Shuttleworth Kicking In Some Real Debian Support
I think most people using Ubuntu sometimes forget just how critical a piece to the operating system puzzle Debian is to the Ubuntu distribution. And by Shuttleworth opting to throw support with actual manpower over to Debian, this will act as a good faith demonstration to the world that Linux development is tightly intertwined.
On the other side of the coin however, putting more manpower over to Debian will indeed mean that Ubuntu will be lacking badly needed developers. Frankly, I find the whole thing to be a bit of a Catch 22.
While I realize that Shuttleworth has a vision in which everyone is going to end up on a cooperative release schedule. But I would also say at this stage in the game, considering that both Apple and Microsoft are releasing new releases of their own OS’, Ubuntu needs to focus on things at hand. Not what “could be”.
2 Comments
The Go-To Guy | Chris Pirillo
August 12th, 2009
at 5:08pm
[...] Shuttleworth is kicking in some real Debian support. [...]
Dean
August 13th, 2009
at 8:12pm
Ubuntu was meant to be comparable with Debian and has been criticized by the Debian community for straying too far from what is mutually beneficial. That much is old news.
Ubuntu packaging is based on Debian unstable. That is also is old news.
Debian has a history of lengthy periods between releases, irregular release schedules, indecision and delays about when there should be a new release and why. This makes it a little hard for Ubuntu to go forward with a new release every 6 months without straying too far from Debian, and anyone using it and updating from one release to the next will notice that packages, despite being Debian unstable, aren’t necessarily the latest version of what’s actually out there, though it strives to use what it the latest thing.
Debian has announced that they are now going to schedule regular freezes for what goes into a release, and this should stop much bickering about when a new release is ready. It isn’t as aggressive as Ubuntu’s approach, but it is a step forward and is expected to create more efficiancy within the stable and testing branches. This in turn, one would assume, will also make the unstable branch more current. The end result, I would think, would be better compatibility between Ubuntu and Debian in the way of easier co-operation between developers of both distros.
Would Ubuntu even have enough resources to pick up and go on profitably if, hypothetically speaking, Debian stopped existing tomorrow? I doubt it. They would have to pick up all that slack themselves… or start building from the foundation of someone else like Gentoo or a variant of it, which would mean drastic changes.
Helping with the Debian project IS synonymous with helping Ubuntu… even more so than the Gungans and the Naboo.
Also, Debian isn’t out there to make money. Canonical is doing this because there’s something in it for them.