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DistributionsLinux Mint beefs up its Debian-based distributionUsers of Linux Mint's Debian-based distribution are getting a couple of new options for managing updates. Instead of dealing with a continual flood of updates from Debian Testing, the Mint maintainers are going to offer monthly updates and a slightly tamer "Incoming" repository. Linux Mint is, of course, a popular and user-friendly distribution that started as an Ubuntu derivative. Initially a GNOME-based distribution that offered a fairly light set of changes from Ubuntu — most notably pre-installed multimedia codecs and proprietary drivers — the project now offers KDE, LXDE, and Xfce-based releases as well. The Linux Mint 11 release (covered here in May) deviates even further from Ubuntu by sticking with GNOME 2.32 rather than moving to the Unity desktop. In September 2010, the project also started providing rolling release based on Debian Testing, but with the same themes, codecs, drivers, and management tools it offers with the main Mint edition. While the rolling release model has the advantage of providing faster updates for packages as they land in Debian Testing, the model has its headaches as well. In the post announcing the Update Packs for Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), Clement Lefebvre points out that LMDE requires more work and experience on the part of its users:
When the updates are significant and affect large or sensitive parts of the
system, some experience is needed from the user. The new updates might ask
you something you're not familiar with, some post-configuration might be
required for things to work as they did, and if you make a mistake and you
don't have the knowledge to fix things up, you might very well end up with
a partly or completely broken system.
What's worse, users often encounter a situation that other LMDE users are not having problems with. "Because things change constantly and people don't update at the same time or as frequently, it's hard to find people with the same problem and so it's hard to talk about workarounds and find solutions." For now, Lefebvre says that users are depending on a thread in the Linux Mint forums to support one another, but says that it's "chaotic" and "far from ideal." Problems with rolling updates might account for the LMDE release losing users. According to the stats from the Linux Mint folks, the Debian Edition has been losing popularity for the last few months. The statistics from April showed LMDE with 8.7% of Mint users (according to statistics from package updates). The numbers for May had dropped to 6.03%, and in June the Debian Edition claimed only 3.47% of users. There are no raw numbers available, so it's not entirely clear that the drop in LMDE percentages aren't a result of increased popularity in the other Mint versions. Note that you need to scroll to the bottom of the pages past the donor information to find the user statistics. Changes afootTo cope with the continual updates from Debian, the Mint folks are introducing two new repositories and a different version of the Linux Mint Update Manager. For users who want rolling updates but without having to suffer system breakage, there's the new Linux Mint Debian Latest repository. This is a repository that should have monthly updates that have been tested and will be delivered to users in batches. As an example, Lefebvre points out that GNOME 3 should be entering Debian Testing soon. However, if users point their repository to the Latest repository instead of the upstream Debian Testing repository, they'll get updates "after the Linux Mint team has tested the update and gathered precious information on it." Note that this doesn't promise that the Mint team will fix broken packages or otherwise smooth over problems in Testing — they'll simply be making an effort to ensure the packages in the Latest repository won't cause problems when users run updates. If a package or set of packages has an issue of some kind, whether that's package conflicts, missing dependencies, or bugs that keep the updates from being useful, then they'll be held back. How will they know that a package or set of packages have problems? The Mint team is also providing a Linux Mint Debian Incoming repository, which will be a speed bump between Debian's Testing repositories and the Latest repository. The team will test the Update Packs in the Incoming repository before putting them into Latest. More adventurous users can use the Incoming repository and report problems before they're released into the Latest repository for more users. Once the team is satisfied that the repository is stable and ready for updates, it will be released as an "update pack," into the Latest repository for users to grab via the new Update Manager. Each Update Pack will come with information on the updates carried in the pack, such as potential problems with the update. For example, the current update pack has warnings that it may cause problems with Flash, and some of the packages that start Debian's transition to GNOME 3 may cause some applications to ignore a user's GTK theme. Where applicable, users are given advice on how to fix or bypass the problems — and users will still have the option of ignoring or blocking package updates. With the update, users now have three choices of repositories for LMDE; the Latest repository, the Incoming repository, and the upstream Debian Testing repository. For users who want to stick with Debian Testing, nothing changes. Users who want to test out the two new repositories are warned that they
are brand new, and should wait a month or two for the LMDE images to be
respun. The LMDE with GNOME image was last updated in December, 2010 and
the image for LMDE with Xfce was last updated in April. But for the brave souls willing to try the new system before it's part of the respins, it's a fairly simple set of steps. All that's required is to install the Note that this puts Mint in a position of hosting a much larger package archive than before, when they only needed to point users to the Debian repositories for most of the packages. The new repository is made possible by an agreement with AYKsolutions to provide an additional server with 1Gbps output to handle Linux Mint's Debian repository. KDE and LXDE changesIn a separate post, Lefebvre announced some changes for the LXDE and KDE Mint releases. Linux Mint 11 LXDE is getting closer, but the project is replacing the LXDM login manager with GDM, due to problems loading X from the live CD with the first Mint 11 LXDE release candidate. The KDE release of Mint may be getting a much bigger overhaul — namely, a switch to Debian away from Kubuntu as its base. Lefebvre says that "lack of performance and the amount of resources needed by the Kubuntu base" has resulted in discussions about delaying the Linux Mint 11 KDE release and switching to Debian Testing for KDE as well. "Although we're close to a release in terms of quality, a discussion is ongoing about the possibility of switching the KDE edition to LMDE. This would give it the performance it needs and make KDE a viable alternative on mid-spec computers." Depending on the outcome of those discussions, the KDE release could be out by the end of July, or users may get a release candidate for an LMDE-based KDE distribution some time in August. It's worth noting that Mint seems to be adopting a model that's similar to openSUSE Tumbleweed. That is, both seek to provide a rolling release that provides users with software at a faster clip but without as many broken packages as they'd encounter running a rolling release tied to package updates immediately as they enter development distributions. Though Lefebvre pointed out how the project will be able to scale technically thanks to the new server, what's unclear is if Mint has enough manpower. As was explored in the Linux Mint 11 piece in May, the Mint team is a very small operation — and Mint seems to be taking on quite a lot of new work. It will be interesting to see if the monthly update schedule boosts LMDE's popularity and smooths over the problems users have had with LMDE so far. For desktop Linux users who want quick access to newer software, this might be a good option once the Mint team gets the process nailed down.
