40 ms·

Google’s in-house desktop Linux

286 points by signa11 4y ago

politelemon 4y ago
For all the talk I've heard over the years about their in house Linux distro. Their desktop application support, and sometimes web application support, for Linux is non existent. Most of their server estate will be Linux based, including what's powering their desktop applications. But almost none of their efforts give back and enrich the desktop ecosystem. That said they do contribute a lot towards frameworks, libraries and the kernel. Certainly they are among the top alongside Microsoft in recent years and Facebook. So I do recognize my entitled call for more... with good cause
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  As a Fedora user writing this from my brand new Google Pixel phone, who uses Gmail and YouTube, and pretty much nothing else from Google in 2022, what is missing?
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    A lot of the stuff that annoys me and gets in my way while using Linux is still the same basic quality-of-life stuff that has been broken forever. Bluetooth pairing fails occasionally. Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work. A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound device. I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure optimal operation – that's what I'd like them to Open Source. I'm happy to buy whatever laptop spec Google uses for gLinux for myself to go along with their OS.
    - praptak 4y ago
      Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work on gLinux. It may be me, because I'm on i3wm which is not the official wm. I have a manually crafted autorandr config but it's kind of hit and miss.
    - vlovich123 4y ago
      > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure optimal operation – that's what I'd like them to Open Source. I'm happy to buy whatever laptop spec Google uses for gLinux for myself to go along with their OS. Then your imagination could be improved in a few ways: 1. Google has complete say over the software you're allowed to run at work. They can mandate using whatever tools they want as terms of your employment. 2. Google has complete say over the hardware they purchase you. Random drive incompatibility isn't a thing. They pick hardware that's been validated to work so they don't have random IT complaints. 3. This is a IT / compliance / security thing. The grand total of UX people dedicated to this probably amounts to designing the splash screens. The grand total for bug fixing is for issues impacting an obscene number of users. If you f'ed up your OS install you'll basically have to fix it yourself (IT will offer to reimage your machine and you'll be responsible for making sure you correctly managed your backups by hand - you get limited storage space at least when I worked there, so you had to make sure to exclude certain folders from backups). 4. They do have a slightly better story for Android development but most of that relies on Google3 / Blaze. I think they're doing some work to migrate to Bazel finally but I imagine they'll always have a bit better internal dev story. About the only value-add they could be giving here is the hardware configurations but they're not really different from stock Linux laptops you'd buy as a consumer.
    - tialaramex 4y ago
      > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work. A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound device. I have these problems with the Dell laptop running Windows 10 which I use for work, but not with my own desktop or laptop running Fedora. So, my experience is more or less the opposite apparently. This makes it harder for me to buy the theory that there's something uniquely inferior about these Linux desktops.
      - dkarl 4y ago
        When I switched from Linux to Macs for my daily drivers ten years ago, I was really shocked by how much stuff just works. But there's plenty of stuff that doesn't work, even on Mac. When I am struggling to get something working with one of my Macs, I often joke to myself that stuff like this is why Linux on the desktop will never be popular. For example, my work laptop, a Macbook Pro, is always on my desk in my office. When I'm working, I have an external monitor plugged into it. If the laptop goes to sleep, then a bit later the monitor goes to sleep. But when the monitor goes to sleep, the laptop wakes up. Then a few minutes later the laptop goes to sleep and starts the cycle again. So every evening when I'm done working I have to unplug the laptop and manually put it to sleep. Then every once in a while (rarely, but multiple times this year) something else keeps waking the laptop up, or maybe I accidentally wake it up and don't manually put it to sleep again, who knows. When that happens, I have a dead Macbook Pro on my desk in the morning, and I say, "[Stuff] like this is why Linux on the desktop will never be popular.
        antod 4y ago
        External monitor handling is one area my Linux Thinkpad works smoother than my work Macbook Pro. The previous time I used a Mac (2015ish), it was the other way around.
      - JasonFruit 4y ago
        I'm honestly a little disappointed at how smoothly everything works on my Linux machines. It ruins the impression that I'm doing eldritch magic, issuing gnomic commands inherited from the primal hackers, immersing my very self in the unknowable gnostic wisdom of Unix. Maybe I need to run OpenBSD.
    - coryrc 4y ago
      > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. Heh, most use Macs. Linux laptop users have the same problems, don't worry. My laptop hard locks up on suspend once every couple weeks, plus all the things you mentioned. Oh, I also have a weird audio latency bug.
    - ori_b 4y ago
      > So whatever that secret is A large IT team.
      - mxuribe 4y ago
        I would imagine that not only large, but also likely quite capable. If the IT staff to be hired at google goes through a similarly tough gauntlet as the software devs and SREs (and other similar product-producing) roles, then i can imagine those IT staffers really know what they're doing...at least they'd have to be good enough to get into the doors of google; which i guess is not easy.
    - Morgawr 4y ago
      > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure optimal operation – that's what I'd like them to Open Source. Hey there, Google engineer here (opinions are my own, etc etc). I work in the ChromeOS platform team. We have hundreds if not thousands of very talented (not me) engineers who work on low-level firmware, drivers, kernel, performance optimization, etc on Linux. ChromeOS is still Linux and almost entirely open source[0], we also upstream most of it[1]. A lot of the improvements that ChromeOS has had for multi-monitor support, plug-and-play devices, wayland, keyboard/touchpad firmware, etc have all entered mainline Linux kernel and should be perfectly usable by the whole Linux ecosystem and other distributions. I don't work with the gLinux team anymore (used to in the past) so I don't know how what exactly they do with their stuff, but regardless of the "it's not a real linux distro!" hate ChromeOS might get, we still run on a fully open Linux environment ourselves. [0] https://source.chromium.org/chromiumos/chromiumos/codesearch https://source.chromium.org/chromiumos/chromiumos/codesearch [1] The stuff we don't upstream it's usually because either we can't (ChromeOS-specific hacks that the Linux kernel mainline wouldn't accept) or we haven't been able to yet due to needing to clean up patches before they are accepted. Regardless we'll still open source it in our kernel tree
      - Melatonic 4y ago
        From an enterprise management perspective nobody (as far as I know) has made some kind of tooling to manage linux desktops in a similar way admins can do with ChromeOS or Windows. I think that is the real dealbreaker for linux in the enterprise for general use.
      - mindentropy 4y ago
        > We have hundreds if not thousands of very talented (not me) engineers who work on low-level firmware, drivers, kernel, performance optimization, etc on Linux. I am interested in working on this. Do you know if there positions open and where and which group to apply?
        Morgawr 4y ago
    - AvocadoSushi 4y ago
      Googler here, opinions on my own. While nothing prevents us from switching desktop environments (many of us do so), basically anything outside the default GNOME/X11 configuration is not supported. (It used to be Cinnamon but we're switching away.) Bluetooth accessories are not guaranteed to work. People struggle with screen configurations all the time. Nvidia driver updates are still a nightmare. I'm pretty sure there's no secret sauce.
      - kristjansson 4y ago
        That’s really nice to hear, actually.
      - jszymborski 4y ago
        I'm curious about the change from Cinnamon to GNOME. Are you aware of any particular reason why? I feel like attitudes towards GNOME haven't particularly changed over the year, but that just might be my bubble.
