More details are leaking out about the Debian Core Consortium, which will be announced at next week’s LinuxWorld Conference & Expo. The public relations manager of desktop Linux vendor Linspire, Heather MacKenzie, revealed that the “the DCC’s official name is the Debian Common Core Alliance.”
Good in theory, but I bet this will just turn into another Desktop Linux Consortium – just a meaningless entity with a neat name. I guess we’ll see in time.
It’s a start — so all these distro will share a core set of packages. Good. And share a set of basic Linux distro standards LSB 3.0. Good.
But don’t they all do that (or Real Soon Now) already?
The real hope is two fold.
First that they’ll be able to actually drive industry acceptance by working toegether and via a cetification program. I.e. pro software shops have a target platform and hardware comapanies the same for drivers.
But the second doesn’t look so good: That they would work together to innovate the platform as a whole. Without Ubuntu on board I suspect that’s less than likely to happen. And apparently they weren’t too enthused about Progeny’s componentized idea.
I really wish a groud like this would start pushing the bounaries with things like an improved FHS (GoboLinux), more advaned software installation (Zero-Install), RDBMS file systems, automatic networking (Randevous) and many other things.
http://gobolinux.com
http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/
Sorry, make that http://gobolinux.org
RUles!
Stinks
Ubuntu is just bastardised Debian anyway.
I will defend Ubuntu even though i dont use it and dont think its as polished as some claim….
the writting was on the wall for Debian for such a long time… either upgrade and become relivent or leave it to someone else….
people will want to see the latest products and have an easy way to install… (new installer is better but for me hardware detection is something short of most other distros)….
Yea, but look….Debian isn’t even a member! Did I miss something? They are going to advance debian without debian? Is this confusing to anyone but me?
Debian must be involved. Perhaps that’s implied? BUt you’re right. in that it doesn’t say so.
Can anyone verify?
Yea, but look….Debian isn’t even a member! Did I miss something? They are going to advance debian without debian? Is this confusing to anyone but me?
I don’t know what Debian’s official involvement is, but I don’t see how it matters if the group’s charter is to set rules for common ground between Debian-derived distros. How close to stay to Debian or how far to move away will be up to the derived distros, not Debian. Though the goal here is to stay very close to Sarge at the core.
I’m disappointed that Ubuntu isn’t involved, but I have faith in those guys. If this proves itself as a stable foundation for the future of Debian-derived distros, I’m confident Ubuntu will join.
Though the goal here is to stay very close to Sarge at the core.
Then thats why Ubuntu didnt join. Its based on Sid.
Then thats why Ubuntu didnt join. Its based on Sid.
Yeah and they came up with the freezing Sid plan because Sarge was nowhere in sight at that time, and nobody had any confidence in regular releases from Debian proper. If that changes, Ubuntu may change as well. I think the key players understand the potential value of something like this, even if they’re not convinced it’s there yet.
> but I don’t see how it matters if the group’s charter
> is to set rules for common ground between
> Debian-derived distros
Actually it would matter. They called the group, the Debian Common Core Alliance. Debian is a trademark, so unless permission is given to use DCC as a submark, the Debian trademark would be lost.
I suspect that the Debian group will likely make a statement to bless this use of the trademark some time during LinuxWorld.
How many of you had heard about Ubuntu 1 year ago? Not many, that’s for sure. How many people are now running ubuntu? A lot, myself included! Contrast this with user linux for example. I heard about user linux a couple of years ago but am not aware of any releases or of anyone running user linux. What comes to mind is the gnome/kde in-decision and the amount of wasted energy regarding that issue.
Ubuntu sure has done a lot in less than a year, releasing warty, releasing hoary, the breezy development work, providing support and updates, free cd’s, kubuntu, liveCD’s, single CD install, the list just goes on and on about the good moves that ubuntu has made in a short period of time. Ubuntu has the momentum now and provides sort of a reality check for debian.
