
The truth about Goobuntu: Google's in-house desktop Ubuntu Linux - CrankyBear
http://www.zdnet.com/the-truth-about-goobuntu-googles-in-house-desktop-ubuntu-linux-7000003462/
======
ableal
_"Google is a paying customer for Canonical's Ubuntu Advantage support
program."_

Good news for desktop Ubuntu users.

 _'Chris Kenyon, who is Canonical's VP of Sales and Business Development, and
was present for Bushnell's talk confirmed this and added that “Google is not
our largest business desktop customer.”'_

Better yet.

------
joshAg
""We chose Debian because packages and apt [Debian's basic software package
programs] are light-years of RPM (Red Had and SUSE's default package
management system.]”"

Would someone mind giving a brief overview of why apt is better than rpm (or
why someone might think this?)?

~~~
wtracy
I'm a Debian fanboy, but in all honesty, the RPM-based distros have long since
caught up with apt in terms of sophistication.

I did find yum (the apt equivalent used by Red Hat and friends) a bit slow
(it's written in Python) and slightly rough on the usability front in some
cases, but perfectly serviceable.

Mandriva and its derivatives (Mageia is worth looking at) use urpmi to provide
the equivalent of apt. I really, really like urpmi, but none of the distros
that use it have satisfied me (for unrelated reasons).

SuSE and friends have advanced package management baked into YaST, which
handles other configuration and setup tasks as well. I haven't used SuSE in
ages, but it the package management seems pretty robust.

~~~
lucian1900
It's a bit sad that many people attribute yum's slowness to Python. Most of
that is because it builds an XML db every single time it runs.

~~~
ch0wn
Absolutely. Package managers are mostly IO-bound so there is no reason why a
Python-based PM should be substantially slower than a C implementation.

~~~
raverbashing
Except when they are calculating dependencies

But I agree with the yum sentiment, it really looks bad when compared to other
solutions that existed: urpmi, apt-rpm, etc

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WestCoastJustin
Here is a talk from May 2012 by Thomas Bushnell (the same guy) about Linux on
the desktop and Google. Link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu3pT_9nb8o>

~~~
valgaze
See 3:25 "a reboot costs a million dollars" (x-thousand engineers &
workstations idle for 15min quickly adds up)

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afhof
As always, another link bait zdnet article with a flashy title and zero
content. Normally I don't bite but I guess I have been taken in and got
exactly what I expected. How come zdnet articles still get posted? I have yet
to see one that actually brings content to the table that is new or
informative.

~~~
vosper
"That said, desktop problems , even on Linux, will happen"

Sounds like something written by someone who's spent almost no time using any
of the Linux desktop environments (let alone trying to connect to a
projector). And sure, Mac lovers might move to Unity rather than Gnome, Xfce
or whatever, but presumably only if someone forced them to use Linux in the
first place.

Also hilarious is the suggestion that Google's graphic designers are running
Ubuntu, considering Creative Suite is Windows and Mac only. I've received seen
plenty of creative out of Google, and none of it was done with the GIMP.

~~~
bad_user
I've been using Ubuntu for years on my laptop, both for work and for home
entertainment.

I've had no problem connecting to a projector, whenever I needed to do that.
Of course, I was careful when buying my hardware. Also, problems do happen,
that's why I'm staying on LTS and personally I consider the intermediate
versions as being beta-quality. And the Unity stuff is not stable and is too
rigid, so I switched to Xubuntu (Xfce), which is more stable and stays out of
my way.

Ubuntu may not be ready for normal users that would want it at home, but a
company like Google has people ensuring that these workstations are compatible
and that upgrades work properly. They also afford to pay for support from
Canonical. So the employees choosing Ubuntu can benefit from its advantages
with less downsides.

    
    
         considering Creative Suite is Windows and Mac only
    

If I were a designer I would definitely pick OS X over Ubuntu, but on the
other hand you can run Creative Suite in a virtual machine like VMWare. And
you can even install an X Windows server on your Windows VM and make that
Photoshop window work on your desktop as if it was a native app, only styled
differently.

Also, designing stuff in Photoshop is not the only thing a good designer does.
A good designer also writes HTML, CSS and preferably also do a little
programming for proofs of concept, amongst others. Those changes may involve
running a complex app on your localhost. And it's definitely easier to have
access to the same tools that the developers use. And it's preferable to use
the same operating system Google uses in production for its servers (at least
a virtual machine).

    
    
         none of it was done with the GIMP
    

True, designers don't use GIMP, but GIMP is a perfectly capable app for doing
design work. Along with Inkscape. The only thing truly keeping designers on
Adobe's Creative Suite is that Photoshop is a de-facto standard, so it's
easier to get training and support for it and it's also easier to send the raw
files (PSDs) to other people.

------
chamakits
I don't doubt that Google is a very public and very popular target for those
looking to breach insecure systems. Having said that, I've heard this "we are
the ones that need this the most" sort of argument that they use to justify
their in house network authentication by many other companies in many
different scenarios. However, most of the time, the problem they are having
applies to just about everyone else in the field they are a part of. Which is
why open source development has been so successful. Many with the same
problem, helping to implement a common solution, instead of a custom one for
each of them. So I wonder, what are the deficiencies of other existing
'network authentication' solutions out there? Why couldn't they help improve
those? Why not contribute whatever improvements they've mode to this area?

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Because they don't wanna fall prey of a 0-day in the wild?

BTW, a company like Google enforcing software choices for employees... Meh.

