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Ubuntu archive reorganization

Ubuntu is over five years old, with ten releases under its belt. Since that time the archive structure, envisioned before the first release, has begun to show its age. Recently the Ubuntu Technical Committee announced that a change was coming. For the most part users should not notice much if any difference, but there will be changes for developers.

The Archive Reorganisation will be done in stages, only a part of the work will be done during the Karmic development cycle. Though the process is still in the very early stages and proposals are subject to change, we will take a look at how things are likely to proceed in the near future.

First we should look at the current organization of the archive, which has been split into four components; main, restricted, universe and multiverse. The main repository contains free software, supported by the core developers. The restricted repository is also supported by core developers and contains non-free software such as drivers. Universe and multiverse contain free and non-free software, respectively and are not officially supported by Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company.

The MOTU (Masters of the Universe) team supports universe, multiverse and various other packages that are otherwise untended. It was initially envisioned that beginning developers would submit patches. After some experience they would be trusted to upload a limited set of packages without prior review. Eventually they would gain enough experience to become a core developer with access to all repositories.

Over time the MOTU team has become increasingly fragmented by the officially supported flavors (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, etc.). Hundreds of packages have migrated to the main repository as the various flavors became official. Ubuntu Studio alone brought 141 source packages into the 8.04 LTS release that were not part of any other flavor. Meanwhile, many MOTU developers tend to only be interested in a subset of packages and are not interested in becoming core developers. For example many Kubuntu developers only want to work with KDE packages and are not interested in having access to the rest of the archive.

As the number of flavors grows to include MythTV packages, netbooks and mobile devices, cloud computing and other specialties, more and more packages (and all their dependencies are moved into main, but are still maintained by MOTU developers, so there are access control issues. Some packages are "maintained for security updates", while others are "commercially supported by Canonical", further muddying the waters.

The proposal to alleviate these issues has been divided into three parts. The first part deals with exceptions useful in specific cases, the second deals with permission changes and third deals with component changes. The first part is largely implemented already. The second part is targeted to take place during the Karmic development period. The component changes are still being discussed and won't really be addressed until after Karmic (9.10) is released.

To begin with, those MOTU developers who are doing a good job maintaining their packages will be granted permission to upload those packages into main. This has been implemented on a case by case basis as determined by the Ubuntu Technical Board.

Currently packages are grouped by seeds and seed collections. "Xubuntu Jaunty desktop" is a seed that contains all of the source packages and dependencies for a functioning XFCE desktop. "Xubuntu Jaunty" is a seed collection of all the packages on the Xubuntu Jaunty live CD. Seed collections are not exposed to users and are subject to reorganization.

Package sets will likely be based on seeds but will be exposed to users via package management tools. Packages are grouped into package sets such as "core", "Ubuntu desktop", "Ubuntu server" and "Kubuntu". A package may be in more than one package set. Each package set has associated access control for upload permissions and queue administration.

The Technical Board will be able to manage package sets by adding or removing packages from them, and will be able to assign upload privileges at the package set level. Some packages sets will be restricted to a small set of experienced developers, such as the Linux kernel or glib. Most package sets will be unrestricted. Granting upload access to a team implies that the administrators of that team will be able to grant upload access to additional developers, at least for unrestricted package sets.

The core developers and the MOTU developers will be collapsed into a single team of Ubuntu developers. It could be that most developers will be able to upload packages from any unrestricted package set, but this is subject to change. It may make more sense to grant many developers access only to their specific package set. So the average Kubuntu developer would only have upload permission for a set of KDE packages, not to the archive as a whole. The line between core and MOTU developers becomes blurred so does the distinction between the current main and universe repositories. Packages contained in package sets will be considered in main while those few packages that are not part of a set or seed collection will be in universe. Some extensions to Launchpad will be required for this to work as desired. Again, this is still subject to change, but should be mostly implemented by the time Karmic is released.

The third part of the proposal is the reorganization of components. There will be more review and discussion of this after Karmic is released so it is best to deffer any discussion for a while.

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New Releases

openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 3 Available

The openSUSE Project has announced the release of openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 3. "Images are ready for download and testing. This release includes the 2.6.30 Linux kernel, KDE 4.3 beta 2, GNOME 2.27.2, OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 Alpha, and more!"

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Fixstars Launches YDL v6.2

Fixstars has announced the immediate availability of Yellow Dog Linux version 6.2, delivering several updates and improvements. "This release offers an updated kernel v2.6.29 for 64-bit systems, OpenOffice 3.0, Firefox 3.0.6 and IBM Cell SDK v3.1.0.1, as well as the next generation of ps3vram for fast, temporary file storage or swap using PS3 video RAM. With this release, ps3vram is up to 50% faster than in YDL 6.1 and is automatically enabled as swap."

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

Kernel version 2.6.30 + firmware + ext4 support available for Debian Lenny

Kenshi Muto has released an updated kernel for Debian 5.0.1 "Lenny". Debian installer images with kernel version 2.6.30 including firmware and support for ext4 are available for i386 and AMD64 versions of Lenny.