        netheril96 4y ago
        They want to switch to Wayland eventually but Cinnamon doesn’t support Wayland.
        jszymborski 4y ago
        Thanks!
      - int_19h 4y ago
        So even Google cannot truly do "Linux on the desktop" right?
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      The secret is using hardware that's known to work with Linux. Inside Google, I'm sure IT does this (or writes/fixes drivers when it must). Outside google, you have to do this yourself. Find someone with a working setup and duplicate exactly. > Bluetooth Bluetooth is a dumpster fire and Linux bluetooth is a radioactive biohazardous dumpster fire. Stay away. My workaround: Linux -> SPIDF -> 1Mii B03Pro bluetooth transmitter. The chipset drivers that output 3.5mm and SPIDF are ancient, stable, and dumb as rocks, so they actually work. SPIDF beats 3.5mm because 3.5mm can detect connectedness and punish you by scrambling your sound settings every time you bump a cable. SPIDF can't do this so software can't screw it up. Also, even if you get linux bluetooth working it will tend to scramble if you reboot into a different OS. Just say no. Use an external bluetooth transmitter.
    - ajross 4y ago
      > Bluetooth pairing BT is just a disaster everywhere. My experience is that for "normal" use cases (input devices & headphone audio, basically) Linux is no worse than anywhere else, but still bad. Apple users think it's great because Apple made AirPods work, but that's a testament to Apple's integration engineering and not the underlying technology. > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work I haven't seen this with Intel drivers on a major distro in a long time. But yes, the driver story for other hardware remains somewhat weak. And obviously the farther you get from "Gnome on Ubuntu/Fedora" into the weeds of desktop choices, the weirder the feature set is going to get. > A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound device No idea here. I haven't seen a USB audio failure in a LONG time (closest I can think of is a Razer headset that has two chat/game output streams and Linux sees only one by default). Mostly likely you had a broken piece of hardware that worked in windows only by installing its own driver. And that sucks, but poor standards compliance is just something we all live with.
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        > but that's a testament to Apple's integration engineering and not the underlying technology. So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it working. What bothers me about non apple stuff is. I can pair my AirPods to my phone, tv, and laptop. Even if they connect to the laptop if I press connect on the Apple TV or phone they switch. With any non apple headphones. (Bose, Audio-Technica, Sony, Asus) I have to press Bluetooth pairing button and connect on the decide again. So switching between two laptops is a pain. Why can’t other brands do what apple can? It’s not the tech problem when someone solves it…
        ajross 4y ago
        > So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it working. Pretty much, yeah. And the reason is that Bluetooth is a disaster of complexity. One implementer thinks function X in state Y means "frob", but another interprets that as a "glim" command. Apple makes it work by controlling variables: their controller, their driver stack, their library framework, their app integration. If one team doesn't understand why another team's layer is doing something, they walk across campus and ask them.
    - raggi 4y ago
      > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. Oh yes, yes they do.
    - jszymborski 4y ago
      > Bluetooth pairing fails occasionally Anecdata, my airpods have been pairing seemlessly with Xubuntu out-of-the-box for over a year. I've similarly not have had any problems pairing with my Bose portable speaker or soundbar.
    - solraph 4y ago
      Known good hardware I expect. There's definitely some hardware out there which is sorta-kinda supported on Linux, but only really works for one kernel version on one distro, and doesn't only supports the bare minimum of requirements. > Bluetooth pairing fails occasionally. I never had this issue on Linux until my most recent laptop, which shipped with a Qualcomm 1103 card, which gave me no end of issues with Wifi and Bluetooth (resume from sleep failing, weird power drain, random drop outs). I swapped out the wifi/BT module for an Intel wireless card (AX210), and all the above problems immediately resolved themselves. Maybe it's just the bluetooth hardware? > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work. I've honestly not had to worry about this in at least ten years across ~8 different machines. It's just worked on all three major graphics vendors. I haven't used Wayland yet, so I don't know if if that's a factor.
      - Underphil 4y ago
        I've had a couple of things that wouldn't always pair. Some headphones, a Bluetooth mouse if I recall. I just chalk it up to the freedom I get from using Linux and just move on.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throw7 4y ago
    Google used to actually have a handful of native applications on linux. I remember uploading to google play music with a linux client (not web) and stuff like google drive were "promised" or something like that. It was all really short lived though. I remember that uploader broke fairly quickly as, of course, some abi change in some library dep and of course there was never another release. It's not really what's missing... it's just google's 'here today, gone tomorrow'. They really shouldn't be called engineers.
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      Is there a native Google Play client on any desktop platform?
- rvz 4y ago
  Well their contributions and 'desktop support' only go towards... ChromeOS. The fact that this effort is going towards this OS tells us they don't care about open-source and especially the Linux Desktop either. It is only to the Kernel which is fine, but it clear that the wider Linux Desktop ecosystem has had the same 20 year old issues still present today.
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Google can keep their in-house distro. Just release their damn Linux Google Drive client, and I'll be happy.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Google released BSD-licensed Drive integration a decade ago. The only reason there isn't a "Linux Drive client" in the sense that you implied is the complete lack of initiative among open source developers. If you want a mature, maintained Drive integration on Linux you can have it right now with ChromeOS. https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chrome/browser/sync_file_system/drive_backend/;bpv=0;bpt=0 https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr...
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    If the competitor offers https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux, developed in the open with a GPL license, is it reasonable to tell other people to take on the cost of building and maintaining a client for your paid service?
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      Which aspect of chromiumos drive integration and sync engine is not "developed in the open"? The dropbox source is distributed as a tarball and if you want to contribute to it "contact us". That doesn't meet my definition of "in the open".
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        I didn't claim that ChromiumOS's code wasn't developed in the open. The fact remains that Google neither supports nor provides a Google Drive client for Debian and its derivatives or Redhat and its derivatives, while its competitor does. It is reasonable for people to complain about this.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
igetspam 4y ago
Correction: The first official distro internally was "grhat." It was born out of need. We used LDAP+kerberos for auth and our homedirs mounted on first login. This had all kinds of fun problems (looking at you, nscd!) but worked well enough most of the time. Goobuntu came a couple years later. In the in between, lots of people ran their own installed version and we worked together to get things working (even Slackware).
- temp0826 4y ago
  >> LDAP+kerberos for auth and our homedirs mounted on first login My first "real" job as a sysadmin had this kind of setup, albeit with Sun servers and workstations running Solaris 8. I was impressed by how well it actually worked most of the time given all the quirkiness of kerberos/nfs/nsc/etc..
  - bryan_w 4y ago
