/dev/chat

8:00 PM

Absolutely. I just read some excerpts I can't find now from a mailing list where they were talking about wanting a unified "experience" across all devices and other marketingspeak. It was awful.

Faheem Mitha

RH also has a corporate policy that everything they develop must be free software. Might have changed recently - see above.

@terdon They being RH?

terdon

Yes

Damn, where's @strugee when you need him? He's more up to date on all this stuff.

Seth

I'm not really sure what is going on in this conversation. I have kind of stopped trying to defend Ubuntu/Canonical, people who hate it always find a reason why they should hate it more :)

terdon

@Seth Coward.

:P

Seth

I'm not going to defend myself either. If you want to think of my as a coward, feel free ;P

terdon

8:03 PM

I was hoping you could help us understand the major differences between UBuntu and Debian. Faheem thinks they're just cosmetic and I believe they affect the underlying code base.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Sensible man. :-)

Seth

I've read most of the backlog. Not really sure what is going on.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth :-)

terdon

@Seth Damn, and he won't bite either.

Seth

@terdon So Faheem is saying Ubuntu devs just drink tea all day?

Faheem Mitha

8:04 PM

@Seth No. They work for the Man. :-)

terdon

I'm sure he'll stretch to letting them have coffee.

Seth

"the Man" makes no money off Ubuntu development.

Faheem Mitha

In this case, the man is South African.

@Seth He doesn't?

Seth

Canonical only makes money off Landscape irrc.

terdon

@Seth What? How come?

Seth

8:04 PM

Well, he does, but not directly.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Landscape?

terdon

Ah, OK.

Seth

49

Q: How does Ubuntu make money?

We get various distros like kubuntu/ubuntu/lubuntu/edu/etc... for free. We get critical updates constantly. We can download any programs we want from Ubuntu repos. Gee, I can't even imagine what kind of a CDN network you gotta have to support all this. Also, Ubuntu has a lot of people working for...

canonical

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Hate it a strong word. I don't hate Canonical/Ubuntu. Let's say I have mixed feelings.

As far as hate goes, I propose Microsoft. Now, that is a company that deserves hate.

Seth

I guess the company does make some money of Amazon refers and the software center (if you choose to sell your app).

@FaheemMitha The only company I hate is Apple, and that is only because I don't like their ethics :-)

terdon

8:07 PM

@Seth You mean they have people from different countries working for them? :P

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Yes, I hate them too. They're both pretty bad. Apple these days is arguably worse.

Seth

@terdon whoops. My bad.

terdon

:)

Seth

@FaheemMitha Canonical sells commercial support for Ubuntu.

For those who need the accountability.

terdon

That's how most of the corps make money isn't it? RedHat for example.

Seth

8:08 PM

(not sure that is the right word..)

Faheem Mitha

@Seth So I would expect. And they are also trying the mobile phone thing, too.

Seth

@terdon RedHat sells RHEL I thought.

Isn't that why CentOS exists?

Faheem Mitha

@Seth It does.

Seth

So RedHat makes money off of support + selling the product.

Faheem Mitha

I can't believe that it's been 10 years since Ubuntu started. How time flies.

@Seth In that case, yes. I'm surprised Canonical has come up some similar enterprisey thing.

Maybe those long term distributions?

terdon

8:11 PM

@Seth True. I was thinking of Fedora.

Seth

@FaheemMitha I'm not sure I understand. Ubuntu is not for sale.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth do you work for Canonical yourself?

terdon

@FaheemMitha no, all Ubuntu versions are free. Server included.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Oh, it isn't? Ok.

@terdon Ok.

Seth

@FaheemMitha nope. And neither do most Ubuntu contributors.

Faheem Mitha

8:11 PM

That's what I thought. I wasn't sure.

Seth

@FaheemMitha You do not "buy" Ubuntu. You can donate, and if you are a company that needs "official" support you can but that.

