Ubuntu is NOT a part of community

[mirv]

Interesting thread. On the one hand, ubuntu has been successful in broadening linux adoption (good for linux), but on the other if ubuntu doesn't give much back, they've really no right to suggest any changes to anything.
That being said, I don't use ubuntu and the above statements are based entirely off reading parts of this thread.

[daveerickson]

If the assertion is that Ubuntu is only popular due to buzz or marketing hype, then doesn't it reason that any distribution interested in growing user base would take a page out of the Ubuntu book?

I will state my personal experience that Ubuntu works out of the box with no tweaking, and pretty much has since I started using it. I installed Arch on a eee netbook with Gnome, I think 2.28, and there was a Synaptics touchpad issue where the point I touched on the pad moved the mouse to that relative spot on the screen, very annoying. Never saw such a bug putting Ubuntu on after that. The point is that the fact that Arch is good to the community didn't help me enjoy a good out of the box experience and with Ubuntu I did.

I challenge other distros to provide the same out of the box experience and I will probably switch and recommend others I have using Ubuntu now to also switch.

[Kano]

I can mainly speak for my own (currently Debian lenny based) distribution, but until you use Intel series 4 gfx (which is slow even with a correct driver) or GMA 500 it is certainly possible to use it on most available hardware. Problematic are old CRT displays which tend to "forget" to send correct EDID info to the xserver and therefore the screen res is not good by default and also the refreshrate.

New things like hal rules (those famous fdi files) to autoconfigure the Xserver for input devices are certainly interesting and can increase the out of the box experience. In case it does not detect a synaptics pad it is configured to use evdev which leads to unexpected behaviour. Some would just ignore that as using a mouse together with a laptop is more common than you might think - at least for the bigger ones...

[mugginz]

And now...... a questionnaire

How do you feel about Greg's assertion that any patches to KDE or Gnome by Canonical employees shouldn't be considered relevant because KDE and Gnome aren't part of the Linux ecosystem?

Ok. Lets begin from the start. Greg is kernel developer. Maybe you know, kernel has nothing to do with KDE/GNOME. As a kernel developer, he usually speak about kernel and thing around it. And here it comes....

During one of his speech, Greg was asked how many patches they (kernel devs) received from Canonical. Completely unprepared, with no intent in mind, Greg answered they contributed 5-6 patches. With 0.1% of patches, Canonical is nothing for kernel development, nobody care a cuss whether it is 5 or 100 patches. It's nothing in fact.

But then this answer was criticized by somebody from Canonical. This petty difference (5 or 100) was a reason for canonical to defend themselves and tax kernel developer with such stupid divergence?

They started that, they got, what they deserved.

I believe Gregs' original error was due to only counting commits by people with @canonical.com addresses and leaving out the @ubuntu.com ones. But no matter why the miscount, I'd say there there's a significant difference between 6 and 100. It's interesting that you bring up that particular angle by the way. I'd say that the error in accounting he made was a significant factor in him using the Linux Plumbers Conference the way he did. I think that he wanted to frame this correction to his error in a way that wouldn't result in him loosing face and so he wrote this talk to with that in mind. It might be the reason why he would make that kind of a speech at that particular venue. He certainly has the right to voice any concerns he may have on any subject he wishes to discuss, and I would've thought he'd have ample opportunity to do so at a more appropriate venue, but his use of the keynote to make these particular points I find interesting indeed. But this is of course only my opinion.

The original question I asked though about whether KDE or Gnome patches are relevant is to try and understand why you insist that they do nothing for the greater community. And as they are more active in the upper layers of the software stack, I thought that it might explain your position better if you don't consider what they do elsewhere to be relevant in the Linux ecosystem.

Do you think it's relevant to consider the amount of years IBM, RedHat, Novell and Canonical have been in business?

Do you think that the amount of employees IBM, RedHat, Novell, and Canonical have may be relevant?

Do feel the revenues of IBM, RedHat, Novell, and Canonical are relevant in this discussion?

No. Why? Nobody counts who gives more or less. It sould be noticed Canonical gives almost nothing.

You feel that the amount of time they've had to use both the amount of money they have, and the amount of people they have, to contribute to the community is irrelevant. How can this be so? Common sense would seem to suggest that the amount of time and money anyone has will impact on what is possible for them.


