Shuttleworth finally makes sense?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jimf Sep 09, 2006 1:57 PM EDT |
This is one of the first sensible things I've seen out of Mark Shuttleworth in the whole time since he started Ubuntu. Now, is it just talk? |
| tuxchick2 Sep 09, 2006 4:03 PM EDT |
The Debian world is a mess. Shuttleworth was being overly kind. Three years to Sarge? How many more years to Etch? That's not meritocracy, as so many Debian devs are fond of prattling- that's chaos and inefficiency. And it's going to stay that was as long as every dork with the tiniest connection to the Debian project feels like he has an equal say with the folks who actually have brains, skills, and are productive. Debian is crushing itself under its own weight. Committees don't keep things moving, they bog them down. Especially committees of thousands. Mr. Mark didn't have any specifics, it comes across like a peace offering, like some ruffled feathers need smoothing. If he can actually get that groaning heap of endless quibbling moving forward, that will be his finest achievement. |
| hiohoaus Sep 09, 2006 10:19 PM EDT |
Mark made a great deal of sense in his LCA2005 presentation at Canberra, which is more evidence that he talks straight (well, when he's not obviously intending a send-up). Debian may or may not be mess — I don't use it often enough myself to make a clear statement on the topic — but if Mark's being kind, it'll be for a good (non-trivial) reason. Or set of them. That boy is very bright. Not perfect, but certainly not someone who's ever safe to write off casually. |
| jimf Sep 09, 2006 11:25 PM EDT |
> How many more years to Etch? We have yet to see. It's not clear at this point whether or not they will be that far off schedule. As for being a mess, I'd agree that the committee thing is far too convoluted, but in spite of that, Debian has supplied the basis for all of the deb based derivatives and really continues to do that. For an experienced individual, I haven't found anything better with which to build a Linux desktop. They must be doing 'something' right. As for Ubuntu, a friend of mine just made a comment this evening on IRC which I find harsh, but, relevant. "Starting with a great code base (debian) - with a ton of money thrown at it (From Shuttleworth) - and with advertising that would make M$ proud - ubuntu STILL has produced nothing but (junk). They aren't on to anything except a fool's PC." Ubuntu has contributed, but, 'how much' is to me somewhat questionable. Shuttlesworth says " I believe that Debian’s breadth is too precious to compromise just because one person with resources cares a lot about a few specific use cases. We should not narrow the scope of Debian. The breadth of Debian, its diversity of packages and architectures, together with the social equality of all DD’s, is its greatest asset." Let's hope that he really understands what that means. |
| Scott_Ruecker Sep 10, 2006 1:58 AM EDT |
>Ubuntu has contributed, but, 'how much' is to me somewhat questionable.< It seems to me that what has happened is that an organization that has a person who can call the shots has taken the best of what an organization that has no person who calls the shots and focused it into a desktop that is usable by a wider audience. Debian is a great Distribution but for the inexperienced it can be overwhelming, it was for me. Ubuntu is just "same" enough that someone who has been using Ubuntu or Kubuntu(in my case) long enough can sit down in front of a Debian machine and they do not run off into the distance never to be seen again. As much as everyone loves Debian, it assumes that you know a thing or twelve about Linux, Ubuntu doesn't. Yes it assumes you know how to use a computer but not nearly as much as Debian. I know that once you get used to a Debian system you see the beauty of the design but to an inexperienced user it is lost on them. The beauty of what Ubuntu is doing is, they are essentially creating future Debian users. In that respect, it is a lot that they have given back. |
| wjl Sep 10, 2006 11:31 AM EDT |
It took me a while until I got it - or at least I think that I got "something". Plus I cannot speak for the Debian community, meaning the more or less loose (or tight) community of Debian Developers, since I'm no part of it. But this is what I think I saw so far: Debian is the universal operating system, as the webpage proudly claims, and that is not too far off a truth. It's like a Swiss Army knife, and can be made something for everyone. Yet it doesn't even try to be everything for everyone, because that attempt would be impossible anyway. So first of all, Debian is what it's developers - with all of their pride and joy - do for themselves: a great, stable, and very well thought-oud and laid-out operating system, capable of running your server for 1,001 night, or providing a desktop which is truly yours - if you can make something out of it. At some time, I read something which made me think. It was something like: why should my OS even try and please everyone