Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian [LWN.net]

The much-anticipated Ubuntu 4.10 release happened on October 20. There are a number of interesting things about Ubuntu, including its commercial backing, use of "4.10" as its initial release number, and its desire to change the world through provocative artwork. But the most interesting thing, perhaps, is the amount of attention that Ubuntu has received. New distributions are not exactly an unusual thing; why all the excitement about Ubuntu?

The money behind Ubuntu is certainly one reason; new distributions may pop up every week, but few of them have a reported 40 paid developers behind them. When a new distribution has that sort of backing, people have a reason to assume that there is something interesting going on, and that it may stay around for a while.

The quality of the hackers that Ubuntu was able to attract is also clearly a factor. Ubuntu employs a number of well-known developers from the GNOME, FreeDesktop.org, and Debian communities, among others. When top-quality developers get together behind a new project, interesting things tend to happen.

Ubuntu also makes promises which resonate with a great many users. A quick, single-CD installation process backed up by a huge network-based package repository. A strong emphasis on the best desktop experience that Linux can offer. Bleeding-edge packages combined with a promise of free support for 18 months. A promise of a six-month release cycle backed up by some of the developers who lived up to that promise with the GNOME project. A general sort of cool buzz.

Those are all good reasons for Ubuntu to succeed, but there may be something else going on here. Ubuntu may have found a way to become the preferred interface between users and the Debian project.

Debian has a lot of appeal. It is an excruciatingly free distribution characterized by a widely recognized technical excellence. It offers a variety of packages which is second to none and a package management system which is unequaled elsewhere. But Debian scares away a number of potential users. Its "stable" release is painfully out of date most of the time, the "unstable" release is rather too bleeding-edge for many users (while still being slow to pick up new releases at times), and the middle-of-the-road "testing" release seems to offer the worst of both "stable" and "unstable." The process of creating a new stable release looks chaotic, with no timeline for an actual release in sight. The community seems to spend rather too much time arguing about the free status of firmware and documentation and packaging up obscure tools and too little time simply creating a current distribution with a broader appeal. Debian is a great institution, but it worries a number of people.

Ubuntu is the promise of all the good things about Debian without many of the problems. As a stabilized version of Debian sid, it has a remarkably current set of packages. For some software (e.g. GNOME 2.8) Ubuntu was, by design, ahead of everybody else. The release cycle is well defined, and the support period has been made clear from the beginning. There is the obligatory friendly installer as well. Ubuntu looks like a Debian which stays current, and which is safe for ordinary people to use.

Ubuntu is certainly not the first company which has made a go at being a more civilized Debian distribution; others include Progeny, Linspire, Lycoris, UserLinux, and even Corel's old offering. Ubuntu looks rather more community-oriented than many of the other commercial, Debian-based distributions, however; Linspire may be good at attracting attention and lawsuits, but few people would consider it to be truly open or part of the community. Appearances matter, and Ubuntu appears to have the right people and attitude.

Interestingly, Ubuntu appears to have made a bigger splash than even UserLinux, which is arguably a more community-oriented, Debian-based distribution. The UserLinux project is clearly well aware of Ubuntu, to the point of adding an entry to the UserLinux FAQ on the differences between the two distributions:

A key difference is UbuntuLinux is a (free) product offering from a single commercial entity (Canonical Ltd.) whereas UserLinux is created through a community development model.

UserLinux aims to create a standard core for ISV's/whomever to support. This includes very little real packaging of custom software beyond pieces to 'brand' the system. Most of the system is packaged upstream and maintained upstream. Ubuntu aims to create a Debian based desktop distribution and contains a very large number of custom packages. For example, Debian Sarge ships with GNOME 2.6 while Ubuntu is forked off of Unstable around the same time that Sarge did, but ships GNOME 2.8 with significant modifications.

For the purposes of public image in mid-October, 2004, one might state the Ubuntu has added a significant amount of value (or at least changes) to Debian, and has a stable release out now. UserLinux looks to be mostly a rebranding effort with no releases available yet. From that viewpoint, it's not surprising that Ubuntu is currently hogging the spotlight. That situation could change as UserLinux pulls its first release together and gets its distributed support network going.

UserLinux would be well advised to do these things soon.

