4 ms·

Ubuntu-minimal depends on Ubuntu-advantage-tools

59 points by teddyh 4y ago

trashburger 4y ago
Canonical has been taking steps to advertise their paid offerings in increasing velocity lately. Is there something that's been triggering this?
- ergonaught 4y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/21/canonical-now-hopes-to-ipo-in-2023/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/21/canonical-now-hopes-to-ipo...
- jzebedee 4y ago
  More likely is that it was mentioned in a recent front-page article about comparing specialty Linux distros: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34837219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34837219
jraph 4y ago
Debian is an ancient African word meaning "Can't be bothered anymore with whatever Ubuntu is pulling off in the next release". I guess anybody interested in a minimal Ubuntu install would be better off installing Debian instead. The value Ubuntu added "back in the day" was end-user friendliness, where end-user is somebody not necessarily technical. But that's kinda pointless anyway for a minimal install. Ubuntu was also useful vs Debian for its regular release schedule and long term support but you basically have this with Debian too nowadays and it's been like this for years now. Can't wait to have the linux kernel installed as a Snap package.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  I looked at moving our cloud machines to Debian rather than Ubuntu. I concluded it may not be worth it: - Debian still has the unattended-upgrades thing. I don't like this. - Debian's package manager doesn't support zstd compression so you can't use modern Ubuntu packages on it (I _think_ they're fixing this) - Debian's packages can be quite far behind, for example the current version of Boost is 1.74 where the offical release 1.81 - I couldn't see any obvious performance improvements (Apache stack) + No snap shit. If anyone can provide me with more ammo to move to Debian I'd welcome it.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    > - Debian still has the unattended-upgrades thing. I don't like this. Then don’t install it? I don’t get the problem. > - Debian's package manager doesn't support zstd compression so you can't use modern Ubuntu packages on it (I _think_ they're fixing this) Fixed and released a week ago: https://bugs.debian.org/892664 https://bugs.debian.org/892664 > - Debian's packages can be quite far behind, for example the current version of Boost is 1.74 where the offical release 1.81 Boost 1.81 is in experimental; download the package if you want it. > - I couldn't see any obvious performance improvements (Apache stack) “No obvious performace improvements” is a negative? What you can reasonably expect of Debian is the same as Ubuntu, minus the bloatware.
    - rascul 4y ago
      > > - Debian's packages can be quite far behind, for example the current version of Boost is 1.74 where the offical release 1.81 > Boost 1.81 is in experimental; download the package if you want it. 1.74 was a year old when bullseye was released, and there had been at least three boost releases in that time. PHP is another example. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180482 : > PHP 8.0 is 10 months old, and debian’s upcoming release will be upgrading from 7.3 to 7.4, which will make 7.4 the standard for the next ~3 years (even though it only gets upstream support for 1 more year)… There is plenty of software this happens to in Debian, and Debian isn't the only distro this happens with. We need distros maintaining stability as must as we need distros moving fast and breaking things, and everywhere in between. It just means that some distros might not be an exact fit for all use cases. And that's fine.
      - jraph 4y ago
        The Debian packager of PHP and Apache also provides a neat repository with very up to date versions: https://deb.sury.org/ https://deb.sury.org/
      - mmarx 4y ago
        > > PHP 8.0 is 10 months old, and debian’s upcoming release will be upgrading from 7.3 to 7.4, which will make 7.4 the standard for the next ~3 years (even though it only gets upstream support for 1 more year)… Packaging PHP 8 would have required to drop, e.g., the mediawiki package, which only become compatible with PHP 8 in 1.39, released November 2022.
- n3storm 4y ago
  the lxc-lxd and snap issues are the stuff that makes me go from "I don't care about ubuntu" to "I hate ubuntu"
  - kramerger 4y ago
    What wrong with lxd on Ubuntu?
    - CoconutPilot 4y ago
      LXD is only available via Ubuntu proprietary Snap packages and not native .deb packages. Native as in Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, and .deb packages are the native package for Debian. Snap has some downsides for server/infrastructure packages. Automatic updating being the most visible, but they are generally all about lack of control. This is what Snap does, it moves the power from users to developers.
      - zekrioca 4y ago
        Not true any longer. Debian has been officially [1] supporting LXD Debian packages [2] since September last year. And you can add this APT repo [3] — which follows the same Debian recipes - into your sources.list to install LXD natively with APT. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/LXD https://wiki.debian.org/LXD [2] https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/lxd https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/lxd [3] https://apt.calenhad.com/ https://apt.calenhad.com/
  - dicknuckle 4y ago
    I uninstalled/purged snap on a machine my coworker provisioned, we don't use anything that snap offers. After that I don't have an issue with Ubuntu at all.
- francislavoie 4y ago
