LWN: Comments on "Ubuntu releases Flight CD 1"

Flight CD 1 Panics on PCs with Adaptec 2100S

malavalren — 2006-04-04T10:11:21+00:00

Hello,

I got problem similar to yours.
Ubuntu 5.10 make a kernel panic during boot.
Its look like a conflit betwwen dpt_i2o and I2O modules.

Yours bug 17897 is it closed ? if yes in witch kernel version ?
Do you have any idea, link that can help me to solve my problem ?
Thank you for your times.

Best regards,
Renaud

Don't dis the Debian devs

grouch — 2005-12-05T11:04:30+00:00

Don't have much confidence that the Debian developers know what they're doing, do you?

I've been running Debian since Slink and have never worried about a situation such as you hypothesise. If you've waited 3 months before updating your system, you've waited too long. If that kword package has a new version number and requires updates to its dependencies, let it happen unless you are absolutely certain that you know more about each software package involved than the KDE team and the Debian maintainers of the packages.

If you are running 'stable', updating that package is unlikely to "change the behavior of KDE programs in ways that [you] don't want." It is almost certainly going to prevent something you don't want, since 'stable' receives security updates.

Dial-up is definitely a pain but I've always just limited apt-get to half my bandwidth and let it work in the background. Run an apt-proxy server if you have several computers on your LAN. Run the updates overnight.

Debian enjoys a very good reputation for getting things right. Don't short-circuit that by failing to use the package update system to maintain your system properly.

Ubuntu/Debian (in-)compability

kevinbsmith — 2005-11-23T18:59:25+00:00

Several questions and answers on this page address the various aspects of the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth?highlight=%28shu...

If you read the whole thing carefully, you'll see that he really does understand the pros and cons of the approach Ubuntu is taking.

Flight CD 1 Panics on PCs with Adaptec 2100S

csamuel — 2005-11-23T12:06:47+00:00

Just tried the Live CD from Dapper Drake and it's still got the bug from Breezy that causes it to kernel panic on boot if you've got an Adaptec 2100S SCSI RAID card (or presumably any card that's driven by the dpt_i2o driver). The bug is that their initramfs tries to load both dpt_i2o and the I2O subsystem.

My bug report is bug 17897, but I've yet to get a response to it, so if anyone else has this sort of hardware I'd really appreciate it if you could try the Live CD and see if it panics for you too and add a "yay" or "nay" comment onto the bug report to see if they'll try and fix this..

Is Ubuntu really Debian based?

mh — 2005-11-23T11:14:57+00:00

>Why do they not just point to the Debian packages, like Knoppix does?

Ubuntu make significant changes to their packages at times. For example, compiling everything with a newer compiler than Debian and with different options, to give better performance; or compiling all gnome apps against the latest version of gtk to take advantage of newer features. When you take into account changes like these, which are part of the core objectives of some Ubuntu releases, there is no possibility of sharing packages with Debian.
The sources, however, are shared as far as possible - ubuntu usually only adds patches on top of the Debian sources and all of these are available to Debian developers so they are free to choose to adopt them for Debian.

Is Ubuntu really Debian based?

piman — 2005-11-23T01:18:22+00:00

> surely the base system could be pure Debian. No? Why?

Ubuntu's base system diverges from Debian pretty quickly. Much of the Utopia stack development (kernel, udev, HAL) happens in Ubuntu, for example, and their Python is also a minor version ahead of Debian.

The unchanged packages are mostly in the periphery, not the base.

Is Ubuntu really Debian based?

rqosa — 2005-11-23T00:34:36+00:00

The problem is that old packages are deleted from the Debian repositories. Consider this example: I install KDE, then three months later I try to install KWord. If I have not run "apt-get update", I will get a "404 not found" error from apt-get when I try to run "apt-get install kword", because the KWord package listed in the Packages file from three months ago has been deleted from the repository. If I run "apt-get update && apt-get install kword", it will insist that I upgrade all of the libraries that KWord depends on; doing that would require a long time to download with my modem, and it might change the behavior of KDE programs in ways that I don't want.

Is Ubuntu really Debian based?

rvfh — 2005-11-22T23:52:41+00:00

Well, you can have your own 'selection' of packages in your Packages list, and directly point some packages to the Debian repository. This way, you just 'shop' for the packages you want, add your own, but if most packages are the same, you don't need to duplicate... That's what Knoppix does unless I have missed something.

Is Ubuntu really Debian based?

rqosa — 2005-11-22T22:42:43+00:00

> Why do they not just point to the Debian packages, like Knoppix does?

It would be unacceptable for a release version of Ubuntu to have a "sources.list" which points at Debian's "testing" or "unstable" repositories, because that would defeat the purpose of having a release version (i.e. there should be no updates except for security bug fixes). It is for this reason that I won't use pseudo-distributions like MEPIS; without an APT repository of its own, it's impossible (or at least difficult) to selectively install packages with apt-get without also bringing in new versions from testing or unstable.

It might be feasible for Ubuntu to use the repositories of Debian's stable releases, but then there's the issue of Debian having a slower release cycle than Ubuntu.

However, many of the packages in Ubuntu are taken directly from Debian unstable, with no changes. (See this blog posting by Anthony Towns.) To me, the value of Ubuntu is that it is essentially a snapshot of Debian unstable with bugfixes, security updates, and a faster release cycle than Debian stable.

Is Ubuntu really Debian based?

ninjaz — 2005-11-22T18:06:06+00:00

I think Ubuntu is doing well to keep their own repositories to match their 6 month release cycles. Since Debian's release cycles have been long and unpredictable, I think it would defeat the purpose of Ubuntu to directly track Debian packages.

The main reason I can see for not tracking Debian for base is kernel and glibc updates. This would lock users out of updated hardware drivers and as I see it, would be a loss for Ubuntu rather than a gain. Eg., when I used Debian, I often faced the situation where I would have to install newer versions of core software by hand to gain hardware support, which essentially destroys the value proposition of a Linux distribution (especially one like Debian which is valued for its level of integration and dependency tracking).

FWIW, I haven't tried Ubuntu yet, but it's looking more and more attractive, especially with the promotion of Kubuntu to first-class project.

Is Ubuntu really Debian based?

rvfh — 2005-11-22T12:47:01+00:00

we've been concentrating on merging work from Debian unstable

Why do they not just point to the Debian packages, like Knoppix does? Would the world not be nicer for all if *ubuntu was Debian-based rather than Debian-inspired?

I can understand that they make additions to Debian, or even have some packages that are different, but surely the base system could be pure Debian. No? Why?