Changes to Gobuntu
| From: | Jono Bacon <jono-AT-ubuntu.com> | |
| To: | ubuntu-devel-announce <ubuntu-devel-announce-AT-lists.ubuntu.com> | |
| Subject: | Changes to Gobuntu | |
| Date: | Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:54:09 +0100 | |
| Message-ID: | <1213304049.7199.23.camel@localhost> |
Hi all, The Gobuntu development team would like to announce that after 8.04 release of Gobuntu, the project will aim to merge many of the Gobuntu changes into mainline Ubuntu, such as our "Free Software Only" installer option which only installs software considered free by the Free Software Foundation's definition of software freedom. This installer option now obviates the need for a separate derivative project, and in the interest of reducing the workload of Ubuntu core developers, the Gobuntu project will instead focus on merging as many changes as possible into mainline Ubuntu. The Ubuntu community and Canonical remain deeply committed to driving the development and adoption of free software. Thus, we will work with interested downstream projects (e.g. gNewsense) to ensure that we make their development efforts as easy and streamlined as practically possible. The Ubuntu project has encouraged a culture of working with and producing derivative distributions, and we will be discussing how we may best serve the needs of these projects with the project leaders in the coming weeks. As always, the primary focus of the Ubuntu community, Canonical, and our derivative and downstream projects remains the success of free, Open Source software. We hope that by providing every Ubuntu user with the ability to install a completely free system using the standard Ubuntu installer we will move closer to a world of freedom, choice, and personal liberty with the hardware you own. Jono -- Jono Bacon Ubuntu Community Manager jono(at)ubuntu(dot)com www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org -- ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list ubuntu-devel-announce@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-an...
Posted Jun 14, 2008 0:48 UTC (Sat)
by elanthis (guest, #6227)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 14, 2008 1:57 UTC (Sat)
by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
[Link]
I thought that earlier versions of Gobuntu contained software packages which violated the FSF philosophies (someone correct me if I'm wrong). My take on this is that Canonical is working on streamlining their Linux release offerings with this. (Disclosure: My perception is influenced by comments made by Mark Shuttleworth in the LWN interview last week.) As for whether non-free bits (as defined by the most fundamentalist interpretation of RMS' philosophies) will exist in vanilla Ubuntu releases, well, I suspect yes. However, seeing how even Gobuntu's efforts to appease fans of the FSF's agenda failed, I suppose that Canonical has taken a more pragmatic and simplified approach to both meeting the needs of FLOSS purists and regular Linux users.
Posted Jun 14, 2008 8:23 UTC (Sat)
by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750)
[Link]
Posted Jun 14, 2008 7:29 UTC (Sat)
by dulles (guest, #45450)
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Posted Jun 14, 2008 16:08 UTC (Sat)
by mheily (subscriber, #27123)
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Posted Jun 14, 2008 16:23 UTC (Sat)
by clump (subscriber, #27801)
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Posted Jun 14, 2008 20:45 UTC (Sat)
by elanthis (guest, #6227)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Jun 14, 2008 22:06 UTC (Sat)
by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jun 15, 2008 0:11 UTC (Sun)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Jun 15, 2008 9:07 UTC (Sun)
by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750)
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Posted Jun 15, 2008 18:20 UTC (Sun)
by jwb (guest, #15467)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 16, 2008 10:48 UTC (Mon)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
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Posted Jun 15, 2008 8:41 UTC (Sun)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 16, 2008 15:09 UTC (Mon)
by amosbatto (guest, #52567)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 16, 2008 15:47 UTC (Mon)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
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Posted Jun 16, 2008 15:53 UTC (Mon)
by elanthis (guest, #6227)
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Posted Jun 15, 2008 12:24 UTC (Sun)
by gerv (guest, #3376)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 15, 2008 13:37 UTC (Sun)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link]
Posted Jun 15, 2008 14:49 UTC (Sun)
by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750)
[Link]
Changes to Gobuntu
So the instal disc would still include some non-Free softare? Doesn't that still violate the
FSF's agenda?
