UbuntuContributions

Revision 23 as of 2008-05-28 14:10:06

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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).
  • Ubuntu developed a system to notify users about package updates (update-manager, update-notifier).
  • Ubuntu is heavily involved in the development of apt, python-apt and synaptic.
  • A application to view and install deb packages called gdebi was developed by 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

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPQuickInstall

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
  • An LTSP specific display manager called LDM which simply acts like a graphical ssh client
  • Multiple appserver support out of the box
  • Deep integration with the debian installer and the Ubuntu alternate CD for a comfortable out of the box install for LTSP servers
  • Deep integration with the Ubuntu hardware autodetection mechanisms dropping the need for configuration of thin clients in most cases
  • Automatic swapping over the net if ram on a client is low
  • Dropping the need for nfsroot resulting in massive client speedup through a unionfs/aufs mount on top of an nbd blockdevice that uses squashfs

Debian joined the development after 6 months supplying large contributions

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.

The upstream development which was led by ubuntu for 2.5 years was switched to a completely new model of cross distro team effort in October 2007; each participating distro has an upstream development contact in the ltsp-upstream team through which they can directly submit code to the launchpad bzr trees.

OpenSSH

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.

== Bazaar ==

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, sponsors development of Bazaar, a distributed revision control system. Also, Bazaar is now a GNU project. http://bazaar-vcs.org/

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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