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DistributionsNews and Editorials Counting usersIt is rather difficult for a distribution or software project to get accurate information about how many users it has—at least without potentially violating the privacy of those users. But there are lots of reasons, beyond just having numbers to tout, that a project would like to know more about its users. There are various opt-in tools that have been used by distributions to count their users, but those typically gather a hardware profile of the user's machine, which is something that may be too intrusive to get majority uptake. Much less information is needed for just a count, though, so there may be less intrusive ways to gather that kind of data. Matt Domsch recently proposed adding a feature to yum to help count users in a message to the fedora-advisory-board mailing list. Domsch wrote the scripts that are used to create the worldwide Fedora user maps and is concerned about the current counting method, which uses information from the yum mirrorlist server:
One thing that's painfully obvious is that
the "Unique IP addresses"
method of counting the number of installations is woefully
under-counting the actual number of installs.
Looking at a single
day's worth of checkins (over 3 million), we see ~40k unique IP
addresses checking in twice a day, another 40k checking in between
4x/day and up to say 20x/day, and then a long tail, fairly evenly
distributed, where a small number of single IPs are checking in up to
2000x/day. It takes quite a bit of effort to cause yum to make that
many mirrorlist requests using a single machine and a single IP
address - but it's highly likely there are 1000-2000 machines behind a
NAT making those requests.
This just shows that we currently have no way to know, within even a 2-4x margin of error, how many current installs of Fedora there are. But this number, and it's growth (positive, or negative), would be interesting to know, if only it were more accurate. So, Domsch would like to see yum generate a unique user ID (UUID) that it would transmit with queries to the mirrorlist server. This UUID would be different from the one generated by the smolt hardware profiler to eliminate the possibility of correlating the two sets of data. Unlike smolt, which is opt-in, he would like the yum changes be an opt-out feature—one that is turned on by default. While counts of UUIDs would be enough to allow counting Fedora users, it wouldn't be enough for Domsch's application. In order to derive the geographic information, IP addresses would also need to be associated with the UUID. As Bruno Wolff III points out, that information could be used to derive travel patterns. That might make it less attractive for users, which in turn might mean that is inappropriate for a "default on" feature. Domsch is aware of the privacy concerns, but doesn't necessarily think it is a showstopper for this feature:
Personally, I don't think this is a big problem. Maybe it is. If it
were, the entire industry which uses cookies exactly for such tracking
(and even more so) would have huge security, privacy, and other
lawsuit concerns which I just don't hear about. Whatever we do will
have to run past Legal.
As Luis Villa notes, however, the internet advertising industry is probably not a good model to follow:
I'm not giving legal, or even moral, advice here, but aiming to be as
ethical as the internet advertising industry is a really, really low
bar. :)
I actually think collecting good usage data is really, really important, and open source projects and their legal counsels would be well-served to collaborate on defining best practices for this area. And I think if we sat down and thought it through, we could come up with best practices that would simultaneously let us gather a lot more data than we currently gather, and do as good (or possibly even better) by our users. But, as Jeff Spaleta points out, exact numbers for users may not be necessary for what Domsch is trying to accomplish. Unless there is reason to believe that practices vary from region to region enough to skew the results, using inexact data doesn't make the map useless. As long as the data is consistently either high or low, it doesn't affect the relative densities of users across the globe. which is how the user maps present the data. Spaleta has done some analysis to try to estimate how accurate the current method is, which came up with a 15% under-count. Given that, "I'd be more interested in standing up a correction factor with an error bar that can be used in a statically significant way to get from the numbers we do have to an estimate of active userbase." Measurements of users, especially those that come with some additional information, can be an invaluable tool for projects. Those kinds of metrics can help steer the project focus, provide feedback on changes in direction, and help planning for expansion among other things as a Fedora web page describes. But there are legitimate privacy concerns that need to be addressed. Some kind of group effort to define best practices, as Villa described, would be a great thing for distributions and other projects to collaborate on. There is clearly a balance that needs to be struck, but if there is more information that can be gathered in ways that are protective of users' privacy, it would certainly be a boon for all. It's a matter of coming up with privacy and data retention policies that clearly spell out what data is collected, how it can be used, and, importantly, how it can't be used. Proprietary companies are generally able to force fairly intrusive reporting on their users—who often have no real recourse. Their privacy policies "protect" the data from being distributed outside of the company, but typically the company itself can use it in various less-than-desirable ways. With luck and some hard work, it would seem possible for free software to find the right balance. In the end, though, free software users have the last word—if a solution is too intrusive, it will be quickly, and widely, disabled.
New Releases Debian Edu 5.0.4+edu0 (Skolelinux 5.0) releasedThe Debian Edu/Skolelinux 5.0 release is out. "This is first Debian Edu release which has been merged with the highly successful LinEx GNU/Linux based educational project from the region of Extremadura in Spain. The most visible result being the GNOME desktop now being supported in addition to KDE." Numerous other enhancements have been made; see the announcement (click below) for details.
