Hello again! Okay, one more post, just for fun :) These days a lot of Debian users don't actually use Debian releases directly, but rather one of the various derivatives or customised distributions around; and it's worth having a bit of a look at what's been going on with them recently, too. Ubuntu introduced their first "Long Term Support" release earlier this year, with a goal of providing a release that people can rely on for three to five years, rather than expecting everyone to upgrade within six to eighteen months. That's had some teething problems [0], that will hopefully provide a useful learning experience [1] for both Ubuntu and other distributions with similar goals, including Debian itself. [0] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/50 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/22/still-learning-what-long-term-support-means/ [1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/54 Another learning experience has been (and continues to be) the art of working out how Debian and Ubuntu relate to each other. We've tried a few things over the past few months, including working together on Sun's relicensing of its Java implementation [2], or working on ways of better acknowledging Ubuntu's ties to Debian [3]; but probably the most important activity is the efforts to ensure Ubuntu's work is included back in Debian -- both so that all of Debian's users benefit, and also so that the Ubuntu guys can spend more of their time working on new improvements, and less of their time managing divergence with upstream. [2] http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2006-05/sunflash.20060516.4.xml [3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/07/msg00241.html That activity comes under the broad term "Utnubu", which is probably the Uluz term for "Others towards humanity" or similar. Utnubu work tends to be fairly disconnected -- mostly just a couple of people from Debian and Ubuntu who are interested in similar areas getting together and talking and coordinating their work a bit better -- such as the Zope teams' work on tracking the differences between the Debian and Ubuntu packages [4], or the sysvinit teams' coordination with Ubuntu developers in supporting new work like upstart [5] on Debian systems. There's a few attempts being made within Debian to make it a bit more obvious how to do that, including both the Utnubu Wiki pages [6] and the Utnubu Report [7]; and Ubuntu are doing their part too, such as by working on documents like "Ubuntu for Debian Developers" [8] to make it clearer what's going on, and redirecting the "utnubu.org" domain to the Utnubu page on the Debian wiki. A number of Ubuntu core developers have contributed their thoughts about Ubuntu, Debian and why we can't just all get along, which you can read in Utnubu's AboutUbuntu survey [9]. [4] http://people.debian.org/~terpstra/message/20060919.062019.9ba5db72.en.html [5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/09/msg00854.html [6] http://wiki.debian.org/Utnubu/ [7] http://wiki.debian.org/Utnubu/Report [8] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuForDebianDevelopers [9] http://wiki.debian.org/Utnubu/AboutUbuntu Another Debian derivative trying new things recently is Linspire; which launched a new variant called Freespire [10] in August, and is aiming to establish a development community of its own. The main difference between Linspire/Freespire and Debian -- apart from its focus on non-technical users -- is probably its "Click and Run" software [11], which has recently been made available at no cost [12], and reportedly will soon be usable via an open source client [13]. These changes haven't been without their problems [14] of course, but they nevertheless represent yet another way in which Debian and free software are reaching yet more people. [10] http://www.linspire.com/linspire_letter_archives.php?id=28 [11] http://www.linspire.com/products_cnr_whatis.php [12] http://www.linspire.com/linspire_letter_archives.php?id=33 [13] http://www.osweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2344&Itemid= 449 [14] http://www.osweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=468&task=view&id=2 323 Although Xandros hasn't had quite so much recent activity (unless you count a partnership with OSDL [15] or an "open-circulation" version of its latest release [16]), it's worth noting that way back in May they introduced a Debian-based server system [17] designed to match the expectations of sysadmins with a Microsoft Windows Server background, rather than a Unix or Linux background. Debian and free software have tremendous mindshare in the "server" market as it's known to Unix admins -- to the point of Nexenta being able to put together a free Debian-based derivative of Solaris [18], and Sun employees like Tim Bray and Alvaro Lopez promoting Debian packaging for Solaris users in general [19]. But for admins who are accustomed to different administration techniques, Xandros's efforts make for a good first step at bringing them into the fold, and I'm sure there'll be more to come. [15] http://www.xandros.com/news/press_releases/release70.html [16] http://www.xandros.com/products/home/open_circulation.html [17] http://www.xandros.com/news/press_releases/release56.html [18] http://www.gnusolaris.org/ [19] http://blogs.sun.com/alvaro?entry=why_i_do_think_opensolaris http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/31/Ubuntu It's probably worth an explicit mention that each of these distros have some aspect of non-freeness about them -- Linspire makes a point of making proprietary software and codecs easy to use on the basis that that's what newcomers expect; Xandros SBS includes a handful of proprietary apps to ensure that Windows' users expectations are met; and even Ubuntu, who are committed to keeping their distro free, make use of a more proprietary model for their "in house" apps like LaunchPad. Debian's ongoing challenge is to find, develop and maintain free software alternatives that are comparable to (or better than!) each of those aspects and, hopefully, to demonstrate that making everything free right from the start is a better approach in all aspects. I'm sure we'll all be interested to see how that works out. :) Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns Debian Project Leader
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