Componentized Linux will become a fully supported Progeny product. This note is meant to serve as a roadmap for the product and an overview of what’s coming and when it should be here.
Componentized Linux: roadmap and future plans
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Eugenia Loli
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This relates to:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10256
It seems to me Ian Murdock, which is the Ian in DebIAN, is dreaming of ubuntu as a component. And userlinux as a certified set of components. Unifying the multiple efforts to make Debian useful for the masses. Exciting to see how this will pan out.
Yeah, he’s bitter that Ubuntu is getting so much attention. There’s little chance of Ubuntu being a “component” of whatever all this means.
This will definitely help the newbies and still be satisfying for geeks. I expect a clearer way of installing and building a system with components, be it a desktop or a server or a cluster.
Debian is easy, but not for newbies…Ubuntu apparantly is easy for newbies, but I find it annoying as I can find my way in Debian. Ubuntu takes out the control you do have with Debian, Gentoo or Slack. They use the Debian system, but it’s impossible to even remove the hotplug program, as other parts of the system are built in a way I can’t change without messing up the system the hard way. Very unsatisfying to have so little control.
I doubt Ubuntu will be able to continue the way they do now if they ever want to appreciation of the entire Linux community. Unpurposely they put Debian in a bad position. You can hear the newbies cry:”why isn’t Debian easier?”. Well, it’s built for 11 platforms and offers you so much control you don’t know how to handle it.
Componentized Linux will be better for all. It should be able to create easy desktop/server systems without losing control over the system if a user knows how to handle it.
@Lumbergh
I really doubt Ian is “bitter that Ubuntu is getting so much attention.” Progeny, Ian’s company, is in a very different market than is Ubuntu. They make and maintain highly customized versions of Linux tailored to specific purposes. Componentized Linux is basically the core bulding blocks of the tools Progeny uses to do this along with a vision for how those building blocks could be used to overcome some of the incompatibilities which currently exist between linus distros.
I’m not an Ubuntu critic. In fact, if you look through the comments of the article posted here about Ian’s “complaint” concerning Ubuntu, you’ll find that I made long post defending Ubuntu. And, fwiw, I’m currently typing this on Kubuntu.
That said, if Progeny can really pull off the vision they have for componenetized linux, Ubuntu would be foolish to not play ball. The only downside would be distros like Redhat, as it effectively reduces the barriers between distros so that vendor lock in is reduced.
@root
Ubuntu doesn’t in any fashion diminsh the control you have over your system when compared to Debian Sid. It is Debian Sid with the addition of some packages from experimental, a handful of bugfixes and patches, and a handful of custom packages (eg., Gnome 2.10). The differences are minimal and you can do anything with Ubuntu that you can do with Sid.
Is this like meta-packages and virutals in gentoo?
Sort of, or like tasks in apt, but far more extensive and implemented in a cross distro fashion where the packaging backend is pluggable (ie, dpkg or rpm).
I’m seriously looking forward to this, it sounds very interesting for a number of reasons.
Just one reason would be that, if I understand it correctly, for example updating X to a new version or changing between XFree86 and X.org would be as easy as simply removing the installed component and install the chosen one. Comparing this to what I had to go through before (many years ago) when I had Slackware installed (Slack 7 I believe it was), I had to manually edit alot of stuff when I made the X update because alot of foldernames had changed etc.. It was not an easy task and I’m certain the end result was not optimal either.
Ofcourse I’m sure things have improved alot in all distros the last few years, but even if a little of that old headache is still there, this will be a godsend..
Another reason would be that there are literally thousands of packages in any given Linux distro and most of them have very cryptic names, making it pretty much impossible to know what everything is there for, and thus making it very very hard to remove unwanted stuff during installation, unless you’re really familiar with that particular distro (or atleast it used to be this way back then, maybe it has changed aswell).
With this component approach, it should apparently be as simple as choosing, let’s say ‘network support’, and all packages needed would be included, no more and no less..
Sounds very good to me.
Oh, and I’m on Windows atm, and I absolutely hate it, but there are unfortunatly things in Linux that I hate even more, although those things are rapidly going away and the number of annoyances I find in Windows are equally rapidly growing in number so it’s just a matter of time before I abandon ship and Componentized Linux is where I’ll go, guaranteed..
Ok, defendor
did you try to install warthy on xfs ? If not, try and see.
Thing is, as a quite a long time debianer who always keeps up with other distros (currently I have 82 gigs of distro installers and live cds always kept current and tried from time to time), I don’t see the roots of the hype regarding ubuntu. You can find other distros out there that just as easy for beginners, just as candy for everyone, just as easy to handle (install, packages). Still, for some reason it has managed to thrive on that hype. And, if you look closer and take away the debian package repositories, all you get is just another base installer for debian sid.
And one that I never found any better or easier than Libranet’s, Xandros’s or Progeny’s. In fact, for all those ubuntu teenage fanboys I recommend usging these for a change, if you so strongly dislike the real Debian.
As regarding all those (and believe me, there are very very many) comments on meny forums about how slow and old and bad Debians are, I only have one comment (not mine, read someplace, but true nonetheless): check the distrowatch list top ten: there are 4 debian/based distros in the last 6 months, and 5 in the last 1 month. That’s all I have to say.
Actually this is quite easily done already in Debian. As soon as the Xorg became available for SID you could simply apt-get it. Debconf would ask which X-server you want and do the rest for you. Switching X-Servers around is as easy as dpkg-reconfigure.
That said, i don’t think Debian is difficult in comparison to Ubuntu. Things that work out-of-the-box in Ubuntu work just as well in Debian; the whole difference is that in Debian you actually can decide during install if you want this functionality or not. Ubuntu just installs the desktop task.
For new users Ubuntu has a lot to offer and advocates for Linux in generall which is a good thing.
the whole difference is that in Debian you actually can decide during install if you want this functionality or not. Ubuntu just installs the desktop task.
Well i rather prefer Gentoo with gives me really total control.I switched to Debian from Mandrake and finally settled an Gentoo all didn’t offer me what i sought after either:a solid framework to experiment with hardened-sources,grsecurity,RSBAC,SELinux,SPP,PIE.Problem with Debian is in my humble opinion that’s there seems so little to happen.
It’s easy to set in grsecurity+PAX all options on and still being able to run gdm+fluxbox.It’s easy with Gentoo to compile xorg statically in order for PAX not to kill the fun,works like a charm,on x86_64 also.
coolie.. didn’t know that.
I’m sure it’s still not quite that easy on Slack tho..
Don’t know how much power Swaret has, but I’m a bit sceptical that it can switch between XFree and XOrg without any fuss..
Anyways, it’s good to know alot of my ‘issues’ with Linux are going bye bye.. me like.