There is clearly a market for distributors who impose some order upon the Debian development process. With these distributors in place, the undisciplined nature of the Debian release process does not matter anywhere near as much. The emergence of successful, value-added, Debian-based distributions may be one of the best things to happen to Debian in some time.

provocative artwork

Posted Oct 21, 2004 4:35 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (10 responses)

"Nonetheless, we pursued this idea with professional artists and designers, and the images you see today are the first in a series that attempt to encapsulate the theme of warmth, human-ness, diversity, sharing, caring and nature."

Warmth, human-ness, diversity, sharing, caring and nature? What happened to sex?

Personally, I'm glad to see that the default artwork was toned down for the final release. The nearly naked people are distracting, and probably annoying after just a few days.

But it could have been far worse. Imagine if they had decided (and I apologize in advance for painting this picture in your head) to grace the desktop with three nearly naked kernel hackers. Say Linus, Andrew, and Alan. That would have crossed the line between low-brow art p0rn and a full-bore visual assault.

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 21, 2004 10:27 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (8 responses)

In case some Puritans don't get it: nudity != sex. art != p0rn. tasteful != provocative.

The Ubuntu pictures are, IMHO, firmly on the left side of these inequalities.

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 21, 2004 16:58 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (7 responses)

I guess you're calling me a Puritan. (You were addressing me, weren't you?) If so, I take it as a compliment. They had some ways that seem odd to us now, but they had a zeal for Right Living that's hard to find in America today. From what I hear Europe is about 5 to 7 years ahead of us in depravity, so I guess I am fortunate to live in America despite it's current moral condition.

As for art vs. p0rn: For what it's worth -- if I could view pictures of semi-nude young women without any sort of physical or emotional response, I would consider scheduling an appointment with my family doctor. If you think nudity is stricty art, then something might not be working right...

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 22, 2004 0:53 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

"If you think nudity is stricty art, then something might not be working right..."

Erm, Smurf definitely did not say that. You might want to read his post again. And, are you actaully claiming the Ubuntu login screen is porn?? Talk about something not working right...

BTW, the Puritans were a hypocritical, disgraceful lot. You might want to read the Scarlet Letter again. Or brush up on the history of witch hunts.

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 22, 2004 1:51 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

BTW, the Puritans were a hypocritical, disgraceful lot.

Not in general they weren't.

If you take any large enough group of people you can find a few individuals who are/were hypocritical and maybe even disgraceful, but that doesn't implicate the entire group. Saying Puritans are a hypocritical, disgraceful lot is like saying Muslims are all terrorists, or Windows users are all idiots.

You better check up on the revisionist history you've been reading. ;-)

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 22, 2004 1:31 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

From what I hear Europe is about 5 to 7 years ahead of us in depravity, so I guess I am fortunate to live in America

Very informative, thanks.

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 22, 2004 18:11 UTC (Fri) by tekNico (guest, #22) [Link]

>if I could view pictures of semi-nude young women without any sort
> of physical or emotional response,

You are *expected* to see *real* "semi-nude young women without any sort
of physical or emotional response", for example on the beach, and in many other social occasions.

Better get the hang of it as soon as possible. ;-P

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 28, 2004 9:34 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

You haven't been out much lately, have you?

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 28, 2004 9:44 UTC (Thu) by dash2 (guest, #11869) [Link] (1 responses)

From what I hear Europe is about 5 to 7 years ahead of us in depravity, so I guess I am fortunate to live in America despite it's current moral condition.

And I guess I'm fortunate to live in Europe!

"provocative" artwork

Posted Oct 28, 2004 14:51 UTC (Thu) by egan (guest, #25723) [Link]

And I guess I'm fortunate to live in Europe!
Even better : i live in Paris!

provocative artwork

Posted Oct 21, 2004 17:39 UTC (Thu) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]

Say Linus, Andrew, and Alan.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo - my eyes!!!!!!! HURTS! PAIN! GO AWAY! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo.................

Free + Community

Posted Oct 21, 2004 7:13 UTC (Thu) by davidw (guest, #947) [Link] (2 responses)

I think the thing that interests me most about both the Ubuntu and UserLinux ideas is that neither one of them is going to give up on the free aspect of Debian, so I can still install it wherever I want with nary a thought to licenses. They also both seem to have figured out that some commercial backing is good, but a community is critical. Ubuntu's challeng is going to be to create a community that gets involved, without feeling like free labor for a corporation. So far, it looks like they are moving in the right direction to accomplish this. It will be interesting to see how things develop on the business side of things with Ubuntu, as well...