    My first job at University was dealing with this type of setup (Solaris workstations) except we weren't dealing with LDAP, Kerberos, and NFS, but rather AD and Microsoft DFS. It did NOT go that well, but was a good learning experience.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    I've used kerberos + some auth (actually AD in addition to LDAP) and automounted home (and data dirs) a number of times (various clusters, departmental servers, corps). I'd say it was fairly mature (the OS stack supported it, it didn't crash all the time, etc) but still had (and has) sharp edges when it comes to high throughput computing.
  - buildbot 4y ago
    Same, though much newer! UW CSE did the same when I worked there as a help desk tech, student directories mounted on login to the machines. IIRC, it was just a samba share linked into kerberos auth somehow.
- V-eHGsd_ 4y ago
  > This had all kinds of fun problems (looking at you, nscd!) "can someone telnet to 10200 on my box to reset nscd!?"
bluedino 4y ago
Don't a lot of Googlers[1] use Macs? And is it still not encouraged to run Windows there, or was that just something created by the media? [1]: Are they still called Googlers?
- coryrc 4y ago
  Yes, yes Windows discouraged, yes.
- readams 4y ago
  Lots of people have Mac laptops but you can't use them for anything but remote into a gLinux desktop or virtual machine to do development. Or you can use a web-based development environment. Basically, at Google, a laptop is just a web browser.
  - rob74 4y ago
    So a MacBook Air is just a really expensive web browser with a weird keyboard layout (it's probably Ok for US keyboards, but I hate the way they hide keyboard mappings essential for development like square and curly brackets, pipe, backslash, tilde etc. on German keyboards with no other plausible explanation than that some designer didn't want the keyboard to look cluttered)?
    - wil421 4y ago
      Can you post a pic of what you are talking about? My mappings for everything you said are one keyboard click or a shift click away.
    - lesuorac 4y ago
      I think it's mostly MacBook Pros (not Airs). Most of Google's services have a corresponding iOS app which requires a Mac to build / run a simulator. So if you're not actually picky about computer then it's more practical to have a Mac as it can handle debugging for Web/Android/iOS. If you're at a desk you can have a dock with a different keyboard.
    - 4y ago
gitowiec 4y ago
Where I could download gLinux? I thought article said it's available for all...
- hundchenkatze 4y ago
  It says you can't get it in the second paragraph.
  - shortlived 4y ago
    Can you create a Debian derivative and not release the source code?
    - Xylakant 4y ago
      Definitely. The GPL triggers on distributions, so as long as you don‘t distribute you‘re in the clear. Company-internal use doesn’t usually count as distribution.
    - Karliss 4y ago
      The thing with GPL is that you must provide source to users of software not to to everyone publicly. So if compiled binaries are only available internally the same can be done with source code.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      Of course; even GPL only requires that you share source code with people that you distribute binaries to. EDIT: The only FOSS license I know about that doesn't do this is AGPL, which Google is known to be extremely averse to.
      - kmeisthax 4y ago
        There's a few other supra-GPL copylefts that impinge on the freedom to privately fork: * The OpenWatcom license requires source code publication on use. This was approved by the OSI but not FSF, which means its one of the few times a license can be described as Open Source but not Free Software. * SSPL extends AGPL's copyleft clause to include support utilities, which didn't pass muster at either OSI or FSF (which is inconsistent with the OSI's prior opinion on OpenWatcom but ) IMHO, Google's not wrong to reject AGPL. The license makes it very difficult to use modern fork-and-pull-request workflows unless you write all your code to be a quine. And the lack of people using it makes it mostly useful as an exception sales vector rather than a legitimate renegotiation of the copyright bargain like GPL is. But Google's objection to it is rather weird, based on some hypothetical scenario of "GPL virality" making them publish internal tools. This is a misreading of underlying copyright law; I have yet to see a court demand specific performance of any source code publication requirement[0]. They will give you money damages and possibly an injunction prohibiting use of the specific application in question - not your entire internal stack. [0] Practical example: that one time Atari hired a subcontractor to republish old Humongous Entertainment games on Wii and wound up infringing the GPL on SCUMMVM. Atari actually considered GPL compliance, but then realized that this would violate their obligation from Nintendo not to disclose game source at all. http://sev-notes.blogspot.com/2009/06/gpl-scummvm-and-violations.html http://sev-notes.blogspot.com/2009/06/gpl-scummvm-and-violat...
mabbo 4y ago
I would love to see a similar article diving into Amazon's use of RHEL5, and the eventual slow move to "Amazon Linux". At one point, I had a RHEL5 desktop in Seattle, which I could (and had to) develope remotely on from the Toronto office[0]. The software libraries we used depended on something that RHEL5 had and newer versions of Red Hat didn't, as I understood it. Eventually a new and fantastic manager joined the Toronto office and convinced senior management to at least ship the desktops to Toronto. [0] At the time, the 'office' was the warehouse in Mississauga.
- setheron 4y ago
  I was always surprised how fast they got NoMachine to work on the VPN. In today's world with tools like Nix and more hermetic build systems that include libc, the need to build on RHEL5 wouldn't exist. Of course it's always good practice to test on the environment you're going to eventually deploy.
nickelcitymario 4y ago
Having never worked at a place the size of Google, I'm surprised that their IT team directly manages 100,000 machines. In my (apparently naive) mind, if you're smart enough to work at Google, you're smart enough to manage your own OS. Is it a security thing? Are Googlers not allowed to directly control their own computers?
- ptero 4y ago
  I never worked at Google, but based on my experience elsewhere it is partly security and partly standardization of guaranteed minimum functionality. For example, security aside, as an engineer working on X that depends on internal tools Y, Z and W, I do not particularly care what variant of Linux is under the hood as long as I can run my favorite WM, editor and user apps. But I do want support on Y, Z and W if they misbehave. If I run a non-standard OS or distro I will likely get a lukewarm support because those teams will put debugging problems in "non-standard configurations" as a low priority. Personally, I learned to live with most Linux distros. When I did roll out a non-standard setup I had a standby system in a standard configuration that I can show failures on before asking for help. My 2c.
- dman 4y ago
  Google was the only employer I had where I had root on my machine, so I would say that developers have control over their machine.
  - baobob 4y ago
    Was this pre or post 2009?
    - compiler-guy 4y ago
      I have root on my Google machine right this second.
    - sulam 4y ago
      I have root right now on my Linux and MacOS systems.
lysergia 4y ago
Is there any Google branding in the OS? I’d love to see some screenshots of it in action.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  It’s a normal GNOME desktop with a stylized penguin wallpaper and a link to IT.
cripblip 4y ago
A recent debconf talk on supporting the same https://debconf22.debconf.org/talks/11-scalable-support-for-linux-users-a-guide-for-overwhelmed-sysadmins/ https://debconf22.debconf.org/talks/11-scalable-support-for-...
kodah 4y ago
I'd really love if more companies embraced desktop linux, much less maintaining their own distro configuration.
smm11 4y ago
Not related to Google at all, but I've been in Windows places with Sun, OS/2 and NeXT providing the data. Not a single install was newer than the 90s. Consider this happened after 2011. Having a few different Linux distros at Google, okay then.
flakiness 4y ago
The canonical blog post: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/how-google-got-to-rolling-linux-releases-for-desktops https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioner...
tlhunter 4y ago
> Whenever Sieve spots a new version of a Debian package, it starts a new build. These packages are built in package groups since separate packages often must be upgraded together. Once the whole group has been built, Google runs a virtualized test suite to ensure no core components and developer workflows are broken. That must have required an impressive amount of effort! > Better still, thanks to the rolling release schedule, Google can patch security holes on the entire fleet quickly without compromising stability. Previously, security engineers had to carefully review each Debian Security Advisory (DSA) to make sure the fix was in. I can only imagine Google upstreams an incredible number of patches from this process.
