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DistributionsNews and Editorials In defense of Ubuntu Criticisms of the Ubuntu distribution and Canonical, its corporate sponsor, are not hard to come by. Depending on who is speaking, Ubuntu and Canonical are guilty of profiting from the free software community without giving back to it, forking important projects or distributions, legitimizing the use of binary-only system components, and more. Of all of these gripes, it is the "contributing to the community" complaint which is heard most. If one believes these complaints, Ubuntu is a parasitic operation which does not understand how the community works and which is harmful to the community as a whole.Your editor would like to submit that these charges are overblown. Ubuntu is far from perfect, and it could certainly give back more than it does, but Ubuntu does not deserve the level of opprobrium it is receiving from certain parts of our community. It is interesting to note that there appears to be a special place for distributors among those who would criticize. Red Hat, it has been said, drives things toward its own profit and has, in the past, pushed far too much bleeding-edge software on its long-suffering users. Fedora is accused of remaining insufficiently open, excessively bleeding-edge, and refusing to make the watching of flash videos just work. Novell/SUSE has done a deal with the devil. Debian, we are told, is simultaneously too chaotic and too bureaucratic, and it can never get a release out on time. Some charge that Gentoo's community is dysfunctional, and that, in any case, it's made up of people with too much time on their hands. And Ubuntu stands accused of taking the work of others while failing to give back to or even credit the community from which draws its software. It is not surprising that distributors are specially blessed with this sort of criticism. Most free software users never deal directly with the upstream projects which create the software they use. Instead, they get it all from a single middleman - the distributor. So the distributor has a great deal of influence over what kind of experience those users have; the distributor is also the obvious guilty party when things seem to go wrong. Lots of people have opinions about their distributor, but they know little about the projects that actually develop their software. That said, much of the criticism of Ubuntu is coming from the developer community, which does have a more detailed view of the full ecosystem. It is worth thinking about why that might be. While Ubuntu's contributions may not be as high as one might like, they are most certainly not zero. There are Ubuntu developers who are Debian developers, X.org developers, GNOME developers, and so on. If this page is to be believed, Ubuntu developers are also contributing to the HURD. The page does not say why, sorry. The developers who castigate Ubuntu are uniformly silent about the number of kernel patches coming from the Mandriva camp. They have nothing to say about how much Xandros gives back to Debian. Nobody totals up contributions from Gentoo. There are no complaints about Slackware's presence in the community. Arch Linux developers do not hear that they are not doing enough. There are no high-profile articles on how rPath is taking advantage of free software developers. Yet Ubuntu's contributions most likely exceed those from all of the distributions named here, with the possible (but far from certain) exception of Gentoo. Ubuntu, it would seem, is being held to a higher standard than many of its peers. One reason for Ubuntu's special treatment must certainly be its nature as the cool kid who showed up out of nowhere. Sudden success can breed a certain amount of animosity, especially when much of that success is perceived to be built on the work of others. It is a rare distribution list which has not seen the occasional "I'm tired of your distribution, I'm moving to Ubuntu now" message; that kind of stuff gets old after a while. And when something gets old and irritating, it's tempting to respond in a short-tempered way. But the real reason must be elsewhere: Ubuntu has overtly set itself up to be held to a higher standard. It has been positioned as a strongly community-oriented distribution with the mission of saving the world for free software. Debian-derived distributions which make less noise about community - Xandros, say - receive less grief for their lack of participation in the community. Nobody expects anything from them, so nobody complains. But people do expect something different from Ubuntu; it's supposed to be a part of our community. So when it seems that Ubuntu is not contributing patches upstream or that it's maintaining forks of important software components, and when tools like Launchpad remain proprietary, it feels like a promise has not been kept. There is no doubt that Ubuntu could do better than it has. But we should not lose track of what Ubuntu has done. Ubuntu has created a distribution which appeals to a whole new class of Linux users. The fact that much of this work was done elsewhere notwithstanding, Ubuntu has shown that a Linux system can wear a friendlier, easier-to-use face. In the process, it has made Debian suitable for a larger class of users. Ubuntu has shown that a Debian-based distribution can make regular, stable releases and still ship contemporary software. Ubuntu has lived up to its promises of support, including providing top-quality security support. And all of this is happening in a way that, we are told, should become commercially self-sustaining at some point. On top of all this, Ubuntu employs a number of developers who work within the community. Yes, it would be a good thing if there were more of these developers. It would also be good if more fixes and enhancements escaped Ubuntu's repositories and made it back upstream. Ongoing encouragement at all levels should help to make this happen. But, as we encourage Ubuntu to live up to its ambitious goals of being a full member of our community, we should not lose our perspective. We are, beyond doubt, richer as a result of Ubuntu's existence.