FSF violations in Gobuntu
Changes to Gobuntu
Yes, but since it's hard/impossible to do as good job with Gobuntu anyway as is being done
with gNewSense, it's better to not trying to do "almost similar, but not as good" project.
There weren't really too many people interested in actually doing something specifically for
Gobuntu. Instead it's more beneficial to just try sync with gNewSense in general to any extent
that is reasonably possible, so that the freedom aspects are improved for every Ubuntu flavor.
For most, including me, it's probably quite fine that there's the "Free Software only" option
(currently in boot menu, accessible with F6), together with the alternative option of simply
disabling "restricted" and "multiverse" repositories which ensures reasonably 100% free system
- and it is something that should get better if remaining possibly problematic stuff currently
in main or universe is noticed via gNewSense's work and moved to restricted/multiverse.
I think the Debian / Ubuntu (main/universe) level of freedomness is quite enough, and
gNewSense is just there, just like RMS itself, to remind that nothing is ever 100% complete or
perfect, even though it's beneficial to aim for it always. The small but important
non-DFSG-free GLX pieces are one important example of stuff that has to be, at some point,
fixed / rewritten.
I don't mind few firmwares on the CD media really, I don't feel there's anything particularly
problematic about those if those can be just left there, untouched. In the long run AMD/ATI
and NVIDIA proprietary drivers could probably be even dropped from the CD, as AMD is providing
open drivers in the future for all cards and Nouveau could make 3D work for desktop usage on
NVIDIA, too. People can still easily install the proprietary driver from Internet if
necessary, but in the future those hopefully aren't needed to provide basic 2D/3D acceleration
/ resolutions for any card.
Btw, I think it's still very good if interested people contribute identifying packages in a
wrong section in Ubuntu. In simple cases a bug report, or helping to separate the problematic
pieces to new packages. One example is mplayer which is actually erroneously in multiverse,
even though it's of course free software and from which, in case really needed, the
shown-to-be-real-patent-threats bits can be disabled. It's in Debian main too nowadays, and I
heard it's going to be moved to universe in Ubuntu, as should be.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND LINUX?
While I'm all for freedom, choice, and personal liberty in Linux, I have concerns about the
lack of testing and QA across the Linux spectrum.
As a long-time Linux user and Software Engineer, I have watched the OS grow over the years.
More than ever, QA and basic testing is an issue.
Linus Torvalds has not managed the overall OS (only the kernel) for good or
ill, and it's becoming an exponential problem.
Would you allow 1,000,000 non-technical people to add layers upon layers of
untested/junk software onto your OS (like Ubuntu 8.04)?
Unfortunately, this is the reality of Linux today, with no real testing/QA.
Just my opinion, of course, and I expect the usual negative responses here.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND LINUX?
> Linus Torvalds has not managed the overall OS (only the kernel) for good or ill, and it's
becoming an exponential problem.
One person cannot be expected to manage any non-trivial software system. Linus Torvalds is not
a God.
> Would you allow 1,000,000 non-technical people to add layers upon layers of untested/junk
software onto your OS (like Ubuntu 8.04)?
Why do you think that package maintainers are non-technical? That's pretty insulting.
> Unfortunately, this is the reality of Linux today, with no real testing/QA.
There is plenty of real testing and QA work going on. Your "reality" is pretty limited.
>Just my opinion, of course, and I expect the usual negative responses here.
I don't think you know enough about the QA processes used within the major Linux distributions
to make an informed comment. Thanks for trying.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND LINUX?
"Dulles" has been known to troll. See: http://lwn.net/Articles/278043/ and other examples via
google.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND LINUX?
Don't know about his other stuff, but I'm pretty sure I agree with him on the quality control
of certain Linux distributions.
