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Planning for Ubuntu Edgy: A mid-week report from the Ubuntu developer's conference
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CommentsUbuntu's last release, 6.06 Long Term Support (LTS) was codenamed the Dapper Drake. It was designed to be a well-polished and well-supported release befitting its long lifecycle, and by most accounts it has succeeded.
On the other hand, Mark Shuttleworth's announcement of Edgy set different goals for the upcoming release:
Edgy is all about cutting edge, perhaps bleeding edge, brand new code and infrastructure. It will be the right time to bring in some seriously interesting but definitely edgy new technologies which lay the groundwork for the next wave of Ubuntu development.
Perhaps more importantly, while Ubuntu developers and the community decided to delay the release of Dapper by six full weeks to focus on quality assurance and polish, they agreed to make up for the delay in by slashing the Edgy release preparation period by a quarter. Edgy aims to take Ubuntu in some new, interesting directions -- and to do so at a breakneck pace.
Shuttleworth and Ubuntu technical board chair Matt Zimmerman are already quietly warning that Edgy may be "rougher" than previous Ubuntu releases, although they do not see this a liability; users can continue using Dapper with full support for a three to five years. Developers, however, will be able to use the window of long-term stability offered by Dapper to explore new and more risky choices in the Edgy time frame.
Dapper crowned a successful two-year period of growth for the Ubuntu project. Just as Ubuntu's first release, the Warty Warthog, broke new ground for GNU/Linux distributions while risking a few warts, Edgy aims to push development "to the edge."
At the time of writing, there are more than 170 identified goals under discussion at the Paris developer summit. Only a portion of these are marked as high priority, few have moved past the stage of "braindump," and only a handful have been approved. These specifications provide an idea of where Ubuntu might go in the next release. Of course, no promises are being made -- officially or unofficially.
A number of interesting feature goals stand a decent chance of being implemented in the Edgy release.
A cleaner house
While the software distributed with and supported in Ubuntu has only grown in size over the last four releases, core developers are taking advantage of the opportunity in Edgy to audit the list of supported packages and to make bold decisions that aim to build a smaller, stronger, and more well supported distribution around an updated list of software.Ubuntu's priorities have changed over the last two years -- as has role of the desktop and supported lists of packages and of the universe component and the process of support. The Ubuntu core developers aim to revisit the lists of packages with all of this in mind.
Polish and consistency
Several specs under discussion involve improving polish and consistency on the Ubuntu desktop through pervasive and invasive types changes. One good example is a suggestion to to include consistent tab behavior across applications on the Ubuntu desktop.Firefox, Gaim, GNOME Terminal, and other applications implement tabs with different key-bindings and interaction techniques. The Ubuntu developers are considering making changes to these applications in Edgy to make this behavior more consistent. Similar types of polish aim to improve user experience in other important ways.
Xen-enabled kernels by default
The kernel team is looking seriously at shipping kernels with Ubuntu that can be used with Xen without modifications as a way of making effortless virtualization an option for any Ubuntu user that wants to take advantage of it.
Widespread accessibility improvements
Ubuntu has, since day one, made accessibility support one of its most important philosophical goals. Led in large part by a big push by Henrik Nilsen Omma, Edgy aims to improve the state of accessibility in Ubuntu by including some of the best and most cutting edge accessibility tools in the free software world. This includes software to take advantage of hardware video acceleration for screen magnification and evaluation and integration of a whole set of next-generation tools for screen-reading and more. In addition to this being the right thing to do, it will open doors to Ubuntu in government and big business environments.
File type magic
Several goals discussed mapping unknown or unsupported files types to the applications necessary to run them in the Ubuntu package database. Just as Firefox can suggest and install software to help view unsupported media, the next version of Ubuntu may be able to suggest and install software necessary to support media and other types of files when a user does not have the necessary software installed.
GCC-SSP
Core developers are making a plan for the integration of GCC with "stack-smashing protector" into the distribution. SSP is an option on top of the GNU C Compiler which proactively blocks a wide number of buffer overflows; the end result is software that is proactively secure.
SSP has already been integrated into several other operating systems. Rather than building everything with SSP in Edgy, Ubuntu will probably experiment with SSP for many selected packages and then, once the team has worked the kinks out, will apply it to the whole archive for the release after Edgy.
Enterprise Grade Commercial Support
Through a number of specifications, Canonical seems to be gearing up for a serious push in providing improved support for Ubuntu. While the support seems to largely geared around supporting the Dapper Drake release, and not Edgy itself, Canonical Ltd. seems to interested in making a series of large investments into building infrastructure for community support and offering more traditional professional and enterprise support of the type offered by other "mainstream" distributions.