aposm 4y ago
I find it very interesting that they're using Debian Testing as essentially a rolling-release distro. I did this in the past for a few years, and stopped (switched to Fedora), but I am pleased to see there is at least one other group of people who think that's a reasonable setup.
- pja 4y ago
  I’ve been doing this for years. I generally suggest holding off on upgrades in the weeks immediately following a Debian stable release is a good idea: when everything that has been held back from testing suddenly arrives at once, bugs sometimes get missed. But otherwise, generally a really solid experience. Of course, it’s not officially supported by anyone, so when the (very) occasional bug does hit, you have to sort out rolling back to something that works yourself. Sounds like Google automated this side of things?
- flas9sd 4y ago
  Debian testing/unstable deserves more user and developer influx from Ubuntu castaways. Googles change to debian-testing reflects my own rite of distribution passage. I used manual /etc/apt/sources.list upgrades within Ubuntu so often, after Unity was abandoned, there was no reason to stay on Canonicals flavour. After a year on testing I went to unstable and subscribe to bugs affecting me from time to time. Usually there's either quickly a workaround or a flatpak as last resort. Not something I'd install on the family pc, but testing or unstable is a good choice for developers. Contributing to Debian and adjacent projects like GNOME and freedesktop.org got easier (or standardized?) since they all run a gitlab instance each.
  - minedwiz 4y ago
    My personal dev machines have been on unstable for a couple of years now. I tried testing first, and honestly have been broken there more than I've ever been broken on unstable (which is 0 times).
GekkePrutser 4y ago
> Besides, the "effort to upgrade our Goobuntu fleet usually took the better part of a year. With a two-year support window, there was only one year left until we had to go through the same process all over again for the next LTS. This entire process was a huge stress factor for our team, as we got hundreds of bugs with requests for help for corner cases." Ummm.. No? Ubuntu LTS has a 5-year support window. Not 2. Or maybe it didn't all the way back then? I don't recall. A rolling distro does make sense though. Especially in a large org where you have a relatively homogenous usepatterns. All the edgecases you can find centrally and pre-empt them before rolling out the updates.
- midasuni 4y ago
  Desktop was 3 years from 6.06 onwards, only server had 5 years. Might have changed recently. This meant you had a year to upgrade the old LTS before it went end of life (from 2008 releases moved back to April, 6.06 was the first LTS and I assume they took a little longer getting it out. I think the version before was 5.10)
  - weberer 4y ago
    They changed it in 2012. Desktop gets 5 years of support and server gets 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Version_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Version...
- mattarm 4y ago
  > Ummm.. No? Ubuntu LTS has a 5-year support window. Not 2. Internal users demanded the upgrade every two years anyway.
racl101 4y ago
neilv 4y ago
Doing a rolling distro sounds like a great idea for Google, at their scale, and they also have the expertise and resources to handle any downsides of that. For early startups, I've been doing "Debian Stable" as the default, partly so that we don't have to spend any time on any surprise distro changes when we're focused on MVP, etc. And in 2 years, the startup will probably have a lot more resources, and we can look at whether that still makes sense, though we might just end up doing an in-place APT `dist-upgrade`, or coast on `oldstable` awhile if the timing is not right yet. I also try to use the same distro on workstations and in production, to permit lightweight efficiencies, like experimenting and debugging outside of containers on workstations, without special tooling, while still having a close match to production. So, Debian Stable everywhere. A recent Ubuntu LTS would also work for this (and sometimes be easier for things like Nvidia SDK), though Debian has been arguably a bit better for security and stability lately. For things not in the Debian Stable we're using, such as if we need a bleeding-edge version of some key thing, and we have big security/reliability requirements... I manage non-Debian-packaged third-party dependencies in our own Git repo, and track and vet updates. This also means trying to minimize these dependencies, more than we would if we were pulling in 100 packages casually from a language-specific package manager, since each package is additional work.
- krzyk 4y ago
  Debian Stable (same as Ubuntu LTS) doesn't have newer package versions, it might sound OK for Windows people, that are accustomed having release once every few years, but in case of mode hardcore Linux users it wouldn't be the best user experience. Even just the git has many releases during Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS, which enhance user experience, that holding back users is not the best idea. And in most cases security fixes land first in the newest versions and are backported, so it is most likely to have a fix in HEAD than in some random older release.
  - jrockway 4y ago
    I use Debian stable for my workstation, but get everything I care about from somewhere else. Go, Node, Emacs, Postgres... all installed from some other package repo. (I actually like Homebrew a lot on Linux.) So I might be two years out of date on ls, but it probably hasn't changed in the last 2 years anyway.
AlbertCory 4y ago
What a laugh. I left in 2017, and I was one of the last SWEs to use a Linux laptop. Everyone had moved to a Mac, after the Christmas Windows security disaster (which I won't detail here). It was pretty much forbidden for a SWE to use Windows, and for a while Linux had a lot of users but over time it became all Mac. Finally in 2016 I caved in and drank the Kool-Aid too. I'd go to the Tech Stop for something or other, and the staff would never object, since, after all, it was the official Google Linux. But you could tell that they didn't see this very often. Side note: the Tech Stop staff were some of the best, nicest, and most competent people I ever encountered in that role. Furthermore, whatever I needed seemed to almost always require them to keep it overnight and wipe the machine completely.
- hahnchen 4y ago
  do you know what the situation is right now?
  - iron2disulfide 4y ago
    There are still SWEs that use the Linux laptops. There are dozens of us!
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      I love it. Like I said: it was not unheard of to use one -- just a bit unusual.
  - yadaeno 4y ago
    People still use glinux but as a remote host. Everything is done on the browser so laptop choice is less important.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      > Everything is done on the browser Not quite. There is security hardware there, as I recall.
  - 4y ago
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
Google could also simply buy Canonical, and then decide what to do with Ubuntu. And doing some damage to the Microsoft monopoly, as a side bonus.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
Weird. Why not just use Arch Linux? They could have simply done what Manjaro did: start as Arch, add some packages and over time fork completely and manage your own testing and stable (by getting inputs from mainstream Arch)
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Because Debian-testing is wonderful?
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  Their servers use a modified version of Debian. They already have knowledge and tooling around dpkg, debs, etc.
amelius 4y ago
Do they use M1 MacBooks?
- nexus7556 4y ago
  Yes. I’m a Googler who uses a 15” M1 MacBook Pro
  - amelius 4y ago
    Do you run gLinux on it?
    - nexus7556 4y ago
      I do not, it’s not an option. If it’s a Mac it has to run macOS
sirjaz 4y ago
But I thought Google was all in om ChromeOS and chromebooks?
- WaffleIronMaker 4y ago
  Those target a demographic consisting of schools and non-developers. Internal Software Engineers have different needs.
andrewclunn 4y ago
Why can't we get it? Is this not a violation of the GPL?
- userbinator 4y ago
  The GPL has a clause that mentions internal use.
chmorgan 4y ago
Does anyone know what they do for malware and virus detection / protection? There are a lot of commercial products but they are all quite opaque in how they work, vendors don't discuss the cpu/latency impacts of their solutions (or perhaps they don't know what these impacts even are...). Would be great to know if there was something or what approaches Google takes to protect themselves and their employees.

