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DistributionsUbuntu, Banshee, and default applicationsThere have been rumblings for a few weeks now about the fate of the Banshee music player in the Ubuntu default install. The distribution switched from GNOME's default Rhythmbox music player to Banshee for the 11.04 release, but started discussing switching back for 12.04 LTS at the recent Ubuntu Developer Summit—to the surprise of the Banshee team. While the reasons for the switch are largely technical, though there is some dispute about their validity, there is a fair amount of unhappiness about the decision, not only for the switch itself but for the way the decision was made. In any case, the distribution will be switching back to Rhythmbox for 12.04. One of the biggest complaints is that the Banshee team had no warning that Ubuntu was even considering the switch. As Jo Shields put it in a blog post: "If Banshee was being considered for replacement due to unresolved technical issues, then perhaps it would have been polite to, I don't know, inform upstream that it was on the cards?" He also notes that this is not the first time a project has been blindsided by a UDS discussion to remove a package from the default install. The PiTiVi video editor project had a similar experience back in May with regards to removing that package for 11.10. After the UDS meeting, Canonical's Ubuntu desktop manager Jason Warner posted a note to the ubuntu-desktop mailing list looking for "further feedback". He outlined some of the problems with Banshee that were brought up at UDS, including its stability, start-up time, resource usage, and the project's responsiveness to Ubuntu-specific concerns. Ubuntu Banshee maintainer Chow Loong Jin posted a response that addressed each of those concerns, but seemed most puzzled by the lack of responsiveness complaint: "If there were patches that Canonical/Ubuntu wanted in, why haven't I heard about them?". Martin Pitt concurred that Chow and Banshee have been responsive, but he added another handful of concerns about the program, including GTK3 support, the amount of space required to ship Banshee (30M, which includes Mono), ARM support, and a "fuzzy" future for Mono. Once again, Chow stepped in to address some of those complaints. In particular, there seems to be a disconnect regarding ARM support. Chow points to one bug that has been filed, which is being worked on, and is unaware of other problems. But, based on information from Tobin Davis and Oliver Grawert of the Ubuntu ARM team, there have been numerous problems supporting Mono and Banshee on ARM. Those problems have evidently taken a large portion of the ARM team's time to try to resolve. That, coupled with a perception that Mono is becoming less popular as a platform, has even led to consideration of dropping Mono from the packages that will be officially supported for the LTS as Sebastien Bacher mentions:
We also
didn't take any decision on the topic but if mono is having low traction in
the linux desktop world nowadays (it was pointed at UDS that we don't see a
lot of new projects using mono since f-spot, banshee and tomboy, most new
GNOME projects seems to go for vala rather for example) the cost of
supporting it officially for 5 years might be higher than the benefits,
it's not a made decision of any sort but a topic to discuss and take in
consideration there.
The technical complaints seem reasonable, though it appears that some of the stability, resource usage, and start-up time issues are debatable, with some having lots of those kinds of problems and others not seeing them at all. But the bigger question is why the project wasn't really notified that there were big enough problems to consider removing Banshee as a default application until after it had been proposed, and mostly agreed upon, at UDS. One of the Ubuntu Mono packagers, Iain Lane, was actually present at the UDS, but was evidently never notified that Banshee's removal was under discussion. As Lane put it :
None of this should have come out of a UDS session. If there are
such serious issues then they should have been raised months ago.
Lane is reacting to Warner's pronouncement, two weeks after bringing the subject up, that "it is clear the right decision for 12.04 is to make Rhythmbox the default music player". That message, in effect, brings the discussion to a close and makes the switch back to Rhythmbox. Lane and others felt that it was far from "clear" that the switch should be made. Warner clarified that he meant "clear to me", and went on to specify the reasons behind his decision. Most of it comes down to stability:
Most people using the traditional "Linux Desktop"
are vocal, though forgiving, when it comes to applications. I firmly
believe that mass market users will neither be vocal nor forgiving and
they will not tolerate systems they can't trust or feel are unstable. They
simply won't use our products and apps.