SMART Package Manager
SMART is a new package manager written from scratch in Python. It is able to deal with RPMs, Debian, and Slackware packages at the same time and includes a series of improved algorithms for resolving package dependency issues. Already in use by several other distributions, Ubuntu is looking at rolling out SMART as an option in Edgy. Once a list of issues are resolved in the Edgy and Edgy+1 time frames, the team plans to work on integrating SMART more fully into the project.
Conspicuously missing from the list of likely features is the crowd-pleasing Xgl. It, or the alternative AIGLX, might end up in the release but there don't seem to plans on doing it at the moment and the release schedule leaves little room for changes of heart.
The conference will continue through Friday, June 23. The list of full specifications can be read viewed on the Ubuntu Development Summit Web page. A second report on the conference will be released here after the conferences conclusion.
Comments
on Planning for Ubuntu Edgy: A mid-week report from the Ubuntu developer's conferenceNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
Re:Time for an internal fork... to fix Dapper firs
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 23, 2006 09:20 AMKubuntu has had one more release but it too needs probably a few more releases to catch up to Ubuntu. The thing to realize is that the whole project started with Ubuntu and that has been the main focus. However other derivatives are comming off and as they mature they will hopefully get to the maturity of ubuntu.
As for ubuntu, there were a few things that could have been handled better like the installer, last minute drivers and printing but hopefully the poin t release for dapper will fix that.
Also why do you think the *buntu releases need a firewall? It's not like they have any ports open and it's not like their are viruses for linux. (Not saying we should be lax about security but it's hard to know what to look out for unless we have a real virus to deal with). I know you can add firewalls after the install but I'm still not quite sure what the point is. Maybe one of the server options should be setting up a firewall but personal firewalls don't make a lot of sense to me. You may as well go out and buy a hardware firewall if you're concerned about stuff.
You jest? No firewall at install is ok! Funny.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 23, 2006 10:11 AMOk to use Linux with no Firewall..! Good joke! Funny...
But, if it was not joke...
Firewalls = at install need to be offered to the users who don't have any at all! The number one reason why Microsoft is launching the new battlestar is security. Ubuntu and it's family should have firewalls and full on SELinux all ON by default. Let the user turn then off... but, by default all security should be on (Fedora does this fairly well... and the K12LTSP, that is Fedora based, has this as part of the install as well)!
GO to this web site and do some homework.
<a href="http://www.grc.com/" title="grc.com">http://www.grc.com/</a grc.com> (basics on security and the need for firewalls)! Hey then set up any *buntu distro and run the GRC "ShieldsUP" port testing tool (and see what happens next)! If they can see your ports, then they can probe your ports. Why advertise your ports as open? FIREWALLS need to be on by default. Ports need to be "stealth" rated by GRC testing. If you got basic networking built-in... you need to block stuff at the firewall... and if no network, then turn off networking functions (by default) and allow for them to be turned on manually... and then allow networking to happen locally... gee, even firestarter installed by default is ok (except my testing of Firestarter seems to have problems with LTSP install of Edubuntu). Any suggestions for an LTSP friendly Edubuntu Firewall for the LTSP machine (installed with 2 NICS)?
Not everyone in the work can afford hardware firewalls... and I once had old modem activity and someone was building a virtual hard drive in RAM (Win98) while the computer was sitting there doing nothing (external modem lights were flashing like crazy so I check it out and watched the intruder and had some fun). LINUX is software, software is not secure by fault (read: Secrets and Lies by
Bruce Schneier, source info here:
<a href="http://www.counterpane.com/sandl.html" title="counterpane.com">http://www.counterpane.com/sandl.html</a counterpane.com>
"Information security expert Bruce Schneier explains what everyone in business needs to know about security in order to survive and be competitive. Pragmatic, interesting, and humorous, Schneier exposes the digital world and the realities of our networked society. He examines the entire system, from the reasons for technical insecurities to the minds behind malicious attacks. You'll be guided through the security war zone, and learn how to understand and arm yourself against the threats of our connected world")!
Re:You jest? No firewall at install is ok! Funny.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 23, 2006 02:07 PMsudo apt-get install firestarter
no biggie. If average users start setting up ftp and ssh, then I'd say include the gui... To say there is no firewall... untrue.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:P
<a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CommonQuestions" title="ubuntu.com">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CommonQuestions</a ubuntu.com><nobr> <wbr></nobr>...or wherever there is any installing help or ANYWHERE...for any *buntu does it say a firewall is on by default? I thought the goal of Dapper was to make *buntu a finished, and easy to install and use, no brainer of a distro (seems you have to be able to read brain waves from great distances, or be able to be a complete geek ALREADY dialed in to all of the hidden *buntu tricks BEFORE you install it)!