  Thanks for the laugh, that first line is amazing IMO, PopOS is the ideal Ubuntu alternative right now. They're mostly doing things right. For Desktop, anyway.
  - sshine 4y ago
    I tried Pop_OS! on my gaming laptop last year. It does have some nice UI improvements. It is also terrible: - Suspend did not work - My GPU would always be activated, which would make my fan run at maximum speed. - Steam didn't work out of the box, so I never actually played any games, which was the whole point. Steam did work with some effort on regular Ubuntu. - Eventually, the system became glitchy in record time, i.e. random crashes. Going back to Ubuntu server edition, I felt like I had been given a new computer again.
    - francislavoie 4y ago
      I don't have any of those problems on my Dell XPS laptop. Installed it in October-ish.
      - FunnyLookinHat 4y ago
        Same for me. Ran perfectly on my Thinkpad X1E (including for gaming!).
- ElfinTrousers 4y ago
  I've been using Linux for...huh, I guess next year makes 30 years. I run Ubuntu on all of my machines, because it's easy and well-supported and I got tired of tinkering with my Linux install for its own sake roughly 20 years ago.
  - sshine 4y ago
    I'm in the same boat. 26 years of Linux, been running Ubuntu for at least a decade. Ubuntu server on laptops, because it gives me nice things. Debian on servers, because it's minimal and conservative.
  - ergonaught 4y ago
    Linux since Slackware 1.0, and started using Ubuntu as soon as it was available. Still using it on some cloud servers, but they've put enough dents in my "trust" sentiment that I avoid using them where possible, now, and my desktops are usually Manjaro. I'm unhappy with them but it will be a tragedy when they are finally acquired.
    - 3np 4y ago
      Can recommend considering Endeavour as a Manjaro alternative.
- Reventlov 4y ago
  >I guess anybody interested in a minimal Ubuntu install would be better off installing Debian instead. Do debian ships with a microsoft signed bootloader ? Is that easy to install on Debian ?
  - teddyh 4y ago
    > Do debian ships with a microsoft signed bootloader ? Yes.
  - martijnvds 4y ago
    Yes, Debian comes with a signed bootloader and kernel.
  - pja 4y ago
    Yes. Debian ships with shim-signed which has been signed by Microsoft UEFI CA & will in turn boot grub-efi-amd64-signed which will then boot a signed kernel. So you have a chain of trust from a standard UEFI system to the kernel. All of this is installed by default with a normal Debian install.
- jacooper 4y ago
  But does Debian have the same security support speed as Ubuntu? Debian is a community project, therefore everything is best-effort rather than guaranterd like Ubuntu or RHEL/-clones. Although for all the hate it gets, Ubuntu Pro is genuinely a good offering when comparing it to something like RHEL. Also fuck snaps, no body wants to use that crap, neither on the desktop(flatpak is just better) or the server(use containers already).
  - teddyh 4y ago
    All the data is there: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/ https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/
    - jacooper 4y ago
      I'm asking in general, is it as fast as Ubuntu?
      - teddyh 4y ago
        You’d have to ask someone who runs both Debian and Ubuntu systems; I don’t know. If you want to study the data, I guess you could compare <https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/rss.xml https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/rss.xml> with <https://www.debian.org/security/dsa-long https://www.debian.org/security/dsa-long>.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
phoe-krk 4y ago
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1930914/comments/15 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1... seems to have a workaround which seems to be a .deb package with matching package metadata that is otherwise empty. Is it really that easy? Would ubuntu-advantage-tools "benefit" from being cryptographically validated to ensure that users do not substitute the original release from Canonical with "counterfeit" replacements?
- teddyh 4y ago
  In that case, is ubuntu-minimal also a metapackage? If that’s true, I assume that you could just as well replace the ubuntu-minimal package with your own package with equivalent dependencies, except the dependency on ubuntu-advantage-tools.
  - phoe-krk 4y ago
    > In that case, is ubuntu-minimal also a metapackage? Yes - https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/ubuntu-minimal https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/ubuntu-minimal shows a lot of dependencies and two actual files with documentation. I think the main issue would be getting this ubuntu-other-minimal package into Canonical's official repositories. Otherwise, you've just made another Ubuntu remix.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  As far as I can see, this package doesn't replace the existing package, it merely contains metadata to prevent the existing package from being reinstalled. I'd prefer a set of build files over a package like this, but if it's as empty as it claims to be then this is a great solution to this ridiculousness.
onphonenow 4y ago
The bug reporter is claiming there is a mass exodus from Ubuntu - is this really the case? I’m seeing more Amazon / Ubuntu/ mainstream distro stuff these days then I feel like I used to 10-15 years ago. Is this mass exodus moving to Debian for things like Amazon AMI’s?
- caboteria 4y ago
  I read the comment as OP threatening a mass exodus rather than claiming one was already happening. Not clear, though, so it's a valid question. I don't see a mass exodus from Ubuntu but it seems that most Docker containers these days are based on either Debian or Alpine.