Fedora 12 re-spins ReleasedThe Fedora Unity Project has announced the release of new ISO Re-Spins of Fedora 12. "These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 12 installation media and include all updates released as of February 2nd, 2010."
Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Alpha2The second alpha of Mandriva Linux 2010.1 is available for testing. "As this is an early pre-release, the major changes are mostly in the area of included third-party software."
MINIX release 3.1.6MINIX 3.1.6 has been released. This release includes new drivers, VirtualPC Network Support, System Event Framework, experimental APIC support, and more.
openSUSE Build Service 1.7 releasedThe openSUSE Build Service team released version 1.7 of the openSUSE Build Service. "The openSUSE Build Service allows developers to create packages, software stacks or even a whole distribution as well as use and integrate them with other open source components." Click below for a list of key features in this release.
Pre-release version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 (The H online)The H online reports on the availability of pre-release version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5. "As well as bug fixes released since RHEL 5.4, at this stage of the RHEL life cycle the next incarnation of RHEL5 also includes extensive new functionality and numerous drivers for supporting newer hardware. The Linux distributor has, for example, made various enhancements to KVM, now Red Hat's preferred virtualisation solution, introduced in RHEL 5.4. These allow more flexible allocation of the amount of memory available to guest systems at runtime and better pass through of PCI devices to guest systems. The new RHEL beta also includes support for a number of recently, or soon to be released, AMD, IBM and Intel processors and their associated chip-sets."
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux Bits from the release team: Release schedule; the RT needs YOUThe Debian release team reports that the March freeze is looking unlikely due to a high number of release critical bugs. Click below for more information.
Fedora Rawhide changes comingThe Fedora "no frozen Rawhide" scheme is about to go into operation. That means there will be two independent development repositories in operation: one will be frozen for the Fedora 13 release, while the other continues to offer the full Rawhide experience with new and scary packages. Rawhide users will want to look at their repository configurations to be sure they're tracking the version they want.There are also changes to library linking going into Rawhide which could create minor problems for people building packages. There is some concern about the timing of this change (right before the F13 freeze), but the change is going forward regardless; more information can be found on this page.
Fedora Board RecapClick below for a recap of the February 4, 2010 meeting of the Fedora Advisory Board. Topics include regional localized spins, and Community Q&A.
Notice: dnssec-conf updates in Fedora 11 and 12The Fedora Project found a problem with a recent update to the dnssec-conf package for Fedora 11 and 12. "A new update is being prepared to address this problem for Fedora 11 and 12 users, and will be pushed to our mirrors as soon as possible. Users who are not running BIND nameservers (named) on their Fedora 11 and 12 can safely disregard this notice."
SUSE Linux and openSUSE openSUSE Survey 2010openSUSE is looking for information from its users about the distribution by way of a survey, which runs through the end of February. The survey is meant to "give feedback to the openSUSE project about the distribution, the openSUSE tools environment and the project in general. Let us know where things are in good shape and areas where improvement is needed." Click below for the full announcement.
Call for Volunteering: Wiki Reviewing Process in German WikiThe openSUSE project is cleaning up the German wiki and is asking for volunteers to help with the process.
Ubuntu family Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week: Call For Participation!Jono Bacon has announced an online learning event: Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, happening online March 1 - 6, 2010. "So, I am looking for volunteers. If you feel you could give a tutorial about a given Python module or associated technology (e.g. Glade, Launchpad, Bazaar etc), please drop me an email at jono AT ubuntu DOT com and I will liaise with you to get it scheduled. I am also look for some showcase sessions: stories about how you put together an application, how it scratched your itch and what tools you used. Thanks to everyone who contributes to leading a session!"
Minutes and resolutions from the Technical Board meetingClick below for the minutes of the February 9, 2010 meeting of the Ubuntu Technical Board. Topics include a discussion about the approval process for new MOTUs.
Minutes from the Developer Membership Board meetingThe minutes from the February 2, 2010 meeting of the Ubuntu Developer Membership Board are available. Topics include the future of the MOTU team, and more.
Distribution Newsletters DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 340The DistroWatch Weekly for February 8, 2010 is out. "On the occasion of the forthcoming release of PC-BSD 8.0, a major new update of the desktop-oriented FreeBSD system, DistroWatch talks to Kris Moore, the project's founder and lead developer. What is the relationship between FreeBSD and PC-BSD like? Which are the new features in version 8.0? What are the project's future plans? Read on to find out more. In the news section, we link to an interesting article investigating the history of FreeBSD and also to a guide whose goal is to get newcomers to Linux up and running with the latest release of Fedora. Further down in the news, the first issue of BSD magazine is now available for free download, Canonical's Jane Silber talks about the role of women in the world of open-source development, and Kongoni announces the end of its Slackware-based distribution. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the DistroWatch.com January 2010 donation is Qimo 4 Kids, a charity project that develops a free Ubuntu-based distribution for children. Happy reading!"
