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- inactive, on 11/17/2008, -4/+145Dude1 : "I'm thinking of releasing a new distro"
Dude2 : "Really? Cool what's the distro's angle? What are it's strengths?"
Dude1 : "Well it's based on Ubuntu, but, BUT its got a black theme"
Dude2 : *face palm*
Its getting to be a problem now. - benologist, on 11/17/2008, -3/+66Changelog 1.0.000001alpha:
- changed logo
- search/replaced "Ubuntu" with our name
Looking for testers. - Vadi0, on 11/17/2008, -1/+50"Unlike other Ubuntu forks, we have codecs pre-installed!"
- ProxyContin, on 11/17/2008, -0/+43wait a minute ... isn't ubuntu a fork of debian?
is this a forking pattern? - stevensj2, on 11/17/2008, -8/+43And people wonder why Linux isn't mainstream?
Guy: "Hey, you should get linux! It's better than Windoz LOL!"
New Guy: *Googles Linux*
----- 172,364,252 Search Results: Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, Gentoo, Redhat, SuSE, YellowDog, DSL, ......,Fedora...
New Guy: "Erm..uh...Which Linux should I use, what's the difference?"
Guy: "Dude! Get Ubuntu! It totally rox!
New Guy: *Googles Ubuntu*
------54,236 Search Results: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Fluxbuntu, Bluebuntu...Zubuntu
New Guy: "Wh..but..Which Ubuntu should I use? What is the difference between, say Ubuntu and Kubuntu and Fluxbuntu??"
Guy: "Easy! You see, the main basic difference is the which desktop environment and window manager is being used. It is either KDE, Gnome, XFCE, or Fluxbox."
New Guy: *Googles KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Fluxbox*
-----826,452,372,418 Search Results
****HEAD ASPLODE****
I understand the power of choice, and the right tool for the right job.
But there comes a point when things have gotten out of hand. That point was a long time ago. - Ki77erB, on 11/17/2008, -2/+37Future plans:
-replace wallpaper
-change theme from brown/orange to black/purple - ohmysac, on 11/17/2008, -1/+35Also, don't forget the forks that fork...forking forks.
- inactive, on 11/17/2008, -0/+26To be fair, I have used Linux Mint in the past and it is quite nice. A lot of the nuisance of installing Ubuntu is eliminated.
That said, I'm running Kubuntu 8.10 now ;) - mickstephenson, on 11/17/2008, -1/+25To my mind it should not be called a distribution unless you have your own repositories and build all of the packages yourself. Piggy backing on someone elses repos isn't distributing ergo you don't have a distribution. Linux Mint for example is not a distribution.
- McNally, on 11/17/2008, -4/+25> Dude1 : "Well it's based on Ubuntu, but, BUT its got a black theme"
> Dude2 : *face palm*
And hence we shall call it.. Facebuntu!
Seriously, though, you've hit the nail on the head. - harlowsmonkeys, on 11/17/2008, -0/+18Buried for calling these forks "attacks". That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of free software--the right to fork is one of the most basic rights of free software, and exercising that right is not an attack.
- vinceislegend, on 11/17/2008, -1/+17I always figured customizability to be one of the main facets of using Linux. I don't understand the issue with customized versions of an outstanding distro. They cater to more specific crowds, making them better suited to those people than something developed by people trying to cater to everyone, but I use Mint and I am quite happy with it.
Just so long as they don't claim to be original. As far as I can tell, all of these say, very straightforwardly, "Ubuntu-based". - jemka, on 11/17/2008, -0/+16Fork you.
- wolferz, on 11/17/2008, -1/+16Actually it's been a problem for a while. The whole "if you don't like the direction the product is going fork it" thing is good and all but it's done excessively. In theory this methodology should result in rapid improvement and evolution of projects. In practice it does the opposite.
The end result is the "barely controlled chaos" most industry experts talk about when referring to open source. Chaos is inefficient. It achieves little with great effort. By constantly forking new distro's and applications that will likely be defunct in a year or two resources that could be put into improving the original project are wasted and very little if anything is gained. Occasionally such forks produce an idea or code that gets used in the original project... but more often than not it is just a massive waste of effort and one more defunct project taking up space on various cvs repositories.
This is why Linux as a whole, the community behind it, the applications that run on it, and the distros that are packaged with it, is evolving very slowly while proprietary products such as Windows and Mac OS continue to evolve more rapidly (though still far slower than they should). Most changes to how various Linux Distros work and even look, whether you consider them improvements or not, have been taken from Windows, Mac OS, and (obviously) BSD... not from forks. Obvious exceptions include package managers (first one of which I believe was Debian's apt-get) and... yeah that's it.
