On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 03:13:15PM +1300, Jim Cheetham wrote:All the packages in ubuntu/*/main are recompiled, and are not Debian project packages (although they are .deb files)
each of woody, sarge, warty and hoary represent a different snapshot of the debian universe.
Yes, except for the case where ubuntu/* packages (warty, hoary, etc) have had modifications made that are not accepted by Debian. At which point the package diverges, albeit only slightly.
An example of a change that Debian might not accept would be the example of a switch from using 'su' to using 'sudo' when invoking something. Ubuntu require 'sudo', but Debian have historically preferred 'su'. It's not a technical difference, it's a philosophical one. It also doesn't affect the code of the packaged program itself, but does affect what you could call package metadata (i.e. the changes to the menu structures that would occur when the package is added) (yes, not the same as *actual* package metadata, but similar).
the only difference is who built the packages and asserts for their quality. in case of woody or sarge that's the debian team, in case of warty or hoary that's ubuntu but then, a lot of ubuntu people are debian developers.
True. I trust the asserts made by FreeBSD, Debian and to a certain extent Ubuntu (increasing over time, but initially low because they don't have a history). I don't trust the RPM habit of "just search google and install an rpm if it looks like it has the right name" and I don't quite understand how Mandrake/RedHat come up with their packages.
Also, because of these changes, and because of the versions of packages that are selected, and the amount of love and attention that Ubuntu provides, it is no longer really fair to say "Ubuntu is a Debian distribution". It's not.
i'd like to disagree with that. especially it does not do justice to the amount of care and atention that debian developers bring in to make a stable system which then lasts for 3 years. ubuntu is a team working on debian, warty and hoary are debian releases. that's how i see it, and thats how i hope it is and will remain to be.
I'm not intending that comment on the same level as "Linux is/isn't GNU" :-)
I mean, Ubuntu isn't just a collection of Debian (woody|sarge) packages (it is to 99%, but not to 100%). Especially because of the warning about not mixing repositories. Which is "better" ... foo-1.1-woody2 or foo-1.1-ubuntu2? Answer: don't have foo-1.1-woody2 visible in the first place.
Ubuntu is a distribution that tracks the versions used in Debian, and it submits patchs back into Debian, but there is no automatic acceptance of these. Over time, the two distros will diverge quite significantly.
i sure hope they do not diverge. and my understanding (from the very few bits i have read) is that they do not intent to diverge.
Agreed - they do not want to. However, they know that they have a different requirement and a different philosophy. Debian can't declare a new stable until it works on all the Debian supported platforms. Ubuntu can leap as soon as x86,ia64 and ppc are OK ...
They also know that their modifications might not be accepted by Debian.
-jim