It's like every release of certain distros just get worse and worse and worse in terms of
quality. I had to completely stop using Ubuntu after the Edgy release because the number of
bugs I kept running into started making my computer literally unusable for my needs. Examples
range from crashes in various core applications, to my printer being unable to print, to
packaging issues. Bugs were filed, nothing got fixed until the next release... which usually
introduced a whole new set of show-stopper bugs.
I switched to Fedora and every single one of the show-stopper bugs I had went away. Instead I
got a different set of irritating bugs, but those were at least ones I could work around (e.g.
my printer at least worked and firefox stopped crashing on a regular basis).
Ubuntu got to the point where it seems more interested in gimmicks than stability. I think
the LiveCD installer was the catalyst - the LiveCD has been absolutely nothing but a nightmare
for me since it came out. It takes many minutes to boot on most systems I've tried, the
installer itself would often crash, and even the alternative installer CD had problems causing
it to bail out in some cases. There were some machines that I literally could not install
Ubuntu onto, yet I could easily install Fedora, SUSE, Mandriva, or Slackware on them.
Fedora doesn't seem to have a lot of "Fedora bugs," but its bleeding-edge policy combined with
a conservative post-release update policy gives it a number of unfixed upstream bugs in each
release. For example, Fedora 9's Firefox is still plagued by the fsync/sqlite problem, which
is hitting me pretty damn hard. I ended up working around that with some tricks (moving
~/.mozilla into a tmpfs filesystem - I have RAM to spare), but it seems silly that Fedora
doesn't just release an update to its beta-version Firefox with the Mozilla-endorsed patch.
At least with Fedora though I don't see the distribution developers themselves adding bugs
that don't exist upstream. And with Fedora, I mostly expect bleeding-edge bugs, because I was
well aware that it's a bleeding-edge distro when I installed, so I'm more willing to tolerate
those bugs -- Fedora doesn't claim to be a top-notch desktop ditro for regular people (you
know, the ones who don't know how to use tmpfs to work around Firefox bugs, or how to compile
foomatic from source to get working printer drivers, or how to fix a stalled installer
process).
Take this article: this new Ubuntu install option for only installing FSF-approved software is
just another potential failure point for Ubuntu's quality control. It's another feature,
another option, another whole set of tests that aren't likely to be done adequately. More
code, more bugs, and not even directly in line with Ubuntu's original goal. Plus, if this
doesn't actually satisfy the Free Software purists, it almost seems a pointless change... the
people who actually care about pure Freedom are -- from what everyone else is saying here --
still unlikely to use Ubuntu after this addition. It's just another gimmick.
I really miss the first couple of Ubuntu releases. If I could have that quality of
distribution combined with the current upstream software, I'd be a pretty happy man.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND LINUX?
There is one important point here, namely that bugs are very rarely fixed in stable versions.
Here's an example - which happened to me, but is very, very typical, across multiple distros,
and multiple applications.
1. I installed Ubuntu Edgy and Amarok. The media-centre laptop uses a USB sound card. I found
a bug in that Amarok wouldn't let me use OSS with /dev/dsp1. This is a trivial bug to fix
(there is a drop-down list of devices, and no ability to enter your own; I worked around it by
symlinking /dev/sound/dsp to /dev/dsp1)
2. I immediately reported the bug, and the workaround.
3a. What actually happened is *nothing*. The bug has basically been ignored for over a year.
Many other users of Amarok on Edgy will suffer the same bug, and will either have to re-invent
the same workaround, or give up.
As the bug reporter, I wasted my time.
3b. What *should* have happened is this:
* the bug gets fixed promptly upstream (this is the quid-pro-quo of
users sending in bug reports)
* the fixed application gets pushed out into the existing release, so that all users of Edgy
get to benefit.
My point really is that we need to speed up the cycle of
bug - fix - distribute
so that it takes of order weeks, rather than years. Importantly, we must do this for the
ordinary releases, not just the development versions, because most users do not run the
development branch.
