Debian Internal Projects

Debian Internal Projects

Debian-Junior

Debian-Med

Debian-Edu

DeMuDi

Debian-Desktop

Overview

• What is Debian?
• What are Debian internal projects?
• Debian - adaptable for any purpose?
• Technology
  • Meta packages
  • User Menus
• Documentation
• Future

What is Debian?

• Linux is just the kernel of your operating system.
• You need a lot of applications around.
• Those collections of software around the Linux kernel is called distribution.
• Companies who build such distributions are called distributors.
• They make money by selling their distribution in boxes, doing support and training.
• You might know Mandrake, RedHat, Suse and others.
• Debian is just one of them.

What is Debian? (next try)

Web of trust

Differences to other distributions

• Debian is no company but an organisation.
• It does not sell anything.
• Debian members (maintainers) are volunteers.
• Maintainers are working on the common goal: building the best operating system they could afford
• Largest collection of ready-to-install Free Software on the Internet
• Two ways to obtain Debian GNU/Linux
  • Buying it from any other distributor on CD
  • Downloading from the Web for free
• The later is the common way and there are really great tools to do it this way.

What are Debian internal projects?

• Debian contains nearly 10000 binary packages
• General users interested in a subset of those packages
• Care for special groups of target users with different skills and interests
• Not only handy collections of specific program packages but care for easy installation and configuration for the intended purpose.
• No fork from Debian

→ Basic idea: Do not make a separate distribution but make Debian fit for special purpose instead

Motivation

• Profile of target users:
  • Less technical competence
  • Not able to install upstream programs with acceptable effort
  • No interest in administration
  • Interest in defined subset of available free software
  • Need for easy usage
  • Defined security profile
• Other possible projects:
  • Authorities
  • Office
  • Enterprise / accounting
  • ???

Status of specialized Free Software

• Hard to install
• Hard to maintain
• Hard to use because of lacking GUI
• Strange Licenses
• Orphaned upstream
• Porting issues (architectures, byte order, 32 vis 64 bit)
• Data format not exchangeable
• Parallel development of the same functionality
• Used tools or back ends are not intended for those applications

→ Lack of an integrated framework

History of Debian internal projects (1)

• Debian-Junior
  • Start: beginning of 2000
  • Initiator: Ben Armstrong <synrg@debian.org>
  • First internal Projekt - in fact the idea of internal projects was born
  • Released in the current stable Debian code name Woody
• Debian-Med
  • Start: beginning of 2002
  • Initiator: Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org>
  • Adapted ideas from Debian-Junior and added some stuff
• Debian-Edu
  • Start: just starting
  • Initiator: Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>
  • Bringing back a fork from Debian

History of Debian internal projects (2)

• Demudi
  • Start: not really started yet
  • Initiator: Marco Trevisani <marco@centrotemporeale.it>
  • Bringing back a fork from Debian
• Debian-Desktop
  • Start: October 2002
  • Initiator: Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>
  • Many common issues with other internal projects

Debian-Junior

• Make Debian an OS that children of all ages will want to use
• Making it so nice that they like it
• Making it a playground for children experiments
• Not only providing games but care for their quality
• Main target are young children, teens should become comfortable with using Debian without any special modifications

Debian-Med

• Integrated software environment for all medical tasks
• Special care for the quality of program packages in the field of medicine which are integrated in Debian yet
• Building packages of medical software which are missing inside Debian and inclusion of those packages
• Caring for a general infrastructure for medical users
• Efforts to increase the quality of third party software

Debian-Edu

• Make Debian the best distribution available for educational use
• Federate many initiatives around education (which are partly based on forks of Debian)
• Integrate changes from the French Debian Education distribution into Debian
• Cooperate with Debian based SkoleLinux in Norway
• Cooperate with other education-related projects (like Seul, Ofset, KdeEdu)
• Just started, mailing list and web site in preparation

DeMuDi

• Currently not announced as official internal project but coordinator is in touch
• Oriented toward music and multimedia
• Make GNU/Linux a platform of choice for the musician and the multimedia artist
• Part of a project funded by the European Community, called AGNULA
• Initiator is not yet Debian developer but you are able to work on Debian without being an official developer

Debian-Desktop

• best possible operating system for home and corporate workstation use
• Motto: "Software, which just works"
• Desktops like Gnome and KDE should coexist well in Debian and work optimal
• Easy usage for beginners without restrictions of flexibility for experts
• Easy configuration (hardware-detection)
• Internationalisation

Why not just forking from Debian?

