Google ditches Ubuntu for Debian for internal engineering environment
theinquirer.net
theinquirer.net
That's more or less the approach many Engg teams with much lesser Engg resources also take. Or are the Engg teams I've worked with just the minority?
In the past every time I tried out Debian on my laptops, I ended up with hardware problems.
Last time this happened, my Wifi wasn't working due to Debian not including the device's firmware. And there was no easy fix available, the only thing I could do was to recompile the kernel by myself. I then installed Ubuntu and it worked out of the box. Ubuntu is decent even on one of my MacBook Pro laptops I have, which is filled with components that need proprietary drivers.
My younger self wouldn't believe what I'm about to say, but I can't deal with hardware problems or any of that crap anymore. Still if I were to now buy a non-Apple computer, it's Ubuntu that I'd install on it.
On Google, they have people dealing with this shit, providing round the clock support and standardized hardware. That's not something that small companies can afford to do.
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...
Not without a network connection, it doesn't.
There are other ways (flash drive, etc.) to get the firmware onto the machine, of course, but I can understand bad_user's frustration.
Plug it in, then enable USB-tethering while logged into a wifi (data will go to the wifi not towards your mobile data plan then). The usb-ethernet driver works out of the box for almost all distros.
Apropos of nothing much more than old people mumbling to each other about things, last week I bought a working, new PC (not peripherals or monitors), rather than assemble it myself from components bought separately from eBay for the first time in twenty years (well, 20 years ago I was using eSwap rather than eBay). Much the same as you; I'm just tired of putting it together and making sure to buy hardware that was all going to work together and then sorting out the drivers and all that sort of thing.
So I went to a pick-your-parts-and-we-assemble site, and bought a shiny new system with a Z370 chipset and a shiny new CoffeeLake processor. The chap I spoke to couldn't guarantee it would run a Linux, but he said he'd install Ubuntu on it himself and check it ran, before doing the usual Win install on it and sending it out. No worries, thought I. I'll swiftly turn that into a dual-boot system (which itself turned out to be a pain; this secure boot stuff sure can be awkward).
It turns out that Ubuntu 16.04 LTS doesn't come with a kernel recent enough to fully drive the Z370 and associated CPU inbuilt graphics, so I have to muck around getting hardware working anyway by bringing it forwards a few kernels, figure out how to add the relevent intel driver support to the kernel myself, buy a new graphics card and install it (no, I wanted to stop fiddling around with the hardware!)... or, as my older wiser self has decided, just keep using the old machine for graphically demanding Linux work and wait for 18.04 with kernel 4.15
It's been so long since I owned hardware made in the last six months that I'd completely forgotten about kernel support. I've been so happy for so many years that the kernel supports really old hardware, I forgot completely about the other end of the spectrum.
I had to order a remote KMS session to figure out what went wrong: debian did not include the pretty common realtek-firmware and I was not able to apt-get it without a network interface. Luckily I was able to use it from a the previous installation.
What's a "debootstrap upgrade"? Why couldn't you chroots and dist upgrade?
(i know what a debootstrap install is)
That's really amusing from my perspective (having lived in an Asian country) because for us Westerns, most abbreviations come from using the first few characters of a word.
I've seen the same pattern in Japanese: The word "OSU", which people usually conjure to salute each other in the morning or as they enter a dojo or fight, is actually an abbreviation of "Ohayou Gozaimasu", built in the same way as I imagine the Indian English's "Engg" was built: Taking only the first and the last parts of the term. O(hayou gozaima)SU.
If you're working on a large project like Chrome or Gmail, anything less than 64gb of RAM and a giant SSD is a productivity hit, and most Mac desktops aren't price competitive with a beefy Linux workstation.
CB are Linux just without GNU or userland. So the driver's already been optimized for the hardware. Plus secure and gets updated.
The only negative is having to leave in developer. Now if Google would finish the work they are doing on the KVM to fix this it will be ideal.
What is nice you are dev on the same as runs the cloud.
But my preference is use Crouton and I use docker containers and how I set up my CS sons at University.
The down side is you have to leave the CB in developer mode. You also have to use rkt but works fine with docker images.
Also use Debian home/work switched from Ubuntu/centos/Windows. Using Debian is very stable and has most dev packages needed.
Use Windows 10 in KVM for the occasional gaming fix.
Going to try and run a desktop virtual machine in the cloud because I’m security paranoid.
Presumably individual engineers are still free to use Gentoo if appropriate but from a support and maintenance perspective the costs may not be feesible company wide.
Not the same as "using it throughout the organisation" in the sense that their IT personnel need be concerned with.
Googlers must ask to use Windows because “Windows is harder because it has 'special' security problems so it requires high-level permission before someone can use it.” In addition, “Windows tools tend to be heavy and inflexible.”
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-truth-about-goobuntu-google...
Privacy wise, I am not sure if an IDevice would be such a bad decision. But afaik they're phoning home still and I have to trust them...
I had setup an Active Directory server on a Raspberry Pi for serving my Windows 7 clients. I would have loved to continue using Windows as I think it is great technology. However I was switching because of some crucial decisions by Microsoft:
1. Shoving unwanted "features" along with security updates. As much as I understand Microsoft in wanting a more uniform landscape this is a no-go for me. The only reason I was not hit by the Windows 10 mandatory upgrade was the fact I had the machines in an AD domain (or at least I suspect so).