New Releases Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4AS U7 now available PixExcel has released the seventh update to Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4AS. "Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 is aimed at people who need a stable OS with a long lifespan but don't want an expensive bundled support contract. It is derived from open source software with only four packages modified in order to replace trademarks and logos with our own. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 include the Linux 2.6 kernel, SELinux, GNOME 2.8, Samba 3.0, Logical Volume Manager 2, PCI Express support and NFSv.4." Click below for a look at the new features in this update.
"Intrepid Ibex" Alpha-4 released The fourth alpha for the Intrepid Ibex is out. The announcement (click below) has pointers for downloading Ubuntu, Ubuntu Education Edition, Kubuntu and Xubuntu flavors. Mythbuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 is also available.
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux Upcoming changes to supported architectures Joerg Jaspert looks at supported architectures in the post-Lenny Debian archive. "with the Lenny release upcoming we are thinking about larger changes to the Debian archive, of which one point is "Clean up the supported architecture list to free up space for new ones"."
For Those Who Care About X (Bits from the X Strike Force) Debian's X Strike Force is the team responsible for the packages forming the X Window System, including the X server, all video and input device drivers, as well as client libraries and various client applications. Click below for a status report, a look at what's next, and a call for help.
Debian on the FreeRunner -- now official The Debian project has announced (click below) a new base for the Openmoko FreeRunner. "Note that Debian does not try provide yet another software stack (or "Distribution" in the OpenMoko slang) next to 2007.2, 2008.8 or FSO, but rather an alternative base, comparable to OpenEmbedded. We are looking forward to also support other stacks such as the Stable Hybrid Release, once they are ready for that."This page shows the officially supported distributions for the Openmoko. (Thanks to tajyrink)
Debian's 15 year anniversary The Debian distribution has reached its 15 year anniversary, this timeline documents the project's history. (Thanks to Chris Lamb).
Fedora ACL Changes and new package group policy The Fedora infrastructure team has been working on a new group policy to encourage greater openness in the community while containing newer members until they have earned the trust of the community. Click below to see the changes being implemented.
Something going on with Fedora The Fedora Project has sent out an "important infrastructure announcement" regarding an unspecified "issue" with Fedora systems. "We're still assessing the end-user impact of the situation, but as a precaution, we recommend you not download or update any additional packages on your Fedora systems." Stay tuned for more.
An update on Fedora's "issues" The Fedora Project has sent out a relatively uninformative update about whatever problem it is working on. "The Fedora Infrastructure team continues to work on the issues we discovered earlier this week. Right now, we're getting the account system restored to service, along with some of the application servers. We're also taking advantage of the outages to upgrade a few systems at the same time."
Fedora Password Reset Request The Fedora Project is requesting users to change their passwords: "The Fedora Infrastructure team is still actively working on the issues we discovered earlier. As a precautionary measure, we need all members to reset their Fedora Account System passwords."
Slackware Linux KDE 4.1 in Slackware Testing (KDE.News) KDE.News reports on the arrival of KDE 4.1 into Slackware-current. From the Slackware changelog: "Thanks to Robby Workman and Heinz Wiesinger for all the packaging and testing help, and of course to the whole KDE community for helping to bring the Linux desktop to a whole new level of appearance and ease of use. I've installed this on my main email/browsing/general machine and as far as I'm concerned there's just no looking back. It's really a big step forward."