IMO, the default apps need to be the best foot forward, the showcase for Ubuntu. If a users first experience with our product is poor, we have a problem from which it will be very hard to recover. Rhythmbox, while not pretty or as featureful as Banshee, does the core function more reliably and more stably. And it isn't about number of features or [breadth] of feature scope, but rather how well the application does what it says it does. For his part, though, Lane also notes the PiTiVi situation as an earlier example, and details the problems he sees in the process:
Most importantly, we need to be having more constant and constructive
dialogs with upstreams throughout the whole cycle and not just at
application selection time (actually in this case there has been very
poor [communication] with upstream even since the discussion). Using the
promise of being on or threat of being removed from the install to
cudgel projects into the direction you want is not very satisfactory.
Chopping-and-changing doesn't do people any favours either. There should be some commitment from Ubuntu; being the default app brings upstreams a lot of users (which is great), but also increases the support and bug workload (which is not so great). If Ubuntu could be relied on more then upstreams would not be so burdened. Bacher acknowledges some of Lane's complaints, saying that the "topic has been handled in a pretty suboptimal way". He also agreed that the PiTiVi situation was similar and that the distribution could have done a better job keeping that project in the loop. But he is leery of Lane's "cudgel" characterization:
While it would make sense to tell upstream what we like or dislike
about their software, I'm not sure we should try to "use" our position to
demand things to be done or fixed for us. I would feel uncomfortable
telling any upstream "you should fix those bugs or your software will be
out of the CD", while in practice it's true that some issues lead us to
decide what to ship or not.
There's also the question of the importance of being in the default install. Even if Mono were to be removed from the packages supported for the five-year LTS period, both it and Banshee (Tomboy, F-Spot, ...) will still be available, but may be less prominent. As Lane pointed out, there are both good and bad points to being in the default install, but it's clear that projects which get removed feel it to be something of a slap in the face. But, as Jono Bacon points out, the way that Ubuntu users discover new software is changing:
While a few years ago apt-get and Synaptic provided a means to install
software for us, they lacked the discoverability and ease of use required
for many novice users. In addition to this, those tools did not provide a
means for a novice to identify what were the best choices for them in the
sea of software available for Ubuntu. As such, for software not included in
the default install, end users were somewhat in the dark about the best
software they could install to meet their needs.
The Ubuntu Software Center changed all of that. Now we have a simple, easy to use facility for browsing software, seeing ratings and reviews to get a feeling for what is best of breed, and installing it with just a click. The Ubuntu Software Center provides an AppStore-like interface for users to discover new software, so they are less likely to be bound only by what's available in the default install, according to Bacon. However, he does recognize the importance of the default applications and why projects are concerned when they get dropped:
I am not surprised that some consternation occurs when applications or
components are proposed to be added or removed from a default Ubuntu
installation. Being on the disc provides a sense of validation and
acceptance to our upstreams, and provides an incredible amount of
visibility to these applications.
In the end analysis, it would seem that Ubuntu could do a much better job working with the upstream projects that it is shipping in its default installation. It is mostly just a matter of communication, and this incident (and that PiTiVi situation before it) have raised the visibility of this type of problem. Rather than waiting until (nearly) the last minute, involving the upstream projects as well as the Debian/Ubuntu package maintainers early in the decision-making process is likely to cause a lot less stress and unhappiness. Projects that know about problems that may lead to their eventual removal from the default package set are pretty likely to address them—giving them enough time to do so before suddenly tossing them out can only help with that.
Brief items Distribution quotes of the week
Does Debian measure its success by the number of installs? The number of
maintainers? The number of flamewars? The number of packages? The number of
messages to mailing lists? The quality of Debian Policy? The quality of
packages? The "freshness" of packages? The length and quality of
maintenance of releases? The frequency or infrequency of releases? The
breadth of derivatives?
