies of integration on OpenSolaris, instead of just writing portable code and letting the OpenSolaris specialists handle the integration? A far better approach is madduck's proposal to get distros to work together. And even then distros like Ubuntu are expecting upstream to waste their time on bureaucracy instead of accepting clearly stable changes. If "standards for how we interact with each other" means taking upstream's word that the changes in the stable tree are really stable, then that's a good move, but at the moment Ubuntu's procedures seem cargo-culted from Solaris without an understanding of how to make them work effectively. Solaris being the home of Architecture Review Committees, interface stability and contracts between modules for use of private interfaces, which OpenSolaris is hoping to streamline and make it more appropriate to open source development. Other bits from the main article: There's been a OpenID plugin for Bugzilla for 2.5 years (now bitrotted), and it converted from RSS to Atom feeds for searches nearly 2 years ago. What I suspect jdub really wants to prevent is distros doing their development internally as happened with the example in the article (Xgl) and intlclock.
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LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 6, 2008 23:16 UTC (Wed) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link] No, absolutely not -- experiences such as these were merely jumping-off points for the philosophical challenge (particularly for someone such as myself, who deeply values the differentiation that the existence of distributions provides us against our proprietary competitors).
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 6, 2008 23:18 UTC (Wed) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link] Note that the thought experiment was not about "making packages for distributions", but "what would happen if we take distributions out of the picture?". I think that misunderstanding is the basis for your response.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 6, 2008 23:33 UTC (Wed) by TRS-80 (subscriber, #1804) [Link] And I don't think you can take distros out of the picture - as I said, "Integration is what distros do, and is driven by the overarching decisions of the distro" so you're forcing upstream to make these decisions. Ubuntu's choice of upstart is great, but OpenSolaris uses SMF - why should an upstream project have to choose one or be burdened by supporting both? Maybe D-Bus activation is a better choice for some programs, but not all.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 6, 2008 23:40 UTC (Wed) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link] If your conclusion is that distributions can't be taken out of the picture, then you're not taking part in the thought experiment. That's okay, but I'm more interested in the thought experiment than defending the status quo (which I can do very well for myself, but find it unchallenging and lacking in philosophical value). :-)
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 6, 2008 23:52 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] The "experiment" is ongoing. You can always install packages directly and not through a distribution. The fact is that most of us use a proper distribution and don't build Linux from scratch. Binary packages provided by third parties to Linux are known to be of lower quality (to say the least). And if you want to completely eliminate distributions, you won't really have reference platforms, and binary packages may be even more of a pain.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 0:02 UTC (Thu) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link] ... but the key to this is figuring out what could be better, rather than actively choosing the worst outcome. :-)
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