Free + Community

Posted Oct 21, 2004 19:13 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (1 responses)

It will be interesting to see how things develop on the business side of things with Ubuntu, as well...

I'm wondering how long they will be able to pay for shipping on the free disks they are offering. From all indications Mark Shuttleworth is a generous person, but that (international) shipping bill could get pretty big after a while.

Free + Community

Posted Oct 28, 2004 8:38 UTC (Thu) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link]

I'm wondering how long they will be able to pay for shipping on the free disks they are offering.

Compared to the cost of employing ~30 people to work on Ubuntu, I'm pretty sure that shipping CD:s around the world is peanuts.

But yeah, I do wonder what their business plan is. Mark Shuttleworth can probably afford to bleed more red ink than most startups, but at some point they have to get profitable if they intend their effort to be sustainable.

18 months support is not long enough

Posted Oct 21, 2004 8:17 UTC (Thu) by addw (guest, #1771) [Link] (2 responses)

commitment to security updates with 18 months of security and technical support for every release

If you want to use this as the basis of a corporate desktop, 18 months is far too short, 4 years is probably the desktop requirement (servers need even longer support). This is something that RedHat & SuSE have understood. Note that the 18 month clock start ticking from the date of release, a user will: download it, evaluate it and then start to roll it out to users (which will take some time); so they may only have 12 months support 'left' by the time that it hit user desktops.

I do understand that this sort of long term maintainance is expensive to provide, but remember that it is expensive/disruptive to have to upgrade/reinstall user desktops every year.

18 months support is not long enough

Posted Oct 21, 2004 9:14 UTC (Thu) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link]

The optimal deployment time for a corporate desktop operating system is a continuum. At one end, very frequent changes impose a continual small cost, especially to process documentation. At the other end, very rare changes impose an occassional large cost, especially for operator training.

The current Microsoft Windows release model is at one end of this spectrum. And corporate IT is currently optimised to support Microsoft's release model. But please don't be mislead into thinking that this release model is the only one which leads to acceptable results.

As an example of an alternative model, there are many school and university student labs which upgrade their OS versions once or twice annually, during the student-free periods.

For companies with an annual downtime, an operating system with a timetabled operating systems release may suit their operations better than the rare and indeterminate releases of Windows.

Other companies may decide that a continual trickle of small changes offers less risk than the occassional "big bang" with the implication of a the large number of vendor-specific security patches. It's also difficult to make long release cycles stick: some desktop users will have valid reasons for desiring later versions of applications than the one installed. So long release cycle strategies usually degenerate at the edges, whether this matters or not depends upon your own circumstances.

18 months support is not long enough

Posted Oct 22, 2004 2:56 UTC (Fri) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link]

Note that on the website and most other places (although not in this announcement), we say that the distribution will be supported for <i>at least 18 months</i>. Don't be too surprised if it gets longer as time goes by. :-)

Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Posted Oct 21, 2004 8:53 UTC (Thu) by uwaucs (guest, #6160) [Link] (1 responses)

Ubuntu is fantastic.

I've been running the AMD64 distribution for a while, and it's stable and instantly useful. I just installed it on my Thinkpad T-41 and:
* the ipw2100 wireless card (GPL driver, binary hotplug loaded firmware) worked without any config, and even during the _install_ process.
* it autoconfigured X wonderfully, GL worked, even to the point of noticing I have a synaptics touchpad and setting it up so that scrolling, tap-click, tap-drag, etc works.
* sound just worked, etc.

Not only that, but the base install is a _fully working_ desktop - every application you'll generally want to do work is there. It's very convincing. I'm a fan of Debian, but this is just so much less pain with all the advantages of a plain Debian system.

Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Posted Oct 21, 2004 23:12 UTC (Thu) by jmason (guest, #13586) [Link]

Good news -- I've been wondering how Ubuntu would deal with my T41.

The other stumbling block, however, is KDE support -- although their FAQ states that they do have the KDE packages in 'universe', but it's not quite as polished as the GNOME support just yet.

I'm looking forward to trying it out; reportedly, if you're seat-of-the-pants-hacky enough, you can apt-get dist-upgrade your way from Debian unstable directly to Ubuntu so I might do that ;)

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 21, 2004 12:01 UTC (Thu) by joedrew (guest, #828) [Link] (4 responses)

As I understand it, Ubuntu uses the standard debian-installer, so its install shouldn't be significantly friendlier (or different in any way, really) than Debian Sarge's installer.

