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The benefits of instability

There has been considerable discussion of Ubuntu by Debian developers, and LWN [sub], amongst others.

I have one additional observation: Debian's so-called inability to release may be a key to Debian's success.

Free software projects get the most benefit from community testing just before and just after a release. Few people other than the developers and the most hardcore users want to use an outright experimental branch, so those things never get much testing. Conversely, a truly stable release tends to find a decreasing number of bugs over time, and so get less benefit from the high number of users testing it.

Projects get the most benefit from having a large number of users trying out code that has lots of bugs to find, but that is not so buggy as to scare users away. Different projects have different systems for signalling this: the Linux kernel has "x.y.0" releases, others have "release candidate" snapshots, etc. Small projects like distcc can just try to stay in this state all the time, trying to make not too many and not too few changes in each release.

In recent years, Debian has had trouble getting stable releases out regularly. Many people run unstable/testing, even if they'd rather just have a timely stable release. This is often seen as a problem that should be fixed, but in an evolutionary sense, it's probably good for Debian: all those people are essentially roped into testing unstable.

If Ubuntu does manage to do timely 6 month releases, I may just use those releases. Ubuntu won't get the benefit of so many testers on their unstable builds.

(This is more of a thought experiment than an argument for either distribution or any release policy.)

posted Sun 24 Oct 2004 in /software/ubuntu | link

Michael Banck on Ubuntu

Michael Banck writes on Ubuntu:

It seems Canonical managed to pull off with a tiny workforce what Debian was not able to do with a thousand volunteers. Of course, there is the mythical man month: about three dozen highly skilled and motivated developers working full time on Ubuntu can somewhat compensate for thousand volunteers of which only a tiny fraction care about releasing at all. However, Ubuntu also bravely decided to take new approaches to distribution development (at least compared to Debian) and try fundamentally different ideas, a couple of which were taken from how the GNOME community works.[...]

They have a set of rules that says they should be respectful and communicative between each other. Disputes are regulated by their technical board and community council. This warrants a good working climate between the Ubuntu maintainers, which makes Ubuntu fun to work on.

There is a rigid, time-based release schedule. Not only the release date itself is fixed well in advance, but also every major milestone along the release process.[...]

Everybody involved can upload any package (as long as the patch gets approved), there is no concept of NMUs (Non-Maintainer-Uploads). More precisely, there is no concept of package maintenance at all, different developers are just loosely appointed to specific parts of the archive, like X, GNOME, etc.

posted Wed 20 Oct 2004 in /software/ubuntu | link

Ubuntu versus...

Comparisons of the new Ubuntu Linux operating system to others.

(These comparisons are based on my limited experience. You may disagree. You can mail me if you like.)

Ubuntu vs Debian

+ Almost all Debian packages are available.

+ No idiotic debian-devel flamewars.

+ Six-month predictable upgrade cycles are far nicer than 2-year-old or bleeding-edge. I can get security and bug fixes through apt without worrying that it will break libc.

+ No dselect! dselect put me off Debian for about three years in the 90s.

+ Sane and simple installer. (I haven't tried the new Debian installer for a while, and I hear it's got better. Of course, most existing Debian users are so cowed that they install by cloning an existing system...)

+ No hand-hacking X configurations, at least on my machine.

− Can't upgrade in-place from Debian; presumably you need to move Debian's system files out of the way and install Ubuntu. Not terribly hard.

Ubuntu vs Gentoo

+ Both seem to be reasonably fresh. Both care about a default install that's reasonably pretty.

+ No pointless rebuilding of software that could be packaged as binaries.

+ Having seen the Gentoo install instructions, I think I'd rather circumcise myself — anonymous.

− Gentoo's ebuild system for defining new builds is far cleaner than that of dpkg.

Ubuntu vs Fedora

They're alike in many ways: Both are open source and free to download, have friendly installers and GNOME-based desktops. Both appeal to both traditional Linux power users and non-shell-oriented users. Both have a single commercial commercial sponsor: Canonical and Red Hat.

Both, in different senses, continue on from previous work: Debian and legacy Red hat respectively.

? I haven't used Fedora enough to really compare.

+ Last time I looked, Fedora was criticized for being insufficiently open to people outside Red Hat.

+ Red Hat use Fedora as an input to their for-money distributions, whereas Ubuntu is apparently an end to itself. Whether that affects the result I don't know.

+ Ubuntu installed automatically on my Evo N410c laptop and Fedora hung. (Fedora may have since fixed this.)

