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121 Comments
- ToadLeg, on 05/21/2008, -4/+71Shuttleworth founded Ubuntu, which is a pretty big accomplishment. Maybe one of the good things about open source programming is that someone like Shuttleworth can come up with new ideas without fear of being fired, and people can test them and send feedback to let him know how boneheaded the ideas may be before they cause a disaster. It would not be good if the leaders of Linux and FOSS become afraid to come out with new and bizarre ideas.
- JSatt, on 05/21/2008, -21/+62Sounds like Shuttleworth is getting a little big for his britches. Who does he think he is, Linus?
Time-based release cycles are just one of the problems that plagues windows. They're too worried about getting the product out on time and end up shipping an incomplete product, i.e. Vista. I would rather wait an extra couple of months for my next version of SuSE so long as I know that it's going to work likes it's supposed to. - weizbox, on 05/21/2008, -3/+33'I think the merging of Linux major distributions is more important'
Thank god not many people think like you :) I personally love the diversity of Linux distros. - brettalton, on 05/21/2008, -2/+27@ToadLeg
Someone digg this man up!
@JSatt
Also, don't forget, he was a Debian maintainer for a number of years in the 90's. He's not as unknown as some may think, but no, he's no Linus Torvalds. - brettalton, on 05/21/2008, -5/+23Aaron Seigo (a KDE programmer) stated that development was more important than integration? Of course he did! He's a developer while Ubuntu deals with integration. Also, its not like KDE can talk, their 4.0 release wasn't exactly peaches and cream either. Everyone is waiting on 4.1 just like businesses running Ubuntu are waiting for 8.04.1.
- cesclaveria, on 05/21/2008, -3/+19for next time, it is a good practice to have your home folder on a separate partition. so you can mess around with your OS without fear of losing your files. (I guess this could apply to windows also)
- inactive, on 05/21/2008, -4/+18How about a unified package system for all linux distros. Similar to how an exe, or dmg works for windows/mac. Instead of having so many different package types for linux.
- jcannonb, on 05/21/2008, -4/+16The reality is the many different distros is one of the reasons why companies like Adobe don't put out Photoshop etc... Which platform do you aim for binary compatibility on?
I personally prefer Fedora/CentOS/RHEL, but Ubunutu has made a single binary distribution quite popular, which is why we are starting to see more things 'made for Ubunutu'. Linux needs a little unification if it is going to become truly a mainstream desktop for 'everyone' to use, and not just the geeks and nerds. - marx2k, on 05/21/2008, -0/+10Accomplishment: My mom knows what Ubuntu is. She does not know what Debian is
- inactive, on 05/21/2008, -2/+12I prefer rolling updates...it's easier to find out what went wrong when I update and something breaks. When I updated to Hardy on my desktop, I had a whole load of trouble and didn't even know where to begin to fix them...so i just backed up my home folder and went back to gutsy.
- brettalton, on 05/21/2008, -0/+10Why are people burying cesclaveria?
You *should* mount /home or 'My Documents' on a separate partition, that way, if the OS gets bricked, your documents are saved and you only have to wipe the OS partition instead of backing everything up, then wiping, then restoring your documents. - staeiou, on 05/21/2008, -0/+9It already has. IBM employs over 600 people full time to do nothing but write GPL code. They've made substantial contributions not only to Linux, but Apache, PHP, Samba, and OO.org. You know JFS, the filing system? They wrote pretty much that whole thing and then GPLed it.
They say that it has been well worth the investment, as they avoid the Microsoft tax and have become the place for Linux-loving IT people who want to buy hardware. And as Linux becomes a better OS, they get more customers, so they have an interest in making the OS objectively better. See http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/community.html - inactive, on 05/21/2008, -0/+9Hardly an accomplishment? It's the number one distro out there! It's based on Debian, we know that, but how does that change the facts? Too many people have come to the Linux (and FLOSS) world through Ubuntu, that's an accomplishment.
- KillSudo, on 05/21/2008, -2/+10Who told you that when KDE4.0 was released that you where getting peaches and cream? I defiantly remember them saying that 4.0 was a current snapshot of code that was of enough quality to be a .0 release. They never even hinted at it being ready for production use except to show off what they where spending time on and to allow a massive flood of bug reports. The release worked as planned and they were able to immediately start fixing bugs and seeing where "the people" wanted it to head. If you disagree with Mr. Seigo I would like to here why. Since when did the wishes of the distributions override the wishes of developers that are working for free and mostly in their spare time? When people contribute at will you can't set hard dates. Mr. Seigos proposition that everyone else get together and pull KDEs trunk and determine when they think its right for release sounds like a much better plan that benefits everybody. If there are simple bugs that are not being tackled because of bigger issues but a distro wants to release right now with the current feature set and stability then why can't they track down the bugs and fix them while submitting the patches back to kde to become official? Sounds like everyone wins then.