  - ElfinTrousers 4y ago
    I think what he thinks of as "mass" is probably what we would call "himself and two or three of his friends who think similarly".
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Nearly all of the Docker containers I build are based on Alpine. Occasionally I go "oh shit, this uses that musl thing not glibc, I need to remember to... <some minor tweak>". The one Docker container that doesn't, in fact, is based on CentOS so I can run Davinci Resolve in CentOS when my desktop OS is really Ubuntu.
- warp 4y ago
  I expect there is a group of developers and tinkerers who used to run linux on the desktop (where Ubuntu traditionally was perhaps easier to use, especially on laptops with wifi, etc...), who switched to MacBooks and now develop and run their linux stuff in docker, ec2/cloud or even just some Raspberry Pis. (Though I guess that in itself wouldn't be a large enough group to be seen as a "Mass Exodus")
- nubinetwork 4y ago
  > mass exodus I've been considering it since their apt and motd spam, and their holding back of updates (paid or otherwise). I won't make any definitive changes until the next LTS gets released though.
bboozzoo 4y ago
Storm in a teacup? It's not like this is the most wasteful package on the system, so I don't see where the drama is. If you're building a minimal image based on Ubuntu, just go ahead and apply the workaround, or remove the files. If you're rebuilding the whole distro, drop the package and fix the deps to your liking.
- jraph 4y ago
  Yeah, but minimal should do what it says, and the whole point of a distribution is not having to do this kind of thing. You should not have to work around your distro, especially deliberate choices. If Ubuntu needs people to have this package for support, why don't they have a ubuntu-recommended package that depends on it and that's installed by default, and let people who want something minimal to have it?
dizhn 4y ago
I tried to remove that the other day but stopped seeing release-update tool would be remoced too. In my experience the tool works perfectly for OS upgrades. I have not had a single problem with live updates over ssh. This tool might even be why minimal needs it. Bad/dark packaging.
kissgyorgy 4y ago
At this point people should let go Ubuntu. The dark patterns in this Linux distro is just baffling.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  "Dark patterns" like what?
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Forcing snap.
    - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
      Not just that but forcing Firefox as a Snap version that was broken for a long time. That's ideology being pushed massively before utility. If they waited until heavy use apps were available as working Snaps then there might not have been as much push back. Though I personally hate the concept too, so ymmv.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Why is snap supposed to be bad, now?
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        I'm unsure what you mean by the use of 'now', it makes it sound like Snap has never been bad, when in reality it has never been good...
      - jraph 4y ago
        Several seconds to launch a calculator. With all the memory usage and CPU it implies. That's for this kind of stuff we would have laughed of Windows. And please, you don't need to sandbox such a dumb calculator (no offense to the Gnome devs, we need such simple apps). Centralized store with no open source implementation server-side that you can self host. We already have Flatpak for this use case that does not have the previous issue and that we could have standardized on. Didn't need another standard for this. Stuff not ready / broken in several ways with it but still provided by default (Firefox). When you already own your perfectly fine APT package repositories and have a total control on what dependencies you can rely on, you don't need this kind of stuff to provide software on your distro.
charcircuit 4y ago
Another episode of free users being entitled. Ubuntu has a different definition of what they consider minimal yet they can't accept it and throw a fit.
- lamp987 4y ago
  i r8 2/8
fwlr 4y ago
“ubuntu-advantage-tools needs to be present so users can upgrade to Ubuntu Advantage/Pro to get extended security support.” Remind users to apt-get ubuntu-advantage-tools if they want to upgrade. “No, `apt-get ubuntu-extended-support` isn’t an option, because users should be able to use Ubuntu without using apt-get.” So, who exactly is using Minimal Ubuntu (“…a set of Ubuntu images designed for automated deployment at scale…”) without using apt-get? Your description of the distro as “…not intended to be comfortable to use at the command line, but you can apt-get and snap install anything as usual…” sure sounds like you expect users to use apt-get, in the rare circumstance that anyone ever does log in as a user to one of these distros. “Sorry, but we will not budge on this ‘must have access to advantage/pro without apt-get’ technicality.” So there’s this line, once again from the Ubuntu wiki’s own description of Ubuntu Minimal: “The `unminimize` command will install the standard Ubuntu Server packages if you want to convert a Minimal instance to a standard Server environment…”. So make a `get-advantage` or `go-pro` command. There, access to advantage/pro without apt-get. “Look, we are a business, and advantage/pro upgrades are how we make money, we’re not taking it out.” I’m sure you have telemetry tracking upgrade conversions - maybe in ubuntu-advantage-tools itself, maybe elsewhere. Take a good look at that data and find out how many people are upgrading to advantage/pro from minimal. Is it zero? It’s zero, isn’t it?