2. Phoning home without any recourse for me to even know what is collected. How long it is stored. Remember: innocent data today could bring me in trouble tomorrow. Collection can change any time without me even noticing.
And will that now stop? (I guess so)
I saw this bug on Ubuntu, Arch and Mint, on integrated Intel and two different AMDs GPUS [2]
[1] https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&...
Personally, Ubuntu is much more palatable to end users who aren't CS majors, especially with their willingness to ship/support closed source drivers, unlike Debian
If they release gLinux to the outside world, we can all benefit from their constant vigilance, compared to just a community supported distro
I wouldn't want to run gLinux(based off of Debian, and meddled with by Google). I'd trust Mainline Debian with community vetted Patches from Google.
But, if Google decides to monetize it, they may track the fuck out of consumers like they do on Android. That's the only downside I see to gLinux
Thus, I really wonder if gLinux wants to follow Debian testing closely? The might trail behind like the Ubuntu releases.
All of that makes sense for an internal corporate distro at a place like Google. It doesn't add meaningful value over Ubuntu for external users, except for state-sponsored attackers who want a more precise understanding of the vulnerabilities in Google's corporate workstations.
It seems like gLinux would have the same tradeoffs, except that they're going to push more of the broadly useful changes upstream.
(Disclosure: I worked at Google in the past, used Goobuntu, and am a Debian developer. But I was not on the Goobuntu team or involved with the decision to switch to a direct Debian base.)
What? I have taken fossilized servers neglected for ten years and managed to successfully get them to 16.04 LTS - stuff is harder with Debian where e.g. mysql-server has disappeared in buster and replaced by MariaDB.
Although Ubuntu is a glorified copy of Debian, the components that Ubuntu changes tend to be brittle and unstable, and not adequately justified. If anyone wants an OS that helps them get stuff done, not mess with their work, and not even break between major upgrades, Debian is the way to go.
Maybe another window has opened for some desktop innovation now? I would try to copy stuff from Android. Snap [0] is a promising way to deploy apps (in general, self-contained stuff you cannot depend on), even commercial/proprietary ones. The "app store" is terrible, though. Androids intents might be worthwhile to copy to decouple things. Androids activity lifecycle might be interesting. All of this requires a large-scale long-term reengineering of deeper layers, which is practically impossible for hobbyists. You will get hit a lot by people for being not-Unixy (see systemd) and only after years of slog you might be able to show a superior desktop.
On the other hand, there is no money to be made with desktops, so why should a company approach such a risky project?
One of those examples where competition does not help at all.
Many desktop users and contributors moved to Ubuntu and stopped contributing to Debian. A good number slowly moved back to Debian in the last 5 years.
There is a similar situation with clang and gcc. Clang improved error messages and raised the bar. Gcc follows. It would probably not have improved on its own.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/06/canon...
Then of course companies like Google are immune to this sort of issue as they even design and sell linux hardware.
Even on the Asus EEE 1215B that I bought with Linux pre-installed, I had issues with my wlan card.
Spectre patched kernels were only just released into -proposed in the last day or so.
Ubuntu Meltdown: Jan 10 Spectre: Jan 11
Using debian could maybe be compared to using vanilla JS instead of the shiny frameworks.
The downside is that, debian is very conservative in their releases. Most packages that ship with the distro or are in the repositories are a bit behind. I guess that's why Google switched to Debian Testing.
Btw even debian testing is comfortably stable.
For people who want to try debian, I advise them to try Linux Mint Debian Edition. It is a vanilla debian shipping with a good looking DE. I installed it on my mother's laptop, she's been using it for more than 2 years. It is so stable that, one time her laptop broke and we pulled her old netbook from storage. I only took the hdd from the old laptop and inserted in the netbook. After installing the wifi driver the machine has been running flawlessly for more than a year now.
I only do dist-update dist-upgrade from time to time, no further maintance was necessary.
Actually even recently I got email that a bug that I was watching was closed because it was too old. I mean I stopped carrying about Ubuntu almost 10 years ago.
The vast majority of issues I was having were around desktop functionality: connecting a monitor to laptop, weird issues with UI, wifi, putting laptop to sleep. Actually one of last issues that infuriated me was them being ok with release that that crashed (froze) every time you started a laptop with a proximity to 802.11n network.
Imagine trying to use your laptop to take notes in college and it froze few seconds after it booted up repeatedly. It took me a while to find out what the problem really was, then found the bug, realize that it was opened before the release, yet they still went with the release.
To make things even more frustrating at the same time they refused to include OpenOffice 3, because it might not be stable enough. Talk about priorities.
That was the time I started looking at alternatives, someone recommended OpenSuSE and I really liked it.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/YaST2-2....
There's a huge difference in you switching your single desktop to a different distribution and switching an organisation the size of Google. Going with Debian brings then closer to "upstream", while leaving them with a base installation that isn't much different.
What does Manjaro offer better than Debian if i may ask?
I've been using Manjaro for over a year now, never had any problem.
Its one of the things I love Debian for.