Oh, and stickers, they sell stickers :)

Faheem Mitha

@Seth OK.

I guess it is a bit different from RHEL then. Though you can essentially have RHEL for free, via the clone CentOS and stuff.

terdon

And you can have Fedora which is pretty much what RedHat was before RHEL came out.

Seth

@FaheemMitha Yep.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon See lwn.net/Articles/590354

for example. See where RH is in the tables.

terdon

8:16 PM

Wow, and Intel is 1st!

Seth

I'm not really sure where Ubuntu is when it comes to contributing to Debian. Not sure where the stats would be. But we do.

Faheem Mitha

The other really prominent corporate name is Intel, which certainly have a very sensible corporate policy towards free policy, but I expect they mostly work on their own drivers. Though I don't know.

terdon

But that's just the kernel.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon True. but it includes a lot of stuff. All the device drivers, the filesystems,...

terdon

@Seth I posted a link above showing >1K bugs reported by a developers@ubuntu.com or something address.

Seth

8:17 PM

I couldn't get that link to load :(

terdon

@Seth 'cause it take ages

Faheem Mitha

It loaded for me.

terdon

@FaheemMitha Indeed. I think that Canonical's contributions will be more to the installer/udev/general hardware support and tools running on the OS rather than part of it.

Makes more sense anyway. Debian already works on the rest, if I were they, I'd go for higher level stuff.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon They contribute to the installer? News to me. Any statistics to back that up?

@terdon Debian doesn't work on the kernel. At least no directly. And as for other stuff, they could ceratainly use help. As I argued earlier.

terdon

@FaheemMitha None whatsoever. Which is why that sentence started with "I think".

@FaheemMitha It doesn't?

Faheem Mitha

8:20 PM

@Seth you are an Ubuntu mod, right? Do you hang out here, so you can move questions back and forth - to coordinate with the mods here, or do you just hang out here just because...?

Seth

Just because. There is a lot to be learned when you just listen :)

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Doesn't what? Doesn't work on the kernel? Not really, no. Except for Ben Hutchings. I don't think they have a terribly big kernel team. Whenever I ask something, it always seems to be Ben who replies.

Seth

(that is in no way a reflection on you or anyone else here, in case it sounds like that)

Faheem Mitha

@Seth No, we're not so super-sensitive. At least I'm not, and I don't think terdon is either.

terdon

@Seth It did and we took it as a compliment, it seemed to suggest that we say things that are informative. Why'd you go and qualify it? :P

Faheem Mitha

8:21 PM

Happy to have you hanging out here.

terdon

Hey, I'm sensitive! I like flowers and everything!

But yeah, I'm hard to offend. And I;m certainly not about to get offended by someone I like as much as @Seth.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon LOL. And guitars. And no doubt senoritas with flowers in their hair.

terdon

Yay! Though flowers are optional extras :)

Seth

I'm not very good with words sometimes so :)

So, the Xubuntu developers changed the default highlights for 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn). I thought it was a neat idea, although I would change it back right away ;P

6

Q: Why did my highlights turn pink in Xubuntu 14.10?

Around the time of the start to testing of the second beta for Xubuntu 14.10, my highlights turned pink system-wide. What gives?

xubuntu themes 14.10

Faheem Mitha

There seem to be some quite hard working Debian volunteers here, locally. I hope they don't get discouraged.

@terdon what happened with that weird i thing? Did you fix it up at your end?

And is AU going to change anything at their end?

terdon

8:25 PM

@FaheemMitha Yes!

3

A: The letter i is not displayed properly.

Turns out Mateo was spot on. The issue was fixed by adding this to my ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf file (not ~/fonts.conf, when that file was created, running fc-list returned an error message telling me that I should switch to the one in ~/.config because ~/.fonts.conf is deprecated): <match...

Faheem Mitha

Funny, I don't have a ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf. This is Mint?

Seth

Debian actually.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth What terdon is running?