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Fedora

Fedora news: F12 release name is "Constantine", Josh Boyer appointed to the board

Some miscellaneous Fedora news from over the weekend includes the results of the Fedora 12 release name vote; the winner is "Constantine". Also, Josh Boyer has been appointed to the final seat on the Fedora board by Fedora project leader Paul Frields. "Josh is well known around the Fedora community for his work with release engineering and many other development-oriented groups, as well as his past work with FESCo and as a maintainer of Fedora on PPC architecture. I hope the community will join me in welcoming him to the Board where we hope he can help achieve some of the goals put forward during the town hall meetings earlier this month." The new board will be meeting for the first time on Thursday July 2, in a public IRC meeting.

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Cooperative Bug Isolation for Fedora 11

The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project (CBI) is now available for Fedora 11. "CBI (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/cbi/) is an ongoing research effort to find and fix bugs in the real world. We distribute specially modified versions of popular open source software packages. These special versions monitor their own behavior while they run, and report back how they work (or how they fail to work) in the hands of real users like you. Even if you've never written a line of code in your life, you can help make things better for everyone simply by using our special bug-hunting packages."

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SUSE Linux and openSUSE

iFolder Packages Available for 11.1

iFolder client packages are available for openSUSE 11.1 from the openSUSE update repositories. "Like openSUSE, iFolder is an open source project sponsored by Novell. iFolder is a simple and secure storage solution that can make syncing and sharing files easy. You can back up, access, and manage your personal files from anywhere, at any time. Once you have installed iFolder, you simply save your files locally and iFolder automatically updates the files on a network server and delivers them to the other machines you use."

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Distribution Newsletters

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 309

The DistroWatch Weekly for June 29, 2009 is out. "Everybody knows that LinuxTag is a premier open-source exhibition and conference in Europe. But how does it feel being there? What are the people like? What takes place at the stands, conference halls, informal parties? This week's DistroWatch Weekly gives first-hand answers to these and many other questions. In the news this past week, Debian contributors release an updated kernel for "Lenny", while Fedora settles on a code name for its upcoming release, version 12. If you've ever been tempted to try the oldest surviving Linux distribution, a beginner's install guide for Slackware we link to might be just what you need. Finally, don't miss the story about the BSD Magazine which has released some great articles from its print publication for your reading pleasure. Have a great Monday and the rest of the week!"

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Fedora Weekly News 182

The Fedora Weekly News for June 28, 2009 is out. "Here are a few highlights from this week's issue. By request, we've returned to including the contents at the top of the issue. Please let us know what you think! Announcements starts us off with updates on recent Fedora elections. Hot on the heels of the release of Fedora 11, the codename for Fedora 12 has already been chosen -- read inside for details. From the Fedora Planet, lots of great updates from the recent FUDCon in Berlin, as well as many updates from Fedora contributors. In Ambassador news, details from the recent Fedora 11 launch party from the NaLUG (Napoli GNU/Linux Users Group). In Quality Assurance news, many updates on Fedora 12 development, including discussion of improving debugging procedure pages, rawhide acceptance plan, bugzapper updates, and much more. Much interesting discussion in the Design beat this week on thinking around themes for Fedora 12 based on the release name. In Security Advisories, we're brought up to date with this week's software patches for Fedora 9, 10 and 11. This week's issue rounds out with updates from virtualization activities, with detail work on a libguestfs 'Super-minimized Appliance', VMWare ESX driver status, and much more! Enjoy!"

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The Mint Newsletter - issue 87

This issue of the Mint Newsletter covers the release of Mint 7 x64 and much more.

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OpenSUSE Weekly News/78

This issue of the OpenSUSE Weekly News covers: openSUSE Forums hits 30,000 Users, Google Summer of Code Status Reports, Jigish Gohil : Stop ssh brute force attack using SuSEfirewall, metaverse: More Free and Open Source Tools for Writers, openSUSE Forums: How to Read a .docx file in SUSE?, and more.

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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #148

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for June 28, 2009 is out. "In this issue we cover: MOTU Council, New Ubuntu Members, First Paper Cut milestone reached, Tracking Ubuntu Community Issues, Kubuntu Tutorials Day, Introducing the Ubuntu NGO team, Extra options when filing bugs, Ubuntu Podcast Quickie #7, and much, much more!"

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Newsletters and articles of interest

Five Reasons I Prefer Slackware Over Ubuntu (fullmetalgerbil)

Dave at the fullmetalgerbil weblog has this post presenting five reasons why he prefers Slackware over Ubuntu. "Really, when I thought about doing this I wondered if I could come up with five reasons but now I'm sure I could go on much longer. Slackware is the oldest existing Linux distribution and it didn't get to being around this long by being sub par. There's a general consensus that the post install configuration of Slackware may be a bit too challenging for beginners, but I think anyone who can read a copy of the Slackbook and use a Slackware forum if need be would be able to do it. Believe me, it's worth the initial effort and like Trent of the Linux Critic says-once you go slack, you never go back."

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