~~~
fingerprinter
I don't think they do. As far as I understand it, employees can choose Mac,
Goobuntu or Windows (though windows has to be justified b/c of the higher
overheard of support). Sounds reasonable to me.

From talking with Thomas before, if I have this correctly, is that Google
doesn't allow offsite development. So it seems most Googlers have a desktop
for development and an laptop for other things with NO code on it. I may have
that wrong, but I'm sure some Googlers here can verify that or not.

~~~
packetslave
It's not "offsite development" that's prohibited so much as not allowing
source code to be stored locally on laptop HDD's (even with full-disk
encryption). You can develop remotely over SSH, NX, NFS, SSHfs, etc., you just
can't have the source (or compilation artifacts) on an easily-stolen device.

~~~
hboon
So thick client development with tools that can't or aren't setup for remote
use — eg. coding an iOS app — is usually done on site?

~~~
packetslave
Java developers that use Eclipse or IntelliJ seem to work remotely pretty well
using NX or VNC to get a remote Linux desktop, and Googlers who work on open-
source projects obviously have different rules for that code.

I'm actually not sure what the IOS devs do. They might have different rules
since their projects are more standalone and not tied into the rest of the
main Google source tree, but it might also be that they just develop on-site.
You could probably be fairly successful with XCode using something like SSHfs
if you're on a fast enough connection, but I don't know if anyone actually
does that.

------
czervik
Here's a video from Puppet Conf 2011 on how Google uses Puppet to manage Linux
workstations:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8mbMjlr_b0>

~~~
packetslave
Puppet is also used to manage the large fleet of Mac laptops (and desktops):
[http://redmonk.com/cote/2008/06/11/puppet-at-google-
redmonk-...](http://redmonk.com/cote/2008/06/11/puppet-at-google-redmonk-
radio-episode-48/)

~~~
czervik
The link to the mp3 is broken, anyone have a working link?

~~~
packetslave
Oops, I didn't notice the broken link. The article has a transcript at the
bottom, though.

------
tomrod
Interesting to see this and the "Death of the Linux Desktop" posts both on the
front page. Are there heated opinions on the issue here?

~~~
adestefan
Only that both the success and death of Linux on the desktop is vastly
overstated.

~~~
hammersend
That's what I was thinking. I've seen this headline on a few sites in the last
few days and the commenters all seem to be talking about Linux in the past
tense. Apparently I didn't get the memo because my laptop with Ubuntu on it is
still working fine and the projects that I make use of haven't missed a beat.
That's some kind of "dead".

~~~
tomrod
Indeed. I've also become converted (finally) to Unity on a single screen.
Still have a hard time with multiple moniters, but whatever.

------
jebblue
Ubuntu works for me and my wife and has for years. I pine for the days of
Gnome 2 but that's not coming back. If Unity could be made into Gnome 2 but
keep Unity people happy then that would be cool.

~~~
w1ntermute
> I pine for the days of Gnome 2 but that's not coming back.