What about Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu? Too?
Do these have a firewall running by default?
If so, then why no GUI by default. And with Edubuntu, I installed Firestarter and I could not figure out how to get it to only block the internet connected NIC (and not the NIC to the terminals)?
AND the instructional HOW-TO didn't even address it at all (or say enough about a 2 NIC install from the beginning of the install, either).
<a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/GettingStarted" title="edubuntu.org">http://www.edubuntu.org/GettingStarted</a edubuntu.org> is helpful but does not from the start explain the 2 NIC install processonly when you get to the image found after "Below is an example of the physical layout of an Edubuntu thin client lab": is there any mention of 2 NICs being the normal use???
Also on this page:
<a href="https://wiki.edubuntu.com/EdubuntuLtsConfParams" title="edubuntu.com">https://wiki.edubuntu.com/EdubuntuLtsConfParams</a edubuntu.com>
YOU can see how much of the LTSP stuff they need to finish as well. They have done a wonderful job so far... but, to offer support for 5 years, out of the box, on something that they know is not done yet... does not make sense? I'd say wait until all the LTSP parts are done... then, offer the 5 years Edubuntu LTSP Server support from that date forward (I think that the 3year/5year offer for 6.06 was way too premature (especially since Mark Suttleworth has announced that the next versions of *buntu will only come with 18 months support vs 5 years...). Interesting because by the next release the LTSP Edubuntu Team might just be finishing what they didn't have time to finish for Dapper (I think that the teams should be allowed to finish what they started AND THEN OFFER THE 3-5 YEAR SUPPORT... and maybe call it enterprise ready! This release of Edubuntu with the "enterprise hype" was embarrassing as I was telling many school admins that it would be great... well, it ain't done, and because it ain't done... it ain't that great for those that are running terminals that have less than a PII and 48 MB of RAM (and are only PXE able)!
In the Getting started for Edubuntu there really needs to be more written up about PXE vs Etherboot and why PXE moving forward is the way that the entire LTSP direction is moving (leaving those with Etherboot devices or NIC cards on older PCs as terminals hanging or what, needs to be explained to all prior to installation as a preface or something)!
FINISH DAPPER FIRST, offer the 3-5 year support, then focus on the EDGY toys - like those that are being thought up for the next release (or is that one going to be half done and sent out on CDs only for mind readers as well)!!!
I am sorry, but with so much unfinished with Dapper that I was expecting... I feel let down and perplexed that Edgy is even being moved toward at this point in time... I can't just hand these 6.06 CDs that I have ordered out to folks and say have at it (without a sheet of paper that says by the way, Kubuntu does not list FireFox as a supported browser in their add apps application at all, that Edubuntu LTSP is not done, that the *buntu family does not support an up to date apt-get for the wonderful KIPI plug-ins for Gwenview (in Kubuntu for example there is Gwenview but no KIPI Plugins to use it... that is not enterprise ready folks)!
This Dapper 6.06 is not something that I can hand out... I can install it for folks because I know what I am doing... but to give it out to the unknowing is a bit dangerous (they can have fun playing with it... but in reality most just want to use is... and it really is lacking in some ways with superior and easy to use features, like modern up to date KIPI plug-ins in any repository)! TELL ME OF ONE PERSON THAT DOES NOT HAVE A DIGITAL CAMERA? BY default this should be taken under consideration and all the high powered and Open Source tools should be preloaded or at least installable from the SUPPORTED LIST (not from the unsupported list). This 3-5 year support for what is listed is a JOKE (really not that funny as Dapper is not finished so I can't give out the CDs like I had hoped to)!
Hey - give folks a firewall or at least tell them somewhere upfront that one is working and how to control it!
Waste of Ship-it $ resources to send Dapper out!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 23, 2006 08:32 PMWhat is the rush? Save money by keeping only shipping with Ship-it stuff that is at least finished (like the all the VERY IMPORTANT LTSP client features NOT INCLUDED on the CD for Edubutnu, that they are still working on). Isn't is a waste of Ship-it money to ship stuff that is not finished yet?
Re:You jest? No firewall at install is ok! Funny.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 30, 2006 10:28 PM'A firewall protects a computer system from unauthorized access. It is not normally necessary to install a firewall on an Ubuntu system, because access to the system is closed by default. However, if you run any services which you allow other computers to access (for example, the Apache web server), it is advisable to install a firewall. Firestarter is a program which allows you to control a firewall through a graphical interface.'