SUSE Linux and openSUSE SUSE Linux 10.1 has reached End of Life Support for SUSE Linux 10.1 has been discontinued. "With the release of an mysql security fix on August 13 we have released the last update for SUSE Linux 10.1. (Actually 10.1 was discontinued on May 31st, but the queue took a bit longer to flush from all updates.) It is now officially discontinued and out of support."
Other distributions KDE 4.1 Included in FreeBSD Ports Tree (KDE.News) KDE.News reports that KDE 4.1 has been included in the FreeBSD ports tree."KDE 4 will be installed into a custom prefix ${LOCALBASE}/kde4 so KDE 4 and KDE 3 can co-exist. For sound to work, it is necessary to have dbus and hal enabled in your system. Please see the respective documentation on how to enable these."
Distribution Newsletters Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #104 The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for August 16, 2008 covers: Intrepid Alpha-4 released, New UWN translation team, Global Bug Jam: Retrospective, MOTU School sessions for developer week wanted, MOTU News, North Carolina Mental Health Proposals: Open Source VistA Only, Open Sesame: Entering the Realm of Open Source Technology, and much more.
OpenSUSE Weekly News/34 This edition of the OpenSUSE Weekly News covers the announcement for ENOS 2008, Join the openSUSE Proofreading Team, Announcing Hack Week III, openSUSE TV, and much more.
Fedora Weekly News, Issue 139 This issue of the Fedora Weekly News covers Fedora Test Day: Encrypted Installs & Plymouth, Tech Tidbits, Artwork, Features in F10, and much more.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 266 The DistroWatch Weekly for August 18, 2008 is out. "The explosion of low-cost, ultra-portable laptops that started to appear in computer stores is a dream come true for many technology enthusiasts and free software developers who are keen to offer solutions for the new computer class. In this week's issue we take a first look at Mandriva Flash 2008.1, one of the first distributions with official support for the ASUS Eee PC. Does it really work "out of the box" as claimed? Read on to find out. In the news section, Slackware introduces KDE 4.1 into the development tree, Fedora hints at a major problem with its update infrastructure, and Linux Mint suffers from a crippling attack on its web site. Also in this week's issue, links to two excellent interviews with Ubuntu's Scott Remnant and gOS's David Liu. Finally, after a short break, we have resumed adding new distributions to the DistroWatch database - one of the new ones introduced last week is FaunOS, an interesting Arch Linux-based desktop distribution optimised for USB Flash drives."
Distribution meetings FUDConF11 Planning has begun for FUDCon 11, tentatively scheduled for December 5 - 7, 2008 in Boston. See the wiki page where any changes will show up first.
Miscellaneous Articles Fedora 10 Takes Shape (Internetnews.com) Internetnews.com takes a look at some new features planned for Fedora 10. "Among the features currently being tested in Fedora 10 is a new network connection sharing feature. Frields said the feature would enable ad hoc networks, in which one user shares their live connection to the Internet with others. Frields said he tested the feature in a literal road test -- he was able to maintain a network connection while riding in a car, courtesy of the ad hoc network created by users in a second car, which had a broadband Wi-Fi connection."
Interviews Interview: Scott James Remnant, Lead-developer of Ubuntu Desktop Linux (Hardware.no) Robin Heggelund Hansen talks with Scott James Remnant, leader of the Ubuntu Desktop Team. "I was one of the original groups of developers hired by Mark, based on my work with the Debian project; at the time, I was maintaining dpkg, GNU libtool and pkg-config. My role has varied over the four years, from some of the early decisions about which applications to include to my current role of leading the desktop team."
gOS 3 Beta, Netbooks, and Linux: An Interview with David Liu, Founder of Good OS (LAPTOP) LAPTOP has an interview with David Liu, founder of Good OS (gOS). "With the recent release of gOS 3 Beta, we thought it was prime time to take a closer look at the company responsible for creating the OS that powered the ill-fated Everex Cloudbook, and the gorgeous (and Mac OS X Leopard-inspired) gOS Space. We chewed the fat with David Liu, gOS founder and CEO, about the operating systems' new features, potential competition from Ubuntu Netbook Remix, the push for consumer adoption, and the future of Linux on the desktop."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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