The "It's Just a Desktop Distro" Problem

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 04:50:40AM -0500, jorge o. castro wrote:

> I was met with puzzled faces and one or two "I thought it was a desktop 
> distribution?" looks. I saw some mention of this `problem` in the irc 
> channel so I thought I'd bring it up. Does Ubuntu have a "desktop only" 
> image problem? I think so.
> 
> [ cut out 15 paragraphs of why this problem exists, but screw that, we 
> all know it's there, let's get to solutions ]

We discussed exactly this issue during the Marketing BOF at December's
Ubuntu conference.  The notes are sparse on this particular subject, but
they can be found here: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/UbuntuMarketing
We identified a couple of concrete things that we could do to try to address
this misconception:

1. Rename the 'custom' install to 'server' (Colin has already done this)

2. Create an Ubuntu "server edition" for Hoary, which (as I recall) would
essentially default to the server installation, rather than the desktop

> * Market the administrator-features better - Admins want NFS installers,
> minimal network installers that don't install everything, and more control
> overall. GDM popping up for a desktop user is great, but not on a server.
> The default desktop installation doesn't work for server stuff.
> Conservative admins are /bastards/, you say udev, kernel 2.6, hal, and
> dbus to a conservative server admin and they're having a heart attack.
> Personally, the 2.6.8 problems with XFS has ruled out Warty as a
> server-solution for me. On a random laptop that's no big deal, but man, on
> a server, that's unacceptable.

Everyone is conservative in different ways.  I don't let XFS anywhere near
my servers, but 2.6.x is a given, and I'm not concerned about udev either.
hal and dbus are only part of the desktop infrastructure, so server installs
don't get them by default.

I think the general thrust of your suggestion will be addressed by the
"server edition" discussed above.

> d-i has lots of expert options available, they should be more visible 
> for a server audience but can still be out of the way for the general 
> populace, perhaps a "server" boot option. Something like "expert" but 
> more geared towards server guys. Of course, experienced d-i guys know 
> how to do this stuff, but there's no easy way for a new admin to know 
> this stuff is possible.

Which options do you think would make sense to expose in a server
installation?

> * Server Tools - Some things just need tools. I can plop any competent 
> network administrator (even the non-linux ones) in front of YAST and he 
> can do most of it by just fumbling around. Things likes "DNS Server" and 
> "FTP Server" make it easy for new users to administer services. This 
> just isn't available in Ubuntu. One central administrative interface 
> where an admin can change things without even having to worry about the 
> OS would be nice.

If there are good tools which already exist, which we can integrate with
Ubuntu to provide "server in a box" functionality, this would be
interesting, but developing such tools from scratch is beyond the scope of
what we're doing at the moment.

I think we'll get more mileage by first targeting server admins who already
know what they want and how to do it, and giving them the simplicity that
they appreciate (server edition).  "Server in a box", and allowing less
experienced users to set up servers, would be a much longer-term
consideration.

> * Server Tools Part 2 - You know what rules about commercial server
> distributions? Management. For example, I can log into my Red Hat Network
> account, click 2 web form boxes, and apply security fixes on 10, 50, or
> 500 boxes, click apply, and it's done. Sure, I can script and cron this in
> Ubuntu, but it's not as simple or "Just Works". Take it a step further,
> give me nice LDAP integrations tools, give me something that will log onto
> an Active Directory network out of the box, give me something that will
> replace a Domain Controller with 2 or three clicks.  Give me Kerberos
> support for everything. Take a good hard look at what an Windows
> administrator can do with an Active Directory, and then look at at we have
> available. It's not even close, we're hurting. Novell has their stuff, and
> Red Hat has their newly acquired Netscape stuff ..  Naturally, this is
> tough, expensive work, but charge a fair price and see what happens. Ask
> anyone who runs a decent sized network, Single Sign on isn't trivial, give
> us a competitive solution. Give us something where I can sit there an tell
> my boss "We can move to Ubuntu for this set of services and have the same
> management capability that we already have in Windows". (Lofty goal, I
> know)

It is far too close to feature freeze to even consider anything like this
for Hoary, of course, but if you could document some specific proposals in
the wiki, they can be considered for the following release.  Perhaps
the functionality in update-{notifier,manager} could be extended in some
server-friendly ways (currently they're both desktop-oriented, but share the
same high-level goals).