The philosophy is clear, if you don't understand it, you don't really need it
Re:Time for an internal fork... to fix Dapper firs
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 23, 2006 04:04 PMRe:Time for an internal fork... to fix Dapper firs
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 23, 2006 11:01 PM- Easier Edubuntu install of 2 Nics
- Easier Edubuntu install (like K12LTSP)
- option during install of Edubuntu of FireWall
- option of Firewall install for all *buntu distros - Newbies should be given the option of setting up a firewall during the install... etc!
Newbies should not be expected to setup systems with routine configurations, much less special circumstances. If your Administrator doesn't know how to do this, please fire him/her. You're being scammed.
Edubuntu was to be easy for Windows School Admins!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 24, 2006 03:02 AMThe idea was to make Edubuntu easy for School Admins migrating from Windows to LINUX. K12LTSP.org right now is a better solution. When Edubuntu is finished then take another look at it. K12LTSP.org is just so much easier to install, has the firewall, and the 2 NIC setup during install is perfect (totally lacking with Edubuntu is anything that gives anyone a sense that they are setting up 2 NICs during the install)!
There is a howto to do this on 5.10 but it doesn't work on 6.06. Too many things have changed between the two and doing it manually is a pain in the rear.
60 Developers and this is what they have to show? Another sad story of good PR and bad delivery!
The main complains I've seen, center around the following users:
* Some people who install via the LiveCD
* Some people who have ATI cards
* Some people who have certain scanners.
* Some Edubuntu users (note, *buntus all tend to get classified as Ubuntu, even though they all have different levels of maturity. When Breezy came out, Kubuntu complaints gave the impression that Ubuntu was a piece of garbage.)
I don't fall into any of these categories (Ubuntu, NVidia, upgrade install, no scanner), and except for LiveCD users, most people don't either, so don't let this cloud your judgment on a fine distro.
Stick with apt-get/Synaptic for package managment--why are these people always tinkering with things that work already instead of tackling things that DON'T WORK!!!!
--AR
This would be great for people that actually work
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 26, 2006 07:10 AM
Polish and consistency
Several specs under discussion involve improving polish and consistency on the Ubuntu desktop through pervasive and invasive types changes. One good example is a suggestion to to include consistent tab behavior across applications on the Ubuntu desktop.
Firefox, Gaim, GNOME Terminal, and other applications implement tabs with different key-bindings and interaction techniques. The Ubuntu developers are considering making changes to these applications in Edgy to make this behavior more consistent. Similar types of polish aim to improve user experience in other important ways.
This would be great for people that actually work with computers. Three or four different keyboard tab shortcuts is a sign of sloppiness.
Re:This would be great for people that actually wo
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 30, 2006 03:58 AM>
> Three or four different keyboard tab shortcuts is a sign of sloppiness.
Maybe if they were implemented by the same company, project or people. However, for example Firefox and Gnome terminal are completely different projects.
Ubuntu is "just" packaging and integrating these, it's not implementing them. There are quite a lot of other issues until one gets to this level of minor details.
Time for an internal fork... to fix Dapper first!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 23, 2006 07:49 AMThe 5 year supported server and 3 year supported desktop 6.06 series has still some bugs and unpolished parts (for a support period as long as it has). Moving on to flashy stuff right now may be fun... but hey, what about the other stuff that needs to be done for 6.06?
- Like - SWAP for LTSP stuff? (what is LTSP if you can't run older pre-PII computers as terminals with 32 MB RAM with it)
- Easier Edubuntu install of 2 Nics
- Easier Edubuntu install (like K12LTSP)
- option during install of Edubuntu of FireWall
- option of Firewall install for all *buntu distros - Newbies should be given the option of setting up a firewall during the install... etc!
Dapper is really in places at Pre-release state... for example Kubuntu has no FireFox browser during install or in the list of "supported" browsers (you have to go outside the supported list to install FireFox and many other popular applications in Kubuntu)... And this is ready for the enterprise when FireFox is not on the supported for 3 years on desktop list of supported applications for Kubuntu? Go figure? Get real.
*buntu 6.06 - is really up for another round of work to be done THEN RELEASE it again for the 3 year and 5 year support options...!
Running off and playing again is not finishing what was started with Dapper 6.06 and getting it done (there have been alot of commments on the lists to this effect). Don't get this wrong and think this is a slam on *buntu... it is rockin stuff (very good)... it just needs a bit more finishing work to be enterprise and easy to install and school LTSP ready (it ain't really done yet)!
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