LWN: Comments on "Shuttleworth: N-imal?"

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

dlang — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:15:12 +0000

google is not selling an OSS desktop system, they are selling a phone that happens to do some tricks.

some of the apps packaged are worthwhile, but many of them boil down to taking a web application and redefining it as an app.

but you also can't claim that the linux approach of a package manager and a repository doesn't work and point at the android (or iphone) app store and say itdoes work, all the app store is is a repository for their package manager to work from.

now if android starts being used on tablets and netbook machines like people are predicting, I expect that there will be a shakeup among the apps, but I also expect that ubuntu and other desktop orientated linux distros will add one more package to their repository "Android App Store Client' that will allow the users to download and install the android apps (debian may not add it as it will not be free enough for them, but everyone else will)

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

drag — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:47:09 +0000

A) The choice is really not between what you say it is.

It's really:
Do I want shit to break a little bit all the time
vs
Do I want shit to break all at once.

Personally I use Debian unstable/testing model of 'shit breaking a little bit all time' since it's easier for me to deal with then upgrading with Fedora or Ubuntu.

B) This is a chronic issue with all of Linux and is far from unique with Ubuntu.

I am waiting for the day when people realize that Linux userspace sucks, that package management is a non-solution to developers not caring about ABI/API stability/quality assurance/and testing.. and they start to go back (en masse) to using Redhat/CentOS releases since it's actually designed to be used by people that need a OS for the real world.

Too bad the driver development model for Linux sucks for desktop users and takes a hugely to long for improvements in drivers to trickle back to actual users.

So sad. These things are things that need to be fixed.

-------------------------------------------

If you want a clue on how to do it... look at Android who are selling Linux handheld machines to users at a rate of over 200,000 a DAY and have more packaged software in Google's repositories then Debian would dream of ever having.

Leave it up to a major American corporation to show how to market a OSS platform to the general public. I would not be surprised that Google's version of Linux sells on more systems in a month that the GNU/Linux-based desktop has had serious installs (as in people actually using Linux as the main desktop OS and not just fiddling around with it)... ever.

To bad that Oracle sucks, and to bad that most people within the traditional Linux community refuse to acknowledge these facts. They could learn heavily from Google's overwhelming success at marketing a OSS system. Sure sure there are a few proprietary drivers and Google's applications that run on Android are closed and some phones use DRM to lock things down, but it's certainly a huge improvement over what was available previously. This is a huge win for Linux.

Ubuntu package uploaders ("commit access")

sladen — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:31:03 +0000

Perhaps you can recurse the following entry and get some of the information you're after, although I'd caution about making too many presumptions based purely on what email addresses somebody has registered:

launchpad.net/~ubuntu-dev/+members

One common misconception tends to be that all employees of Canonical are magically able to upload to the Ubuntu archivethis is not case; and Canonical-as-upstream submissions for inclusion into the distribution need to get packaged by, signed, and uploaded by one of the Ubuntu developers just as with other Debian/Ubuntu packages (who may, or may not, also happen to be employed by Canonical).

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

jspaleta — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:37:05 +0000

You want numbers? I'm more than happy to give you very detailed numbers on the number of fedora contributors with commit access for packaging work. I can even give you a break down of Red Hat versus external. Last time I looked it was more externals with commit access (with the caveat that its a hueristic based on information in the account system and there is no requirement that all Red Hat employees identify themselves as such in the system). I'd need a couple of days to dust off the scripts to pull that information from the Fedora Account System again.

Can someone volunteer to do that for Ubuntu packaging commit access with a breakdown of Canonical to external involvement?

There's a very significant difference in how packaging is done in Ubuntu versus Fedora or even Debian. Both Fedora and Debian put more stress on having a primary maintainer on each and every package...a person who is ultimately accountable for the welfare of a particular package. And while different in detail, both policies help self-regulate the number of packages as a function of the number of maintainers in order to keep a sustainable amount of workload across the repository structure. Ubuntu's loose team approach is significantly different and they have many more packages per committer and their contributor manpower is not growing apace. They can get by with this approach primarily beccause Debian has the tighter accountability model and they reuse much of the packaging work Debian in their merge process. There's no way Ubuntu's packaging process could scale if Ubuntu was a distinct distribution that was not leveraging Debian packages as a significant resource. The manpower situation is only going to get more complicated for Ubuntu if their plans for software center move forward and they allow application developers to short circuit their standing packaging submission and review process.

-jef

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

jengelh — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:37:30 +0000

It implies that Fedora actually _has_ the manpower.

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

NAR — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:02:24 +0000

Isn't this exactly the same that Fedora does? BTW currently my workstation runs a 30 months old kernel and I guess it won't be replaced for at least six months. The kernel actually was built more than 2 years ago.

Ubuntu release terminology

Felix.Braun — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:09:40 +0000

Yes, but luckily, Debian doesn't release very often, so there aren't that many codenames to keep track of. :-)

Ubuntu release terminology

Cato — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:41:23 +0000

Indeed - however, for Debian I really do have to make notes as to which release is which.

Ubuntu release terminology

holstein — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:59:12 +0000

Still, they are all in alphabetical order.

So it's still easy to figure which one is older/newer.

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

Cyberax — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:52:22 +0000

That beats Debian's "death crawl" (it's like death march, only much slower) and Gentoo/Arch's "continuous death".

At least, this way I get some predictability. Also, Ubuntu really doesn't have manpower to engineer release of ALL free software components (no one does). And even if Ubuntu had that power, then a lot of people would scream "not upstream friendly!" the minute Ubuntu ships their own 'released' software.

So yes, some sort of cadence is necessary.

Ubuntu release terminology

cowsandmilk — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:32:46 +0000

except for all the people still use the names afterwards when talking about releases, even if official Ubuntu communication switches, forums and such don't

Ubuntu release terminology

sladen — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:01:37 +0000

Quick reference for Ubuntu release terminology:

Ubuntu 04.10, released in October 2004
Ubuntu 05.04, released in April 2005
...
Ubuntu 10.04, released in April 2010
"Maverick Meerkat", likely to become Ubuntu 10.10 circa October 2010
"Natty Narwhal", likely to become Ubuntu 11.04 circa April 2010

If a codename is being used, it is in development and not out yet.

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

DOT — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:59:39 +0000

Would you like a biannual forced death march or a continuous forced death march? I'd favor the first, because then I can plan for it. The latter is bound to break my system some day, when I don't expect it, and at the absolute worst time.

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

jengelh — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:54:47 +0000

>this functional commons of code

[Citation needed].

Meanwhile, I point to http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/biannualforceddeathmarch/ that I recently discovered.

Shuttleworth: N-imal?

mikov — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:41:18 +0000

Am I the only one who cannot keep track of all Ubuntu release names? I have to go to the Wikipedia page every time to lookup the corresponding version. This is terribly counterproductive.