> * Fix the "Fame" Problem - I can nearly name the entire Ubuntu desktop 
> team right off the top of my head. I can't name anyone on the server 
> team (although I'm guessing some people are members of both). We read 
> about all the cool desktop things and mockups on planet.gnome and 
> planet.debian yet there isn't someone blogging things like "I've got 
> Postgres 7.4.x in, and 8.x is prepped in the dev version, let's all go 
> get drunk!" We're reading about all the cool boot time improvements and 
> audio stuff from the Mataro conference, but where's the propaganda 
> helping me deploy Apache2 on Ubuntu?

I think that much of this is runoff from the "desktop-oriented distribution"
myth: the community sees much of the Ubuntu team as "desktop team" folks
because almost everyone has their hands on the desktop at some point.

There is a lot of work to be done in the way of determining what the
requirements would be to make Ubuntu a top-notch server platform in the eyes
of the community, both in terms of visibility and concrete features, and
this will be the initial focus of the server team.

> * Market the Debian Factor - I'm kind of unsure on this one, as Ubuntu is
> clearly its own distro, but as a long time Debian user though, I can't
> help but want to market the inherited features. Look at the forums and
> lists, lots of new users from other distributions. People need to know
> that debconf rocks for getting 90% of the server side stuff up and running
> for most use cases. How many people know that when in doubt, what they
> need to do is look in /usr/share/doc/$packagename? How many server admins
> out there are following some outdated Apache thing they found on google
> instead of letting apt and debconf do the hard work for them? Sure, lots
> of this is in the wiki and whatnot, but look at the typical "How to use
> Foo" on Oreillynet or Newsforge. Nine times out of then, the first 2 pages
> are how to install the program. LAMP takes 10 minutes to setup with apt in
> Ubuntu at most, market that strength!

This sounds like an area where the documentation team could get involved;
this kind of "marketing", I think, boils down to documentation (howtos and
the like) which happen to be targeted at server configuration and operation.

> * Be as bold server side as you are on the desktop - Hoary is packaging 
> GNOME 2.9. This naturally attracts people who want to bleed on the 
> desktop. How about some experimental PHP5 and PostgreSQL 8 stuff for the 
> server folk?

I don't think that exactly the same idea extends to the server market; as
you said earlier, server admins tend to be much more conservative, and
experimental development releases are frightening rather than exciting.

Some of our existing features aimed at stability are more appealing to the
admin in me:

- Time-based release cycle that you I schedule maintenance around
- Long support cycle that doesn't force me to upgrade immediately
- Clear and present commercial support

> * High Value User - A long time ago I heard a radio interview with 
> Brendan Eich, one of the mozilla.org guys, and he said something pretty 
> important, something he called the "high value user". The top tier of a 
> certain group, highly influential people. They targeted this group. 
> Things like other developers. It's no secret that Ubuntu is pro-Python. 
> There needs to be some upstream marketing here. Given Ubuntu's strong 
> use of Python, surely getting projects like Plone, Zope, Moin, and 
> others to promote Ubuntu as a premier Python platform would be a good 
> idea. You guys are doing all the Python work and integration anyway, 
> might as well drag upstream along with you. :) I can think of half a 
> dozen Sun, Red Hat, and Novell desktop people that have blogged about 
> how great the Ubuntu desktop is, yet I can't think of any server-side 
> guys who have even mentioned Ubuntu in the same light. Having them 
> publicly mention how great Ubuntu is a server and development platform 
> would be great. Target them!

We've talked some about this, but I'm very hesitant to try to actively
encourage people to do this; it ends up sounding hollow.  A genuine
testimonial is worth much more than one which requires prodding.
What do you think we can do to encourage this, without being disingenuous
about it?

If you or someone from the doc team could write up these points in the wiki,
I think it would make a great starting point for the server team.

-- 
 - mdz