59 points by teddyh 4y ago

Canonical has been taking steps to advertise their paid offerings in increasing velocity lately. Is there something that's been triggering this?

ergonaught 4y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/21/canonical-now-hopes-to-ipo-in-2023/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/21/canonical-now-hopes-to-ipo...
jzebedee 4y ago
More likely is that it was mentioned in a recent front-page article about comparing specialty Linux distros: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34837219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34837219

jraph 4y ago

Debian is an ancient African word meaning "Can't be bothered anymore with whatever Ubuntu is pulling off in the next release". I guess anybody interested in a minimal Ubuntu install would be better off installing Debian instead. The value Ubuntu added "back in the day" was end-user friendliness, where end-user is somebody not necessarily technical. But that's kinda pointless anyway for a minimal install. Ubuntu was also useful vs Debian for its regular release schedule and long term support but you basically have this with Debian too nowadays and it's been like this for years now. Can't wait to have the linux kernel installed as a Snap package.

secondcoming 4y ago
I looked at moving our cloud machines to Debian rather than Ubuntu. I concluded it may not be worth it: - Debian still has the unattended-upgrades thing. I don't like this. - Debian's package manager doesn't support zstd compression so you can't use modern Ubuntu packages on it (I _think_ they're fixing this) - Debian's packages can be quite far behind, for example the current version of Boost is 1.74 where the offical release 1.81 - I couldn't see any obvious performance improvements (Apache stack) + No snap shit. If anyone can provide me with more ammo to move to Debian I'd welcome it.
- teddyh 4y ago
  > - Debian still has the unattended-upgrades thing. I don't like this. Then don’t install it? I don’t get the problem. > - Debian's package manager doesn't support zstd compression so you can't use modern Ubuntu packages on it (I _think_ they're fixing this) Fixed and released a week ago: https://bugs.debian.org/892664 https://bugs.debian.org/892664 > - Debian's packages can be quite far behind, for example the current version of Boost is 1.74 where the offical release 1.81 Boost 1.81 is in experimental; download the package if you want it. > - I couldn't see any obvious performance improvements (Apache stack) “No obvious performace improvements” is a negative? What you can reasonably expect of Debian is the same as Ubuntu, minus the bloatware.
  - rascul 4y ago
    > > - Debian's packages can be quite far behind, for example the current version of Boost is 1.74 where the offical release 1.81 > Boost 1.81 is in experimental; download the package if you want it. 1.74 was a year old when bullseye was released, and there had been at least three boost releases in that time. PHP is another example. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180482 : > PHP 8.0 is 10 months old, and debian’s upcoming release will be upgrading from 7.3 to 7.4, which will make 7.4 the standard for the next ~3 years (even though it only gets upstream support for 1 more year)… There is plenty of software this happens to in Debian, and Debian isn't the only distro this happens with. We need distros maintaining stability as must as we need distros moving fast and breaking things, and everywhere in between. It just means that some distros might not be an exact fit for all use cases. And that's fine.
    - jraph 4y ago
      The Debian packager of PHP and Apache also provides a neat repository with very up to date versions: https://deb.sury.org/ https://deb.sury.org/
    - mmarx 4y ago
      > > PHP 8.0 is 10 months old, and debian’s upcoming release will be upgrading from 7.3 to 7.4, which will make 7.4 the standard for the next ~3 years (even though it only gets upstream support for 1 more year)… Packaging PHP 8 would have required to drop, e.g., the mediawiki package, which only become compatible with PHP 8 in 1.39, released November 2022.
n3storm 4y ago
the lxc-lxd and snap issues are the stuff that makes me go from "I don't care about ubuntu" to "I hate ubuntu"
- kramerger 4y ago
  What wrong with lxd on Ubuntu?
  - CoconutPilot 4y ago