Brief items Distribution quote of the week
Long time ago, far far away (over Atlantic Ocean), lord Matthias and lord
Josselin decided to fight a dragon that was eating virgin packages every time
new Python version was born in Debian kingdom. They created two different
machineries to fight the dragon and after a while the dragon ran away.
All lived happily ever after... except they didn't! These machineries scared
some people even more than the dragon and were dangerous sometimes as well.
The kingdom divided into two camps and when everyone almost lost hope that the
kingdom will be united again, Python kingdom's friendly governor king
created Jaskółka sword (AKA PEP3147) and at the same time a peasant created yet
another two headed machinery to make sure dragon will not come back (with
Jaskółka on board). Even royal council was involved (in a topic related to
dragon) but it couldn't take a decision for a very long time and thus Prince of
Darkness^WDebian (AKA "barefoot prince") convinced both lords to use this new
machinery.
-- Piotr Ożarowski
CentOS 6.0 releasedThe official release announcement for CentOS 6.0 is out; there is a minimal set of release notes for those who would like to know about the changes in this release. Also noteworthy is the fact that the project is trying to avoid the stall in security updates that characterized the 5.6 transition: "Since upstream has a 6.1 version already released, we will be using a Continous Release repository for 6.0 to bring all 6.1 and post 6.1 security updates to all 6.0 users, till such time as CentOS-6.1 is released itself. There will be more details about this posted within the next 48 hours."
Debian's patent policy FAQThe Debian project, in cooperation with the Software Freedom Law Center, has posted a patent policy FAQ covering the basics of software patent law from a (necessarily) US-centric point of view. "This document presents information about patents and patent liability useful for developers working on community distributions of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). By community distributions, we mean collections of free software packages maintained and distributed by organizations composed of volunteers, where neither the organization nor the volunteers seek to make a profit from the activity."
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux bits from the DPL for June 2011Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli catches up with some June bits about a RFH: debbugs, Time-based freezes, Python helpers, IRC sessions, and several other topics.
Newsletters and articles of interest Distribution newsletters
Stories of Linux: Interview with Ian Murdock on Debian's Early Days (Linux.com)Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier talks with Debian founder, Ian Murdock. "Another piece of Debian history that many don't know is that Murdock's early work on Debian was sponsored by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Murdock was sponsored by the FSF for about a year between 1994 and late 1995, and says that the FSF was "enormously helpful" in getting Debian off the ground. Murdock eventually left the FSF to finish his degree. Despite the FSF connection, Murdock says that the broader perception of Debian as 100% free software from day one "isn't true." In part this can be traced to later developments like Debian's Social Contract and the Debian Free Software Guidelines — but those happened during Bruce Perens' tenure, not while Murdock was at the helm."
PCLinuxOS Review: What Does PCLinuxOS Have to Offer? (Linux.com)Jack Wallen reviews PCLinuxOS for Linux.com. "PCLinuxOS has one of the strangest takes on package management I've run into on Linux. PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva, so it uses RPMs. I will admit that I've always been a fan of RPM and Yum for managing packages. What I've never been much of a fan of is PackageKit. PackageKit is a graphical front-end used to handle RPM and Yum, as well as Debian packages when used on those distributions. PackageKit has always (in my opinion) been inferior to the likes of Synaptic. And that is where PCLinuxOS shines. The developers of this rpm-based distribution have taken the Synaptic front end (usually associated with apt and apt-get) and added it as the package manager for PCLinuxOS."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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