• Separate distribution would cost extra effort
  • Would be hardly better than Debian
  • Continuous work to keep base system boot-floppies etc up to date
  • Nearly impossible to get security fixes as fast as Debian
  → Forking would be a bad idea.
• Integration into Debian has advantages
  • Huge user base all over the world thus becoming public on the back of Debian
  • Secure and stable system without extra effort
  • Bug Tracking System for free
  • Infra structure (HTTP-, FTP-, Mailserver, PKI, ...) for free
• Bringing back something to Debian
  • Enhancing quality of packages by making them more user friendly

Debian - adaptable for any purpose?

• Developed by about 1000 volunteers
• Flexible, not bound on commercial interest
• Strict rules (policy) glue all things together
• Common interest of each individual developer to get the best operating system for himself
• Developers have children in real life or work in the field of medicine etc.
• In contrast to employees of companies every single Debian developer has the freedom and ability to realize his vision
• Thus single developers have influence on development - they just have to do it

Technical reasons for adaptability

• Focus on
  • Security
  • Stability
  • Quality
  • Careful testing (BTS)
  • Continuity (take care for old configuration)
• Powerful packaging tools
• Support of 11 hardware architectures (auto builders: alpha, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc)

Technology (1): Meta Packages

• Collection of specific software
  • No research for available software necessary
  • User is not forced to browse the whole package list of Debian
  • Easy comparison between software covering the same task
  • Safety against accidental removal of dependencies
  • Conflicts to incompatible packages
  • Easy installation
  • Low effort for administration
• Adapted configuration inside meta packages
  • Care for special needs of project users
• Documentation packages
  • Packaging and creating of relevant documentation
  • Translation

Handling of meta packages

• Overview over
  • Command line tools
  • Text user interfaces
    You know dselect?    → Forget it!
  • Graphical user interfaces
  • Web interfaces
• Hints for administration
• Future development

Command line tools (1)

~> apt-cache search med | grep '^med-'
med-bio - Debian Med Bio-Informatik-Pakete
med-common - Debian-Med-Projekt: gemeinsames Paket
med-common-dev - Debian Med Project common files for developing meta packages
med-dent - Medizinische Debian-Pakete für die Zahnarztpraxis
med-doc - Debian Pakete mit medizinischen Dokumentationen
med-imaging-dev - Debian Med packages for medical image development
med-tools - Debian Med - verschiedene Programe
med-bio-contrib - Debian Med bioinformatics packages (contrib and non-free)
med-imaging - Debian Med Imaging Packete

→ Not really straightforward currently

Command line tools (2)

~> grep-dctrl -r ': med-' /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep -v '^[ SIMAVF]' | grep -v '^Pri'
Package: med-dent
Depends: odontolinux, galeon | www-browser
Description: Debian Med packages for dental practice

Package: med-imaging-dev
Depends: librumba-dev, libgtkimreg-dev
Description: Debian Med packages for medical image development

Package: med-doc
Depends: doc-linux-html | doc-linux-text, resmed-doc, galeon | www-browser
Description: Debian Med documentation packages

Package: med-tools
Depends: mencal
Description: Debian Med several tools

Package: med-common-dev
Depends: debconf (>= 0.5)
Description: Debian Med Project common files for developing meta packages

Package: med-imaging
Depends: rumbaview, paul
Description: Debian Med imaging packages

Package: med-common
Depends: adduser, debconf (>= 0.5), menu
Description: Debian-Med-Projekt: gemeinsames Paket

Package: med-bio
Depends: bugsx, fastdnaml, fastlink, garlic, njplot, readseq, tree-puzzle
Description: Debian Med bioinformatics packages

Package: med-bio-contrib
Depends: clustalw, clustalx, molphy, phylip, seaview, treetool
Description: Debian Med bioinformatics packages (contrib and non-free)

