Historical Week for Debian and Ubuntu (a Look Back)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-15 11:34:24 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-15 11:34:24 UTC
Summary: A roundup of news about Debian, Ubuntu, and derivatives of Ubuntu
Debian
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The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian 7 (codename "wheezy"). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian 7 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "wheezy" CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated.
Systemd in Debian
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Since this weekend we have known that systemd was winning the Debian init system battle, but now it's official: systemd has prevailed over Upstart in Debian.
After a very heated fight between the Debian technical committee and also Debian stakeholders, Bdale Garbee as the chairman of the tech committee has announced systemd will be used in Debian 8.0 Jessie.
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systemd already has a wide adoption withing the GNU/Linux distribution with all major distros including openSUSE, Fedora, Arch Linux, etc using it as their default init system. Upstart was either way not getting much support from the free software community due to the restrictive CLAs Canonical requires which is often criticized by the community. With Debian going* for systemd, it will get even more developer power whereas Canonical will be left alone to deal with Upstart along with many more project that it’s trying to do on its own – including the recently discussed File Manager which may replace Nautilus (Files).
Systemd in Ubuntu
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Going forward, systemd will be Debian's default init system for Linux distributions, an init system soon to be used by every other major Linux distribution other than Ubuntu.
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With this move Canonical has slowed the alienation of Ubuntu from the rest of the Linux community. It also shows that Canonical also understand that it can’t fork it’s path too much from the mainstream Linux community, especially from mommy Debian. In a nutshell it’s a wise and welcome decision by Ubuntu leadership and will help them focus on more pressing issues which will help make Ubuntu better.
Systemd
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My view is that this idea is wrong: systemd is broken by design, and despite offering highly enticing improvements over legacy init systems, it also brings major regressions in terms of many of the areas Linux is expected to excel: security, stability, and not having to reboot to upgrade your system.
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As usual in these cases, not just Lennart, but many of those who supported him, also those who sponsored these efforts, has suffered all kind of attacks. Sadly not just for technical, I mean ATTACKS. Even journalists have been involved. Yes, Free Software is also mature enough to have "yellow (technical) press" associated, political and business interests and people in different communities willing to use them against anybody who threaten the current status quo.
Mobile
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Vodafone joined Ubuntu’s Carrier Advisory Group, as Ubuntu demoed progress on a unified desktop/mobile UI, but a Debian decision may further isolate Ubuntu.
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One of Canonical's main goals in bringing Ubuntu to mobile devices is to create a converged platform across smartphones, tablets, and PCs. As such, a developer should be able to write an app that has a single code base yet runs on all three types of devices, presenting a different interface to the user on each form factor.
Licence Agreement
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Canonical has issued an official explanation for the reason why Linux Mint developers have to sign a license agreement in order to continue to distribute the package straight from the Ubuntu repos.
Valve
LTS
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After this weekend sharing benchmarks of the recent Ubuntu 12.04 LTS point releases, here's some complementary tests that offer a look at the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" performance against the current state of the "Trusty Tahr", a.k.a. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
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The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS
(Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products,
as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support.
Development
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Last week I was in Orlando sprinting with my team as well as the platform, SDK, and security teams and some desktop and design folks. As usual after a sprint, I have been slammed catching up with email, but I wanted to provide a summary of some work going that you can expect to see soon in the Ubuntu app developer platform.
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The Ubuntu Developer Summit is the primary place where we discuss, debate, and plan the future of Ubuntu. The entire event takes place online, is open and accessible to all, and every session is recorded so everyone can see how decisions are made. It is a useful, fun, and rewarding event to join.
Ubuntu Variants
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Various flavors of Ubuntu 14.04 have come out today with their Trusty Tahr Alpha 2 spins.
Bodhi Linux
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We are huge fans of Jeff Hoogland’s work as a Software Developer and his efforts with Bodhi Linux. So we invited Jeff for a quick chat with Unixmen Australia. We were privileged when Jeff accepted our invitation. Here is what he had to say.
Linux Mint
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It’s no great secret that our organization Reglue uses Linux Mint on many of our outgoing computers. I run Mint on one of my work computers and at home as well. Linux Mint has given us the opportunity to create a respin for educational purposes within our non profit, largely due to an app named mintConstructor. It provides a fairly simple method of making custom systems using Linux Mint as the base.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
- Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
- Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
- We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
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- Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
- There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
- An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
- We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
- First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
- We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
- Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
- some remaining links for today
- Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
- The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
- SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
- SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
- IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
- It's not about the clients, it's about money
- Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
- We've already begun the migration to static
- Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
- Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
- Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
- They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
- Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
- Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
- GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
- Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
- Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
- Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
- Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
- the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
- United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
- In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
- Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- GNOME is Worse Today (in 2023) Than When I Did GTK Development 20+ Years Ago
- To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
- HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
- HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
- Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
- Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
- Debian GNU/Linux is a Fine Operating System, But What if People Die Making It for Somebody's Corporate/Personal Gain?
- Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
- Links 24/09/2023: 5 Days' Worth of News (Catchup)
- Links for the day
- Leftover Links 24/09/2023: Russia, COVID, and More
- Links for the day
- Forty Years of GNU and the Free Software Movement
- by FSF
- Gemini and Web in Tandem
- We're already learning, over IRC, that out new site is fully compatible with simple command line- and ncurses-based Web browsers. Failing that, there's Gemini.
- Red Hat Pretends to Have "Community Commitment to Open Source" While Scuttling the Fedora Community (Among Others)
- RHEL is becoming more proprietary over time and community seems to boil down to unpaid volunteers (at least that's how IBM see the "community")
- IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- Not Your Daily Driver: Don't Build With Rust or Adopt Rust-based Software If You Value Long-Term Reliance
- Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
- The Future of the Web is Not the Web
- The supposedly "modern" stuff ought to occupy some other protocol, maybe "app://"
- YouTube Has Just Become Even More Sinister
- The way Google has been treating the Web (and Web browsers) sheds a clue about future plans and prospects
- Initial Announcement of GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix) on September 27, 1983
- History matters
- Upgrade and Migration Status
- Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
- Yesterday in the 'Sister Site', Tux Machines (10 More Stories)
- Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
- The New Techrights Will be Much Faster
- A prompt response to FUD is important. It's time-sensitive.