- colto, on 05/21/2008, -1/+9And even despite so Vista was still very delayed.
- banmaster, on 05/21/2008, -2/+9Then it would have to be 'un-free' then wouldn't it. People generally want a return on their money.
- inactive, on 05/21/2008, -4/+11and this is why people like debian and slackware. its ready when its ready
- WhereAmI, on 05/21/2008, -0/+7Excluding Diggs servers. And if you use a Linksys router I've got news for you...
- stix213, on 05/21/2008, -4/+10I prefer software to be released when it is ready.... not by an arbitrary release cycle time-line. This allows time for bigger features to be implemented and fully tested (longer release) and smaller features to be added, tested, and released faster.
But what do I know.... Maybe it is better to just release a buggy version early because the calender tells you to - or even better, to just drop revolutionary features because they can't fit into the schedule from the Linux gods.... - duderdude, on 05/21/2008, -0/+6Millions of dollars are already being poured into Open Source/Linux development. Ubuntu, Redhat, Suse, Xandros, Mandrake are all commercial entities. Plus, thousands of lines of code are being contributed from companies like IBM, Sun, QT, and hundreds of others. Then on top of that, think about all of the Web 2.0 companies like Digg, Google, and Yahoo who really almost exclusively on LAMP stack software and contribute tons of stuff back to the community. It's big money.
- fredmv, on 05/21/2008, -1/+7Yeah, that's why NASA uses it.
And Google.
And the U.S. Army.
Go crawl back under your rock. - inactive, on 05/21/2008, -0/+6The problem with this is that, no matter which distrobution you support, someone, somewhere will port it to another distro. Hell, portage can work on Ubuntu if you want it to
- Manther, on 05/21/2008, -1/+6JSatt, I don't think he's trying to force anyone's hand in putting something out every April and October here. Some of the major distros already have a 6 month release cycle, and I think Shuttleworth is just trying to take the initiative and try to get them all on the same 6 months. He's not saying 'bump your next release up 6 months to match my company,' he's even said that he'll move the Ubuntu release to accommodate the unification. He's looking out for everyone's best interest, IMHO, with each distro coming out at the same time, with all the same 'newest' features, we'll all be on the same page no matter which one we choose. Personally I think it's a great move.
- stargatesteve, on 05/21/2008, -0/+5You clearly do not understand the mindset of developers. When I come home from a 8 to 5 job, I find it quite relaxing to program on a pet project. I have had the opportunity to see two pieces of code that do something very similar; one was developed by an employee I worked with, and one was developed by a programming hobbyist from ukraine. The one from Ukraine was much more efficient, more stable, and generally better featured than the in-house version we made.
I would recommend that you do some dev work sometime to actually understand both it, and the people who enjoy doing it. - brettalton, on 05/21/2008, -13/+18I think the merging of Linux major distributions is more important, but less doable.
I'd be able to do without a merger if PolicyKit went through, and there was a universal way to install software on all systems. - marx2k, on 05/21/2008, -1/+6Alien eats rpms for breakfast and spits out broken debs.
- Purin, on 05/21/2008, -0/+5There is a universal way to install software on all systems.
It's called compiling. - Stroggoth, on 05/21/2008, -1/+6And Firefox is just Mozilla with some UI added. Open source is all about taking ideas and code from commercial and open source and branding it your own.
- jcannonb, on 05/22/2008, -0/+4The packager choice isn't the issue. Kernel's vary between distro's, which means a much greater likely hood that compiled product on kernel A will not work on kernel B. Yes, open source doesn't matter, because you can just recompile, but companies like Adobe are not going to OpenSource CS.
Apple would probably port iTunes to Linux if it could find a binarily sound way to distribute it and get ~90% of the linux market. I know I would prefer native iTunes support for my iPhone. - Tyr7BE, on 05/21/2008, -4/+8The guy just suggested one package system, and you brought up three potentials. This is exactly the problem. If everyone used deb, there would be no differing package formats.