→ Also a bit cryptic

Command line tools (3)

~> sudo auto-apt update

put: 880730 files,  1074158 entries
put: 903018 files,  1101981 entries

~> auto-apt -x -y run
Entering auto-apt mode: /bin/bash
Exit the command to leave auto-apt mode.
bash-2.05b$ less /usr/share/doc/med-bio/copyright
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  bugsx fastlink readseq 
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  bugsx fastlink med-bio readseq 
0 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 183  not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/1263kB of archives. After unpacking 2008kB will be used.
Reading changelogs... Done
Selecting previously deselected package bugsx.
(Reading database ... 133094 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking bugsx (from .../b/bugsx/bugsx_1.08-6_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package fastlink.
Unpacking fastlink (from .../fastlink_4.1P-fix81-2_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package med-bio.
Unpacking med-bio (from .../med-bio_0.4-1_all.deb) ...
Setting up bugsx (1.08-6) ...

Setting up fastlink (4.1P-fix81-2) ...

Setting up med-bio (0.4-1) ...

localepurge: checking for new locale files ...
localepurge: processing locale files ...
localepurge: processing man pages ...
This package is Copyright 2002 by Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org>

This software is licensed under the GPL.

On Debian systems, the GPL can be found at /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.
/usr/share/doc/med-bio/copyright (END) 

&rarr Isn't this great?

Text user interfaces

• Debian Task Installer
• End-user section contains entry for each internal project
• Easy installation

Graphical user interfaces (1)

Graphical user interfaces (2)

→ Synaptic's filters are a great tool here.

Web interfaces (1)

http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=med-&subword=1

Web interfaces (2)

→ Also not really straightforward currently but becoming comfortable with the Package Tracking System is an extra plus here :-)

• Recently developed web tool
• Great help in watching package status
• Supports subscription to interesting packages

Package Tracking System

http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=tille

Web interfaces (3)

→ Not yet a tool but a start of it

Future handling of meta packages

• Obviously there are no nifty tools as you might know them from Debian available yet.
• Tools which grep the apt cache directly for meta packages have to be written.
• Policy agreement about additional flag for debian/control file
• Find a set of keywords for each internal project and write a tool to search comfortable

Tools to develop meta packages

• Building a meta package is more or less equal for each meta package
• Those stuff should be parameterised and supported by tools to
  • Make it easier
  • Reduce probability of bugs
• There is no common agreement about this but at least Debian-Med is using the med-common-dev for package building
• Each Debian-Med package build-depends from this package which provides templates and tools for meta package building and some examples

Technology (2): User menus

• Define a list of sub project users using debconf to manage groups like junior and med in /etc/group
• These users are provided with an extra menu
• Do not bother other users with those additional menus
• Provide script update-subproject to update user menus after new package installation or additions of users to those groups
• Current Debian-Med packages give an idea of the look and feel

User menu tools

General menu rewrite

• Currently Debian menu system is completely rewritten
• Debian packages update general menu after installation automatically
• Key features like user roles and translation will be added
• Plan: Meta packages contain role specific menu entries which are updated on a per user basis
• Enabling clean administration of multi user systems

Documentation

• All internal projects care especially for documentation and translation because target users have big need for this
• Have a close look on <project>-doc packages!
• Ben Armstrong has started a Debian Subproject HOWTO:
  http://people.debian.org/~synrg/subproject-howto.html/
  It explains how to start and maintain a Debian internal project in general

Future

Debian-Junior

• First release with Debian Woody
• Included in task selection list of install CD

Debian-Med

• First steps
• Some meta packages ready
• Great interest from developers and users
• First version in Sarge
• Knoppix based Live-CD

Future

Debian-Edu

• Creating web site and mailing lists
• Integrating stuff from educational distributions which is not yet in Debian
• Care for new Debian-installer based CDs

DeMuDi

• Same as above
• Care for really free multimedia software (patent issues, licenses, etc.)

Future

Debian-Desktop

• Impact onto all other internal projects, because it is end user oriented
• Take part in development of Debian-Installer

Further Information