
Google ditches Ubuntu for Debian for internal engineering environment - adamnemecek
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3024623/google-ditches-ubuntu-for-debian-from-internal-engineering-environment
======
madmax108
For some reason I always assumed Google had their own customised OS built on
top of Debian instead of using Ubuntu OOTB. Debian offers a much more stable
base which someone with the resources like Google has can easily customise for
internal Engg usecases. Esp. in the last few years, Ubuntu has been having a
rough time with the ups and downs, while Debain-land has been much calmer. End
of the day, Ubuntu has to bring in new bells and whistles for the user
community (which has backfired multiple times) as it's targeted as a daily
general-use distro while Debian only has to guarantee stability.

That's more or less the approach many Engg teams with much lesser Engg
resources also take. Or are the Engg teams I've worked with just the minority?

~~~
bad_user
The bells and whistles of Ubuntu includes the firmware and drivers necessary
for computers to work out of the box.

In the past every time I tried out Debian on my laptops, I ended up with
hardware problems.

Last time this happened, my Wifi wasn't working due to Debian not including
the device's firmware. And there was no easy fix available, the only thing I
could do was to recompile the kernel by myself. I then installed Ubuntu and it
worked out of the box. Ubuntu is decent even on one of my MacBook Pro laptops
I have, which is filled with components that need proprietary drivers.

My younger self wouldn't believe what I'm about to say, but I can't deal with
hardware problems or any of that crap anymore. Still if I were to now buy a
non-Apple computer, it's Ubuntu that I'd install on it.

On Google, they have people dealing with this shit, providing round the clock
support and standardized hardware. That's not something that small companies
can afford to do.

~~~
mnw21cam
Often the required firmware is in the non-free section of Debian, which isn't
enabled by default for idealism/purity reasons. It is very simple to enable
installation of packages from the non-free section, and then usually
everything just works. Basically, Ubuntu have chosen a different default - it
probably doesn't actually have any firmware that Debian doesn't. Neither
approach is wrong.

~~~
jlgaddis
> _It is very simple to enable installation of packages from the non-free
> section, and then usually everything just works._

Not without a network connection, it doesn't.

There are other ways (flash drive, etc.) to get the firmware onto the machine,
of course, but I can understand _bad_user_ 's frustration.

~~~
kakwa_
Floppy disk ^^. I had to do it for an old Compaq Proliant DL 360 G1 (with no
USB ports) back in 2012. It was for an old Intel NIC (e100 driver).

~~~
jlgaddis
If his laptop doesn't have a wired NIC, I'm guessing it probably doesn't have
a floppy drive either. :-)

------
nerflad
How many Googlers are using Linux for their everyday work? I assumed MacOS had
as strong a hold on Google engineers as those anywhere else. I personally
don't like using MacOS and would be thrilled to see more developers using open
source systems.

~~~
cromwellian
Most use beefy desktops with Linux, and some laptop like a MacBook, Thinkpad,
or Chromebook.

If you're working on a large project like Chrome or Gmail, anything less than
64gb of RAM and a giant SSD is a productivity hit, and most Mac desktops
aren't price competitive with a beefy Linux workstation.

~~~
igravious
What desktop/workstation manufacturer?

~~~
quicklime
HP z620

~~~
igravious
Thanking you!

[http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z620.html](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z620.html)

~~~
jlgaddis
If you're in the market for a new workstation, HP's business workstations
really are good machines (I had a nice one at a previous employer). They are
_nothing_ like HP's consumer PCs that most are familiar with.

~~~
wyclif
What would be the most optimal Linux distro to install on a z620, Fedora?

~~~
e12e
Depends what you're optimising for? All rolling releases and recent stable/all
testing releases run on roughly the same kernel, generally the same libc, with
access to the same (non)free firmware if properly configured...

------
pmlnr
This is very good news. Debian is still the base for a lot of the most known
distros and is a great distro on it's own. Contribution into Debian Testing
will end up not just in Debian, but in Ubuntu, Mint, etc. Debian doesn't have
a RedHat behind it, like CentOS or Fedora, so a Google adoptation will
certainly come as a boost.