Seth

yeah

Faheem Mitha

I see they shut down Ubuntu One.

Seth

8:28 PM

> On my machine (LMDE, firefox, various versions) the letter i on AU is not displayed properly:

I think the issue is with operating systems not displaying the Ubuntu font properly.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Yes, I have the same problem here. Wonder if it worth filing a bug. But I don't really use Firefox. At least, not enough to notice this sort of thing.

terdon

@Seth I thought so too but I had the Ubuntu fonts installed and it worked fine on chrome. It was something to do with FF's anti aliasing settings.

Dammit, why do people who don't really understand it take it upon themselves to explain dangerous security flaws?

-1

A: How do I know if my system is vulnerable to the ShockShell vulnerability?

The ShockShell vulnerability affects many systems. Is my system affected? If you want to check if your system is affected, run the following command inside a terminal window running bash. Ubuntu's gnome-terminal runs bash by default (to see if you are running bash, then run echo $SHELL, and if ...

Seth

@terdon Oh, ok. Might be worth filing a bug against FF then.

terdon

Might be but I'm not sure what's going on. I'm not sure it's FF's fault and not my own for example.

Seth

@terdon too late:

62

Q: What is the CVE-2014-6271 bash vulnerability, and how do I fix it?

$hexafraction$ Recently, there have been news going around regarding "CVE-2014-6271" (See USN-2362-1), which is a vulnerability in Bash. How do I know if I am affected by this, how can I fix it, and why should I care? This is designed as a canonical answer for this vulnerability, due to its scope and severity.

bash security

oops, sorry I just realised I put bash instead of dash in the test. Never mind it's fine. — Matt H 28 mins ago

lol.

Faheem Mitha

8:36 PM

On a tangent - is homebrew the best OS X packaging system currently?

Seth

Ah, I see where the conversation got started now. Yes, the differences between Debian and Ubuntu are more than cosmetic. I don't know exactly what they change though.

Faheem Mitha

I don't believe I ever used the word "cosmetic".

Seth

1 hour ago, by Faheem Mitha

@terdon There are differences, true. But they are mostly cosmetic. Ubuntu doesn't try to change anything that would require real engineering effort/ability. E.g. the packaging system. For that, they prefer to reply on free volunteer labor.

:)

Faheem Mitha

@Seth I stand corrected.

I did say "mostly".

I remember seeing a discussion once about mercurial packaging. The Ubuntu guy was like, we'll just wait for Debian to package it, then we'll pick it up. :-)

Seth

Personally, I find that mildly offensive. so they don't have a right to use the same packaging system if they don't change it dramatically? What happened to "free software"? Ubuntu doesn't have engineers? Who wrote Unity? Mir? Ubuntu Touch? Who fixes all the bugs that are reported? We don't need to start this conversation again. Those are just a few of my thoughts.

@FaheemMitha And why shouldn't they?

Faheem Mitha

8:41 PM

@Seth Well, they could help...

Seth

Trying to pass that off as Ubuntu just feeding off others work is plain silly.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Well, that's my take on it. Mostly.

Seth

@FaheemMitha They could, or they couldn't. Why do you care? ;)

@FaheemMitha and that is fine, you can have that opinion.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth Well, I'm not expecially fond of exploitation, in any form. And some of the time, at least, it feels like exploitation. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.

I don't know if I would say it was wrong as such. I guess I just don't like it.

terdon

Why would it be exploitation? If I write software based on your libraries, why would I be expected to dig in and help you with the library? I don't understand the first thing about it, I just use it.

Seth

8:44 PM

"How dare you use the software I developed and released for free! That is exploitation! I demand you help me with it. Forget your own projects, I'm being exploited!"

Faheem Mitha

As various people have pointed out, they have the right to do so.

Seth

Exactly :)

@terdon the less sarcastic version of my own opinion ;P

terdon

But even the moral right as far as I'm concerned. I don't see anything immoral or otherwise reprehensible here.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Well, partly it is a branding thing. Ubuntu is just basically Debian. But they have been so successful in branding that many people don't even know it is Debian.