It seems your comments so far are advocating everything that most people see as wrong with Linux today. - kazamx, on 05/22/2008, -0/+4Isn't there really just the choice of RPM and .Deb? that would cover like 90%+ of linux users.
- init100, on 05/23/2008, -0/+4"I'd really like to see Fedora swallow its pride and just move to deb."
And I'd really like to see the Debian and Ubuntu crowds swallow their pride, drop apt and deb, and move to yum and rpm. After all, it's the standard format of the Linux Standard Base. - stargatesteve, on 05/21/2008, -2/+6terrible. People currently develop it for fun, or because they want to. I would rather have someone develop something because they want to, rather than they were paid to.
- inactive, on 05/21/2008, -0/+4Mark has a point, he came out with that idea because he thinks that it would be good for the Linux marketing, the announcements will be bigger and most people will be aware of the existence of Linux no one can argue with that, what is uncertain is what would be the quality of the final product.
"Ubuntu 8.04 demonstrates why strict schedules are undesirable"
I love how Arstechnica is smashing Ubuntu and Mark for the quality of the Hardy release :) I just hope that they wake up in the next release. - kleverness, on 05/22/2008, -0/+3I think the real solution to this problem is to come up with a tool (with Qt and GTK frontends) which manages the packages and has multiple backends for every package type so the user doesn't have to worry about this.
This project exists: http://www.packagekit.org/pk-intro.html
Hope they succeed :) - stargatesteve, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3not always. Thus Sid.
- stargatesteve, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3oh, I know. I personally love the testing distro. LOVE IT!!! In the least perverted human-computer way possible.
- inactive, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3arch and freeBSD are both really nice in that respect
- Tyr7BE, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3"all of its features were created because someone wanted a feature that didn't exist yet"
"It was not created for noobs"
That's pretty much what Ubuntu is all about. They put together something user friendly for noobs (and pretty much any desktop user in general). This is someone saying "linux doesn't have any features for noobs, I'm going to add that".
I think you need to understand that Linux was created to be whatever people want it to be. As you say, it evolves. If people want it to be user friendly, it will be user friendly. If people want it to be secure, it will be secure. If people want good networking, it will develop good networking. If people want all of the above, it will acquire all of the above. - krnldmp, on 05/21/2008, -2/+5Linux will never need any such thing.
- inactive, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3sure but even so. running sid is your choice. im not a debian user myself but im sure many people like its rigorously tested stable and testing braches
- watcht, on 05/22/2008, -0/+3Synchro releases are good and bad, you got this nice entacipation from the crowd of users, and supporter love. At the same time you get a deadline stress and other pressures on devolpers, programmers, coders, etc. and some features get cut, bugs dont get ironed out, and you sorta get something like when Hardy first came out.
However opposite can be said on released when finished, users get pissed and start not caring anymore, but the build team is nice and relaxed. Sometimes this can be overdone, like Duke Nukem Forever - javaroast, on 05/22/2008, -0/+3They already have a common executable format. Has been around for a long time now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkab ... - peestandingup, on 05/21/2008, -5/+8Nothings wrong with having timed release cycles. Apple does it all the time & gets it right for the most part. MS just sucks at it.
- Tyr7BE, on 05/21/2008, -3/+6I've yet to find a piece of software that doesn't offer a deb package. I'd really like to see Fedora swallow its pride and just move to deb. That would more or less settle things and let people get on with actual work.
- WhereAmI, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3KDE 4.0 did that and look how pissed Linux users got.
- Tyr7BE, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3Yes that's right. Money makes things terrible.
Personally, I would rather have someone who loves what they do devoting a minimum of 8 hours per day to a project than have them come home from another job already tired and sick of the computer, to poke away half-assedly at a project for a few hours in the evening.
There's no rule that says you can't want to work on something and get paid to do it at the same time. - stargatesteve, on 05/21/2008, -0/+2That kind of thing is not intimidating. all linux distros use the same basic software, the only difference is what libraries and software they choose to install. Other than that, they are (mostly) the same.
And the very thing that makes linux so attractive is the fact that anyone _can_ just come along and make their own distribution. If they were rolled together, it would become very Microsoft-ish. - Tenoq, on 05/21/2008, -3/+5Yeah... so in the end we got basically a re-hashed XP, with some security upgrades, a pretty GUI and a (IMO) ***** up audio architecture that made Creative a monopoly for gaming sound again.
Seems like ***** all was done for the 5 year wait. Just think how far Linux has come in 5 years. -
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