Check out Xubuntu, it's not too different.

~~~
nitrogen
Linux Mint also has a desktop, Cinnamon, that resembles Gnome 2:
<http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/>. I haven't tried Cinnamon, but I've used
Linux Mint before and will most likely be switching to Mint next time I
reinstall Linux.

------
grecy
Interesting comments about using Windows.

When it's difficult to use Windows at one of the world's biggest Tech giants,
you have to wonder how long windows can stay relevant in the tech/dev space.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually, having worked at Google and used Goobuntu (which was great) and then
tried to use Ubuntu LTS outside the constant vigilance of a large support
team, it isn't a threat to Windows (or OSX).

The challenge in an Enterprise that doesn't have a stock to penguinistas to
keep it on the straight and true, it goes pear shaped at odd times for
unpredictable amounts of time. That and the fact that there is no "real" third
party software for it makes a lot of folks sad. (see the other conversation on
HN on why that is)

~~~
wtracy
True, I've had my share of bad updates, but Windows goes "pear-shaped at odd
times" at least as often as Linux, IME. Care to elaborate further?

(I do agree that it is harder to get support people for Linux.)

------
donniezazen
I have come to love Arch Linux. Pacman and AUR are much simpler and efficient
than APT and DPKG.

~~~
moreorless
How are they simpler and more efficient?

~~~
antihero
The Arch Build System is utterly wonderful. All you do is define a PKGBUILD
and it will handle downloading sources, compiling them, and creating a
package. It's so simple that once you've done it a couple times it's basically
fuck-all effort to create them for whatever you want.

So say I wanted to have dmenu on my systems with a custom colour scheme. I
make the colour scheme changes as a patch and then create a package on the AUR
like so: <https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dm/dmenu-dogs/PKGBUILD>

Then all I need to do is run pacaur -y dmenu-dogs (pacaur is an AUR helper,
which automates the process of downloading the PKGBUILD + any patches/local
sources, running makepkg, and installing it) on my other boxes and it sorts
everything out for me.

Pacman itself is also very lightweight and fast, and has a very simple and
clearly separated API. Want to know what package owns a file? pacman -Qo
/usr/lib/blah. Want to check a package has all it's files? pacman -Qk
mypackage. Anything removing is -R, anything querying is -Q, anything
installing (syncing) is -S.

The last thing I love about Arch is the wiki. It is fucking AMAZING. There are
well explained and thought out posts detailing how to install and configure a
vast, vast range of software. I even refer to it when I'm not using Arch.

~~~
wreckimnaked
And installing yaourt[1] makes using PKGBUILDs from AUR and ABS, and binary
packages from the repos amazingly transparent and fast. I've never heard of
such a level of flexibility on package management.

For instance, you can install the precompiled chromium from the repos with
yaourt -S chromium; if you need to recompile it from ABS, throw a yaourt -Sb
chromium and you are done. To install the binary build from AUR, yaourt -S
chromium-browser-bin will do it.

[1] <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt>

------
icarus_drowning
Not related to the content of the post (which, it seems, is mostly a rehash of
already-available data), but I must say, the comments over at zdnet must
really be going downhill-- there are some truly horrific examples at the end
of the article.

~~~
freehunter
It event seems the author mangled a direct quote. If you're not sure you can
type a quote correctly, copy and paste. And call your editor.

 _“Google is a target Everyone wants to hack us.”_

------
joejohnson
A lot of people I know at Google use a Mac.

~~~
murz
The typical engineering setup is Mac laptop + Goobuntu workstation.

~~~
jrockway
_A_ typical engineering setup. There are quite a few of us using Goobuntu
Thinkpads or Chromebooks. (Since you can't have code checked out on your
laptop, a Chromebook is not as disadvantageous as one would imagine.)

~~~
tylerritchie
Does the chrome secure shell support keyfiles now?

~~~
nickbarnwell
In the dev release it does. Info here [1]

[1][https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups#!...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/chromium-
hterm/4P21C89X6w4)

------
ripratm
There is an entire talk about this at some Ubuntu conference a few months
back.

Basically exact information, this article is just a rehash

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu3pT_9nb8o&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu3pT_9nb8o&feature=player_embedded)

------
petitmiam
> Bushnell explained that “Goobuntu is simply a light skin over standard
> Ubuntu.”

Given the headline, I was hoping for a bit more.

------
antihero
"But Linux on desktop is dead guys!!!" -- An OSX User

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joshu
This is probably spam. Poster is likely the author.

~~~
mh-
well, that's an odd definition of spam.

also, while writing this I happened to recognize you from reddit..

<http://reddit.com/user/joshu/submitted/>

~~~
joshu
Shrug. And people promote their own projects here, too. I am also not using a
voting ring to get crap to the front page.

But this is generic blog spam. Abuser of the commons etc etc.

Not sure I get your point re reddit?

