[ncolug] Debian Linux gains carrier grade status
- From: Henry Keultjes <hbkeultjes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: NCOLUG <ncolug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 11:40:11 -0400
Chuck and Dave have boh reinforced my favoring Debian.
Thank you!
Of course Debian is typically far ahead of the crowd in PPC ports!
Henry Keultjes
Mansfield Ohio USA
Chuck Stickelman wrote:
Years ago Debian sat down and determined where in the file system tree
various files belong. This was way before LSB and the Filesystem
Hierarchy Standard (FHS) <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/> and even
before the original File System Standard (FSS). When the group was
formed to make those standards, Debian felt under represented; many
aspects of these specifications seemed to favor distributions based on
.rpms. I just looked at the FHS document and see that Daniel Quinlan
is still one of the maintainers; Daniel was one of the original Debian
core. So I don't know what that means in terms of Debian being
included or singled-out... I do know that the original Linux FSS had
many missing pieces and even more exceptions. Debian was really ahead
of it's time in this respect.
Now about Debian and Ubuntu. I'm not sure that my issues reflect
those of the Debian developer community or not.
The problem as I see it is that Ubuntu's developers have moved the
location of some files within some packages. Now we have two
different .debs for the same package - an Ubuntu one and a Debian
one. Using the Ubuntu package on a pure Debian machine will break
things; using the Debian package on a pure Ubuntu system will break
things as well. This is the result of Ubuntu's actions. If the Linux
community sees this as broken then it's Ubuntu's to fix. Many people
who install Ubuntu on their system won't ever notice the problem
because they won't open their system up to "the world" (or whatever
Ubuntu calls that which is not Ubuntu...) However, if they want a
package that exists as a .deb, and it's not provided by Ubuntu, then
they risk breaking their systems.
Now Henry has asked why the Debian people can't go out and get the
Ubuntu solution and start doing things Ubuntu's way. Well. I'm not
sure it's false pride, I think it's more a matter of practicality. It
wouldn't be practical for Debian to go around picking up everyone
else's changes to where files should "live" in the directory tree.
There are many Debian-based distros, each is free to choose to alter
the contents of any package. But by doing so they separate themselves
from the parent project. Personally, I think it's not Debian's issue
to resolve.
Now, is this a non-issue? Maybe. Most of the distribution issues
I've had or have heard about seem to be about hardware
detection/support. That's typically a kernel issue. A student of
mine this quarter couldn't get Ubuntu to install on his Dell desktop
machine. Neither would Debian. SUSE had no problem. So now he's
running SUSE, when he really wanted to run a Debian-based
installation. What was different between the three installations?
The kernel version and modules.
What he could have done was to take the kernel and modules from the
SUSE installation and use them on the Debian (or Ubuntu) installation
and he would have been up and running. I know that's a lot to ask a
person, but it comes with the freedom to choose.
I think the installer issues should not be a significant reason to
chose 1 distro over another - you're only going to typically install
Linux once per machine. It's not something that has to be re-done
very 60-90 days... (Debian was first installed on my server, bertha,
in the early 90's. Since then she's had a new motherboard, new hard
drives, new video card, NIC, etc. The only thing that hasn't changed
is the case and the power supply. Yet I've only installed Debian once.)
Chuck
Henry Keultjes wrote:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2157587/debian-linux-gains-carrier
The questions was raised about Debian's OSDL status. Here is a very
positive answer.
That brings me back to the Ubuntu situation. I have always liked
Chuck's well placed passion for Debian yet I don't quite understand
the gripe with Ubuntu not pushing code upstream.
Is not the sole requirement of the GPL to publish the code?
If the code that Ubuntu produces is worthwhile, is there any reason
that Debian developers cannot just go and get it or is it a question
of false pride on the part of the Debian developers?
Since Chuck was part of that original Debian "club" he should be
qualified to answer that but I would also like for him to go back to
his old comrades and ask that question - are they griping about a
non-issue?
Henry Keultjes
Mansfield Ohio USA
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