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Google Ditches Ubuntu for Debian

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 23 2018, @07:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the goocafeteria-serves-googurt dept.

Apparition writes:

For years, Google used an in-house Linux distribution called Goobuntu (based on Ubuntu LTS releases), as its development platform. No more.

After more than five years with Ubuntu, Google is replacing Goobuntu with gLinux, a Linux distribution based on Debian Testing.

[...] As MuyLinux reports, gLinux is being built from the source code of the packages and Google introduces its own changes to it. The changes will also be contributed to the upstream.

[...] How does Google plan to move to Debian Testing? The current Debian Testing release is upcoming Debian 10 Buster. Google has developed an internal tool to migrate the existing systems from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Debian 10 Buster. Project leader Margarita claimed in the Debconf talk that tool was tested to be working fine.

Google also plans to send the changes to Debian Upstream and hence contributing to its development.

[...] Back in 2012, Canonical had clarified that Google is not their largest business desktop customer. However, it is safe to say that Google was a big customer for them. As Google prepares to switch to Debian, this will surely result in revenue loss for Canonical.

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday January 23 2018, @09:33PM (2 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday January 23 2018, @09:33PM (#626776) Journal

    That's my guess as well. They wanted to cut out at least one layer of middle men.

    Note that they moved from Ubuntu Stable (lte) to to Debian Testing.

    Apparently with the subset of server oriented stuff that Google needs, testing is more than good enough. Testing is where end users are banging away on it trying out every imaginable desktop environment and reporting bugs in same, but the underlying OS is usually solid at the testing stage.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:43PM (1 child)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:43PM (#626824)

    Note that they moved from Ubuntu Stable (lte) to to Debian Testing.

    Apparently with the subset of server oriented stuff that Google needs, testing is more than good enough.

    Ubuntu is based on Debian Testing anyway, so having a version called "Ubuntu Stable" in the first place is slightly misleading.

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    • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday January 24 2018, @12:15PM

      by FakeBeldin (3360) on Wednesday January 24 2018, @12:15PM (#627111) Journal

      Ubuntu is based on Debian Testing anyway, so having a version called "Ubuntu Stable" in the first place is slightly misleading.

      Well, there isn't such a version.

      There's Ubuntu LTS, which stands for "Long Term Support". That's a version of Ubuntu which is supported substantially longer than other versions - where "support" means that it receives updates for security issues and a few other cases.