Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
It's Free – Libre
While the value of “free as in beer” is easy to describe, the value of “free as in speech – otherwise known as libre – is harder to relate. Nonetheless, rather large books have been written on the subject, so we'll try to stick with something condensed.
Virtually everything distributed with Ubuntu is an open source program in some manner. Many of the components of Ubuntu, such as the Linux kernel and the GNU toolset, are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which in a nutshell requires that any software distributed under the GPL license either include the source code with the software or a way to get the source code. Other bits of Ubuntu are under slightly different licenses with slightly different legal requirements, but the outcome is effectively the same. Ubuntu is free - you can get the source code to it and modify/distribute it as you see fit.
But when we're talking about Ubuntu, there's more than just being able to access the source, as most of the development teams that are responsible for the programs included in Ubuntu have their projects open for public participation. So not only can you take the code and modify it, but if your modifications are good enough they can be submitted back to the main project and possibly be included in a future version of the software. The fundamental idea of open source software is that users are empowered to see how software works and to modify it as they see fit. Other lesser benefits also exist, such as protecting authors' rights by preventing people from taking the code and improving it without sharing it (the GPL), and making sure all the authors are properly credited.
This does not always make open source relevant for the user however. The fundamental benefits of open source software are for people that are programmers, but most users are not programmers. Being able to see and edit the code is not necessarily useful if you don't know how to use it. Even with a background in programming, I would be hard pressed to be able to quickly contribute significant code changes to most projects; very few programs are small and simple enough to be able to easily jump into these days.
Still, there are some definite benefits for those of us that can't throw out code like Linux's chief architect Linus Torvalds. The most direct benefit of course is that this software exists at all. Since all of the software in Ubuntu is free as in beer, paid developers do not develop many of the programs. Open source as a default state makes it easier for people to contribute to the development of software, and that means it's easier for such gratis software to be continually developed in the first place.
Open source software is also a benefit for the longevity of software. Since no one person has absolute control over a project, no one can terminate it. This means that someone else can pick up a project and continue should the original developer(s) quit, as is sometimes the case with old software. It also allows for software to be forked, which is to take the code from a project and create a derivative separate from the original project – the benefit being that a forked project can be taken in a different direction than the original developer may want. As proof of the importance of forking, there are a number of programs in Ubuntu that are forks of older projects, such as X11 (otherwise known as just X), Ubuntu's base windowing system.
Finally, open source software is beneficial to overall software security. If you can see the source, you can analyze it for possible bugs. If you can edit the source, you can fix those bugs rather than wait for someone else to do so - and we can't even begin to overstate the importance of this. The direct relevance to the average user is once again limited here since most people cannot read or write code, but it does filter down through benefits such as rapid patching of security vulnerabilities in some cases. The security benefits of Ubuntu being open source are some of the most important reasons we consider Ubuntu to be secure.
In short: even if you can't code you benefit from Ubuntu being a free (libre) operating system.
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LittleMic - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_linkWell, Windows 2000 had symbolic links for a long time :-p (only for directory until Vista though)
ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
ntfs has symlinks but the windows shell can't create or manipulate them. Pretty pointless. MS can (and does) use them in vista/7 but you can't make your ownEeqmcsq - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
"hint: symlinks are your best friend. My home dir is littered with links to places on the filesystem I visit a lot to avoid a lot of clicking/typing"I use Gnome's bookmarks for that. Those bookmarks even include SMB shares on my other computers.
ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
gnome bookmarks are very handy I just find symlinks to be more flexible since they work regardless of gnome vs kde, gtk vs qt and gui vs cli. Even wine can take advantage of themjigglywiggly - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
one more thing you should have covered is battery life on laptops. Linux in general is pretty awful at managing battery life. Just web browsing 4 hrs on Vista on my vostro 1310(not using 7) but with Ubuntu 2 1/2. It's a huge difference, but oh well.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Laptops are out of our domain, that would be Jarred. If this two-part series is successful, I'll see what I can do about talking him in to putting some Ubuntu (or any Linux for that matter) battery benchmarks in. But I'm told a complete workup takes a while.strikeback03 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
On my Thinkpad T43, battery life is essentially equal between XP and Ubuntu. Ubuntu may even be slightly better, though I have never bothered with a formal test to put real numbers on both. Have you looked at whether the processor is throttling down properly or not while in Ubuntu?sprockkets - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
"Now we have yet to touch on hardware accelerated playback, which is something we’re going to hold off on until we take a look at Ubuntu 9.04. Linux does not have a common media framework like Windows and Mac OS X have DirectShow/DXVA and QuickTime respectively. Rather the desktop environment that Ubuntu is based off of (GNOME) includes a lesser framework called GStreamer, which is closer to a basic collection of codecs and an interface to them. As such hardware accelerated playback is not as easy to do under Ubuntu as it is under Windows and Mac OS X. We’ll take look at the APIs and the software for this in our look at Ubuntu 9.04."Well, not exactly. There is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI, which is not exactly widespread yet. nVidia's VDPAU, which provides hardware acceleration for h.264 and if you have the latest version of PureVideo in your card, it does VC-1 as well. It can work with this or alone as well.
Also, while it is wacky that bin or binaries are in one spot, and lib or libraries are in another, and anything you install is in a /usr/lib/local, it does keep all related files in one spot. Keeping all your libraries registered as packages also makes it easy to repair.
Also, one click installs are possible on openSuSE as well, though it does involve a small gui process and adding a repository as well. But doesn't any program require this?
Also, I believe your problem with SMB shares is something I run into as well, but only on GNOME. On KDE, browsing shares is quite normal. Since I never bother mounting the share, I can't directly access it without KDE caching the file locally.
Isn't /home/$Your Name$ intuitive as to where your stuff would be? That is very nice, as I can keep my stuff separate from the OS, thus I can reformat the OS partition without having to touch my data. Imagine reinstalling Windows and finding all your apps working exactly as before with no work. Can OSX do that (not rhetorical)?
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
VDPAU is something we'll specifically be covering in the Part 2; in fact it's what I'm working on at this moment.GeorgeH - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I'm sure the comment section will quickly be swamped with quibbles, so I just wanted to say that I found this article to be very informative, accurate (WRT my own Ubuntu experiences), and thorough. Kudos - now it's time to ask for a raise. :)