Mark Shuttleworth Talks About What Ubuntu Contributes

[mugginz]

Number of commits in "common work" projects (Linux, GCC, GNOME) prove you are a liar

"Common work" does not mean projects usable or used only for Ubuntu.

They make commits to upstream.

[Panix]

This article is interesting although it probably doesn't introduce a whole lot new (i.e. it's been said before here?):

http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2010/08/red-hat-vs-ubuntu-why-upstream.html

The problem I see from Ubuntu, although I'm not all that familiar with the entire issue, is that Ubuntu seems to do a lot differently which can have a somewhat negative impact. The more they 'deviate' the more it's harder to have everything flow, imho. There's what, 100 distros or whatever and it's one of the situations you get. You have to take the good with the bad and admit the disadvantages as well as the advantages.

Ubuntu forked Debian but a lot of debian-based distros stay relatively aligned so that it's mostly just a lot of tweaking. I don't think Ubuntu just 'tweaked' Debian. Also, the sudo/su thing. They seem to change things drastically and they have the resources to do it and market their products. There also seems to be an overwhelming priority of resources on Gnome whereas some other distros seem to achieve a balance even if they have a certain default DE. Kubuntu is perceived as a poor man's KDE distro although other distros do well with the KDE integration or development. The other distros doesn't even have the same resources but their KDE ver. is said to be solid (Arch, maybe? Debian, itself?). Why is that?

I'm neutral on Ubuntu but I concede the complaints/concerns and I suspect they may be valid. But, I do use it because it's popular so the primary reason is on a practical basis. It might not be the best reason but I figure I can't go wrong. Also, the other major reason is the connection to Debian and Debian is my main distro so...

Carry on... I thought the article might be of interest and it's relatively up to date (as of this post).

[mugginz]

Carry on... I thought the article might be of interest and it's relatively up to date (as of this post).

An interesting article.

Where they say:

If you need something fixed or done, then you make that contribution upstream. Doing everything upstream is the only way that Linux will remain un-fragmented. Without upstream there is no Linux community.

There's a bit of a problem with that approach. When you have a better way of doing something but upstream don't agree then if you restrict yourself to the above then you have to dump your better way and stick with a less perfect one. The good thing with open source software is that you can try different things.

If Ubuntu was awful to use then everyone would be using a different distro and this discussion wouldn't exist I guess.

Given then Ubuntu is apparently popular perhaps upstream might be more open to their ideas. But of course I kid.

If you or I have a new idea for Gnome we can code it and submit a patch upstream. If upstream don't like it then they will reject it. It doesn't mean we have the then delete the code we wrote, we can still offer it for others to use.