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 21, 2004 18:04 UTC (Thu) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]

If you'd like to stop trying to understand from a distance and get close enough to try it yourself, you might learn something of interest. I've installed both from recent installer releases. I can't speak to the default disk partitioning, because I never use that; the rest of the install *is* simpler with Ubuntu IME. I can point to one mildly crufty piece of hardware - the "yenta" PCMCIA annoyance in our Inspiron laptop - that Debian trips over, but Ubuntu (and Libranet before it) handle just fine.

So, no, just as the common origin of most of the packages (both started from a snapshot of Sid, more or less) don't mean the packages are all identical, the use of debian-installer doesn't insure they behave identically dusring the eraly install phase either.

I'm thinking that Ubuntu ought to be described to Debian users as "Try it, you'll like it!" :-)

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 22, 2004 2:57 UTC (Fri) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link] (2 responses)

The installer is based on debian-installer, but is fairly dramatically simplified.

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 23, 2004 9:12 UTC (Sat) by joey (guest, #328) [Link] (1 responses)

Much as your explination of it has been. ;-)

(Most the the "dramatic simplification" is available by booting the standard debian installer with DEBCONF_PRIORITY=critical)

Friendlier install

Posted Nov 1, 2004 18:48 UTC (Mon) by mdz@debian.org (guest, #14112) [Link]

Joey, surely you realize that when that work began, the installation would fail in various ways if the priority was set to 'critical', and fixing those bugs was a significant part of our work on d-i.

Most, if not all, of that work has since been folded into d-i proper, but it isn't fair to trivialize it by implying that we simply changed the priority.
A great deal of effort was put into simplifying the process for a wider audience.

desktop - not server - oriented

Posted Oct 21, 2004 16:53 UTC (Thu) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] (2 responses)

This is great, but it appears to be focused on the desktop, even to the point of the Terminal Server Client - very cool.

But as far as making this into a server - any thoughts? One thing I remember about UserLinux was to have 3 standard installs: server, desktop, and something? - which seems the right direction.

desktop - not server - oriented

Posted Oct 22, 2004 2:59 UTC (Fri) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link]

Ubuntu is definitely supported as a server OS. If you boot the installer with 'custom', it will install the base system only, letting you get on with your server requirements. There is a big list of server software in our supported list, covering all the most popular things (like BIND, Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc).

desktop and server oriented

Posted Nov 1, 2004 18:56 UTC (Mon) by mdz@debian.org (guest, #14112) [Link]

All of the servers used to support the development of Ubuntu run Ubuntu, as do my personal servers.

It's true that some of the distinguishing features in Ubuntu are in the desktop, but this doesn't diminish its applicability to servers. On a server, Ubuntu essentially "feels" like Debian, but with some key differences, such as a shorter, predictable release cycle, a predictable support lifetime and the availability of a commercial support relationship directly with the vendor (Canonical).

The best thing Verisign ever did...

Posted Oct 21, 2004 19:21 UTC (Thu) by mwh (guest, #582) [Link]

... was deliver a truckload of cash into Mark Shuttleworth's hands.

Less zelotism, please

Posted Oct 21, 2004 19:36 UTC (Thu) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link] (6 responses)

> Debian has a lot of appeal. It is an excruciatingly free
> distribution characterized by a widely recognized technical
> excellence. It offers a variety of packages which is second
> to none and a package management system which is unequaled
> elsewhere.

This is a little bit annoying. Yes, Debian is a top notch distro with great "technical excellence". So are Red Hat and SUSE. Debian isn't any more excellent than they are. But that's just a little niggle. The real annoyance is the last sentence. The package management system for Debian is in no way any better than the package management system for, say, Fedora. The differences between the DEB and RPM formats are negligible and both can use apt & yum to manage their packages.

Debian is a very good distro, as I have already said. But it isn't better than most of the big name distros. I think it would be good if the unsubstantiated zealotry for Debian here could be toned down just a bit. It's detrimental to the credibility of LWN. Leave the arrogant pontifications to the Grumpy Editor's section.