------
acd
If Googlers make a nicer Debian desktop theme please contribute it back
upstream.

Also use Debian home/work switched from Ubuntu/centos/Windows. Using Debian is
very stable and has most dev packages needed.

Use Windows 10 in KVM for the occasional gaming fix.

Going to try and run a desktop virtual machine in the cloud because I’m
security paranoid.

------
contingencies
Debian is also the default Google compute cloud instance type.

------
bon0r
The talk from the conference mentioned in the article can be found here ->
[https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/44/](https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/44/)
and the relevant part starts around ~12:00 (direct link to video:
[https://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-
meetings/2017...](https://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-
meetings/2017/debconf17/lightning-talks.vp9.webm))

------
hyperion2010
Biased here, but at the scale of an organization like google why would they
not use a tool like gentoo to customize and build binary packages for the
whole organization? Does debian have symbols servers or something like that?

~~~
rusk
I think you've answered your own question here. An organisation the scale of
google _could_ use a tool like Gentoo to customize and build their binary
packages. They haven't, and this perhaps speaks to the suitability of Gentoo
as an operating system for use _en masse_.

Presumably individual engineers are still free to use Gentoo if appropriate
but from a support and maintenance perspective the costs may not be feesible
company wide.

~~~
hawski
They kinda use Gentoo. ChromeOS is built with Gentoo's portage. AFAIK
Chromebooks are very commonly used at Google.

~~~
rusk
I guess this is more of an "embedded" usecase and more suitable to a
statically compiled target.

Not the same as "using it throughout the organisation" in the sense that their
IT personnel need be concerned with.

------
luord
I did this same switch years ago (probably because of unity) and never looked
back. I love debian.

------
crispytx
That's cool as hell. I didn't know that Google runs Linux on the desktop. I
always just assumed they used Macs.

~~~
LeoPanthera
As far as I know, engineers can choose whatever they want.

~~~
gbugniot
Except Windows according to this article
[https://www.engadget.com/2010/05/31/google-to-employees-
mac-...](https://www.engadget.com/2010/05/31/google-to-employees-mac-or-linux-
but-no-more-windows/)

~~~
LeoPanthera
From 2010. I wonder if that has changed.

~~~
chopin
With Windows 10? It made me switch away from Windows. I'd like to be the
customer of an OS, not the product of its vendor.

~~~
tasubotadas
Windows 10 is the best OS in the family so far. The fact that you switched, is
most likely just a hyped-overreaction to one of the things that they did that
you didn't like.

~~~
nerflad
A fresh installation of Windows 10 _Professional_ has advertisements for Candy
Crush in the start menu. I don't think anyone's overreacting.

------
amelius
How much did Google contribute to Ubuntu specifically?

And will that now stop? (I guess so)

~~~
Tom4hawk
I don't know how much they contributed to Ubuntu but if they also plan to
contribute to Debian than it will eventually(matter of months) end up in
Ubuntu.

------
georgehaake
Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, i3, Xfce....? Perhaps no default?

~~~
izacus
Cinnamon is the default supported option, but noone stops you from installing
and using something else.

~~~
akerro
Looks like Cinammon haven't fix their issue with font rendering on many GPUs
[1]

I saw this bug on Ubuntu, Arch and Mint, on integrated Intel and two different
AMDs GPUS [2]

[1]
[https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&...](https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+font+)

[2]
[https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/5885](https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/5885)

------
mankash666
I would think that a community supported Debian distro wouldn't match up to a
canonical supported distribution. But it seems otherwise. The existence of
Ubuntu has greatly benefited the Linux use base, with many patches contributed
upstream to Debian and other related projects. Sad to see Google move away
from them.

Personally, Ubuntu is much more palatable to end users who aren't CS majors,
especially with their willingness to ship/support closed source drivers,
unlike Debian

If they release gLinux to the outside world, we can all benefit from their
constant vigilance, compared to just a community supported distro

~~~
reacharavindh
Alternatively, I'd rather prefer for them to send changes upstream to Debian
so that the entire community gets the benefit.

I wouldn't want to run gLinux(based off of Debian, and meddled with by
Google). I'd trust Mainline Debian with community vetted Patches from Google.

