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The post shares several pain points with Debian's slow, aging change-process and integration-infrastructure. Open question: If Debian contributors feel the nee

The post shares several pain points with Debian's slow, aging change-process and integration-infrastructure. Open question: If Debian contributors feel the need to drop out and move on due to these pain points, are there less-painful Linux-distribution projects out there that are getting more of these pain points right they can flock to? Is this a sign that Debian needs to reform, or that other, newer distributions are outpacing it?

nik736 8y ago
I switched all my servers to Ubuntu years ago when people were telling me "Ubuntu is no server distribution". I honestly never looked back.
- SteveNuts 8y ago
  Ubuntu LTS distributions have been the perfect mix of new-ish packages and stability for us.
- apetresc 8y ago
  I think Ubuntu suffers equally from every single pain point that Michael describes in his post.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- astazangasta 8y ago
  Given that ubuntu depends heavily on debian maintainers and governance, what exactly does this improve?
- Twirrim 8y ago
  Ubuntu is... interesting. Watch out for what packages you rely on, and what repository those packages come from. If they're in universe, expect your bug reports on Launchpad to go unanswered or unresolved. The only way to get fixes in them is to go upstream to Debian. But note that not every bug in a universe package is actually fixable or broken in a Debian world, because the bug might be down to interactions between a decision made by Canonical with packages in the main repository, and those for the universe package.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    Yes. For some reason people, even those running Ubuntu servers, are surprised to learn that universe has no guarantee to get updates for known vulnerabilities. Ubuntu is currently divided into four components: main, restricted, universe and multiverse. All binary packages in main and restricted are supported by the Ubuntu Security team for the life of an Ubuntu release, while binary packages in universe and multiverse are supported by the Ubuntu community. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/FAQ https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/FAQ If you care about security, disable universe and multiverse on servers, or use Debian Stable if you want a Debian-based distribution.
  - bubblethink 8y ago
    I think ubuntu has done a decent job with universe by and large. I find it in much better shape overall than epel. A good way to judge the health of these auxiliary repos is to look at the age of chromium. Ubuntu is generally good with patching at least security issues in universe. epel is still running behind by a month or two despite the security disclosures. So RH ought to take a page from Canonical's book when it comes to epel and make it a more official thing than the entirely community driven thing it is right now.
    - h1d 8y ago
      I don't mind RH being slower as I take it that's what makes RH what it is. Old packages but most stable.
      - bubblethink 8y ago
        It's not about RH packages directly. They are fine. As it is with universe on ubuntu, you quite likely need epel on rhel for doing quite a lot of basic stuff. If you are able to get by with just the proper supported packages in each distro, this doesn't affect you. And that's where the two diverge. universe is in better shape since it is semi-official, v/s epel which is completely unofficial/community-based.
        8y ago
- h1d 8y ago
  Are they who blindly use CentOS/RedHat? Ubuntu specifically has a "server" version. I've been using it since 10.04 (almost 9 years) and never had to use anything else.
nextos 8y ago
I like Debian, but I agree it's become too slow and bureaucratic. Sadly, like most big organizations, it is hard to implement changes from inside. In my opinion, most Debian's issues stem from a centralized imperative package manager where all packages need to be carefully kept in sync for things to work. Moving to something like Nix would greatly simplify development. This is far from a new idea. In fact, it was quite thoroughly discussed in debian-devel mailing list back in 2008, 2013 and several other times [1]. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/12/msg01007.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/12/msg01007.html
- asveikau 8y ago
  > it's become too slow and bureaucratic. When I first used Debian in the 90s it had a reputation for being slow and bureaucratic.
  - josteink 8y ago
    And unlike most distros which were around back then, Debian is still here today, so it must be good for something. That said, I agree anything Debian (and thus Ubuntu too) and FSF feels awkwardly baroque to work with these days. Old email-based systems, bickering over politics and minor issues rather than the subject at hand, for weeks or months... and no standard CI?!? With all that I too find myself spending my time contributing elsewhere. It’s a shame as these 2 organizations acts as a fundament for sooo many things I rely on daily, but I just can’t bother.
    - noir_lord 8y ago
      > Debian is still here today, so it must be good for something. It’s stable and I know they’ll still be around 5 years from now. They also very rarely break anything on updates. There are only three Linux distress I’d run in production, RHEL, Debian or Ubuntu (depending.
    - sanxiyn 8y ago
      What is the problem with old email-based systems? This is an honest question.
vertex-four 8y ago
NixOS/nixpkgs is exceptionally friendly and open to new developers, and even just a one-off patch is simple to do.
- danieldk 8y ago
  Indeed. I started using NixOS and Nix a bit more than six months ago and I was contributing patches within no-time. One can just submit a pull request on GitHub (with the proper format) and a lot of aspects are automated: e.g. the impact of the change (in terms of packages that are effected) is automatically determined and someone with the right privileges can request a build. Some PRs linger around for a longer time, but most of my PRs were merged within the day. Also, I received useful feedback if a PR needed more polish. What helped me a lot with Nix is that you can easily make your own local derivations. Derivations are usually short [1] and bear little risk with sandboxed builds enabled. Basically, you do a nix-shell -p mypackage, you get dropped in a shell with your derivation, but it does not affect the rest of your system. [1] Example of a C++ library: https://github.com/danieldk/nix-home/blob/master/overlays/30-alpinocorpus.nix https://github.com/danieldk/nix-home/blob/master/overlays/30...
mongol 8y ago
I am surprised OpenSuse does not get more attention. I feel its infrastructure, with the open build service etc, should be aťtractive to many?
- rmk2 8y ago
  Ugh, just saw your comment now. I wrote a bit more in a sibling comment about openSUSE. For some reason, people seem to either sneer at openSUSE (probably people who go way back?) or are simply unaware of anything it does and/or its existence. I briefly asked the people at the openSUSE stand at FOSDEM 2019 why they don't advertise things such as OBS more, and the answer suggested that some people basically don't see a point in it? It's a pity.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  The last time I tried OpenSUSE, it gave me nothing but problems. Admittedly, this was many years ago and things may have changed -- but I have no real reason to give it another try to find out.
rmk2 8y ago
openSUSE uses the Open Build Service[0] to build, well, openSUSE. OBS also supports other distributions etc., but it makes it fairly easy to put up a package.[1] For RPM-based distros (e.g. openSUSE), you write a .spec-file, check it in via OBS's version control alongside your sources, and off you go. OBS builds the package (and pulls in dependencies as needed etc.) and publishes the result as a repository with GPG keys and all the jazz, which you can just add to your own distro, and which is openly visible, so everybody else can use your package(s), too. OBS also supports forking existing packages, and you can merge them back together, which means you can fix something in an existing package (whether a distro-package or something somebody else put up) and if they accept the changes, congratulations, you just fixed something in the distribution. This means a lot of building, compilation, versioning etc. is out in the open, and you always have the sources available on top of it. As an aside: I doubt people will "flock" to openSUSE, since many people sneer at them for no good reason (YaST, still?!), but they do a lot of good work, are good upstream contributors (like RedHat and unlike Ubuntu) and some of the tooling is absolutely amazing, except that nobody really knows about it. [0]: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Build_Service https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Build_Service [1]: https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/distribution_build_delivery_styles/ https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/distribution_build_de...
- sverige 8y ago
  I'm a BSD guy but needed a Linux distro last year for a specific project. OpenSUSE was remarkably good, stable, easy to use and update, and apparently free of the political crap that seems to come with many other distros. I have recommended it to others who need a stable Linux distro with lots of well-maintained packages. Some of them looked at me like I was crazy. Preconceived notions are hard to overcome sometimes. Oh well.
- h1d 8y ago
  Do you feel any concern when the owner keeps changing? I think that's part of the reason people keeping a distance.
- moosingin3space 8y ago
  OBS is so good, Fedora (my distro of choice) has a clone of it called Copr: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/