I only have figures for 2007 easily at hand, but; (I've no financial figures for Canonical 2007)

Worldwide Employees
Cannonical  approx 140
RedHat	    approx 2200
Novell      approx 4100
IBM         approx 386,558

Revenue
Canonical's annual revenue is creeping towards $30 Million (2009)
RedHat $523 Million (2007)
Novell $993 Million (2007)
IBM    $98,786 Million (2007)


Years in existance
Canonical (founded in 2004) (5 years)
RedHat    (founded in 1993) (16 years)
Novell    (founded in 1979) (30 years)
IBM       (founded in 1889) (120 years)

How many employees has Mandriva? Or Debian or Gentoo? Oh Yeah, Gentoo is far bigger company than Canonical.... ROFL

Try to compare Canonical with Gentoo you demagogue!

I believe Gentoo 1.0 was release around 2002 and have read reports that it has between 200 and 500 employees. So, Gentoo has at least as many employees as Canonical, and likely many more. If they do have many more employees does this explain why Gentoo has more kernel commits, or it it because Ubuntu focus too much on other places?

Oh, and more insults. A lovely demonstration of you winning style.

What are those parts, nobody (except god blessing Shuttleworth) work on them? Give us some examples!

A few examples, although these will likely be dismissed by some as meaningless. Some of these projects are to be plugged in as replacements for projects with similar functionality in order to provide a better experience than what exists there today. Hopefully they demonstrate that Ubuntu are trying to round out the Linux experience. If you want to supplant Windows and OS/X as the desktops of choice and fix bug #1, smoothness and quality of user experience is needed.

FUSA Applet
user switching, presence and session termination
New FUSA applet allows you to mange your presence setting, as well as switch to a guest or other user, and logout


Project Ayatana
Indicator plasmoid for KDE Desktop

Libindicate
A small library for applications to raise "flags" on DBus for other components of the desktop to pick up and visualize. Currently used by the messaging indicator.

Notify OSD
Canonical's on-screen-display notification agent, implementing the freedesktop.org Desktop Notifications Specification with semi-transparent click-through bubbles.


Apport
Debugging program crashes without any automated tools has been pretty time consuming and hard for both developers and users........

This is now also used by OpenSuse, Fedora is goin to move away from Apport to something they will develop themselves to carry out this functionality.


usplash
xsplash - A development requirement for their desire for 10 seconds boot.



Ubuntu Software Center. - Will eventually provide an avenue for third party commercial apps to be purchased and installed. As we've seem in the Andriod Market Place, even small payments for programs inspires developers to produce more software (programmers have to eat too!)



Canonical to fund upstream Linux usability improvements
Ubuntu provides access to its usability experts so that projects can get professional usability information on their software to help move the ease of use forward in their projects.

Canonical carry the financial burden of this.



This is in no means an exhaustive list, but I've got to leave some work for others to do

[Kano]

@mugginz

I don't think he counted so wrong as ppl in question got a mail to clearify which company they belogng too. Even i got a mail with maybe a handful of 1-2 liner patches which are in the kernel now. I really think he wants to do that as accurate as possible.

[mugginz]

@mugginz

I don't think he counted so wrong as ppl in question got a mail to clearify which company they belogng too. Even i got a mail with maybe a handful of 1-2 liner patches which are in the kernel now. I really think he wants to do that as accurate as possible.

I think he wants to be as accurate as possible, and his initial error was just that, an accounting error because of his methodology. Nobody's perfect and we are all prone to make an error once in a while. But that's not what I have an issue with. It looked to me like a thinly veiled way to make a correction to his original count of patches to kernel, and do it in a way that saves face for him. But, again, this is only my opinion about his motives to use the LPC keynote this way.

He's on the record as saying that yes, he made an error, and that in fact he believes now that Canonical has upsteamed about 100 patches to the kernel. But he says that's still very low. Others brought to his attention that the Ubuntu guys focus mainly on other areas of the Linux stack, and that perhaps he should've included KDE and Gnome patches in his speech to be more fair. He responded by saying that KDE and Gnome aren't relevant, or part of Linux, because KDE and Gnome can also run on FreeBSD and OpenSolaris as well. I found that also interesting as I consider KDE and Gnome as fundamental to the daily use of Linux, and without them, wouldn't be as nice to use or have as many users as it has at the moment.