286 points by signa11 4y ago

For all the talk I've heard over the years about their in house Linux distro. Their desktop application support, and sometimes web application support, for Linux is non existent. Most of their server estate will be Linux based, including what's powering their desktop applications. But almost none of their efforts give back and enrich the desktop ecosystem. That said they do contribute a lot towards frameworks, libraries and the kernel. Certainly they are among the top alongside Microsoft in recent years and Facebook. So I do recognize my entitled call for more... with good cause

hammyhavoc 4y ago
As a Fedora user writing this from my brand new Google Pixel phone, who uses Gmail and YouTube, and pretty much nothing else from Google in 2022, what is missing?
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  A lot of the stuff that annoys me and gets in my way while using Linux is still the same basic quality-of-life stuff that has been broken forever. Bluetooth pairing fails occasionally. Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work. A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound device. I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure optimal operation – that's what I'd like them to Open Source. I'm happy to buy whatever laptop spec Google uses for gLinux for myself to go along with their OS.
  - praptak 4y ago
    Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work on gLinux. It may be me, because I'm on i3wm which is not the official wm. I have a manually crafted autorandr config but it's kind of hit and miss.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure optimal operation – that's what I'd like them to Open Source. I'm happy to buy whatever laptop spec Google uses for gLinux for myself to go along with their OS. Then your imagination could be improved in a few ways: 1. Google has complete say over the software you're allowed to run at work. They can mandate using whatever tools they want as terms of your employment. 2. Google has complete say over the hardware they purchase you. Random drive incompatibility isn't a thing. They pick hardware that's been validated to work so they don't have random IT complaints. 3. This is a IT / compliance / security thing. The grand total of UX people dedicated to this probably amounts to designing the splash screens. The grand total for bug fixing is for issues impacting an obscene number of users. If you f'ed up your OS install you'll basically have to fix it yourself (IT will offer to reimage your machine and you'll be responsible for making sure you correctly managed your backups by hand - you get limited storage space at least when I worked there, so you had to make sure to exclude certain folders from backups). 4. They do have a slightly better story for Android development but most of that relies on Google3 / Blaze. I think they're doing some work to migrate to Bazel finally but I imagine they'll always have a bit better internal dev story. About the only value-add they could be giving here is the hardware configurations but they're not really different from stock Linux laptops you'd buy as a consumer.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work. A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound device. I have these problems with the Dell laptop running Windows 10 which I use for work, but not with my own desktop or laptop running Fedora. So, my experience is more or less the opposite apparently. This makes it harder for me to buy the theory that there's something uniquely inferior about these Linux desktops.
    - dkarl 4y ago
      When I switched from Linux to Macs for my daily drivers ten years ago, I was really shocked by how much stuff just works. But there's plenty of stuff that doesn't work, even on Mac. When I am struggling to get something working with one of my Macs, I often joke to myself that stuff like this is why Linux on the desktop will never be popular. For example, my work laptop, a Macbook Pro, is always on my desk in my office. When I'm working, I have an external monitor plugged into it. If the laptop goes to sleep, then a bit later the monitor goes to sleep. But when the monitor goes to sleep, the laptop wakes up. Then a few minutes later the laptop goes to sleep and starts the cycle again. So every evening when I'm done working I have to unplug the laptop and manually put it to sleep. Then every once in a while (rarely, but multiple times this year) something else keeps waking the laptop up, or maybe I accidentally wake it up and don't manually put it to sleep again, who knows. When that happens, I have a dead Macbook Pro on my desk in the morning, and I say, "[Stuff] like this is why Linux on the desktop will never be popular.
      - antod 4y ago
        External monitor handling is one area my Linux Thinkpad works smoother than my work Macbook Pro. The previous time I used a Mac (2015ish), it was the other way around.
    - JasonFruit 4y ago
      I'm honestly a little disappointed at how smoothly everything works on my Linux machines. It ruins the impression that I'm doing eldritch magic, issuing gnomic commands inherited from the primal hackers, immersing my very self in the unknowable gnostic wisdom of Unix. Maybe I need to run OpenBSD.
  - coryrc 4y ago
    > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. Heh, most use Macs. Linux laptop users have the same problems, don't worry. My laptop hard locks up on suspend once every couple weeks, plus all the things you mentioned. Oh, I also have a weird audio latency bug.
  - ori_b 4y ago
    > So whatever that secret is A large IT team.
    - mxuribe 4y ago
      I would imagine that not only large, but also likely quite capable. If the IT staff to be hired at google goes through a similarly tough gauntlet as the software devs and SREs (and other similar product-producing) roles, then i can imagine those IT staffers really know what they're doing...at least they'd have to be good enough to get into the doors of google; which i guess is not easy.
  - Morgawr 4y ago
    > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. So whatever that secret is, whether it consists of drivers, known hardware configurations, or even just config files they use to ensure optimal operation – that's what I'd like them to Open Source. Hey there, Google engineer here (opinions are my own, etc etc). I work in the ChromeOS platform team. We have hundreds if not thousands of very talented (not me) engineers who work on low-level firmware, drivers, kernel, performance optimization, etc on Linux. ChromeOS is still Linux and almost entirely open source[0], we also upstream most of it[1]. A lot of the improvements that ChromeOS has had for multi-monitor support, plug-and-play devices, wayland, keyboard/touchpad firmware, etc have all entered mainline Linux kernel and should be perfectly usable by the whole Linux ecosystem and other distributions. I don't work with the gLinux team anymore (used to in the past) so I don't know how what exactly they do with their stuff, but regardless of the "it's not a real linux distro!" hate ChromeOS might get, we still run on a fully open Linux environment ourselves. [0] https://source.chromium.org/chromiumos/chromiumos/codesearch https://source.chromium.org/chromiumos/chromiumos/codesearch [1] The stuff we don't upstream it's usually because either we can't (ChromeOS-specific hacks that the Linux kernel mainline wouldn't accept) or we haven't been able to yet due to needing to clean up patches before they are accepted. Regardless we'll still open source it in our kernel tree
    - Melatonic 4y ago
      From an enterprise management perspective nobody (as far as I know) has made some kind of tooling to manage linux desktops in a similar way admins can do with ChromeOS or Windows. I think that is the real dealbreaker for linux in the enterprise for general use.
    - mindentropy 4y ago
      > We have hundreds if not thousands of very talented (not me) engineers who work on low-level firmware, drivers, kernel, performance optimization, etc on Linux. I am interested in working on this. Do you know if there positions open and where and which group to apply?
      - Morgawr 4y ago
  - AvocadoSushi 4y ago
    Googler here, opinions on my own. While nothing prevents us from switching desktop environments (many of us do so), basically anything outside the default GNOME/X11 configuration is not supported. (It used to be Cinnamon but we're switching away.) Bluetooth accessories are not guaranteed to work. People struggle with screen configurations all the time. Nvidia driver updates are still a nightmare. I'm pretty sure there's no secret sauce.
    - kristjansson 4y ago
      That’s really nice to hear, actually.
    - jszymborski 4y ago
      I'm curious about the change from Cinnamon to GNOME. Are you aware of any particular reason why? I feel like attitudes towards GNOME haven't particularly changed over the year, but that just might be my bubble.
      - netheril96 4y ago
        They want to switch to Wayland eventually but Cinnamon doesn’t support Wayland.
        jszymborski 4y ago
        Thanks!
    - int_19h 4y ago
      So even Google cannot truly do "Linux on the desktop" right?
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    The secret is using hardware that's known to work with Linux. Inside Google, I'm sure IT does this (or writes/fixes drivers when it must). Outside google, you have to do this yourself. Find someone with a working setup and duplicate exactly. > Bluetooth Bluetooth is a dumpster fire and Linux bluetooth is a radioactive biohazardous dumpster fire. Stay away. My workaround: Linux -> SPIDF -> 1Mii B03Pro bluetooth transmitter. The chipset drivers that output 3.5mm and SPIDF are ancient, stable, and dumb as rocks, so they actually work. SPIDF beats 3.5mm because 3.5mm can detect connectedness and punish you by scrambling your sound settings every time you bump a cable. SPIDF can't do this so software can't screw it up. Also, even if you get linux bluetooth working it will tend to scramble if you reboot into a different OS. Just say no. Use an external bluetooth transmitter.
  - ajross 4y ago
    > Bluetooth pairing BT is just a disaster everywhere. My experience is that for "normal" use cases (input devices & headphone audio, basically) Linux is no worse than anywhere else, but still bad. Apple users think it's great because Apple made AirPods work, but that's a testament to Apple's integration engineering and not the underlying technology. > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work I haven't seen this with Intel drivers on a major distro in a long time. But yes, the driver story for other hardware remains somewhat weak. And obviously the farther you get from "Gnome on Ubuntu/Fedora" into the weeds of desktop choices, the weirder the feature set is going to get. > A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound device No idea here. I haven't seen a USB audio failure in a LONG time (closest I can think of is a Razer headset that has two chat/game output streams and Linux sees only one by default). Mostly likely you had a broken piece of hardware that worked in windows only by installing its own driver. And that sucks, but poor standards compliance is just something we all live with.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      > but that's a testament to Apple's integration engineering and not the underlying technology. So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it working. What bothers me about non apple stuff is. I can pair my AirPods to my phone, tv, and laptop. Even if they connect to the laptop if I press connect on the Apple TV or phone they switch. With any non apple headphones. (Bose, Audio-Technica, Sony, Asus) I have to press Bluetooth pairing button and connect on the decide again. So switching between two laptops is a pain. Why can’t other brands do what apple can? It’s not the tech problem when someone solves it…
      - ajross 4y ago
        > So no one outside of apple is smart enough to get it working. Pretty much, yeah. And the reason is that Bluetooth is a disaster of complexity. One implementer thinks function X in state Y means "frob", but another interprets that as a "glim" command. Apple makes it work by controlling variables: their controller, their driver stack, their library framework, their app integration. If one team doesn't understand why another team's layer is doing something, they walk across campus and ask them.
  - raggi 4y ago
    > I cannot imagine that Google engineers would live with such deeply broken systems as daily drivers. Oh yes, yes they do.
  - jszymborski 4y ago
    > Bluetooth pairing fails occasionally Anecdata, my airpods have been pairing seemlessly with Xubuntu out-of-the-box for over a year. I've similarly not have had any problems pairing with my Bose portable speaker or soundbar.
  - solraph 4y ago
    Known good hardware I expect. There's definitely some hardware out there which is sorta-kinda supported on Linux, but only really works for one kernel version on one distro, and doesn't only supports the bare minimum of requirements. > Bluetooth pairing fails occasionally. I never had this issue on Linux until my most recent laptop, which shipped with a Qualcomm 1103 card, which gave me no end of issues with Wifi and Bluetooth (resume from sleep failing, weird power drain, random drop outs). I swapped out the wifi/BT module for an Intel wireless card (AX210), and all the above problems immediately resolved themselves. Maybe it's just the bluetooth hardware? > Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work. I've honestly not had to worry about this in at least ten years across ~8 different machines. It's just worked on all three major graphics vendors. I haven't used Wayland yet, so I don't know if if that's a factor.
    - Underphil 4y ago
      I've had a couple of things that wouldn't always pair. Some headphones, a Bluetooth mouse if I recall. I just chalk it up to the freedom I get from using Linux and just move on.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throw7 4y ago
  Google used to actually have a handful of native applications on linux. I remember uploading to google play music with a linux client (not web) and stuff like google drive were "promised" or something like that. It was all really short lived though. I remember that uploader broke fairly quickly as, of course, some abi change in some library dep and of course there was never another release. It's not really what's missing... it's just google's 'here today, gone tomorrow'. They really shouldn't be called engineers.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Is there a native Google Play client on any desktop platform?
rvz 4y ago
Well their contributions and 'desktop support' only go towards... ChromeOS. The fact that this effort is going towards this OS tells us they don't care about open-source and especially the Linux Desktop either. It is only to the Kernel which is fine, but it clear that the wider Linux Desktop ecosystem has had the same 20 year old issues still present today.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