nik736 8y ago

I switched all my servers to Ubuntu years ago when people were telling me "Ubuntu is no server distribution". I honestly never looked back.

SteveNuts 8y ago
Ubuntu LTS distributions have been the perfect mix of new-ish packages and stability for us.
apetresc 8y ago
I think Ubuntu suffers equally from every single pain point that Michael describes in his post.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
astazangasta 8y ago
Given that ubuntu depends heavily on debian maintainers and governance, what exactly does this improve?
Twirrim 8y ago
Ubuntu is... interesting. Watch out for what packages you rely on, and what repository those packages come from. If they're in universe, expect your bug reports on Launchpad to go unanswered or unresolved. The only way to get fixes in them is to go upstream to Debian. But note that not every bug in a universe package is actually fixable or broken in a Debian world, because the bug might be down to interactions between a decision made by Canonical with packages in the main repository, and those for the universe package.
- danieldk 8y ago
  Yes. For some reason people, even those running Ubuntu servers, are surprised to learn that universe has no guarantee to get updates for known vulnerabilities. Ubuntu is currently divided into four components: main, restricted, universe and multiverse. All binary packages in main and restricted are supported by the Ubuntu Security team for the life of an Ubuntu release, while binary packages in universe and multiverse are supported by the Ubuntu community. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/FAQ https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/FAQ If you care about security, disable universe and multiverse on servers, or use Debian Stable if you want a Debian-based distribution.
- bubblethink 8y ago
  I think ubuntu has done a decent job with universe by and large. I find it in much better shape overall than epel. A good way to judge the health of these auxiliary repos is to look at the age of chromium. Ubuntu is generally good with patching at least security issues in universe. epel is still running behind by a month or two despite the security disclosures. So RH ought to take a page from Canonical's book when it comes to epel and make it a more official thing than the entirely community driven thing it is right now.
  - h1d 8y ago
    I don't mind RH being slower as I take it that's what makes RH what it is. Old packages but most stable.
    - bubblethink 8y ago
      It's not about RH packages directly. They are fine. As it is with universe on ubuntu, you quite likely need epel on rhel for doing quite a lot of basic stuff. If you are able to get by with just the proper supported packages in each distro, this doesn't affect you. And that's where the two diverge. universe is in better shape since it is semi-official, v/s epel which is completely unofficial/community-based.
      - 8y ago
h1d 8y ago
Are they who blindly use CentOS/RedHat? Ubuntu specifically has a "server" version. I've been using it since 10.04 (almost 9 years) and never had to use anything else.

