How is Ubuntu based on Debian?
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on Debian. Like this, there are several other linux distributions that are based on Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, etc. What confuses me is what does this mean i.e one Linux distro based on some other. How they are made?
@Zenklys — this is not a duplicate. I don’t want to know the difference between Debian and Ubuntu. What I want to know is how is one distro based on some other distro. I have taken Ubuntu and Debian as an example only to tell what I am trying to ask.
The phrase “based on” here, means they took it, they changed it. Therefore Ubuntu is a modified version of Debian.
Here is a timeline of the Linux distributions. Debian began in 1993 and if you go 20% down this file, follow the lines to the Ubuntu distributions. There are many. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/…
4 Answers 4
Zack had a great diagram explaining it on his UDS-P Talk Slides
Basically, Every Ubuntu cycle, until Debian Import Freeze, source packages that aren’t modified in Ubuntu are copied from Debian into Ubuntu, daily (the 74% branch). Packages that have been modified in both Debian & Ubuntu get manually merged (the Patch branch), usually by the developer who last touched the package in Ubuntu.
Some core packages (kernel, much of the desktop, and other bits) doesn’t come from Debian at all, and comes straight from Upstreams (the 11% branch)
So, Ubuntu gets to maintain its own core set of packages and also get the benefit of the huge quantity of Debian packages.
Ubuntu uses the same packaging management system (deb and apt) and with each development cycle pulls in the latest packages from Debian and then adapts them to Ubuntu specifics and adds more features and patches where necessary. They also push changes back to Debian and often developers are Ubuntu and Debian developers.
Mint in turn does the same with Ubuntu packages (Update: although Mint does not seem to contribute back as much or at all)
thanks. But I still have a question. If Ubuntu themselves uses Debian packages, then one should use Debian only. But still people would go for Ubuntu?
Their goals and philosophies are somewhat different. If you want a stable, cross-platform OS, by all means switch to Debian. If you want a desktop OS which runs reasonably recent versions of popular apps, choose Ubuntu.
Ubuntu uses the Debian packages as base for their own modifications and additions. As such they are not the same packages in all instances. Often things are fixed in Ubuntu and then pushed upstream to Debian later. Also often the stable release of Debian uses way older stuff, because the release less often and focus on stability. Ubuntu on the other hand takes the packages from Debian testing and releases every six month.
Debian has a very strong ideology about what packages they would include with their system. Debian would only include things licensed to be «free as in freedom» (open-source licensing) and not «free as in beer» (given away but still not truly open-source licensing). This severely limited some things in the system. For instance, video drivers may be given away, but only as binaries, which did not meet the criteria, and thus hand to be hand-installed. Ubuntu took the great framework and package system done with Debian, and made it to be a great user experience, rather than a political statement.
Erm, I’m a Ubuntu and Debian developer, and have never seen contributions from Mint. They also don’t seem to do anything to stop their users from sending us bugs 🙂
There are a number of things that define a distribution, apart from the name. Packaging system (deb, rpm, . ), standard environment (eg. the kind of «init» used as a standard), and a number of other things, like release schedule policy, main target users, etc. Notice that sharing certain core tools don’t make two distributions «siblings». See the case for Red-Hat and SuSE, for example: on the graph linked by @Zenklys, you see that SuSE is an early derivative from Slackware, but they borrowed the RPM packaging system from Red-Hat, I guess not to reinvent the wheel.
Most of those things are decisions that someone (a company, individual or a developing community) takes for you. Some distributions are quite different from each other and have almost nothing in common in their origins (Debian and Red-Hat are two examples from early times. ), result of parallel efforts on achieving a working environment, but others are born just because a sizable community agree that certain aspects of an existing distribution could be done in a different way, like having shorter (or larger!) release cycles, or maybe making the distribution less «general» and focusing on certain aspects, like media creation (you pre-install tools, try to have better/easier hardware config for specific things. ); or when a company decides they can do business by tuning a distro for certain target audiences.
Let’s keep with Ubuntu from here on, but keep in mind that this process is similar all around.
Of course, taking the «derivative» way means you start with a working system from day 0. Your work will focus on making the desired changes and on keeping up to date with the «parent» version for the parts you don’t really want to work on.
Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian in that sense: they took a working distribution and decided on a number of things. For example:
- Default (and officially supported) desktop environment and theming.
- Emphasis on a non-root user being able to access all the restricted areas (hardware setup, for example)
- Integrating tools and, sometimes, also developing new ones, to achieve their goals.
At some point they started taking more fundamental decisions, like changing crucial subsystems (going for upstart, for example), or default version of tools, like the one for Python, in which Ubuntu depends heavily.
Some of those changes may end up not taking place on the original distribution, or just taking longer time. or the opposite, where you don’t like a change that has been made in the parent distro and you arrange things so that your distribution stays the same way as it was (like when Ubuntu moved to Gnome 3 as the default).
Then again, at some point Ubuntu users decided they weren’t happy with all the choices that are being taken for them, so you end up with derivatives like Kubuntu or Xbuntu that may (or may not) end up achieving a certain «official» status within the original project.
Ubuntu has kept a some level of feedback with Debian, making it easy to take your knowledge from one to the other, but that doesn’t need to be true for all derivative distros.
And so on. but the answer is running long by now 😛
What is Ubuntu? Ubuntu Features, Advantages, and Disadvantages
What is Ubuntu? Ubuntu Features, Advantages, and Disadvantages, Ubuntu is an open-source operating system that is available for free. In this article, we will go through an introduction to one of the prominent operating systems: Ubuntu.
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Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that is available as an open-source operating system. It is best suitable for cloud computing, along with excellent support for the Open stack. Ubuntu has been developed by an enthusiastic community of developers who are working consistently to improve the working of Ubuntu by adding new features as per the changing technology. Behind the funding of Ubuntu is Canonical Ltd company.
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“Ubuntu” was used after the African philosopher translated it to “Humanity to Other”. Ubuntu has been derived from Debian’s architecture and the Linux server.
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What is Ubuntu?
Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system developed by the company Canonical Ltd. It was designed to improve the development in the fields of smartphones, computers, and network servers. The fact about Ubuntu is that it has been derived from Debian, making it much similar to Debian in some aspects. But, Ubuntu gained better popularity due to the unique features it possesses. Also, it has a company to backup, providing a better user experience.
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