Rumors were swirling around the halls of LinuxWorld that the often troubled DCC Alliance was going to fold its tents and disappear. What actually happened was that several of the members met quietly and agreed to a tenuous plan to move forward under a new president pro tem, Kevin Carmony, Linspire’s CEO.
for all ubuntu has done for linux. its sure turned into a bad thing for debian. yet another case where the distros should work together atleast instead of fighting each other. i run debian, in the begining ubuntu looked like a good thing, now its like a thorn in the paw of the lion…
its also sad that mepis bailed, i cant bielieve they are switching to an ubuntu base. *removes mepis from CD library*
i really hope this thing gets off the ground and does some good. a comon core for all these distros would make it so much easyer on vendors.
Edited 2006-04-07 15:04
Zedicus: DCC Alliance != Debian. Actually, some Debian members complained about the use of Debian name by DCC alliance, as you can read from the article.
If your interest is the Debian Project, nothing to see here. Move along.
The DCC is as dead as UserLinux is and always was. It’s pretty clear now that all these companies and distributions have gone off to do their own things.
Ubuntu emphasizes collaborating on the source code level of Debian, rather than on the binary level as the DCC. Ubuntu has been good for Debian, too, and sends its patches upstream. I believe it’s parent company Canonical is implementing a system that greatly eases the sharing of source code patches between Debian-based distros.
And this IS IMPORTANT. Binary compability in F/OSS world is unimportant. Let say I have Slackware somewhere and I like what Ubuntu did to Application it, should I:
a) Pray to all gods under sun and run binary
b) Grab source, patch it and compile
I have to admit that Ubuntu runs perfect on my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop that I purchased last year.((even wireless connection works))
If they keep offering a good platform and a lt of support, of course I am going to stay with Ubuntu.
I might try Slackware 11 when it comes out.
No complains about Ubuntu.
-2501
i know its not actually part of debian… it would still be nice to see all the debian based distros play nice together wouldnt it.??
also ubuntu does send patches upstreem. though towards the end of the release they are patching possibly older versions then whats in unstable, it can cause more problems then it helps.
personally i think ubuntu having subdistros built off of it is a bit much. subdividing subdivisions? are we seeing how low you can go?
Umm… According to Distrowatch there’s something like 50 distributions based off of (at some point, at least) Knoppix, which in turn was based off of Debian.
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence
And this has been going on for a while. Note that one of those is Mepis. They’re just switching to a different Debian Derivative.
I think Klaus Knopper is a Debian Developer, too. So is/was Mark Shuttleworth, and I think he’s said that he wants to give back to Debian as much as possible. I wouldn’t worry.
Besides, Ubuntu seems to be keeping up-to-date on more than six-month timescales. They have KDE 3.5.2 packaged now, and (well, were) scheduling releases with Gnome releases.
BTW: According to that page, SphinxOS is based on Mepis is based on Knoppix is based on Debian, and there’s also Debian->Ubuntu->Gnoppix->Impi Linux. So there’s at least two third-level distributions already.
Imho, the DCC has two serious weaknesses.
Firt, it went ahead without the support of the Debian Project and Ubuntu passed, saying the DCC would fail, both making the thing look really weak.
Second, my 2 cents is that businesses want support. Choosing Red Hat or SuSE is a no-brainer because you don’t get only certification but also a product aimed at the enterprise with a billion-dollar company standing behind it, zillions of techs and support people and, often, big fish like IBM in the mix. Install a Debian-based distro and you have almost nothing behind it. Over the next few years Ubuntu will be aiming for the same territory on a going-for-it-alone basis, but a nebulous “alliance” of relatively unknown distros is never going to look very inviting when you want cast-iron back up from a well-drilled outfit who’ll still be there in a few years’ time.