Less zelotism, please

Posted Oct 21, 2004 22:10 UTC (Thu) by piman (guest, #8957) [Link] (3 responses)

Actually, there are people (myself included) that will argue dpkg/.deb is better engineered than RPM, even without getting into support infrastructure Debian has and RPM-based distros have borrowed in the past (alternatives the menuing system for example). No attempts at an inherently broken "file dependencies" system, proper virtual package support, recommends and suggests, and per-package or local file diversions. When making packages, debhelper and CDBS make producing high-quality packages that integrate into Debian a breeze, compared to spec file making. When the surrounding tools like aptitude, debconf, and deborphan/debfoster are thrown it, it's very easy to call Debian's package system unequaled.

It's great that APT can support RPM now, and I agree that closed the gap significantly. But RPM still has a long way to go, and it doesn't help that there are competing incompatible versions of it.

Less zelotism, please

Posted Oct 22, 2004 1:26 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

How about acknowledging some of the drawbacks of apt/dpkg? For instance, the dpkg database is sloooow. Debconf has become an annoyance, stopping most installs to ask inane questions (even with priority set to the highest. Many packages force you to learn obscure infrastructure (alsa modutils, a2enmod, etc). It's hard to know what force flags to use. It's embarrasingly difficult to install an equiv for any nontrivial package. Etc...

Personally, I'd say the original poster had it right: RPM and apt/dpkg each have their benefits and drawbacks. Personally, I've used Debian for the past 4 years because it's been the best tool for the job. This week, though, I did replace 2 of my 3 Sid machines with Ubuntu...

Less zelotism, please

Posted Oct 22, 2004 3:09 UTC (Fri) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link] (1 responses)

Debconf has become an annoyance, stopping most installs to ask inane questions (even with priority set to the highest.

This isn't a fundamental flaw in Debconf itself -- just its misuse. One thing Ubuntu has done has been to ensure a lot of these questions are not shown; either ignoring notes that are unimportant to the user, or taking sensible default to questions that have them.

Many packages force you to learn obscure infrastructure (alsa modutils, a2enmod, etc).

I would argue that a2enmod is no more obscure than editing the apache config file, and it's well-documented (bias alert: I wrote it).

It's hard to know what force flags to use.

dpkg --force-help tells you, but you shouldn't ever need to use it.

A bit OT re: a2enmod

Posted Oct 22, 2004 4:43 UTC (Fri) by tsinclai (guest, #11399) [Link]

You wrote a2enmod?

I teach a class in Linux system administration and switched recently from Red Hat to Debian (via
Knoppix) and I must say that the way the apache2 package is organized is much easier to
manage and your scripts (did you do a2demod as well?), while obvious in hindsight, make my job
a lot easier.

I modified the scripts to create the equivalent functionality for enabling and disabling sites.

Anyway, much thanks for your good work!

Less zelotism, please

Posted Oct 22, 2004 8:05 UTC (Fri) by walles (guest, #954) [Link] (1 responses)

The package management system for Debian is in no way any better than the package management system for, say, Fedora. The differences between the DEB and RPM formats are negligible and both can use apt & yum to manage their packages.

Something that you don't acknowledge is the vast amount of packages available for Debian, and that there's one central repository that effectively works as a normalizer for the Debian derivatives.

This makes it a lot more likely on Debian (and its derivatives) than on Redhat (and its derivatives) that:

A package you're looking for is available in the default repository.
If not, a package that will work fine on your system is available in another repository that can simply be added to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
If not, a standalone package that will work fine on your system is available for download from somewhere else.

So it's not just about the file format and the infrastructure, it's what's being done with it.

Less zelotism, please

Posted Oct 22, 2004 17:27 UTC (Fri) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

> Something that you don't acknowledge is the vast amount
> of packages available for Debian

Oh, most definitely. You will note that I didn't include this aspect when I made my original post. The Fedora community is working with various repositories rather than a central one. This can be both good and bad but I do like the Debian way better.

Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Description of Debian

provocative artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

"provocative" artwork

provocative artwork

Free + Community

Free + Community

Free + Community

18 months support is not long enough

18 months support is not long enough

18 months support is not long enough

Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Friendlier install

Friendlier install

Friendlier install

Friendlier install

Friendlier install

desktop - not server - oriented

desktop - not server - oriented

desktop *and* server oriented

The best thing Verisign ever did...

Less zelotism, please

Less zelotism, please

Less zelotism, please

Less zelotism, please

A bit OT re: a2enmod

Less zelotism, please

Less zelotism, please

desktop and server oriented