Ubuntu vs. Sarge

[Brazen]

This is from a year and a half old article:

"If anything, Ubuntu's popularity is a net negative for Debian," Murdoch told internetnews.com. "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."

Murdoch argues that if Ubuntu were truly compatible with Debian, all of the energy going into it could be directed at Sarge and toward getting it released, which is what would really benefit the Debian developer ecosystem as a whole.

"I understand what the Ubuntu folks are trying to do, and they're doing lots of good work that will eventually find its way into Debian," Murdoch said. "But what we really need right now as a community is for Sarge to be released.

"In that respect, Ubuntu's popularity is more harmful than helpful."

I'm wondering what some of you more in-the-know Debian and Ubuntu people think of this. Has Ubuntu really hurt Debian? Are they really THAT incompatible? What do you think?

 

[DaiShan]

??? This article is over a year old, Sarge is nearing the end of it's life cycle (etch is due out by the end of this year), Hoary is already out of date by two generations.

/edit my point being, why are we quoting an article this old? Debian is still THE Linux distro (IMO of course) for business systems, and Ubuntu is very noob friendly (a good thing) they use different sources, and I don't think that either distro has suffered. Ubuntu is coming up with some really cool stuff (their new init script system should be AMAZING) OSS is about helping each other, although I've noticed that Debian developers sometimes come off as a little aloof heh.

 

[cleverhandle]

I don't know... I think Ian was overstating the case, probably due to the enormous pressure at that time for the devs to finally get Sarge out the door. From what I've seen, some Ubuntu changes go back upstream to Debian, and some don't. That's not a bad thing - Ubuntu is a lot more fast and loose development-wise than Debian is, and that's part of what keeps them cutting-edge and popular. They serve different markets - if anything, Ubuntu has hurt Fedora and Suse much more than Debian. Certainly I don't think that Ubuntu has any kind of moral obligation to fit their changes into Debian. Debian prides itself on being a truly free base that everyone can use - if Ubuntu wants to take that and fork it into a newb-friendly desktop distro they have every right to, though the further they fork the more work they're making for themselves.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: DaiShan
??? This article is over a year old, Sarge is nearing the end of it's life cycle (etch is due out by the end of this year), Hoary is already out of date by two generations.

/edit my point being, why are we quoting an article this old?

Namely because the article is largely talking about impacts that had not happen yet. Granted Ian said that Ubuntu had already hurt Debian, but Ubuntu was brand spanking new and hadn't yet made much impact on anything. By now, we have the benefit of hindsight: Was Ian right? Has Ubuntu hurt Debian?

The very fact that you point out that Sarge is near the end of it's life makes you wonder: Is etch going to be better thanks to Ubuntu? Or is Ian right, and it's worse?

 

[Brazen]

I found this on wikipedia:

Ubuntu packages are generally based on packages from Debian unstable. Ubuntu uses Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool to manage installed packages. Debian and Ubuntu packages are not necessarily compatible with each other. Several Ubuntu developers are also maintainers of key packages within Debian itself, and Ubuntu changes are contributed back to Debian as they are made, rather than being announced only at release time.

Now, I was thinking that someone said when they come out with a new version of Ubuntu, they always start back with Debian Unstable. If that is true, then they couldn't become too far incompatible. This also says "Ubuntu changes are contributed back to Debian as they are made" so wouldn't that mean that Debian Unstable would be just like Ubuntu at the time of release? I guess I just don't get what they mean by that statement, and how Ian could say such things if this is true?

 

[Nothinman]

Are they really THAT incompatible?

Given the huge difference in release speeds they will be eventually. Go ahead and try installing something from Dapper on Sarge and see what happens. Of course it depends on thet package too, some will have 0 changes from Debian and will work fine but some will be so far out that they won't even work in sid. Differences in Gnome, Xorg, kernel, etc versions will cause all kinds of dependency problems for some packages.

This also says "Ubuntu changes are contributed back to Debian as they are made" so wouldn't that mean that Debian Unstable would be just like Ubuntu at the time of release?

Not all of Ubuntu's changes are applicable to Debian and lots of the time the changes are made available in their Launchpad thing but aren't actively pushed to Debian so DDs have to go looking for the patches if they want them. How many DDs do you think want to spend more time looking for patches that may or may not work for them? That and Launchpad isn't free software so many of them don't want to use it.

I don't think Ubuntu hurts Debian as much as he's saying, but they're definitely not 100% compatible either.