Imho, Debian is happier with outfits interested in roll-your-own using it as a base, like educational departments and local government. This fits much better with Debian’s ideals than men in suits waving huge invoices and babbling about below-the-line synergies.
i run debian, in the begining ubuntu looked like a good thing, now its like a thorn in the paw of the lion…
Care to elaborate on that? I’d be curious to know exactly why Ubuntu is “a bad thing for Debian”.
ubuntu submits patches based on the ‘frozed’ unstable it grabs every 6 months. this often hurts more then helps. ubuntu has to store there own packages and have there own mirrors listings since they are not directly using debian. debian purists and ubuntu zealots often end up in flame wars in forum over how things should be. now i hear ubuntu talking about a GNUbuntu? isnt that like the same goal debian pure has?
why wouldnt you just use debian as a base and role yur own distro on top of it? through yur developers at the debian unstable branch. when the ubuntu peeple started getting all their patches put into debian unstable it actually made it unstable. something that was never a problem in debian before.
why would anyone want to try an have to hav their own repositories out there for sumthing thas already done for them?
instead of building a new distro build some good full featured tool packages for debian, roll yur own distro with the tools an point yur sources at a debian mirror?!?
> why wouldnt you just use debian as a base and role yur
> own distro on top of it?
Look at it this way.
* If you base your distro on Debian and backport everything, you’re basically bypassing Debian’s testing/unstable and creating a fork. You do a lot of work, collect a lot of patches, that don’t benefit Debian and you don’t benefit from Debian. Now imagine that there are several such forks. Each fork won’t be able to share code outside of Debian because “enhanced foobar” from fork 1 won’t necessarily be compatible with “enhanced foobar” from fork 2. Each fork’s security patches won’t help the other.
* If you base your distro on Debian unstable frozen every 6 months (i.e. a temporary branch), you’re *very* interested in keeping your distro in sync with where Debian is going so you don’t have to do a lot of work when resyncing time comes. Projects that Debian places as lot priorty but you value highly can be hosted in your temporary branch and when it acceptable enough for Debian unstable, it can be accepted (as X.org was). Bug reports you receive can go to Debian unstable (which according to Debian is unsupported) so unstable becomes more secure. Now imagine that several branches off of unstable. branch 1’s repositories won’t be off by more than 6 month from branch 2’s repositories so it should be possible in most cases to share packages between branch 1 and branch 2. Security patches from each branch will be shared between distros at least once every 6 months (and more often if they keep an eye on unstable’s patch). Enhancements from each branch will also be shared between the branches when they’re resynced into unstable.
Okay, of these two, which sounds better?
TFA says nothing about Ubuntu, yet most comments are about Ubuntu. Not everything in the Debian world can be credited or blamed on Ubuntu. It’s entirely possible that this DCC thing just sucks on it’s own.
On-topic: Since it’s primarily for business sake that this thing exists, it seems the goal is a Red Hat of the .deb world. The people involved in the DCC who want money out of it would probably be most happy if Debian themselves formed a for-profit company. But since that won’t happen, they have look to someone else.
The problem is that no other .deb distro has as much clout so they have to make do with a conglomerate of smaller Debian spin-offs. Which will probably never work, because we all know getting various distros to act in concert is harder than pulling teeth. So until some really big (big as in finance and popularity) .deb distro decides to go for-profit and satisfy these businessmen by joining the DCC, they have nothing.
Yeah but many important packages that have made it to debian were built from ubuntu sources. The Sid’s version of Xorg is the same that’s on Hoary. Sid’s Gnome is the same as in Breezy. And these are just two examples of what i’m talking about
The Sid’s version of Xorg is the same that’s on Hoary. Sid’s Gnome is the same as in Breezy.
Umm… your information seems to be in need of an update: Debian’s X.org is based on Ubuntu’s sources, that much is true, but Hoary and Breezy both have X.org 6.8.2 while Debian Sid has had 6.9 for a long time now (and 7.0 is already in Experimental).
Breezy has GNOME 2.12 while Sid has 2.14 (well, most of the Sid packages are now 2.14 although the upgrade from 2.12 is still half-finished).
Thanks for that update, guess I have to look at the changelogs more often then
stick a fork in them
ian got a cool position and some of that fame he has been wanting
warren got ubuntu as a base
the other distros got plenty of squabbling and moaning and linspire got a bunch of PR while not contributing a damn thing…
dcca practically worthless just like linspire
anyone want the italian beta version of linspire, grab it here
ftp://linspirebeta:[email protected]/linspire5-it/5.1.365_full-it_…
we’re pining for the fjords!