I think the main cause for this is that there are so many forks of every project and even forks of forks of forks... that it's essentially white noise. No one notices as 50 new projects are started and promptly collapse to be replaced by 50^2 the next month, 50^4 the next, and 50^8 the next. Another reason is because a lot of Linux proponents and, by extensions, open source proponents, refuse to admit when things can be done better.
The solution is to exert better control over who can fork what and for what reason. Such restrictions would give some direction to the largely directionless open source world. Of source such directions are also antithetical to the core principles of open source and as such will never happen.
And before some one says it... yes I have used Linux recently... in fact I'm using Linux right this second. I've been using Linux for years. I *LIKE* Linux. I just don't delude myself on what its weakness' are (including the weakness' it inherits from being open source). I also don't pretend it's made huge advancements that it hasn't. - shredswithpiks, on 11/17/2008, -0/+15Is ubuntu considered a debian fork?
- Maratonda, on 11/17/2008, -2/+17If your head is going to explode, just don't google anything.
GNOME works without you knowing it is a Desktop Environment as KDE and the likes are...
It's like going to a library and whine about the number of books there are in the library. - familynight, on 11/17/2008, -0/+12It's all just one big clusterfork.
- onux16, on 11/17/2008, -0/+12So it's Mint?
- PennFarmer, on 11/17/2008, -1/+12I will admit that this is the most unusual Ubuntu fork I have ever heard of.
- sigmaman2, on 11/17/2008, -2/+11Someone should come out with an "Ubuntu Pr0n Edition", with all R,X, and XXX themes.
Instead of Dolphins inside your spinning Compiz cube, you could have strippers, or Hot Coffee! - HonoredMule, on 11/17/2008, -0/+9Ubuntu IS a fork from Debian.
But I don't believe it is considered merely a derivative anymore, as it has diverged a fair bit at this point. - nrox653, on 11/18/2008, -0/+9Wasn't Ubuntu a fork of Debian in the first place?
- habbofresh, on 11/17/2008, -1/+10*head asplode *
- benologist, on 11/17/2008, -5/+14- complete compatibility with all windoze software and games.... if u no c or c++ plz email
- zsz7, on 11/17/2008, -0/+8I wouldn't call bombing noobs a helpful activity
- sigmaman2, on 11/17/2008, -0/+8I dugg your comment, but I think I got an answer for you too. I think it's the "fast food" mentality that users and forkers may share.
McD's, Wendy's, Burger King, Carl's Jr, etc. all serve burgers. They just serve them in different ways. Maybe they cook differently, have different condiments, whatever. It's still basically ground beef in a bun.
The same way, all the 'Buntus are basically Debian. You just get to pick how your Debian is put together to your taste. - RoboRay, on 11/17/2008, -0/+8What a forking mess...
- Chakat, on 11/17/2008, -0/+8Yep. Forking's pretty common in the Linux world. Mandriva was a fork of RedHat, beryl was a fork of compiz that was later merged back in, egcs was a fork of gcc which supplanted it.
- cptmichael101st, on 11/17/2008, -3/+10wait, this isn't a story about open source silverware??
- nickert0n, on 11/17/2008, -7/+14Want me to cut your meat for you too?
http://home.maine.rr.com/mattyg/wambulance.jpg - inactive, on 11/17/2008, -0/+6:(){ :|:& };:
- Grazfather, on 11/17/2008, -1/+7ubuntu is built of a debian. It's different.. somehow.
- fluxion, on 11/17/2008, -0/+6at which point you read up on KDE, Gnome, XFCE, and Fluxbox and look at some screenshots, and decide which one works for you.
eventually you'll realize that it didnt really matter all that much which one you picked, it was just a quicker way of getting up and running. - HonoredMule, on 11/17/2008, -0/+6Forks are a great way to fix something that is /systematically/ wrong, like "users are idiots" being a guiding principle in UI design when professionals need a more functional or productive UI, or having every trivial piece of configuration data and it's uncle right in the top-level user directory instead of having some semblance of organizational structure for /all/ application data, or still depending on an init system that was only just functional back in the stone age that conceived it.
Forks also help satisfy very specific needs or uses, such as Nexenta using the Solaris kernel to bring proper native ZFS support to GNU. - ethana2, on 11/18/2008, -0/+6When they ask which Ubuntu, I just tell them Ubuntu.
Frick, I don't even tell them about linux in the first place. If they care about choice, they can figure all that crap out later. Ubuntu. - orias6891, on 11/17/2008, -0/+6"Fork me? FORK YOU!!"
- mstrebe, on 11/18/2008, -0/+6You totally miss the point of evolution.