nextos 8y ago

I like Debian, but I agree it's become too slow and bureaucratic. Sadly, like most big organizations, it is hard to implement changes from inside. In my opinion, most Debian's issues stem from a centralized imperative package manager where all packages need to be carefully kept in sync for things to work. Moving to something like Nix would greatly simplify development. This is far from a new idea. In fact, it was quite thoroughly discussed in debian-devel mailing list back in 2008, 2013 and several other times [1]. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/12/msg01007.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/12/msg01007.html

asveikau 8y ago
> it's become too slow and bureaucratic. When I first used Debian in the 90s it had a reputation for being slow and bureaucratic.
- josteink 8y ago
  And unlike most distros which were around back then, Debian is still here today, so it must be good for something. That said, I agree anything Debian (and thus Ubuntu too) and FSF feels awkwardly baroque to work with these days. Old email-based systems, bickering over politics and minor issues rather than the subject at hand, for weeks or months... and no standard CI?!? With all that I too find myself spending my time contributing elsewhere. It’s a shame as these 2 organizations acts as a fundament for sooo many things I rely on daily, but I just can’t bother.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    > Debian is still here today, so it must be good for something. It’s stable and I know they’ll still be around 5 years from now. They also very rarely break anything on updates. There are only three Linux distress I’d run in production, RHEL, Debian or Ubuntu (depending.
  - sanxiyn 8y ago
    What is the problem with old email-based systems? This is an honest question.

vertex-four 8y ago

NixOS/nixpkgs is exceptionally friendly and open to new developers, and even just a one-off patch is simple to do.

danieldk 8y ago
Indeed. I started using NixOS and Nix a bit more than six months ago and I was contributing patches within no-time. One can just submit a pull request on GitHub (with the proper format) and a lot of aspects are automated: e.g. the impact of the change (in terms of packages that are effected) is automatically determined and someone with the right privileges can request a build. Some PRs linger around for a longer time, but most of my PRs were merged within the day. Also, I received useful feedback if a PR needed more polish. What helped me a lot with Nix is that you can easily make your own local derivations. Derivations are usually short [1] and bear little risk with sandboxed builds enabled. Basically, you do a nix-shell -p mypackage, you get dropped in a shell with your derivation, but it does not affect the rest of your system. [1] Example of a C++ library: https://github.com/danieldk/nix-home/blob/master/overlays/30-alpinocorpus.nix https://github.com/danieldk/nix-home/blob/master/overlays/30...

mongol 8y ago

I am surprised OpenSuse does not get more attention. I feel its infrastructure, with the open build service etc, should be aťtractive to many?

rmk2 8y ago
Ugh, just saw your comment now. I wrote a bit more in a sibling comment about openSUSE. For some reason, people seem to either sneer at openSUSE (probably people who go way back?) or are simply unaware of anything it does and/or its existence. I briefly asked the people at the openSUSE stand at FOSDEM 2019 why they don't advertise things such as OBS more, and the answer suggested that some people basically don't see a point in it? It's a pity.
JohnFen 8y ago
The last time I tried OpenSUSE, it gave me nothing but problems. Admittedly, this was many years ago and things may have changed -- but I have no real reason to give it another try to find out.

rmk2 8y ago

openSUSE uses the Open Build Service[0] to build, well, openSUSE. OBS also supports other distributions etc., but it makes it fairly easy to put up a package.[1] For RPM-based distros (e.g. openSUSE), you write a .spec-file, check it in via OBS's version control alongside your sources, and off you go. OBS builds the package (and pulls in dependencies as needed etc.) and publishes the result as a repository with GPG keys and all the jazz, which you can just add to your own distro, and which is openly visible, so everybody else can use your package(s), too. OBS also supports forking existing packages, and you can merge them back together, which means you can fix something in an existing package (whether a distro-package or something somebody else put up) and if they accept the changes, congratulations, you just fixed something in the distribution. This means a lot of building, compilation, versioning etc. is out in the open, and you always have the sources available on top of it. As an aside: I doubt people will "flock" to openSUSE, since many people sneer at them for no good reason (YaST, still?!), but they do a lot of good work, are good upstream contributors (like RedHat and unlike Ubuntu) and some of the tooling is absolutely amazing, except that nobody really knows about it. [0]: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Build_Service https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Build_Service [1]: https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/distribution_build_delivery_styles/ https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/distribution_build_de...

sverige 8y ago
I'm a BSD guy but needed a Linux distro last year for a specific project. OpenSUSE was remarkably good, stable, easy to use and update, and apparently free of the political crap that seems to come with many other distros. I have recommended it to others who need a stable Linux distro with lots of well-maintained packages. Some of them looked at me like I was crazy. Preconceived notions are hard to overcome sometimes. Oh well.
h1d 8y ago
Do you feel any concern when the owner keeps changing? I think that's part of the reason people keeping a distance.
moosingin3space 8y ago
OBS is so good, Fedora (my distro of choice) has a clone of it called Copr: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/