8 ms·
Ubuntu Looking at Discontinuing Its Source ISOs
- jMyles 3y agoI've never understood the use case for them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gowthamgts12 3y agoIt'll be useful in older days when internet bandwidth is limited and thus writing everything to a disc for sharing made sense.
- themoonisachees 3y agoIt also made sense when you could reasonably get Ubuntu given to you on a disc, and you would be in your right to ask for the sources files in the same format, assuming you didn't have internet access at all. It was a matter of license compliance.
- Symbiote 3y agoI'm not even sure that would have been a useful distribution method for the first Ubuntu release, in 2004. Waiting to receive a posted CD would take longer than downloading even KDE or the kernel's source code.
- dizhn 3y agoYou have to think globally. They sent those CDs everywhere.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- a1o 3y agoThe binary ones, not the source
- wongarsu 3y agoIf they sent binary CDs, the GPL forces them to also send you source CDs on request.
- Symbiote 3y agoThat is probably the best reason these CDs were made — legal requirement. That requirement was removed in GPL version 3, where you could distribute binaries however you like and direct people to an HTTP/FTP site for the source. GPL 2 requires the same distribution method to be used.
- dizhn 3y agoThat's true. I must have misunderstood.
- kuschku 3y agoA posted CD in Germany took a day to arrive (when sent from Germany, and there were people who'd send it locally), downloading the source code for a few large packages could easily take a week on dial-up. Been there, done that.
- Symbiote 3y agoIn 1998 maybe, though 1 hour at even 48kbit/s is 20 megabytes, which is a decent-sized program's source. (The Linux kernel source in 2003 was about 25MB, compressed.) But in 2004?
- kuschku 3y agoWhat's so special about 2004? My parents finally got on DSL in 2008, but until then we — and many friends I knew — were still on dial-up. (Using the good old web.de smart surfer tool, if anyone still remembers that) And remember, if you wanted to customize something you'd usually need not just one program's source, but also the libraries. Downloading all of Qt and most of KDE to customize something and build it from source took a loooong time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 29083011397778 3y ago> What's so special about 2004? Ubuntu's first release, IIRC
- steve_rambo 3y agoI was using dial-up up to 2008, included. It could push 10 megabytes an hour at best, and even that only late at night. An hour of dial-up was on the order of 0.05-0.1% of a typical monthly salary back then. So even if you were willing to spend 10% of your monthly income (which is impractical, but this is an extreme example), it could buy you maybe 1-2 gigabytes of data. Or you could just, you know, order a (source or binary) CD for free or almost free.
- wongarsu 3y agoMonthly computer magazines included CDs with all kinds of software (open source, shareware, freeware, older releases of paid software) and linux distributions. Different software each month, Ubuntu maybe in the issue after an Ubuntu release.
- zokier 3y agoI think more common case than postage was downloading ISO on fast office internet and then burning CD-R to carry home; this was era when CD-Rs were the widely available convenient large-capacity portable media. Although that began to be already waning, it was around that time that multi-gigabyte flash drives started appearing.
- finnjohnsen2 3y agoI don't know the strict offline use case for such ISOs, so put me in the 'sounds good to me' group. Being a 15+ year Ubuntu desktop user, rPis, and Ubuntu as preferred images everywhere I do cloud servers, I would rather resources be spent on these normal online things.
- Dalewyn 3y agoOnce upon a time, in a galaxy far away, the sources of coding voodoo demanded distribution. But broadband internet was rare and you would die of old age waiting on dialup internet. So it was that the preferred method of source distribution and acquisition was CD-ROMs (and later DVDs) driven down the highway in a station wagon.
- psunavy03 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/2324/ https://xkcd.com/2324/
- qwertox 3y agoBut they should have a repo or something where you can get the sources of individual packages. Else it's a bit shady.
- zokier 3y agoUbuntu (like Debian) has always had online source repos available; they are in no way restricting access to sources here, just deprecating a legacy channel to deliver them. See `apt-get source` subcommand
- oefrha 3y agoOf course you can get those with `apt-get source` or just grab them from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/ http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/ directly, e.g. look for .orig.tar.xz, .dsc and .debian.tar.xz files in http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/coreutils/ http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/coreutils/. Not really sure who downloads all source in ISO form, seems rather pointless.