and my grandma? Heck; I'm proud it is mine, and I don't care if not everyone can understand what I'm doing here - that was more or less the essence of it. And what is wrong with that approach, as long as *some* guys go and make Debian-Edu or Debian-Med or whatever out of it? Or Ubuntu? I'm following the discussion about a "steering commitee" with great interest, but the most sensible (IMHO) comment on it I read so far was something like: Hey, this is bottom-up, not top-down. We would lose a lot if we would change that. It's like Scott said maybe; it takes some time until you can see the beauty of it's design, but once you do that, you're "solid gone", to speak with Balou the Bear. Yes; releasing is maybe important, but using "testing" on the desktop and "stable" on servers is a great alternative to using (and reinstalling) other distributions, at least for me. Plus if you decide that you want to contribute, a one-liner makes "unstable" out of your "testing", so what? I've heard Mark from the DebConf 2005 videos, and live on this years' LinuxTag, and he's surely a great guy. But if he wants to even come remotely close to Debian's stability and quality, he would be well advised to take Etch (or "testing") as the base for Ubuntu - at least that has gone through *some* QA process. |
| tuxchick2 Sep 10, 2006 11:50 AM EDT |
I'm a long-time Debian user, and use Kubuntu as my main workstation. I also, once upon a time, thought I wanted to be a Debian contributor (howto writing and updating). What a mistake that was- I never encountered so much hostility and psychopathy in in my life. So what I see are three different worlds: 1. Debian the Linux distribution 2. Debian the development and maintainer community 3. The Ubuntu world When I say "Debian is a mess" I mean #2. Debian is a fine distribution, no doubt about it. But it's not even one-tenth of what it could be, because #2 is so dysfunctional. The Ubuntu team is doing a good job, and I hope some of that good energy transfers to Debian too. |
| wjl Sep 10, 2006 12:49 PM EDT |
tc2> "I'm a long-time Debian user, and use Kubuntu as my main workstation." No offense meant, Carla - I know you are, and I know you do. Maybe I got you wrong here... tc2> "2. Debian the development and maintainer community" tc2> "When I say "Debian is a mess" I mean #2." Thanks for clarification. I follow planet.debian.org and other resources several times a day, and maybe you know that for users I just started "thedebianuser.org" - also to sum up the most relevant topics there, or comment on something I saw, or to put compatibility tests/reviews etc, there. I'm still waiting for the email from my 1st interview partner - so the thing is not really like a monthly magazine, but still I try to contribute in making everything a bit more "transparent", or so. Please feel invited to contribute there as well, if your normal work allows you to. I think Debian is what we *all* make out of it... |
| jimf Sep 10, 2006 1:00 PM EDT |
> I hope some of that good energy transfers to Debian too. What I do hope that Ubuntu will transfer to Debian is the concept that users and developers all need to treat each other with a minimal of common courtesy. The Ubuntu community has 'gotten' and benefited greatly from it. Simply adapting that rule would eliminate a great deal of the hostility and infighting we still see in Debian without effecting the hallowed structure of development. Let's remember that when I first tried Debian in (about 98-99) one got their head bitten off for even asking a question. That attitude has changed significantly, so, I have hope for the rest of it. |
| SFN Sep 11, 2006 6:50 AM EDT |
Quoting:it comes across like a peace offering, like some ruffled feathers need smoothing Yes. Martin Krafft detailed the ruffling here: http://blog.madduck.net/debian/2006.05.24-ubuntu-and-debian We had a pretty good discussion about it here: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/64513/index.html |
| tuxchick2 Sep 11, 2006 7:38 AM EDT |
heh, something I noticed a long time ago that still hasn't changed- http://www.ubuntu.com/ contains no mention whatsoever of Debian. It says "Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system". If you dig around a bit you'll find an inside page http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/relationship that damns Debian with faint praise. Whatever problems Debian has, it's a phenomenal distribution that pioneered dependency-resolving, reliable release updates (you still can't reliably upgrade Red Hat, as often as not you end up doing a complete reinstall) and supports more hardware architectures than any other linux distribution. They've done pioneering work for longer than Mr. Shuttleworth has been spending mass quantities of money. Maybe it's not such a big deal, but I think it would be nice for all these enthusiastic Ubuntu noobs to understand the history a little better. |
| Sander_Marechal Sep 11, 2006 2:52 PM EDT |