Ubuntu and Mandriva get the QA/release stuff mostly right, but once the distro is released to
users, updates almost cease: development attention moves to the next release, and the branch
is almost abandoned, at the very moment it is gaining users! Gentoo get the updates right, but
there's never really a "release". As a result, Linux users can never have a system which has
received both substantial testing, and benefits from all the bug fixes which are upstream.
Many people (myself included) find Debian testing to have the right combination of bleeding edge and quality that others yearn. Getting the correct blend of packages can be daunting, but once you are there it just works. And is kept updated fairly often. Perfect for a desktop if you ask me.
Try Debian testing
Quality assurance and Linux?
There isn't enough bug fixers, unless eg. you are one who also fixes bugs in addition to
filing them. Maybe one thing then is that Ubuntu has not yet raised enough new volunteer
developers, even though the user base is very big. There are quite a lot of vocal users who
blame Canonical for not fixing a bug (mainly affecting very few persons) filed a year ago, but
the sad truth is that no developer has probably even looked at it - too little information in
the bug report, no patch provided to ease releasing a fix, no discussion ignited (with
solution proposals) on mailing lists etc., and hundreds of these similar bugs which would
require a lot of tinkering because the default user-reported bug is that "it does not work".
There are plans to improve on this, but clearly it needs people fixing bugs, not only
reporting them. Fortunately more of them are appearing too all the time.
Stable release updates also require an amount of testing volunteer developers do not have
resources or willingness to do, except for "now it works for me" which isn't acceptable.
I do think the "Free software only" option is appealing to many, since it brings "Debian main"
level of freedom to Ubuntu in an easy way. Because Ubuntu is based on Debian, and has received
criticism for the driver-related compromises, it's a good thing to be able to show that
"select this and you've essentially DFSG-free distribution".
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND LINUX?
Why would you expect them to fix a problem with OSS? OSS is dead, dead, dead. Nobody is
going to work on that sort of thing.
hard-coded device filename list
You are right about OSS being deprecated, of course.
However the concept of a fixed list of device filename to use is a ridiculous idea. Linux
allows to create any device file anywhere in the file system (and symlinks to device files),
and amarok should not restrict that by second-guessing the filesystem.
I had the same problem with kppp and a USB-to-serial converter.
Troll-fest
Please come back to us when you have some real, concrete data.
I mean, Linux distros ain't what they used to be. The ones we had 20 years ago: they had
quality and class. But sadly they keep getting worse.
More bugs, but also more functionality
> I mean, Linux distros ain't what they used to be. The ones we had
> 20 years ago: they had quality and class. But sadly they keep
> getting worse.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but no Linux distros existed 20 years ago. The first was MCC
Interim Linux, created in Feb. 1992 by the Manchester Computing Centre. Yggdrasil was the
first widely-used distro, followed by SuSE.
It can be argued that GNU/Linux in 1995 was more stable than today, but that ignores the fact
that GNU/Linux is orders of magnitude more complex and does a lot more tasks than it did 13
years ago. The old command line was darn stable, but practically unusable for the vast
majority of users. We could run X-Windows back in 1995, but there wasn't much that you could
do with it. There was no WYSIWYG word processor, no office suite, no music editor, no video
player/editor, no desktop publisher, or all the other things that most people want to do with
their computer. The Windows Managers available back in 1995 were nothing like GNOME and KDE
today. They allowed you to use a menu, open/close/move windows and maybe stick a icon on your
desktop.
Given the growing complexity and the thousands of pieces of hardware which GNU/Linux now
supports, it is not surprising that there are more bugs.
Basically you have to make a trade-off. GNU/Linux could be like Apple OSX and only support a
limited number of applications and types of hardware and only release a new version every
couple years after extensive testing.