[kraftman]

He responded by saying that KDE and Gnome aren't relevant, or part of Linux, because KDE and Gnome can also run on FreeBSD and OpenSolaris as well. I found that also interesting as I consider KDE and Gnome as fundamental to the daily use of Linux, and without them, wouldn't be as nice to use or have as many users as it has at the moment.

That's funny. Their primary platform is Linux, most people which use those DEs use Linux, most of KDE and Gnome devs use Linux. Afaik they were made for Linux and then ported to other OSes. Kfreebsd kernel can run in Debian, so following his logic it's not part of Freebsd.

[next9]

I think he wants to be as accurate as possible, and his initial error was just that, an accounting error because of his methodology. Nobody's perfect and we are all prone to make an error once in a while. But that's not what I have an issue with. It looked to me like a thinly veiled way to make a correction to his original count of patches to kernel, and do it in a way that saves face for him. But, again, this is only my opinion about his motives to use the LPC keynote this way.

So look at that error he made:

6 / 99 000 = 6 x 10E^(-5)

vs.

100 / 99 000 = 1 x 10E^(-3)

Yes. You can argue that it is 2 place value. But thats stupid. In amount of 99 000 patches it is nothing vs. nothing. It right to say Canonical is one of th most unimportant contributors into the kernel far behind many individuals. This fact itself is OK, but. But finding this fault in Greg first speech and emphasizing it is idiotic self-centered and rude from Canonical. They got, what they had deserved.

He's on the record as saying that yes, he made an error, and that in fact he believes now that Canonical has upstreamed about 100 patches to the kernel. But he says that's still very low.

Bingo. That's the point. He can't know each of the 99 000 patches right?

And. As a kernel developer, motivating companies to contribute into the kernel, he would not comment KDE or GNOME. He wants companies to contribute into the kernel, because kernel is his job.

Others brought to his attention that the Ubuntu guys focus mainly on other areas of the Linux stack, and that perhaps he should've included KDE and Gnome patches in his speech to be more fair. He responded by saying that KDE and Gnome aren't relevant, or part of Linux, because KDE and Gnome can also run on FreeBSD and OpenSolaris as well.

Thats correct. KDE and GNOME have nothing to do on Linux Plumbing conference. On a conference about car engines, it is Off topic to mention steering wheel right?

I found that also interesting as I consider KDE and Gnome as fundamental to the daily use of Linux, and without them, wouldn't be as nice to use or have as many users as it has at the moment.

You say Linux, but you mean GNU/Linux. Linux itself is just a kernel, so Gregs Linux is not your GNU/Linux. Just to be accurate.

[kraftman]

You say Linux, but you mean GNU/Linux. Linux itself is just a kernel, so Gregs Linux is not your GNU/Linux. Just to be accurate.

And GNU itself are just some utilities. It's probably more correct to say X11/KDE/Linux or X11/Gnome/Linux or just Linux distribution, but not GNU/Linux.

Thats correct. KDE and GNOME have nothing to do on Linux Plumbing conference. On a conference about car engines, it is Off topic to mention steering wheel right?

What I see from Mugginz reply Greg was talking about Linux as entire OS when he mentioned those DEs, not about Linux Plumbing conference. KDE and Gnome ARE part of Linux OS.

[next9]

And GNU itself are just some utilities. It's probably more correct to say X11/KDE/Linux or X11/Gnome/Linux or just Linux distribution, but just not GNU/Linux.

No. Linux is kernel. Me, you, others use "Linux" a little incorrect way for the whole system. It's OK. But that is not fault of kernel developers!

There is a kernel called Linux. There is a conference called Linux Plumbing. You must be idiot to blame kernel developer, using the term "Linux" in right and original way! Oh wait. From now, all kernel developers should find a new name for the Linux (kernel), because some idiot adopts it and now is not able to difference kernel (original) and system (colloquially).

What I see from Mugginz reply Greg was talking about Linux as entire OS when he mentioned those DEs, not about Linux Plumbing conference. KDE and Gnome ARE part of Linux OS.

Thats useless argument. I would not anticipate from kernel developer to prepare GNOME patch statistics fot a Linux kernel keynote on a Linux plumbing conference!