Fedora Weekly News #212The Fedora Weekly News for February 7, 2010 is out. "In this week's issue, a few outage notices and notice of last week's Fedora Board IRC meeting kick us off. In the Fedora Planet beat, details on setting up an automatically imaged and administered computer lab with Fedora and CentOs, more Inkscape @ Boston middle schools, musings on the continuing need for password security, and details on The Open Source Way. In news from the Quality Assurance team, coverage of this past week's Test Day on he introduction of NFSv4 by default in Fedora 13, much detail on the QA weekly meeting activities, an update on the driver availability for Nouveau 3D, and details on the first Fedora 13 bug blocker review meeting. In news from the Translation/Localization team, a brief update on the Transifex 0.7 upgrade for translate.fedoraproject.org, and announcement of new members on the localization teams for Ukranian, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Hungarian. The Security Advisories beat lists security patches for Fedora 11 and 12 last week, and our issue rounds out with tasty details from the KDE SIG, including KDE SC 4.4 hitting rawhide and kde-redhat/unstable repos last week, upcoming virtuoso changes in kde-redhat, and the availability of KDE SC 4.4rc2 live images available for testing. That rounds out FWN 212 -- read on!"
openSUSE Weekly News/109This issue of the openSUSE Weekly News covers * Its here! openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 1, * Sirko Kemter: First Art-Team meeting, * ars technica/Joe Brockmeier: Video editing in Linux: a look at PiTiVi and Kdenlive, * Jeffrey Stedfast: Weird bugs due to gcc 4.4 and strict aliasing, * KDE SC 4.4 RC3 Released, and more.
Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #179The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for February 6, 2010 is out. "In this issue we cover: Open source industry veteran Matt Asay joins Canonical as COO, Lucid Translations now open, Ubuntu Developer Week Re-Cap, Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS Maintenance release, Lucid Ubuntu Global Jam Announced, Project Awesome Opportunity, New Ubuntu Review Team: Reviewing bug with patches, Jane Silber Interview, Dustin Kirkland Interview: Encryption in Ubuntu, Nicaraguan LoCo Team's Third Anniversary, Report on Launchpad down-time of 4th Feb 2010, January Team Meeting Reports, and much, much more!"
Newsletters and articles of interest The Top 7 Best Linux Distributions for You (Linux.com)Brian Proffitt lists his choices for "best distribution" in seven categories. "To help users discover the Linux distribution that's best for them, this resource will definitively list the best candidates for the various types of Linux users to try. The use-case categories will be: * Best Desktop Distribution * Best Laptop Distribution * Best Enterprise Desktop * Best Enterprise Server * Best LiveCD * Best Security-Enhanced Distribution * Best Multimedia Distribution".
Five Brilliant Ubuntu-based Distros You Never Knew Existed (Linux Magazine)Linux Magazine takes a look at Ubuntu-based distributions DEFT, Element, Jolicloud, moonOS and wattOS. "It turns out, there are quite a number of simply fantastic distributions based on Ubuntu that you probably never even knew existed. Generally these are geared towards a specific niche, but that doesn't mean that they aren't useful - quite the contrary!"
Interviews An Interview With Jono (Joe Blog's)Joe Barker interviews Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager. "My primary involvement in Ubuntu at the beginning was getting to the know the community, contributing bug reports and feedback and co-writing The Official Ubuntu Book. At the time I was spending most of my spare time knee-deep in the GNOME project and working with local Linux communities in the West Midlands, and my interest in Ubuntu grew from there."
Distribution reviews Fresh Version of Linux Mint Offers Tweaks and Updates (Linux Planet)Linux Planet reviews Linux Mint 8. "When last we looked at Linux Mint we gave it high marks on the user-friendly scale for administration and productivity applications. The latest release takes the distro to new heights of the same with a few new added touches to boot. Linux Mint 8 (Helena) is based on Ubuntu 9.10 and delivers all the basic capabilities you would expect in an Ubuntu distribution."
The Greatest KDE Distro Ever: An Early Look at openSUSE 11.3 (Linux Magazine)Linux Magazine has a review of KDE 4.4 on openSUSE 11.3. "Finally, we have a distribution which has a universal feel, looks great from start to end, integrates seamlessly with every component. There's really only one word to describe this, "sleek." No other distro integrates GTK applications into KDE4 like openSUSE does out of the box. Of course, this is nothing new, openSUSE had already achieved this in their previous release. Thanks to the polish of KDE 4.4 however, this release is even better. Make no mistake, openSUSE is the benchmark for KDE distributions. Nothing else even comes close."
Inside CloudLinux's New Linux-Based Cloud OS (Web Host Industry Review)Web Host Industry Review takes a look at CloudLinux. "The proprietary isolation technology provides a range of benefits for shared hosts, including increasing the number of accounts per server, as well as reducing hardware, electricity, data center space and management costs. As for data centers, it provides customers with a well tested, commercially supported and maintained OS, better security reduces churn and the costs associated with security support issues, and drives extra revenue via upsell to commercially supported distribution that was optimized for Web."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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