~~~
mankash666
And you already have that choice. What's missing is gLinux's availability to
Google outsiders. I think gLinux vetted packages are likely to be more secure
than the community edition.

But, if Google decides to monetize it, they may track the fuck out of
consumers like they do on Android. That's the only downside I see to gLinux

~~~
qznc
I remember that Goobuntu was usually quite outdated as it is based on the
latest Ubuntu LTS plus trailing behind a little. Googlers themselves were not
tempted to use it at home. That does not matter for Google development,
because all their tooling and code comes out of a monorepo.

Thus, I really wonder if gLinux wants to follow Debian testing closely? The
might trail behind like the Ubuntu releases.

------
Jeff_Brown
Why?

~~~
craftyguy
I can think of a few reasons why they (or anyone) would want to (or should)
ditch ubuntu.

~~~
jackaroe78
I'd love to hear why, i'm just curious (dev who's only ever worked with centos
at any kind of large scale)

~~~
geezerjay
> I'd love to hear why, i'm just curious

Although Ubuntu is a glorified copy of Debian, the components that Ubuntu
changes tend to be brittle and unstable, and not adequately justified. If
anyone wants an OS that helps them get stuff done, not mess with their work,
and not even break between major upgrades, Debian is the way to go.

~~~
qznc
There was a time when Ubuntu had hugely better usability than Debian. Nowdays,
Debian has mostly closed the gap. Thank you Canonical for the competition!
Ubuntu/Canonical has lost its focus on the desktop. Desktops are boring now.
Servers are more profitable and the entry to mobile has failed.

Maybe another window has opened for some desktop innovation now? I would try
to copy stuff from Android. Snap [0] is a promising way to deploy apps (in
general, self-contained stuff you cannot depend on), even
commercial/proprietary ones. The "app store" is terrible, though. Androids
intents might be worthwhile to copy to decouple things. Androids activity
lifecycle might be interesting. All of this requires a large-scale long-term
reengineering of deeper layers, which is practically impossible for hobbyists.
You will get hit a lot by people for being not-Unixy (see systemd) and only
after years of slog you might be able to show a superior desktop.

On the other hand, there is no money to be made with desktops, so why should a
company approach such a risky project?

[0]
[https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy](https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy)

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> Thank you Canonical for the competition

One of those examples where competition does not help at all.

Many desktop users and contributors moved to Ubuntu and stopped contributing
to Debian. A good number slowly moved back to Debian in the last 5 years.

~~~
qznc
I believe it helped. Canonical invested in usability and raised the bar in
general. Maybe for clarification, I'm thinking about stuff like the Papercuts
initiative [0] in 2009.

There is a similar situation with clang and gcc. Clang improved error messages
and raised the bar. Gcc follows. It would probably not have improved on its
own.

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2009/06/canon...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2009/06/canonical-to-boost-ubuntu-usability-by-tackling-papercuts/)

------
evolighting
It seems Google is far big enough to handle its own Linux distro; So it is
very strange why they haven't done it since they even have created their own
programing language.

~~~
ma2rten
Google has it's own linux distro for it's servers.

~~~
tooltalk
that is not based on Debian?

~~~
ma2rten
Correct, it's a very stripped down version of Linux.

------
lobo_tuerto
I'm surprised they didn't consider something like Manjaro Linux. I used Ubuntu
for 10 years and just recently switched to Manjaro with i3 and I'm not looking
back, it is that good.

~~~
akerro
Manjaro? The distribution that told users to change their clocks back on their
OSs to get updates working? The one that last year couldn't patch Firefox for
over 1 month because two package maintainers were on holidays, but Arch
patched in one day? They can't even sort out bugs in package updater (recently
leaking memory - 2.4GB RAM usage to update 120 packages?!). Last week I moved
to openSUSE from Manjaro and it was really good decision, works better, it's
faster, ex-Windowsers love it because of YaST2 [1] GUI manager for everything

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/YaST2-2....](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/YaST2-2.18.25.png)