- bArray 3y agoThe real reason is buried: > It was also raised that Snap packages also aren't currently included as part of Ubuntu source ISO builds anyways so these source ISOs are incomplete and have been so for years. To be completely honest, I was done with Ubuntu after they hardcore started pushing Snap packages. My package manager should never be randomly killing apps. Ubuntu has become the Windows of the Linux world. > We'll see if they pull the trigger for the current Ubuntu 24.04 LTS cycle on doing away with these rather unnecessary source ISOs. I still use them for flashing USBs - a lot of installs are offline, especially when the networking is some new or non-standard driver. Honestly Ubuntu restricting itself like this is a good thing, Canonical need to be kicked off of their perch.
- Symbiote 3y agoThis is about source ISOs.
- bArray 3y agoPlease see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914961
- autarch 3y ago> I still use them for flashing USBs - a lot of installs are offline, especially when the networking is some new or non-standard driver. Honestly Ubuntu restricting itself like this is a good thing, Canonical need to be kicked off of their perch. These are not the installer ISOs, they're ISOs containing the _sources_ for all packages in Ubuntu.
- ccrush 3y ago[flagged]
- bArray 3y ago> These are not the installer ISOs, they're ISOs containing the _sources_ for all packages in Ubuntu. I'm aware, you can install from source [1] [2]. My application is embedded devices that cannot connect to the internet that need to run blazingly fast on 'minimal' hardware for a long time. Ubuntu was chosen because we needed support for things like ROS and Nvidia. The problem is that we would take a source image occasionally and then archive it on our infrastructure, so it looks like one download but actually services a significant number of machines. As I mentioned previously, snap is just outright hostile. It's a massive shame for Linux to be forced to use it. [1] https://serverfault.com/a/1080152 https://serverfault.com/a/1080152 [2] https://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/build-architecture-optimised-packages.html https://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/build-architecture-o...
- bregma 3y agoI'll just store the last ones beside my DECUS tapes. It'll be handy for after the apocalypse when we need to restore civilization.
- kissgyorgy 3y agoThis should be the final nail in the coffin, if you still haven't ditch Ubuntu this is a good reason now.
- toasted-subs 3y agoUnfortunately all Linux distributions seem to have issues for me. I just want to install something and have it work. Ubuntu doesn't like my 4tb drives and the Nvidia driver support is horrible for fedora. Less people using Linux makes it more and more difficult to find helpful tutorials and guides. Kind of sad.
- jraph 3y ago> Ubuntu doesn't like my 4tb drives In which ways?
- voxadam 3y ago> Ubuntu doesn't like my 4tb drives Are you still running a 32-bit kernel in 2024? > Nvidia driver support is horrible for fedora If RPM Fusion isn't up to your standards your problem is with Nvidia, not Fedora, the Linux kernel, or Linux in general.
- toasted-subs 3y agoDefinitely not pointing fingers (I'd take the stance of Linus in giving nVidia the middle finger). Just from the point of a consumer trying to get work done on my machine and deliver things in a reasonable time frame. I expect to be able to flash a USB, plug it into my computer and have things work. The default settings for installing Ubuntu do not let you use 4tb drives without custom partitions, not ideal. And RPM Fusion straight up doesn't work with fedora, have to boot into a cli and spend a few days trying to get the closed source drivers to work with no success.
- doubled112 3y agohttps://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryHowto%5Cb%29#Current_GeForce.2FQuadro.2FTesla https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA?highlight=%28%5CbCategory... I've generally had success with the RPM Fusion instructions when installing Nvidia drivers. One part that is strange is that the kmod gets built in the background, and you don't really know if it is still building except by watching the process/logs. If you reboot immediately after install, sometimes you'll break it. Not a great experience by any means.
- FergusArgyll 3y agoI'm only 6 months into the 'linux world', I don't understand what Ubuntu's competitive advantage is. I only used Debian and Ubuntu (and Parrot OS) and I don't see anything missing in the former (that can't be added manually)
- kriberg 3y agoTheir advantage is that they have the largest desktop user base. Access to those users or being the de-facto default desktop base, can be turned into income.
- robotbikes 3y agoThey built up their user base many years ago by providing some level of resources and coordination of desktop usability built on top of Debian's unstable release. Thus becoming something of the default target for application developers who wanted to support Linux. Debian never had the polish that Ubuntu did with its catchy animal based nicknames and 6 month release cycle. They built everything on top of the Debian community and just provided a little bit more testing and marketing. Ubuntu released it's first release almost 20 years ago with Warty Warthog. I switched to Ubuntu around that time as my primary machine although I switched to POP! os by System76 which is a desktop distribution built on top of Ubuntu that focuses on the desktop when System76 engineers decided Ubuntu was straying from supporting desktop Linux.