    LXD is only available via Ubuntu proprietary Snap packages and not native .deb packages. Native as in Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, and .deb packages are the native package for Debian. Snap has some downsides for server/infrastructure packages. Automatic updating being the most visible, but they are generally all about lack of control. This is what Snap does, it moves the power from users to developers.
    - zekrioca 4y ago
      Not true any longer. Debian has been officially [1] supporting LXD Debian packages [2] since September last year. And you can add this APT repo [3] — which follows the same Debian recipes - into your sources.list to install LXD natively with APT. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/LXD https://wiki.debian.org/LXD [2] https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/lxd https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/lxd [3] https://apt.calenhad.com/ https://apt.calenhad.com/
- dicknuckle 4y ago
  I uninstalled/purged snap on a machine my coworker provisioned, we don't use anything that snap offers. After that I don't have an issue with Ubuntu at all.
francislavoie 4y ago
Thanks for the laugh, that first line is amazing IMO, PopOS is the ideal Ubuntu alternative right now. They're mostly doing things right. For Desktop, anyway.
- sshine 4y ago
  I tried Pop_OS! on my gaming laptop last year. It does have some nice UI improvements. It is also terrible: - Suspend did not work - My GPU would always be activated, which would make my fan run at maximum speed. - Steam didn't work out of the box, so I never actually played any games, which was the whole point. Steam did work with some effort on regular Ubuntu. - Eventually, the system became glitchy in record time, i.e. random crashes. Going back to Ubuntu server edition, I felt like I had been given a new computer again.
  - francislavoie 4y ago
    I don't have any of those problems on my Dell XPS laptop. Installed it in October-ish.
    - FunnyLookinHat 4y ago
      Same for me. Ran perfectly on my Thinkpad X1E (including for gaming!).
ElfinTrousers 4y ago
I've been using Linux for...huh, I guess next year makes 30 years. I run Ubuntu on all of my machines, because it's easy and well-supported and I got tired of tinkering with my Linux install for its own sake roughly 20 years ago.
- sshine 4y ago
  I'm in the same boat. 26 years of Linux, been running Ubuntu for at least a decade. Ubuntu server on laptops, because it gives me nice things. Debian on servers, because it's minimal and conservative.
- ergonaught 4y ago
  Linux since Slackware 1.0, and started using Ubuntu as soon as it was available. Still using it on some cloud servers, but they've put enough dents in my "trust" sentiment that I avoid using them where possible, now, and my desktops are usually Manjaro. I'm unhappy with them but it will be a tragedy when they are finally acquired.
  - 3np 4y ago
    Can recommend considering Endeavour as a Manjaro alternative.
Reventlov 4y ago
>I guess anybody interested in a minimal Ubuntu install would be better off installing Debian instead. Do debian ships with a microsoft signed bootloader ? Is that easy to install on Debian ?
- teddyh 4y ago
  > Do debian ships with a microsoft signed bootloader ? Yes.
- martijnvds 4y ago
  Yes, Debian comes with a signed bootloader and kernel.
- pja 4y ago
  Yes. Debian ships with shim-signed which has been signed by Microsoft UEFI CA & will in turn boot grub-efi-amd64-signed which will then boot a signed kernel. So you have a chain of trust from a standard UEFI system to the kernel. All of this is installed by default with a normal Debian install.
jacooper 4y ago
But does Debian have the same security support speed as Ubuntu? Debian is a community project, therefore everything is best-effort rather than guaranterd like Ubuntu or RHEL/-clones. Although for all the hate it gets, Ubuntu Pro is genuinely a good offering when comparing it to something like RHEL. Also fuck snaps, no body wants to use that crap, neither on the desktop(flatpak is just better) or the server(use containers already).
- teddyh 4y ago
  All the data is there: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/ https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/
  - jacooper 4y ago
    I'm asking in general, is it as fast as Ubuntu?
    - teddyh 4y ago
      You’d have to ask someone who runs both Debian and Ubuntu systems; I don’t know. If you want to study the data, I guess you could compare <https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/rss.xml https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/rss.xml> with <https://www.debian.org/security/dsa-long https://www.debian.org/security/dsa-long>.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