Which is understandably annoying for many people who work on Debian.

terdon

@FaheemMitha Yes. So, the Stallman GNU/Linux argument.

Seth

8:46 PM

@terdon Unlike patenting icons in 4 rows.

Faheem Mitha

This isn't about individual usage of some piece of free software. It's about a system.

terdon

Apple did that?Idiots.

Seth

@terdon That was the whole Apple vs Samsung thing.

well, part of it.

terdon

@FaheemMitha Yes, GNU/Linux. This is exactly the same argument as made by Stallman.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Yes, that's a similar situation. Though Stallman's unbranding exercise is kind of dumb, I think. I mean, Debian isn't suggesting Ubuntu call themselves Debian/Ubuntu.

Nick

8:47 PM

@FaheemMitha well ubuntu is 10 times easier to get up and running

Faheem Mitha

@Nick That's an interesting statistic.

terdon

@FaheemMitha No, but it's exactly the same situation you describe. The FSF fold are, understandably, annoyed that their work seems to have been ignored. Your description of the Debian position is the same: We don't want people to just use our stuff, we also want to be lauded!

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Oh, I'm very sympathetic towards the FSF/GNU project's position. Not that anyone cares what I think. I don't think the GNU/Linux thing is reasonable, though.

Seth

What kind of attribution does Debian want? Any real computer person that uses Ubuntu knows it is based on Debian. The non computer people might not, but Debian finds that such a big problem?

Faheem Mitha

@terdon No, not lauded.

Seth

8:50 PM

As if Joe Blow who just wants to watch youtube and do facebook even cares.

Faheem Mitha

@Seth I don't know what Debian wants, in so far as it makes sense to talk about Debian wanting something. Debian is a loose collection of people scattered across the planet, who spend not insignificant portions of their time arguing.

And I obviously don't speak for Debian.

terdon

@FaheemMitha Then I misunderstood this:

5 mins ago, by Faheem Mitha

@terdon Well, partly it is a branding thing. Ubuntu is just basically Debian. But they have been so successful in branding that many people don't even know it is Debian.

Seth

@FaheemMitha Right, so why are we having this conversation?

Faheem Mitha

I'm just telling you how I feel. That's all.

@Seth I have no idea. :-)

Seth

I see ;)

terdon

8:52 PM

"Debian is a [...] collection of people [...] who spend not insignificant portions of their time arguing." : understatement of the century!

Seth

The thing is, you know, the argument is necessary.

terdon

The epic clashes and excitement of Debian development could make a movie.

Seth

btw, can anyone tell me what DE/WM whatever this is?

camo.githubusercontent.com/…

I know it is Arch.

It looks like Xfce perhaps.

terdon

Could be just about anything really.

Gnome2, Cinnamon, KDE. Anything but Unity :) All the others let you customize them.

Seth

I don't think Cinnamon can look quite like that.

I'm going with MATE or Xfce personally.

Does anyone still use real Gnome 2?

terdon

8:57 PM

Sure it can. That's a gtk theme of some sort and a couple of applets. MATE makes sense. But it could also be gnome2.

@Seth How old is that image? And yes, people probably do. It's not been gone that long.

Seth

@terdon 2 days old?

@terdon I'll take your word for it.

terdon

@Seth Ah, yes, it's from that great softwarereqs answer, I remember.

Seth

yep, that one :)

terdon

I'm thinking cinnamon more and more.

strugee

@Seth looks like something in the GNOME family based on the file manager and the fact that the GIMP theme seems to match the file manager theme (indicating that the file manager is probably GTK+)

terdon

9:03 PM

See? Cinnamon!

strugee

@FaheemMitha Ubuntu wrote their installer from scratch. it's called Ubiquity

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Hmm, really? That's surprising.

strugee

only the alternate images use d-i. I'm guessing they don't contribute that much.

terdon

@FaheemMitha They've written a lot of stuff. Some of it is even good!