I wish the debian common core alliance the best of luck, I hope that it all works out well. Since ubuntu is debian based, ubuntu will continue to pull from and give back to debian.
If the alliance is able to provide regular high quality releases of the debian core packages then things might work out. The basis for the alliance is sound, I hope that the execution of the plan is workable and efficient.
Well if debian isnt involved shouldnt it be
Common Core Alliance of Debian Based Distros
the CCADBD or something.
Common Deb Core Alliance
CDCA
I mean technically there isnt anywhere for this to go. How small of a “core” are we talking? Too small – and it will be a moot point becuase everyone customizations will make them each different. Too big of a “core” and everyone is the same and there is no competition.
What else is there… LSB compliance is the only thing good I see…
JT
People installing software is like surfing on a wave. Very few want to be at the buggy, alpha and beta front, but after it stabilizes a bit, there is a sweet spot. After the sweet spot, down on the back of the wave, security problems and latent bugs appear, and people using those are dependent on backported fixes.
I don’t think that the “customizability” is what has made Gentoo popular. I think it is the possibility to have a distro that is released ever day, or even “all the time”, thus putting weight and gathering infrastructure on the sweet spot.
I used to run Debian Woody, then a mixed Woody, Sarge and Sid system. I think I should have gone to pure Sid or pure testing, but the idea of totally unsupported system bothered me. A mixed system at least felt “partially supported.”
Still vacant is the niche of a binary distribution officially centered on the sweet spot. Maybe a Gentoo reference platform would do, if it was updated continuously. Gentoo is the closest to perfect system for me, even though I think that compiling everything is a bit overkill sometimes.
I think Gobolinux is useless. Many would design the filesystem from the ground up exactly as it is now. And everything there is to zeroinstall is a “package manager” for unprivileged users. Otherwise I only see a wordplay on what does it exactly mean to “install” or setup a package.
The biggest problem with DCCA (or how about DMCA for Debian Millennium Core Alliance) is to find agreement on how stable or leading edge it should be. My bet is that DCCA will end up being a compatibility definition, with all distributions still having their own actual cores.
Damn, it would sure help it Debianists stopped reinventing the wheel. First, they simply ignored the PGI installer Progeny had developed and went to invent their buggy installer, because they wanted to use kudzu (they could’ve made an effort to convert Kudzu’s XML to libdiscover, but hey, just start from scratch using C++, why not)
Now, they again ignore Componentized Linux, which is finished and offers precisely what they want. But, hey. Why bother? Let’s create a lil’ something, a “Core Consortium” and make headlines proving how great thought goes into the Debian distro!
What I find most intriguing is how they sistematically ignore Bruce Perens 🙂 Why does he even bother ?! :-))
Yep. Real reusability in free software.
PS: Notice how these Debian stories attract less and less attention?
Damn, it would sure help it Debianists stopped reinventing the wheel. First, they simply ignored the PGI installer Progeny had developed and went to invent their buggy installer
Debian “ignored” PGI because it wasn’t cross-platform enough for Debian’s use. Call that a bad idea, but they didn’t “reinvent the wheel” on a whim. I’ll also point out that the people behind PGI – Progeny – dropped it quite a long time ago, working instead on an adaptation of Anaconda. Perhaps there were more problems with PGI than you realize.
Now, they again ignore Componentized Linux, which is finished and offers precisely what they want. But, hey. Why bother? Let’s create a lil’ something, a “Core Consortium” and make headlines proving how great thought goes into the Debian distro!
Your argument is a bit silly because this effort is being led by Progeny, the creators of Componentized Linux. And obviously it didn’t offer precisely what all other derived distros want, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Truth is, we still don’t know exactly what DCCA is, or what the core software will look like. But it’s a very good bet that it’ll be some evolution of Componentized Linux, adapted as a reference platform for LSB 3.0. But I guess we’ll find out for sure this week at LinuxWorld in San Fran.