phoe-krk 4y ago

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1930914/comments/15 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1... seems to have a workaround which seems to be a .deb package with matching package metadata that is otherwise empty. Is it really that easy? Would ubuntu-advantage-tools "benefit" from being cryptographically validated to ensure that users do not substitute the original release from Canonical with "counterfeit" replacements?

teddyh 4y ago
In that case, is ubuntu-minimal also a metapackage? If that’s true, I assume that you could just as well replace the ubuntu-minimal package with your own package with equivalent dependencies, except the dependency on ubuntu-advantage-tools.
- phoe-krk 4y ago
  > In that case, is ubuntu-minimal also a metapackage? Yes - https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/ubuntu-minimal https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/ubuntu-minimal shows a lot of dependencies and two actual files with documentation. I think the main issue would be getting this ubuntu-other-minimal package into Canonical's official repositories. Otherwise, you've just made another Ubuntu remix.
jeroenhd 4y ago
As far as I can see, this package doesn't replace the existing package, it merely contains metadata to prevent the existing package from being reinstalled. I'd prefer a set of build files over a package like this, but if it's as empty as it claims to be then this is a great solution to this ridiculousness.

onphonenow 4y ago

The bug reporter is claiming there is a mass exodus from Ubuntu - is this really the case? I’m seeing more Amazon / Ubuntu/ mainstream distro stuff these days then I feel like I used to 10-15 years ago. Is this mass exodus moving to Debian for things like Amazon AMI’s?

caboteria 4y ago
I read the comment as OP threatening a mass exodus rather than claiming one was already happening. Not clear, though, so it's a valid question. I don't see a mass exodus from Ubuntu but it seems that most Docker containers these days are based on either Debian or Alpine.
- ElfinTrousers 4y ago
  I think what he thinks of as "mass" is probably what we would call "himself and two or three of his friends who think similarly".
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Nearly all of the Docker containers I build are based on Alpine. Occasionally I go "oh shit, this uses that musl thing not glibc, I need to remember to... <some minor tweak>". The one Docker container that doesn't, in fact, is based on CentOS so I can run Davinci Resolve in CentOS when my desktop OS is really Ubuntu.
warp 4y ago
I expect there is a group of developers and tinkerers who used to run linux on the desktop (where Ubuntu traditionally was perhaps easier to use, especially on laptops with wifi, etc...), who switched to MacBooks and now develop and run their linux stuff in docker, ec2/cloud or even just some Raspberry Pis. (Though I guess that in itself wouldn't be a large enough group to be seen as a "Mass Exodus")
nubinetwork 4y ago
> mass exodus I've been considering it since their apt and motd spam, and their holding back of updates (paid or otherwise). I won't make any definitive changes until the next LTS gets released though.