Google can keep their in-house distro. Just release their damn Linux Google Drive client, and I'll be happy.

jeffbee 4y ago
Google released BSD-licensed Drive integration a decade ago. The only reason there isn't a "Linux Drive client" in the sense that you implied is the complete lack of initiative among open source developers. If you want a mature, maintained Drive integration on Linux you can have it right now with ChromeOS. https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chrome/browser/sync_file_system/drive_backend/;bpv=0;bpt=0 https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr...
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  If the competitor offers https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux, developed in the open with a GPL license, is it reasonable to tell other people to take on the cost of building and maintaining a client for your paid service?
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Which aspect of chromiumos drive integration and sync engine is not "developed in the open"? The dropbox source is distributed as a tarball and if you want to contribute to it "contact us". That doesn't meet my definition of "in the open".
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      I didn't claim that ChromiumOS's code wasn't developed in the open. The fact remains that Google neither supports nor provides a Google Drive client for Debian and its derivatives or Redhat and its derivatives, while its competitor does. It is reasonable for people to complain about this.
  - reaperducer 4y ago

igetspam 4y ago

Correction: The first official distro internally was "grhat." It was born out of need. We used LDAP+kerberos for auth and our homedirs mounted on first login. This had all kinds of fun problems (looking at you, nscd!) but worked well enough most of the time. Goobuntu came a couple years later. In the in between, lots of people ran their own installed version and we worked together to get things working (even Slackware).

temp0826 4y ago
>> LDAP+kerberos for auth and our homedirs mounted on first login My first "real" job as a sysadmin had this kind of setup, albeit with Sun servers and workstations running Solaris 8. I was impressed by how well it actually worked most of the time given all the quirkiness of kerberos/nfs/nsc/etc..
- bryan_w 4y ago
  My first job at University was dealing with this type of setup (Solaris workstations) except we weren't dealing with LDAP, Kerberos, and NFS, but rather AD and Microsoft DFS. It did NOT go that well, but was a good learning experience.
- dekhn 4y ago
  I've used kerberos + some auth (actually AD in addition to LDAP) and automounted home (and data dirs) a number of times (various clusters, departmental servers, corps). I'd say it was fairly mature (the OS stack supported it, it didn't crash all the time, etc) but still had (and has) sharp edges when it comes to high throughput computing.
- buildbot 4y ago
  Same, though much newer! UW CSE did the same when I worked there as a help desk tech, student directories mounted on login to the machines. IIRC, it was just a samba share linked into kerberos auth somehow.
V-eHGsd_ 4y ago
> This had all kinds of fun problems (looking at you, nscd!) "can someone telnet to 10200 on my box to reset nscd!?"

