Ubuntu is under attack

[Mike Bird]

On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 19:20, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 10:01:15AM -0800, Mike Bird wrote:
> An out of the box Ubuntu install will not generate any email.

An out of the box Breezy install will try to generate emails,
but will fail.  There's no obvious indication that the emails
are lost.  In Hoary they would have been delivered.

> Nothing is discarded.

If you had checked before breaking things, you would know that
this is false.  See above.

> If you install anything that generates email, then it is your 
> responsibility to ensure that you have something that will process that 
> mail.

Where is this new imposition documented?  Why make a change which
so directly conflicts with the goal that Ubuntu "Just Work" out
of the box?

> If it's considered a vital part of the package functionality, then 
> that will be described in the package dependencies.

So now newbies have to read the "dependencies" (by which you actually
mean "suggestions" and "recommendations") of several hundred
packages in order to determine how to finish their installations?
And the breakage can change arbitrarily and undocumented on each
release?  Unix was easier than this a quarter century ago.

> Postfix remains a 
> supported part of the Ubuntu distribution - the only difference between 
> the situation in Warty and the situation now is that it isn't installed 
> by default.

Which means that important system messages are discarded.  A newbie
should not need to know that they need to install and configure
an MTA in order to know that something needs attention.

Similarly, a sysadmin switching from any respectable Unix or Linux
to Ubuntu would unconciously assume the presence of a working mail
system.

Similarly, anyone who installed a bunch of great Hoary systems
would be somewhat annoyed when he or she lost data to a problem
on a Breezy system because of this dumbdowngrade.

People will lose their creations, their work.  You will lose karma.
Just stop breaking things you don't understand.  OK?

Oh, and before I forget, what else did you break in Breezy that
we haven't even noticed yet?

> However, it's *on the CD*.

Irrelevant.  The installer does not say "After finishing this
install we suggest you add Postfix if you don't want to get
fired for incompetence."

> The decision ...

What decision?  Where is it documented?  Who made it?

> ... not to install an internet daemon by default was taken in 
> order to provide increased security,

A daemon listening on 127.0.0.1 does not decrease security.  What
makes you think it does?

> and also to allow people who actually /need/ an MTA to configure it appropriately rather than ending 
> up with a (mostly useless) default configuration.

Your phrasing again indicates that you don't know what you're
writing about.  Postfix offers a choice of several basic
configurations during debconf and they are suitable for
almost all newbies, almost all desktops, and many servers.

Sure, sysadmins who want to make a secondary MX that's not an
open relay know that they've got a bit of work to do.  That's
no reason to cause hundreds of man years of effort to be lost
when the various default configurations are secure and cover
almost all cases.

> If you disagree with 
> any of the technical decisions, then please bring it up on ubuntu-devel. 
> However, if your only argument is that postfix should be installed by 
> default, then I'm afraid that it's not a situation that's likely to 
> change. If you feel that it's vital for a distribution to come with an 
> MTA as part of the default desktop install, then I'm sorry. Ubuntu isn't 
> for you. It never was.

You are again mistaken.  Ubuntu had MTA in default installations
until someone broke Breezy.  It is very easy to put Postfix and
Mailx back into the seeds for Dapper.  It's on the CD, it won't
take any more CD space, and (apart from maybe a little work on
the help text) Postfix installs well via debconf and provides
the configurations that newbies and most others need.

You have made not a single valid argument for dumbdowngrading
Breezy.  I am ashamed to see such white noise from a UCAM address.

--Mike Bird