bboozzoo 4y ago

Storm in a teacup? It's not like this is the most wasteful package on the system, so I don't see where the drama is. If you're building a minimal image based on Ubuntu, just go ahead and apply the workaround, or remove the files. If you're rebuilding the whole distro, drop the package and fix the deps to your liking.

jraph 4y ago
Yeah, but minimal should do what it says, and the whole point of a distribution is not having to do this kind of thing. You should not have to work around your distro, especially deliberate choices. If Ubuntu needs people to have this package for support, why don't they have a ubuntu-recommended package that depends on it and that's installed by default, and let people who want something minimal to have it?

dizhn 4y ago

I tried to remove that the other day but stopped seeing release-update tool would be remoced too. In my experience the tool works perfectly for OS upgrades. I have not had a single problem with live updates over ssh. This tool might even be why minimal needs it. Bad/dark packaging.

kissgyorgy 4y ago

At this point people should let go Ubuntu. The dark patterns in this Linux distro is just baffling.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
"Dark patterns" like what?
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Forcing snap.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Not just that but forcing Firefox as a Snap version that was broken for a long time. That's ideology being pushed massively before utility. If they waited until heavy use apps were available as working Snaps then there might not have been as much push back. Though I personally hate the concept too, so ymmv.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Why is snap supposed to be bad, now?
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      I'm unsure what you mean by the use of 'now', it makes it sound like Snap has never been bad, when in reality it has never been good...
    - jraph 4y ago
      Several seconds to launch a calculator. With all the memory usage and CPU it implies. That's for this kind of stuff we would have laughed of Windows. And please, you don't need to sandbox such a dumb calculator (no offense to the Gnome devs, we need such simple apps). Centralized store with no open source implementation server-side that you can self host. We already have Flatpak for this use case that does not have the previous issue and that we could have standardized on. Didn't need another standard for this. Stuff not ready / broken in several ways with it but still provided by default (Firefox). When you already own your perfectly fine APT package repositories and have a total control on what dependencies you can rely on, you don't need this kind of stuff to provide software on your distro.

charcircuit 4y ago

Another episode of free users being entitled. Ubuntu has a different definition of what they consider minimal yet they can't accept it and throw a fit.

lamp987 4y ago
i r8 2/8

fwlr 4y ago

“ubuntu-advantage-tools needs to be present so users can upgrade to Ubuntu Advantage/Pro to get extended security support.” Remind users to apt-get ubuntu-advantage-tools if they want to upgrade. “No, `apt-get ubuntu-extended-support` isn’t an option, because users should be able to use Ubuntu without using apt-get.” So, who exactly is using Minimal Ubuntu (“…a set of Ubuntu images designed for automated deployment at scale…”) without using apt-get? Your description of the distro as “…not intended to be comfortable to use at the command line, but you can apt-get and snap install anything as usual…” sure sounds like you expect users to use apt-get, in the rare circumstance that anyone ever does log in as a user to one of these distros. “Sorry, but we will not budge on this ‘must have access to advantage/pro without apt-get’ technicality.” So there’s this line, once again from the Ubuntu wiki’s own description of Ubuntu Minimal: “The `unminimize` command will install the standard Ubuntu Server packages if you want to convert a Minimal instance to a standard Server environment…”. So make a `get-advantage` or `go-pro` command. There, access to advantage/pro without apt-get. “Look, we are a business, and advantage/pro upgrades are how we make money, we’re not taking it out.” I’m sure you have telemetry tracking upgrade conversions - maybe in ubuntu-advantage-tools itself, maybe elsewhere. Take a good look at that data and find out how many people are upgrading to advantage/pro from minimal. Is it zero? It’s zero, isn’t it?