- horeszko 3y agoI've being using Linux for almost a year and have had a similar experience. From what I've read, Ubuntu was easier to install in the past but today (at least with Debian 12 Bookworm) Debian is just as easy to install and use imo. I've actually had less problems with Debian compared to when I was using Ubuntu.
- happymellon 3y agoIn the past Ubuntu had a little pop up when you booted with Nvidia graphics, installed the correct drivers and just worked. Debian required you to install manually with all the fun involved. All the other distros have caught up so there is less to sell Ubuntu on, but it was one of the first. They also had their 1000 paper cuts project where they spent a lot of time fixing everyone else's bugs and submitting PRs.
- bluenose69 3y agoI remember when linux came on a floppy disk. I just read that the linux floppy-disk controller code is being orphaned. Things change.
- fuzzfactor 3y agoBeing orphaned because floppies are not common enough any more for developers to continue to "support" them. But why should floppy code need to be updated when the hardware itself has been stable for decades?
- 8organicbits 3y agoIt looks like there's been a number of changes in recent years including bug fixes. Kudos to the people providing the support. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/0dd3ee31125508cd67f7e7172247f05b7fd1753a/drivers/block/floppy.c https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/0dd3ee31125508cd67...
- fuzzfactor 3y agoThat is significant. I've got to admire the maintainers stepping up to the plate for this. It does look like so many changes have been gradually made to other things while neglecting this most fundamental boot device, that now a bit of catching up would be needed to eliminate new technical debt when it comes to details where the long-standing floppy code might have had defect-free performance in the past. I wonder how changes like this would affect bootability, or accessibility of non-floppies like HDD, USB, SSD when formatted floppy-style without partitioning? How many different boot devices are there anyway? Would a loss of one forever reduce the number of choices unthinkingly? I always thought floppy performance was engineered to be highly reliable before moving on to more complex filesystems and hard drives in the 1990's.
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoI'm not a fan of Ubuntu, but this sounds a lot worse than it is. This is just about discontinuing the ISOs that contain source code. You can certainly disagree with them doing this, but my initial reaction based on the headline was that this was similar to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux announcement a few months ago when its significantly more benign.
- dralley 3y agoSeems like basically the same thing to me? You can still rebuild RHEL from CentOS Stream sources if you know what package versions to use, it's just not all in one convenient bundle anymore. Likewise, Ubuntu seems to be getting rid of their convenient bundle.
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoYou can download CentOS Stream sources, yes. But you can't download RHEL sources without a Red Hat Subscription.
- dralley 3y agoBut RHEL (starting from version 9) is built from CentOS Stream (apart from the separate trademarks which have to be swapped). CentOS Stream sources are RHEL sources.
- ArchOversight 3y agoNot exactly. RHEL is a point in time snapshot of CentOS Stream. There's no longer exact ABI parity between CentOS and RHEL like there used to be in the past.
- dralley 3y agoThere is ABI parity, though. If it were any other way, RHEL couldn't be "a point in time snapshot of CentOS Stream" and still maintain a stable ABI. The only place where it gets a little bit fuzzy are kernel modules.
- el-dude-arino 3y agoI stopped dealing with anything to do with Canonical the moment I saw their job ads require you to put in your high school gpa. Yes, even if you're a senior+ engineer.
- that_guy_iain 3y agoYou really stopped dealing with a company because their HR put something silly in their job ads? Really? You care that much about HR? Edit: I just looked, they ask about your high school performance in math and your native language and to be ranked and include "cannot recall"
- el-dude-arino 3y agoThese questions don't get placed on their job ads by chance and they aren't done in a vacuum; there is some form of approval at the leadership level. If they ask that question, then they make a judgement based on the answer. If you're a company making such a judgement on such a question for such a position, you're a ridiculous company.
- that_guy_iain 3y agoBy HR. HR decided to add them. They make a judgement based on your how well you did at education, which does imply how smart you are. But as I said, HR added them and stopping using tech because of the HR works is a bit ridiculous. "I don't use your product because I was going to apply for a job and your questions were stupid" is weird as hell since their product isn't built by HR.
- el-dude-arino 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slumberlust 3y ago
- whoarly 3y agoSwitched to using Gitlab CI/CD to build my own images. Would like to iterate to a complete source build eventually. For Linux hardcores there’s little point to an off the shelf distribution.