3

Faheem Mitha

The Debian installer project was a big operation. Went on for years. Joey Hess was project leader part of the time.

I'm surprised someone else would reproduce that from scratch.

hichris123

9:05 PM

Mind if I intrude for a minute? I need to figure out how this would be calling bdflush(), as that's causing it to crash (found that via strace). Any thoughts?

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Alternate images?

terdon

@hichris123 I don't think any of our hardcore C people are around...

strugee

@terdon Fedora Workstation?

hichris123

@terdon Hmm, okay. But do you know of anything that could be used as a... debugger of sorts, showing all of the calls?

terdon

Yes, the same one you do, strace. Sorry. I did find this though:

Faheem Mitha

9:08 PM

wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubiquity says:

terdon

> Note: Since Linux 2.6, this system call is deprecated and does nothing.
It is likely to disappear altogether in a future kernel release. Nowa‐
days, the task performed by bdflush() is handled by the kernel pdflush
thread.

strugee

@FaheemMitha yeah. images as in CD images. there's the main flavor and then there's "alternate".

Faheem Mitha

> Ubiquity is a simple graphical live CD installer designed to integrate well with Debian- and Ubuntu-based systems, written largely in Python, using d-i as a backend for many of its functions for ease of maintenance.

I'm not sure exactly what backend means here...

@strugee oh

strugee

@FaheemMitha probably it uses d-i like a library

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Maybe. I didn't know d-i has python bindings. if so.

hichris123

9:09 PM

@terdon hmm, looking into when ubuntu started using the 2.6 kernel.

terdon

Years ago now.

We've been on the 3x line for what? A couple of years already?

hichris123

Hmm... was it introduced in 2.6.0? Or maybe a later release? I'm curious now.

strugee

@hichris123 I think you're stuck with gdb.

otherwise you'd need something like DTrace.

hichris123

ok.

Huh, the precise manpage doesn't have the warning: manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man2/bdflush.2.html

strugee

@terdon yeah, 3 or 4

hichris123

9:12 PM

But 12.10 does: manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/quantal/en/man2/bdflush.2.html

strugee

@FaheemMitha yes. by far.

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Ok. There was a thing called fink, once.

strugee

@FaheemMitha yep, and MacPorts.

MacPorts was semi-official. Apple linked to it somewhere.

Fink and MacPorts largely suck compared to Homebrew.

@terdon wait, so what was the question?

terdon

@strugee We were discussing how much different companies had contributed to Linux. Never mind, let's not start again. Serves you right for not being here :)

This deserves more upvotes:

5

A: "all but the 13th line" in sed

Part 1 Simply delete the 13th line: sed '13d' <file.txt And a general way to do the complement of the above is: sed '13!d' <file.txt Part 2 Because it can be done: sed -n ':a;${P;q};N;4,$D;ba' <file.txt Note the 4 is one more than the number you require. So if you wanted the last-10th...

Michael Mrozek

Isn't part 2 backwards? He wants "all but the third-to-last line" — Michael Mrozek ♦ 8 secs ago

terdon

9:25 PM

@MichaelMrozek Oh, yes, I forgot that. I was impressed by his figuring out the 3rd to last in the first place. That's a cool trick. I'll see if I can fix it.

Faheem Mitha

9:43 PM

@strugee check out Anthons bio.

that getting to know you question.

strugee

10:19 PM

@FaheemMitha doing it now

Steven Walton

I was wondering if anyone could help me over here chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/17445/…

I'm having boot problems on arch, and can't get anything to work

This was after an update and unfortunately my cache is cleared, so I don't have anything to roll back to. There is no arch-chroot, and I have no internet access on the machine

Braiam

11:47 PM

@strugee actually is just a frontend, the bulk of the work is being done by d-i

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