If you want that, use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or Cent OS if you want a gratis version), but
if you choose to use Fedora/Ubuntu/Debian Testing or any of the other cutting-edge community
distros, then you have to expect the occasional bug.
Finally, you have to ask yourself what you are personally doing to help eliminate these bugs.
When was the last time that you filed a bug report or actually created a patch to fix a bug?
Free Software may not cost you money, but it does demand your time and energy, which is often
more valuable than the money that you would have spent on proprietary software. Freedom has a
cost.
More bugs, but also more functionality
> Sorry to burst your bubble, but no Linux distros existed 20 years ago.
Which only implies that the quality of today's distributions is lower than 0 ;-)
I guess this is what happens when you answer trolls.
More bugs, but also more functionality
I'm fully aware that the over-all value of Linux on the desktop today vastly exceeds that of
even 5 years ago. My desktop can do things today that either couldn't be done back then or
which required me to waste hour upon hour learning one-off tricks or overly specialized (and
soon to disappear) tools to get something done. (And while I don't at all mind learning about
how my computer works or learning new techniques to do things faster/better, being forced to
learn essentially useless tricks for short-lived tools to work around when I should be able to
do in minutes is not fun... I have other things I'd rather do, like talk a walk, read a book,
play guitar, get laid, etc.)
My problem is simply that the number of bugs I encounter in each distro release seems to be
getting larger and larger compared to previous releases while -- at the same time -- certain
distros are expending a massive amount of developer effort on those afore-mentioned one-off
temporary tools and hacks.
Let's take Ubuntu and GNOME as an example. The time spent breaking Nautilus (the combination
of spatial+navigator interfaces they baked up and most of us hated), the time spent breaking
the logout dialog (with the weird button layout and confused some and just irritated others),
the time spent writing some of the custom GTK config tools that never quite worked right
instead of using GST or Red Hat's open source tools, the time spent completely rewriting the
installer as a GTK app to run on a barely-usable LiveCD, etc... if they used that time solely
to push upstream bug fixes to stable releases, we'd have a better quality OS all around. We'd
have way less UI churn every six months (a lot of those custom Ubuntu hacks get dropped the
very next release after they realize what a waste and how broken they are) which is good for
users, we wouldn't be forced to wait 5-7 months to get critical driver fixes (like the
cups/foomatic update I needed for my printer), and so on.
A lot of people laud Ubuntu for its 6 month release cycle. Or Fedora now, same thing. But
really, why should I have to upgrade my ENTIRE OS - top to bottom - just to get an updated
driver or two or to get a couple fixed bugs? (As a side note, I usually run development
distros at home, so I know full well the mindset of the Linux/FOSS user types who don't mind
constantly upgrading everything... I swear, some of us must have actual addictions to seeing
new packages being installed.)
Basically, if you want to sum up:
(a) distros need to stop customizing upstream sources without damn good cause
(b) distros should push stable updates to released OSes more often and shove whole-new distro
releases down our throats less often
Changes to Gobuntu
What I'd like to know is: is it possible to do an upgrade from standard Ubuntu to Gobuntu (or
Gnewsense, for that matter), whereby it tells you "Packages X, Y and Z are non-free. Remove?
Y/N".
I currently upgrade Ubuntu a few weeks before release to test it, using update-manager -d or
whatever the command is. Do I have to do a whole new fresh install to get on the "Free
software only" track?
Gerv
Changes to Gobuntu
aptitude install vrms
vrms
And have your own virtual Richard M. Stallman report on every non-free package installed on
your system.
Changes to Gobuntu
Just go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources and unselect "restricted" and
"multiverse" repositories. After that you may go to eg. Synaptic, and see which packages are
marked "Local or obsolete" - you will see the packages that were from the non-free
repositories.
By default Ubuntu has about 4-6 packages installed from restricted (most just meta packages
pointing eventually to kernel-version-restricted-architecture modules package), and none from
multiverse.
Note that it lists also other packages you have installed outside repositories.