bluedino 4y ago

Don't a lot of Googlers[1] use Macs? And is it still not encouraged to run Windows there, or was that just something created by the media? [1]: Are they still called Googlers?

coryrc 4y ago
Yes, yes Windows discouraged, yes.
readams 4y ago
Lots of people have Mac laptops but you can't use them for anything but remote into a gLinux desktop or virtual machine to do development. Or you can use a web-based development environment. Basically, at Google, a laptop is just a web browser.
- rob74 4y ago
  So a MacBook Air is just a really expensive web browser with a weird keyboard layout (it's probably Ok for US keyboards, but I hate the way they hide keyboard mappings essential for development like square and curly brackets, pipe, backslash, tilde etc. on German keyboards with no other plausible explanation than that some designer didn't want the keyboard to look cluttered)?
  - wil421 4y ago
    Can you post a pic of what you are talking about? My mappings for everything you said are one keyboard click or a shift click away.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    I think it's mostly MacBook Pros (not Airs). Most of Google's services have a corresponding iOS app which requires a Mac to build / run a simulator. So if you're not actually picky about computer then it's more practical to have a Mac as it can handle debugging for Web/Android/iOS. If you're at a desk you can have a dock with a different keyboard.
  - 4y ago

gitowiec 4y ago

Where I could download gLinux? I thought article said it's available for all...

hundchenkatze 4y ago
It says you can't get it in the second paragraph.
- shortlived 4y ago
  Can you create a Debian derivative and not release the source code?
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    Definitely. The GPL triggers on distributions, so as long as you don‘t distribute you‘re in the clear. Company-internal use doesn’t usually count as distribution.
  - Karliss 4y ago
    The thing with GPL is that you must provide source to users of software not to to everyone publicly. So if compiled binaries are only available internally the same can be done with source code.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    Of course; even GPL only requires that you share source code with people that you distribute binaries to. EDIT: The only FOSS license I know about that doesn't do this is AGPL, which Google is known to be extremely averse to.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      There's a few other supra-GPL copylefts that impinge on the freedom to privately fork: * The OpenWatcom license requires source code publication on use. This was approved by the OSI but not FSF, which means its one of the few times a license can be described as Open Source but not Free Software. * SSPL extends AGPL's copyleft clause to include support utilities, which didn't pass muster at either OSI or FSF (which is inconsistent with the OSI's prior opinion on OpenWatcom but ) IMHO, Google's not wrong to reject AGPL. The license makes it very difficult to use modern fork-and-pull-request workflows unless you write all your code to be a quine. And the lack of people using it makes it mostly useful as an exception sales vector rather than a legitimate renegotiation of the copyright bargain like GPL is. But Google's objection to it is rather weird, based on some hypothetical scenario of "GPL virality" making them publish internal tools. This is a misreading of underlying copyright law; I have yet to see a court demand specific performance of any source code publication requirement[0]. They will give you money damages and possibly an injunction prohibiting use of the specific application in question - not your entire internal stack. [0] Practical example: that one time Atari hired a subcontractor to republish old Humongous Entertainment games on Wii and wound up infringing the GPL on SCUMMVM. Atari actually considered GPL compliance, but then realized that this would violate their obligation from Nintendo not to disclose game source at all. http://sev-notes.blogspot.com/2009/06/gpl-scummvm-and-violations.html http://sev-notes.blogspot.com/2009/06/gpl-scummvm-and-violat...

mabbo 4y ago

I would love to see a similar article diving into Amazon's use of RHEL5, and the eventual slow move to "Amazon Linux". At one point, I had a RHEL5 desktop in Seattle, which I could (and had to) develope remotely on from the Toronto office[0]. The software libraries we used depended on something that RHEL5 had and newer versions of Red Hat didn't, as I understood it. Eventually a new and fantastic manager joined the Toronto office and convinced senior management to at least ship the desktops to Toronto. [0] At the time, the 'office' was the warehouse in Mississauga.

setheron 4y ago
I was always surprised how fast they got NoMachine to work on the VPN. In today's world with tools like Nix and more hermetic build systems that include libc, the need to build on RHEL5 wouldn't exist. Of course it's always good practice to test on the environment you're going to eventually deploy.

nickelcitymario 4y ago

Having never worked at a place the size of Google, I'm surprised that their IT team directly manages 100,000 machines. In my (apparently naive) mind, if you're smart enough to work at Google, you're smart enough to manage your own OS. Is it a security thing? Are Googlers not allowed to directly control their own computers?

ptero 4y ago
I never worked at Google, but based on my experience elsewhere it is partly security and partly standardization of guaranteed minimum functionality. For example, security aside, as an engineer working on X that depends on internal tools Y, Z and W, I do not particularly care what variant of Linux is under the hood as long as I can run my favorite WM, editor and user apps. But I do want support on Y, Z and W if they misbehave. If I run a non-standard OS or distro I will likely get a lukewarm support because those teams will put debugging problems in "non-standard configurations" as a low priority. Personally, I learned to live with most Linux distros. When I did roll out a non-standard setup I had a standby system in a standard configuration that I can show failures on before asking for help. My 2c.
dman 4y ago
Google was the only employer I had where I had root on my machine, so I would say that developers have control over their machine.
- baobob 4y ago
  Was this pre or post 2009?
  - compiler-guy 4y ago
    I have root on my Google machine right this second.
  - sulam 4y ago
    I have root right now on my Linux and MacOS systems.

lysergia 4y ago

Is there any Google branding in the OS? I’d love to see some screenshots of it in action.

saagarjha 4y ago
It’s a normal GNOME desktop with a stylized penguin wallpaper and a link to IT.

cripblip 4y ago

A recent debconf talk on supporting the same https://debconf22.debconf.org/talks/11-scalable-support-for-linux-users-a-guide-for-overwhelmed-sysadmins/ https://debconf22.debconf.org/talks/11-scalable-support-for-...

kodah 4y ago

I'd really love if more companies embraced desktop linux, much less maintaining their own distro configuration.

smm11 4y ago

Not related to Google at all, but I've been in Windows places with Sun, OS/2 and NeXT providing the data. Not a single install was newer than the 90s. Consider this happened after 2011. Having a few different Linux distros at Google, okay then.

flakiness 4y ago

The canonical blog post: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/how-google-got-to-rolling-linux-releases-for-desktops https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioner...

tlhunter 4y ago

> Whenever Sieve spots a new version of a Debian package, it starts a new build. These packages are built in package groups since separate packages often must be upgraded together. Once the whole group has been built, Google runs a virtualized test suite to ensure no core components and developer workflows are broken. That must have required an impressive amount of effort! > Better still, thanks to the rolling release schedule, Google can patch security holes on the entire fleet quickly without compromising stability. Previously, security engineers had to carefully review each Debian Security Advisory (DSA) to make sure the fix was in. I can only imagine Google upstreams an incredible number of patches from this process.