Ubuntu vs Red Hat Enterprise

Red Hat Enterprise is really a services package these days, not (just) a Linux distribution, so the comparison is inexact.

+ I'd rather buy a new camera if I had this much money. Even at work, where I theoretically am entitled to use RHAS for ia64, it's a big pain to deal with their quasi-licensing restrictions. In fact, it's far easier to get a new install of Windows from MSDN and keep it up to date. Something's wrong there.

− No commercial support for Ubuntu (yet); no indication of whether or how this will happen.

− No hardware certifications (yet). Expensive 64-CPU servers are going to be running mostly SLES or RHEL for the near future.

Ubuntu vs Mac OS X

(High bar, but very much in GNOME's sights.)

− Macintosh hardware integration is far better: they only have to support a few configurations, they have all the specs, the hardware is designed to work with the OS and it's attractive in its own right. Plug a TV into the composite port and it just works. Sleep/hibernate just works.

− The Mac GUI is really beautifully polished, both visually and ergonomically. GNOME is getting better but isn't there yet: fonts on X11 used to be awful and are now OK.

+ On the other hand, you don't need to buy new hardware, PC hardware is cheaper per cycle, and you can reboot into Windows to play games.

+ Linux is now the standard Unix. Ubuntu is more consistent with what's likely to be running on your servers. Linux is faster on some benchmarks, but all benchmarks are bogus, and particularly so for desktops.

+ Linux utilities tend to be free, not annoying $10 shareware. (OK, I know about Fink, but still.)

+ Better (though slightly less consistent) keyboard navigation.

+ Less Macintosh historical baggage. OS X suffers some friction between the Mac and Unix parts, in for example handling case sensitivity or resource forks. (Mac apps can be in the wierd state of running but having no windows open, which seems to me of very marginal benefit. It's debatable.)

− No single-source 1-800 support.

− No pretty PDF alpha-blended display (yet), but I'll live. Less consistency in the GUI (though it's coming). Not every program runs under GNOME, so there's likely to be some inconsistent GUI toolkits popping up for some time.

− Some functions just have no GUI configuration tools at all: configuring wireless or a VPN may require sudo vi .

+ If something annoys you, you can patch it yourself.

+ The defaults are good, but more of them can be changed; if you don't want Nautilus or Metacity you can just install something else. That's harder/more scary on Mac OS.

+ Both GNOME and OS X are more attractive than Windows. GNOME is probably a slightly easier transition for Windows users, though neither would be very hard.

[See also: Michael Salivar's walkthrough of Ubuntu.]

posted Wed 13 Oct 2004 in /software/ubuntu | link

First look at Ubuntu

I installed Ubuntu Linux on a spare partition on my laptop. I like it. Mary installed Ubuntu too, and also likes it.

At this point it seems too good to be true: Debian with less bullshit. No awful dselect installer. No long-running flamewars that resemble primary school lunchtime or Parliamentary Question Time.

I was going to say "Debian under adult supervision", but that's too harsh. There are some great responsible, mature and talented people working on Debian, but for some reason their process or culture often lets them down. Exhibit 1, debian-devel. Having a benevolent dictator may be an improvement.

It looks like the installer has a way to go, but even now it's easier than the Windows installer, and roughly as easy (though less pretty) than the Mac installer. I hadn't even noticed that it automatically detected my video card without asking. Wow. "It just works."

It didn't detect my Compaq Evo N410c laptop's wierd Orinoco-USB wireless card, but since that needs a driver built from CVS (gar) I can't really blame them. I haven't tried suspend.

I had been running Gentoo on that machine so as to get more recent packages and to avoid some of the annoying parts of Debian. The Ubuntu install process is approximately fifty times faster than Gentoo, both in elapsed time and in number of keystrokes. I don't think I'm exaggerating.

I installed the somewhat obscure darcs package by enabling the "Universe" dpkg source, and clicking through Synaptic. It seems to show building on Debian's massive package base is a good idea...

So, hearty congratulations to the Ubuntu team. What's next?

[ps: "It just works" is an interesting ambiguity, but I meant it in the positive sense.]

Update: jdub writes that hoary hedgehogs are next. (Naturally.)

I suppose what I really meant to ask is, will Ubuntu make a long-term sustainable business out of releasing a no-strings-attached free software distribution? There are some grounds for hope.

posted Wed 22 Sep 2004 in /software/ubuntu | link

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