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