aposm 4y ago

I find it very interesting that they're using Debian Testing as essentially a rolling-release distro. I did this in the past for a few years, and stopped (switched to Fedora), but I am pleased to see there is at least one other group of people who think that's a reasonable setup.

pja 4y ago
I’ve been doing this for years. I generally suggest holding off on upgrades in the weeks immediately following a Debian stable release is a good idea: when everything that has been held back from testing suddenly arrives at once, bugs sometimes get missed. But otherwise, generally a really solid experience. Of course, it’s not officially supported by anyone, so when the (very) occasional bug does hit, you have to sort out rolling back to something that works yourself. Sounds like Google automated this side of things?
flas9sd 4y ago
Debian testing/unstable deserves more user and developer influx from Ubuntu castaways. Googles change to debian-testing reflects my own rite of distribution passage. I used manual /etc/apt/sources.list upgrades within Ubuntu so often, after Unity was abandoned, there was no reason to stay on Canonicals flavour. After a year on testing I went to unstable and subscribe to bugs affecting me from time to time. Usually there's either quickly a workaround or a flatpak as last resort. Not something I'd install on the family pc, but testing or unstable is a good choice for developers. Contributing to Debian and adjacent projects like GNOME and freedesktop.org got easier (or standardized?) since they all run a gitlab instance each.
- minedwiz 4y ago
  My personal dev machines have been on unstable for a couple of years now. I tried testing first, and honestly have been broken there more than I've ever been broken on unstable (which is 0 times).

GekkePrutser 4y ago

> Besides, the "effort to upgrade our Goobuntu fleet usually took the better part of a year. With a two-year support window, there was only one year left until we had to go through the same process all over again for the next LTS. This entire process was a huge stress factor for our team, as we got hundreds of bugs with requests for help for corner cases." Ummm.. No? Ubuntu LTS has a 5-year support window. Not 2. Or maybe it didn't all the way back then? I don't recall. A rolling distro does make sense though. Especially in a large org where you have a relatively homogenous usepatterns. All the edgecases you can find centrally and pre-empt them before rolling out the updates.

midasuni 4y ago
Desktop was 3 years from 6.06 onwards, only server had 5 years. Might have changed recently. This meant you had a year to upgrade the old LTS before it went end of life (from 2008 releases moved back to April, 6.06 was the first LTS and I assume they took a little longer getting it out. I think the version before was 5.10)
- weberer 4y ago
  They changed it in 2012. Desktop gets 5 years of support and server gets 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Version_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Version...
mattarm 4y ago
> Ummm.. No? Ubuntu LTS has a 5-year support window. Not 2. Internal users demanded the upgrade every two years anyway.

racl101 4y ago

neilv 4y ago

Doing a rolling distro sounds like a great idea for Google, at their scale, and they also have the expertise and resources to handle any downsides of that. For early startups, I've been doing "Debian Stable" as the default, partly so that we don't have to spend any time on any surprise distro changes when we're focused on MVP, etc. And in 2 years, the startup will probably have a lot more resources, and we can look at whether that still makes sense, though we might just end up doing an in-place APT `dist-upgrade`, or coast on `oldstable` awhile if the timing is not right yet. I also try to use the same distro on workstations and in production, to permit lightweight efficiencies, like experimenting and debugging outside of containers on workstations, without special tooling, while still having a close match to production. So, Debian Stable everywhere. A recent Ubuntu LTS would also work for this (and sometimes be easier for things like Nvidia SDK), though Debian has been arguably a bit better for security and stability lately. For things not in the Debian Stable we're using, such as if we need a bleeding-edge version of some key thing, and we have big security/reliability requirements... I manage non-Debian-packaged third-party dependencies in our own Git repo, and track and vet updates. This also means trying to minimize these dependencies, more than we would if we were pulling in 100 packages casually from a language-specific package manager, since each package is additional work.

krzyk 4y ago
Debian Stable (same as Ubuntu LTS) doesn't have newer package versions, it might sound OK for Windows people, that are accustomed having release once every few years, but in case of mode hardcore Linux users it wouldn't be the best user experience. Even just the git has many releases during Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS, which enhance user experience, that holding back users is not the best idea. And in most cases security fixes land first in the newest versions and are backported, so it is most likely to have a fix in HEAD than in some random older release.
- jrockway 4y ago
  I use Debian stable for my workstation, but get everything I care about from somewhere else. Go, Node, Emacs, Postgres... all installed from some other package repo. (I actually like Homebrew a lot on Linux.) So I might be two years out of date on ls, but it probably hasn't changed in the last 2 years anyway.

AlbertCory 4y ago

What a laugh. I left in 2017, and I was one of the last SWEs to use a Linux laptop. Everyone had moved to a Mac, after the Christmas Windows security disaster (which I won't detail here). It was pretty much forbidden for a SWE to use Windows, and for a while Linux had a lot of users but over time it became all Mac. Finally in 2016 I caved in and drank the Kool-Aid too. I'd go to the Tech Stop for something or other, and the staff would never object, since, after all, it was the official Google Linux. But you could tell that they didn't see this very often. Side note: the Tech Stop staff were some of the best, nicest, and most competent people I ever encountered in that role. Furthermore, whatever I needed seemed to almost always require them to keep it overnight and wipe the machine completely.

hahnchen 4y ago
do you know what the situation is right now?
- iron2disulfide 4y ago
  There are still SWEs that use the Linux laptops. There are dozens of us!
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    I love it. Like I said: it was not unheard of to use one -- just a bit unusual.
- yadaeno 4y ago
  People still use glinux but as a remote host. Everything is done on the browser so laptop choice is less important.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    > Everything is done on the browser Not quite. There is security hardware there, as I recall.
- 4y ago

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

Google could also simply buy Canonical, and then decide what to do with Ubuntu. And doing some damage to the Microsoft monopoly, as a side bonus.

jokethrowaway 4y ago

Weird. Why not just use Arch Linux? They could have simply done what Manjaro did: start as Arch, add some packages and over time fork completely and manage your own testing and stable (by getting inputs from mainstream Arch)

pessimizer 4y ago
Because Debian-testing is wonderful?
_-david-_ 4y ago
Their servers use a modified version of Debian. They already have knowledge and tooling around dpkg, debs, etc.

amelius 4y ago

Do they use M1 MacBooks?

nexus7556 4y ago
Yes. I’m a Googler who uses a 15” M1 MacBook Pro
- amelius 4y ago
  Do you run gLinux on it?
  - nexus7556 4y ago
    I do not, it’s not an option. If it’s a Mac it has to run macOS

sirjaz 4y ago

But I thought Google was all in om ChromeOS and chromebooks?

WaffleIronMaker 4y ago
Those target a demographic consisting of schools and non-developers. Internal Software Engineers have different needs.

andrewclunn 4y ago

Why can't we get it? Is this not a violation of the GPL?

userbinator 4y ago
The GPL has a clause that mentions internal use.

chmorgan 4y ago

Does anyone know what they do for malware and virus detection / protection? There are a lot of commercial products but they are all quite opaque in how they work, vendors don't discuss the cpu/latency impacts of their solutions (or perhaps they don't know what these impacts even are...). Would be great to know if there was something or what approaches Google takes to protect themselves and their employees.