I think I'm about the typical guy that Marc has brought back to Debian. I started out with the first Ubuntu, brushed my Linux skills on that (and on some FreeBSD server at work) and eventually started programming for it too (having to unlearn many things I learned on Win32 coding). Now I'm maintaining my software for Debian, have joined the Debian pkg-gnome team (just getting my feet wet in there) and I may even end up joining Gnome in November (If I get lucky). For what I have seen so far, Debian isn't as dysfunctional as people claim. There's lots of discussion on the mailing lists and progress may seem slow, but I do see good signs of progress everywhere. If there's one problem on Debian that I have run across then it's this: information overload. The Debian collective has information going back many years and they produce reams of new information every day. Just keeping up with it can be hard work, let alone if you just drop in as someone wanting to help developing and maintaining. It literally takes *month* to do the required reading. Hell, I haven't even finished myself and I've been at it since March/April or so. Trying to simply keep up with it all and actually contributing something back must be hard work too. And if you don't, you get the "we just discuss that. Please read up before asking question X" answer because someone else *has* kept up. As for Ubuntu, they have problems on their own. There's a disconnection between the users and the developers and the developers clearly have trouble keeping up with the flood of new users that Marc's marketing budget is drawing in - resulting in unresponsiveness. Anyway, these are my findings from throwing myself to the lions 5 or so months ago. Probabely not *the* problems, but this is what it looks like coming in as the new guy. |
| wjl Sep 11, 2006 9:54 PM EDT |
Sander, that's an impressive "career" in a very short time; congrats on that. For me, it's a similar problem of "information overload". For instance: my Sid at work just broke somehow, while the one at home runs fine. When it comes up, it says something about "netdev" (still have to figure that out), it starts with an American keyboard layout instead of German now, and X doesn't see a mouse, so it won't start as well. So, no network (unless I manually ifup eth0), no German keyboard, no graphics. Now this is something I can live with, and it's actually even *fun* to find out what happened, and which new packages (compared to Etch on the same box) just came in. It's definitely *not* end-user stuff, that much is clear. But the thing is: in Sid, at least I see all these boot messages, even if it's only for a short moment, while (x)Ubuntu with all its nice "polished" boot would leave me pretty much in the dark - which has happened. Now if I'm kind of a "power user" or something, and try to figure out things and contribute back to the Debian developers, that's fine. But Mark still has a totally different group of users as his "target group", and for them a non-functional X-window system would be a showstopper. Thus I still think that he (or they) would probably be better off forking off "testing" than taking "unstable", just to have the latest and greatest. Just more beta-testers like me in the game, you know? Of course, this is Mark's or Ubuntu's decision, but I think they could make their own life easier... and probably the one of their users as well. Plus: a feedback from an Ubuntu derived off Etch would be profitable for Debian as well - maybe these two groups could actually join somehow in the bug squashing parties, until both products (both Etch and (x)Ubuntu) are really stable, and ready for something called "Long Term Support"? Just my two cents... |
| Sander_Marechal Sep 11, 2006 10:11 PM EDT |
> that's an impressive "career" in a very short time; congrats on that. Thanks, but it really isn't. I haven't done all that much yet, just soaking up information and trying to find my place in the larger community while maintaining my own packages :-) > in Sid, at least I see all these boot messages, even if it's only for a short moment, while (x)Ubuntu with all its nice "polished" boot would leave me pretty much in the dark - which has happened. Yup, that has bothered me too. I can understand it for an end-user desktop system, but it would be very handy if there was a quick and easy way to turn off the boot splash and see the output of the boot process. > Mark still has a totally different group of users as his "target group", and for them a non-functional X-window system would be a showstopper. True, but most of his target users will be running the stable version, as opposed to Debian where many non-devs will happily run testing or unstable. One thing I have wondered about is what kind of developers Ubuntu attracts. It could be that all the focus on end-user desktop bling is only attracting developers willing to work on that bling, and not enough devs willing to do the low level stuff to stabilize the debian unstable fork. At least, as far as community devs are involved. Paid devs are a different breed in this respect. |
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