Ubuntu loses a disciple

Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 08 August 2007 05:28

Opinion and Analysis

Over the past year and a bit, at least two Linux distributions which were based on Debian GNU/Linux have stated that they will be switching their base to Ubuntu. Now it appears that one distribution has backtracked.

Ubuntu itself was initially based on the unstable branch of Debian.  (Debian has three branches of development - stable, testing and unstable - at any one time. Stable is just that, rock-solid stable; testing is the branch that becomes the next release and unstable is bleeding edge and meant for experienced users). Debian's one problem has been lack of a release schedule - as it is a community project, releases are made when the software is ready. Ubuntu has changed that - every six months, ready or not, there is a release. Some releases have more serious bugs than others.

But Ubuntu also differs from Debian in many ways, to the extent that many senior Debian developers have accused the project of deviating too far from Debian's releases. While many Debian packages work with Ubuntu, others are ported to the latter by changing compile-time options and also the manner of specifying dependencies.

Now it seems that others are noticing problems with Ubuntu as well. According to the website DesktopLinux , in March last year Warren Woodford, who founded and runs MEPIS, decided to base his distribution, SimplyMEPIS, on Ubuntu. At that time, Woodford was getting ready to release version 6.0.

He had planned to use the long term support version of Ubuntu 6.06 as the base.

But now, given that he has found Ubuntu is not updated in the way he expected, Woodford has apparently decided to return to Debian. He says Ubuntu is rebuilt from scratch from Debian unstable every six months. This rules out incremental long-term upgrades - which are possible when one uses Debian as the base.

Another reason cited in the Desktop Linux article (it is not clear whether the author actually communicated with Woodford or whether the quotes are 'borrowed') is that though Ubuntu and Debian are compatible when it comes to the source, the same does not hold good for binaries.

The problem with binaries was foreshadowed more than two years ago. Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian project, told Internet News in an interview : "If anything, Ubuntu's popularity is a net negative for Debian. It's diverged so far from Sarge that packages built for Ubuntu often don't work on Sarge. And given the momentum behind Ubuntu, more and more packages are being built like this. The result is a potential compatibility nightmare."

It looks like others are coming to the same conclusion.

Understandably, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, does not take Woodford's statements as constituting a negative.

In response to an email seeking his take on Woodford's comments, Shuttleworth wrote: "I think Warren does excellent work with MEPIS, and my take on his commentary is not as negative as yours seems to be. He correctly notices that our LTS releases, which happen every two years, are considered "super-stable" and thus only receive security updates. We don't push major new versions of applications into the LTS update queue."

He went on: "However, there is a backport repository which is maintained by the Ubuntu community, and Warren might want to check that out, because it does tend to have the newer app packages backported to the LTS releases, and Warren might actually be able to get other folks to help him in the case where a backport doesn't already exist!

"Our next LTS will be based on Gutsy+1, due in April 2008.

"Either way, I know Warren will take the approach that works best for his users, which is super. For the packages which he does take from Ubuntu, I hope he is sending up his patches so we can incorporate those improvements into Ubuntu too!"