-- Mark
Shuttleworth
Many of these metrics are in direct tension with one another; as a consequence, the fact that different DD's prioritise all of these (and other goals) differently makes for ... interesting debate. The sort of debate that goes on and on because there is no way to choose between the goals when everyone has different ones. You know the sort of debate I mean :-)
The above is why I'm constantly encouraging people interested in running
for DPL in the future to reach out to me and work on some tasks of the
current DPL's TODO list. I swear it is not just a cheap attempt at
slavery!. It is rather an attempt at DPL mentoring that could be
beneficial: both to give future candidates more awareness of the task, and
to reduce the potential downtime when handing over from one DPL to the
next.
-- Stefano
"Zack" Zacchiroli
Chrome OS LinuxChrome OS Linux is a free operating system built around the Google Chrome browser. The aim of this project is to provide a lightweight Linux distribution for the best web browsing experience on any x86 PC, notebook or Chromebook. Version 1.7.932 RC is based on openSUSE, the Google Chrome 17 web browser, and includes GNOME 2.32 and an experimental GNOME Shell desktop environment. Chrome OS Linux is an independent project, not to be confused with Google's Chrome OS.
Distribution News Fedora Re-appointment to the Fedora Board and reminder of upcoming electionsThe Fedora Board consists of five elected seats and four appointed seats. There are two appointed seats available, one is announced before the election and one after. Toshio Kuratomi has agreed to serve in his appointed Board seat for another term. The other appointed seat will be announced after elections close. Elections for the Fedora Board, FAmSCo, and FESCo begin on November 23 and close at the end of the day on December 5.
SUSE Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 3 regular support and maintenance has concludedSUSE has discontinued support for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP3. "This means that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SP3 SUSE Linux Enterprise SDK 10 SP3 are now unmaintained and further updates will only update the corresponding 10 SP4 product variants." SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP4 is still maintained and supported. Also "Long Term Servicepack Support" is still available for SLE 10 SP3.
Newsletters and articles of interest Distribution newsletters
People Behind Debian: Mark ShuttleworthRaphaël Hertzog interviews Mark Shuttleworth about Ubuntu and its relationship with Debian. "Before Ubuntu, we have a two-tier world of Linux: there's the community world (Debian, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo) where you support yourself, and the restricted, commercial world of RHEL and SLES/SLED. While the community distributions are wonderful in many regards, they don't and can't meet the needs of the whole of society; one can't find them pre-installed, one can't get certified and build a career around them, one can't expect a school to deploy at scale a platform which is not blessed by a wide range of institutions. And the community distributions cannot create the institutions that would fix that."
Lefebvre: Linux Mint 12Linux Mint developer Clement Lefebvre has some news about Linux Mint 12 "Lisa", which is currently available as a release candidate. "The feedback we got from the RC wasn't as straight forward as it usually is. As expected, the introduction of Gnome 3 is dividing the Mint community. We were delighted to see that MGSE [Mint GNOME Shell Extensions] was well received and that it helped people migrating to Gnome 3. MGSE received a lot of noticeable improvements since and the final release of Linux Mint 12 will come with a Gnome 3 experience that is significantly better than in the RC release."
What's new in openSUSE 12.1 (The H)The H has a review of openSUSE 12.1. "While in the package manager it is worth taking a look around the manager's individual categories. For example, the Chromium browser has made it into openSUSE's standard repositories, and the distribution is also the first to include Google's new Go programming language. However, the biggest surprise is to be found in the Desktop category's KDE section, where packages containing the classical KDE 3 desktop have been re-listed. Rather than offering the version maintained by the Trinity project, the packages contain version 3.5.10 of the desktop, which is still released by the KDE project, together with various patches created by the openSUSE team and the Chakra and Trinity projects. One of the patches ensures that the media manager is no longer dependent on HAL."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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