99.9% of all members of a species are different only in superficial ways, such as the width of their nose or the shade of their skin. So be it. It costs the species little to have these variations.
The people who fork ubuntu to make facebuntu >are not capable< of producing "the next linux"--they're mashers and mixers, not creators. That's perfectly fine, it's their niche. But it costs Linux nothing to have thousands of forks of Ubuntu. None of them are going to replace the cannonical version (hey!).
But, out of the blue, some kid in a basement in Montana is going to get pissed of at the way executive forking works and decide to implement copy-on-write XEN virtualized processes that turn Linux into a security fortress, or something like that. Like all the facebuntus, this guy won't have any idea how hard it's going to be. Unlike them, he'll be a mutant genius with persistence and come up with something truly new and useful.
Of course it'll look like crap because he's got actual skills, but then the throng of facebuntus will flock over to his creation, and evolution will have actually occurred.
Mutations come from variation and uncontrolled expressiveness NOT from "exerting better control." You want better control, you get Vista. "Directionless work" isn't actually work, it's play. It's never going to be productive except by random accident. You can't take a pimply faced teenager who wants to make the Darjeeling Teabuntu and "direct" him to work on a process manager instead. Firstly, he wouldn't do it, and secondly, he doesn't have the skill (and never will).
But your position is exactly why the the well meaning communist revolution turned into a Stalinist nightmare. - hamobu, on 11/17/2008, -1/+6There is also Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Satanic Ubuntu.
- inactive, on 11/17/2008, -5/+10I guess forking is a way for people to learn the inner workings of Linux. These forks however, are just plain rip off attempts. Ride the coat tails until they rip right off.
- djbon2112, on 11/18/2008, -0/+5For 6: "imgburn". Google it.
ISO is a standard format, and an easy way to distribute the images. Face it.
EDIT: And, I just checked. Googling "free iso burner" turns up imgburn as the 5th result. Are people nowadays really getting that lazy? - Grazfather, on 11/17/2008, -0/+5fork bomb omg
I'm guessing - skyshock1, on 11/17/2008, -0/+5So long as well-designed software is back-ported it's not really a problem then is it?
- MikeBasinger, on 11/17/2008, -0/+5As long as people send bugfixes upstream to Ubuntu... Debian.. etc... forks are not bad and can benefit everyone.
- djbon2112, on 11/17/2008, -1/+6I don't know, I do find Linux Mint significantly fast than Ubuntu. Opening Firefox from takes about 2 seconds longer in Ubuntu than in Mint, among other things. It's more than just a skinned Ubuntu.
- speaker219, on 11/17/2008, -0/+5This isn't exactly the best place.
- HonoredMule, on 11/17/2008, -1/+6The forking "problem" (and to an extent, it is /sort of/ a problem) isn't fixable. The alternative is a direct attack on intellectual freedom.
But the real problem isn't forking--it's /merging/. And that could be helped by more aggressively standardizing things and also lowering the resistance to "upgrading" standards. Tons of effort, for example, has been put into developing newer init systems that startup faster and/or make processes/services work more intelligently by maintaining dependency relationships (like with software installation) and using editable milestone meta-services (like meta-packages) instead of runlevels. So why don't we have such systems /actually running/ in major distros? Because such deviation from sysVinit is "breaking the rules." As a result, much better init systems can't gain any traction with package maintainers, outside distros, or anything else whose cooperation might be needed. Meanwhile, systems like Solaris have awesome startup/service management that puts the whole init.d mess to shame.
apt-get is another good example...sure, we eventually got it, but how painfully long did it take? Not only that, but by the time there was any kind of package management standard, there were something like 2-3 well-established yet totally incompatible systems filling that role, and it is taking an eternity again to build some cross-distribution compatibility into these systems, or make packages portable between (for example, .deb and .rpm).
Standards are supposed to unify development AND drive it forward, but with Linux, it seems to spend more time holding it back, and only that long after it's too late to be any unifying help. - Chakat, on 11/17/2008, -0/+4A lot of it has to deal with personal preference. My roommate has Mint installed on their laptop and I can see a lot of the advantages over synaptic and the like. The Linux market right now is capitalism at it's finest, low barriers to entry, lots of players, which all lead to a better project.
- CrimsonFlash, on 11/18/2008, -1/+5I like LinuxMint. Better than standard Ubuntu actually. Was my "linux" distro of choice for a long while before I ditched it for a Mac/Windows box. :)
- Chakat, on 11/17/2008, -1/+5That's not capitalism, that's corporate welfare. There's a difference.
- cosmicr, on 11/17/2008, -0/+4why dont you try a tech forum? but it sounds like the cable's either broken or not plugged in properly.
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