Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 7, 2014 20:03 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
In reply to: Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World) by stefanor
Parent article: Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

How does one see the state of Canonical support from outside a running Ubuntu system? Is there a full listing of what packages canonical formally supports (for whatever definition of support you are using here)?

I've never understood how potential support customers understand what they are actually potentially paying for with the supported packages scattered across repo boundaries like that.

-jef

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 7, 2014 20:06 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes. The 'main' repository is officially supported. Community-supported packages go into the 'universe' repo.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 7, 2014 20:11 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

Sounds like you are directly contradicting the statement I was relying to.

And in doing so, perhaps stressing the important point. I think Canonical's support story is overly confusing.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 1:40 UTC (Sat) by mdeslaur (subscriber, #55004) [Link]

How is it confusing? There a two completely separate package repositories. One is supported by Canonical, the other isn't.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 6:18 UTC (Sat) by xnox (guest, #63320) [Link]

"Yes. The 'main' repository is officially supported. Community-supported packages go into the 'universe' repo."

Whilst this is generally true "rule-of-thumb", it's more complex than that because of pleora reasons. Flavours can and do get LTS status, but are generally supported by said flavour developers. LTS status is a community process led by TechBoard. Binaries from same source package can be split between different components (main vs universe). Architecture one runs things on also matter (e.g. amd64 vs arm64). Things are "supported" but are not compiled from source (e.g. firmware & drivers in "restricted") etc.

And "supported" is a broad term - do you care about security vulnerability fixes only; or bug/functionality fixes as well; or new-hardware support? There are packages that have all,none of those properties and any combination in-between. And like any other company, given enough golden bricks one can get support contract for anything one wishes. Similarly the support relationships with OEMs & CPU designers is also quite different.

What I like about Ubuntu is that software is not excluded from the distribution simply because Canonical doesn't have engineers to support it. Instead there is plenty of opportunity for interested parties to contribute. Which also means, that even if one doesn't have support contract with Canonical and/or cannot negotiate one, there will be other people & companies happy to support you on Ubuntu.

Standard support contracts are detailed here http://www.ubuntu.com/management/ubuntu-advantage and there is "contact us" button to discuss any queries you have and/or negotiate additional things.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 7, 2014 20:14 UTC (Fri) by stefanor (subscriber, #32895) [Link] (14 responses)

There are support-status fields in the package lists. Improving the understandability of this has been on the cards for a long time, but there are always more important things to do...

As you can see from the quotes in the article, and the mailing list discussion, even some Ubuntu Developers don't understand support status :)

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 7, 2014 20:28 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (13 responses)

Makes me wonder... how exactly are those priorities being assessed. This seems like this should have been a very important priority for Canonical's support business.

Because it seems to me... _focusing_ early on articulating your support story to your potential customers as concisely as possible would pay off over a long timescale in terms of revenue.

If noone is making a point of making sure that support story is crisp and clean. You don't want to lead customers on and give them the impression they are getting more support for their money than they are. That's a good way to burn bridges instead of building them. No idea if that's been happening, but it sure seems like the conditions are ripe for that.

Have fun.

-jef

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 1:42 UTC (Sat) by mdeslaur (subscriber, #55004) [Link] (12 responses)

It's completely crisp and clean. The "main" repository is supported by Canonical. The "universe" repository is not.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 1:46 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Didn't you read?

https://lwn.net/Articles/619504/

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 2:43 UTC (Sat) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (10 responses)

Again that is in direct contradiction with the statement I was replying to.

But you know.. for the record.. can you point me to customer facing documentation that states that everything in main is supported by Canonical.. for future reference.

I've read the published terms for ubuntu advantage and it doesn't actually say which packages are supported and which aren't. If you can point me to a terms of service description, anything really, that is potential customer facing which says everything in main is supported and what that means that'd be great.

Oh and a definition of the different support levels too. That'd be groovy.

