Ubuntu Contributions

Many Ubuntu developers are also prolific free software developers and contribute to other projects, notably to [http://www.debian.org/ Debian].

System boot

• Ubuntu developed [http://upstart.ubuntu.com Upstart] from scratch, a modern event-based init daemon.

• initramfs-tools was originally written by Jeff Bailey for Ubuntu, and later became Debian's default initramfs system.

Package management

• The [:PackageDependencyFieldBreaks:dpkg Breaks field] was implemented by Ian Jackson for Ubuntu.

• [http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2007/04/msg00076.html dpkg triggers] were implemented by Ian Jackson for Ubuntu.

• Ubuntu developed a simplified front-end to apt called gnome-app-install (originally written by Ross Burton, but then developed for some years by Michael Vogt of Ubuntu).

Installation

Ubuntu developers have made a number of important contributions to debian-installer:

• debootstrap progress via debconf, and a good deal of what became the first-stage task installer glue
• base-installer kernel selection refactoring and test suite
• much of udev support and devfs path removal
• pcmciautils support
• chunks of debconf maintenance effort such as the progresscancel and escape capabilities
• reserved username checks
• some of rescue mode
• translation handling work in cdebconf that saved about 20MB of run-time memory

In addition, we developed a custom graphical installer, [https://launchpad.net/ubiquity Ubiquity], which uses debian-installer for many of its back-end tasks.

Jockey

Third party driver installation UI: https://launchpad.net/jockey

Crash interception

[https://launchpad.net/apport Apport] intercepts signal and Python crashes, package installation failures, and potentially other problems, creates debug reports, sends them to a bug tracker, and has tools for post-mortem recombination of core dumps and debug symbols. It was ported to Fedora by Will Woods a while ago.

Brainstorm

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website

LTSP5

https://launchpad.net/~ltsp-upstream

Ubuntu was the first distro implementing the ltsp upstream [http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/MueKow MueKow] specification of the next generation LTSP in 2005/6 [http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/Ltsp5 (more detailed history)].

The implementation is including some improvements like:

• Dropping the insecure XDMCP model that allowed you to even take screenshots from a networked X stream
• New sound implementation based on alsa
• A new way of handling local block devices as well
• New printserver to replace the unlicensed lp_server shipped with former ltsp versions
• Deep integration with the GNOME Desktop

Debian joined the development after 6 months, Fedora recently picked up the Ubuntu code as well with the Fedora 9 release, Gentoo is working on an LTSP5 implementation based on this code as well.

OpenSuSE uses the existing LTSP5 code to implement a similar setup wrapped into their kiwi liveCD build scripts.

OpenSSH

• [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1576 Host and user key blacklisting support], mitigating the [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1571 OpenSSL RNG vulnerability]

• [https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1450 ConsoleKit support]

Xorg

Participated with Fedora (and later Mandrake) in the early development of the Xrandr-1.2 gnome-display-properties capplet, contributing significant QA and stability bug fixes, and a revert dialog.

KDE

System Settings, the KControl replacement, was maintained and pushed into KDE 4 by Kubuntu developers.

printer-applet, part of KDE 4.1, was written by Jonathan Riddell

guidance-power-manager, part of KDE extragear, was written by Kubuntu developers.

Patches

During package maintenance and bug triaging we develop countless fixes and send them to upstream. (e. g. the [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=ubuntu-patch;users=ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com ones we submit to Debian]).

Servers/Bandwidth

http://svn.gnome.org/ and http://l10n.gnome.org/ are hosted by canonical. Launchpad provides hosting to many projects including Inkscape and Miro.

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