Ubuntu is under attack (longish)

[Anders Karlsson]

On 12/19/05, Old Rocker <old.rocker at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> On Monday 19 December 2005 09:42, Anders Karlsson wrote:
>
> > I don't get your, or Mike's, gripe. On one hand, you don't want
> > Debian for some reason, but when Ubuntu does not do exactly what
> > Debian does, there is something terrible going on and Ubuntu is under
> > attack. On the other hand, when you have installed Ubuntu, you are
> > making every effort to include as much of Debian as you can, editing
> > sources.list and installing this and that from the Debian
> > repositories, and then it is Ubuntu's fault when it breaks?
>
> One aspect of the philosophy of the Debian system is that the packages
> are in various repositories which signify their stability, and that all
> packages should be available with their dependencies.  Ubuntu is
> supposed to be part of the Debian system, which means that all packages
> should be available.

The philosophy of Debian - yes. But you are not using Debian, are you?
Ubuntu tries to maintain a closeness to Ubuntu, but from what I have
read, gives no guarantee about being 100% compatible. Rather there are
warnings saying the likelyhood of non-campatibility is rather high.

> You are talking as though Ubuntu is a completely different type of
> distro to Debian, which makes Ubuntu non-Debian.  In other words, it is
> a fork in Debian.  Much better to make Ubuntu a better installer and
> better front end to the Debian packages.

You are entitled to your opinion, and I'll defend your right to have
it, even if you are wrong. Ubuntu != Debian, and the sooner that is
cleared up, the better. IF you can install a Debian package in Ubuntu
(and vice versa) that has more to do with luck than intent. It is all
in the docs on the ubuntu webpages.

Ubuntu is based upon Debian, but it is not Debian. The updates, tweaks
and enhancements made to Ubuntu is available to the Debian developers
to include in Debian at their leisure. Ubuntu moves fast, apparently
to fast for some. I kind of like the Ubuntu "a new stable every six
months, like clockwork" rather than the Debian "oh, a stable - yeah,
sometime we'll get around to that I suppose, it's only been three
years...".

> It is Ubuntu's fault when fully compatible Debian packages break due to
> their not being compatible with the main core, because that is NOT why
> Debian was set up.  You should be able to edit the sources.list in
> apt-get and set pinning to ensure you get packages from the
> repositories you want; this is why it was included in apt-get.

No, it is not. It *may* work - installing Debian packages in Ubuntu,
but there are *no* guarantees about it working. If you expected it to
work, you did not read the docs.

You keep saying "fully compatible Debian packages", please show where
in the Ubuntu docs that is mentioned that it will always and forever
work flawlessly.

From what I remember, not even on Debian, and only Debian, was it
entirely safe mixing packages from different releases, let alone
distributions. (I remember severe problems with XFree86...)

> Now, if your argument is that Ubuntu and Kubuntu are fine and its just
> as you want, I can understand that.  However, I am concerned that the
> Debian system is being forked while this is happening.  As part of the
> open source community we should be working towards making less
> proliferation of the same packages, and making those packages better;
> wouldn't it be better if Ubuntu worked with the same packages as the
> Debian system?  Then we could all use the same packages....

Personally, I could not care less if some people want a flamewar about
a fork. Ubuntu != Debian.

Mark Shuttleworth et al, have done, and keep doing an enormous amount
of great work with Ubuntu. It is work that benefits Debian as well you
know. So you may want to go read Ubuntu's mission statements and
related docs...

It would be a lovely idea if everyone could use everyone elses
packages. How about settling what package format to use? RPM, v3 or
v4? Debians format? tar.gz? MINE?
Then there is the issue of *where* to install things. To FHS or not to
FHS. Look at Red Hat (ick!) and try and get them to conform...

What I am saying is, if you want to use Debian packages, install
Debian. More or less every package you find in Debian is available in
Ubuntu, with minor tweaks or subtly different dependencies. But they
are there. Why stubbornly insist "I believe I should be able to
install any Debian package in Ubuntu because I want to and if it
doesn't work I'll complain until blue in the face, even if there is a
Ubuntu version of the package that I could not be bothered to locate"
?

Excuse the sarcasm...

> In a recent article in the UK magazine "Linux Format" this was said:
>
> "There is tension between the Debian Project and its offspring,
> particularly the recent offshoot Ubuntu.  Debian developers have
> debated whether Ubuntu is actually a derivative or a more dangerous
> fork, and whether Ubuntu developers do enough to feed their changes
> back to Debian package maintainers."

It will have to stand for Linux Format and their reporter. I am sure
that if the Debian co-ordinators have a problem, they'll talk to Mark
directly.

> I'm not sure if that last point is true, but its a red flag, a pointer,
> to dangers ahead if Ubuntu and Debian continue to diverge.  It is
> certain that Ubuntu's development has all the signs of being a fork,
> which would be dangerous for the whole Debian community.

*sigh* It is a moot point, as Ubuntu is based on unstable, and a
re-sync happens every six months iirc. Give it a rest dude.

--
Anders Karlsson <trudheim at gmail.com>