-jef

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 10:58 UTC (Sat) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (5 responses)

Anyone knows that if you require real enterprise support with real engineering backup there are just two companies capable of providing that and that's Red Hat and Suse.

If you require a distribution with "Long Term Support" then you deploy either Red Hat based distribution such as Centos or Scientific Linux or you deploy Debian LTS release directly and you simply call your local Linux IT company for support and counselling you dont use Canonical.

There are gazillion "cloud" providers out there providing wide variety of cloud based solution including but not limited to openstack.

Even Google does not list Ubuntu in it's distribution drop down for it's cloud [1].

For free it lists: Debian,CentOS,OpenSuse,FreeBSD,CoreOS etc. ( it does not list Ubuntu ) for paid it lists Windows,Red Hat and Suse, which just reflects what everybody already knows.

Bottom line Canonical is not doing anything special ( it may think it's doing something special when in reality it's not )and their so called support is no exception in that regard since you can get the same or better support from your local IT company as they provide.

https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 14:25 UTC (Sat) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link] (3 responses)

> Anyone knows that if you require real enterprise support with real engineering backup there are just two companies capable of providing that and that's Red Hat and Suse.

RHEL does not include ownCloud in its repositories, so Red Hat will not support it. If you want ownCloud in your RHEL box you will have to use additional repositories.

This is not different from the Ubuntu situation: ownCloud is not present in the "main" repository, so, if you want it, you have to use additional repositories: either the "universe" repository or the repositories provided by ownCloud via openSUSE Build.

Should Canonical stop providing the unsupported-but-useful "universe" repository only because people, seeing the name "Canonical", may think that it is supported and maintained by Canonical?

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 15:04 UTC (Sat) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (1 responses)

"RHEL does not include ownCloud in its repositories, so Red Hat will not support it. If you want ownCloud in your RHEL box you will have to use additional repositories."

And if you use third party repository's you break your support contract and remember there always is a reason for companies not include said software in their repositories.

"Should Canonical stop providing the unsupported-but-useful "universe" repository only because people, seeing the name "Canonical", may think that it is supported and maintained by Canonical?"

The answer to that is yes since Canonical is misleading it's "customers" by providing it in the first place.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 16:31 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

>And if you use third party repository's you break your support contract and remember there always is a reason for companies not include said software in their repositories.

Merely using a third party repository doesn't break any support contract. Red Hat merely won't commercially support packages from those repositories. Same goes for modified packages unless you can show that the problem occurs regardless of the modification.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 15:13 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> Should Canonical stop providing the unsupported-but-useful "universe" repository only because people

I don't see it in the discussion here, but isn't it *on* by default? Maybe if there were an explicit action users would need to take to enable it, it wouldn't be such an issue (there may be (I don't know for sure) but I'd like that detail in the discussion here)?

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 9, 2014 1:37 UTC (Sun) by mjblenner (subscriber, #53463) [Link]

> Even Google does not list Ubuntu in it's distribution drop down for it's cloud [1].

Maybe, but it's an option:

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/operating-systems#u...

And I think you misunderstand 'paid'. I read it as saying you can't use those OS's without paying, not that you get more support.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 8, 2014 16:37 UTC (Sat) by mdeslaur (subscriber, #55004) [Link] (3 responses)

> But you know.. for the record.. can you point me to customer facing documentation that states that everything in main is supported by Canonical.. for future reference.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/FAQ#Official%20Support

"Packages in main and restricted are supported by the Ubuntu Security team for the life of an Ubuntu release, while packages in universe and multiverse are supported by the Ubuntu community."

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 9, 2014 15:12 UTC (Sun) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (2 responses)

That's about security updates which is not the same as supported as in 'I have a problem and I can call my support contact and get some help'.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 10, 2014 1:48 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

It's pretty obvious that you haven't actually had to use the 'commercial' support.

Ubuntu, ownCloud, and a hidden dark side of Linux software repositories (PC World)

Posted Nov 10, 2014 6:43 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

Yes, that's true :)