Posted on December 7, 2006 - by Justin Hartman
Mark Shuttleworth puts me in my place
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So this Ubuntu PowerPC issue has been bugging me a lot, so much so that I left the following comment on Mark Shuttleworth’s blog site this morning.
Mark the problem I am having at the moment is the whole ethics behind Ubuntu and what it actually does support. The concept or idea you came up with initially for Ubuntu was to provide a free desktop for all users in the world and make computing and technology more accessible to the people.
A recent decision however by the dev team at Canonical to drop PPC as a supported distribution concerns me. It concerns me in that it would appear there is no long term revenue in supporting PPC as a technology and it has seriously made me wonder just how true the idealism of Ubuntu really is.
I myself run Ubuntu Edgy on two PCs and my iBook G4 but to know that Ubuntu for PPC will ultimately be turned over to the community to support is a growing concern for me. My initial reaction was to move over to Debian but in chatting on the forum I have decided to, where possible, get involved in the PPC community because clearly there is a market and one that needs supporting.
While I realise that PPC doesn’t provide much commercial value for Ubuntu does this then not go against everything that Ubuntu is supposed to be in providing greater accessibility to the world? I’m curious to know your thoughts because I am certainly damaged in my perception by this recent decision.
Low an behold I received a reply email from Mark this afternoon stating the following.
From: Mark Shuttleworth
To: info@grabble.co.za
Subject: PPC support
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:49:46 +0000Justin,
It’s difficult to make a philanthropic case for PPC over other architectures. Most people with a PPC desktop or laptop have multiple devices and can afford either to purchase an OS, or to contribute to a free OS like Ubuntu. We see relatively little community contribution, rapidly declining installs (if you read the spec, the details are there). So would it be better to spend three people making the x86 desktop better, or keeping the PPC desktop alive?
At this stage, I think the better philanthropic argument is in favour of improving the desktop of 98% of our users. If you are willing to become one of the community members that it will take to keep PPC officially-supported, then please make your voice heard in the distro mailing lists and channels, sign up, contribute time, make it happen.
Mark
7 Comments
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December 20, 2006
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Lol! He does make a good point. Even he has limited resources.
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December 20, 2006
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Lol! He does make a good point. Even he has limited resources.
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December 20, 2006
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I just happened to stumble across this blog site and I thought I have to share it with you. Seems I was not the only one to be a little pissed off at this decision to drop PPC.
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December 20, 2006
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I just happened to stumble across this blog site and I thought I have to share it with you. Seems I was not the only one to be a little pissed off at this decision to drop PPC.
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December 21, 2006
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[...] Mark Shuttleworth’s email to me and the whole debate that has gone on about Ubuntu’s decision to drop PowerPC has made this decision difficult however seeing as I have only recently moved from Apple OSX to Ubuntu I figured it’s better to move now and stick with a distro that will support PowerPC for probably a few more years than be stuck with a distro that is left to the devices of a community that might simply let PowerPC support die a slow and bitter death. The overall consensus I got from the Ubuntu Forums is that PowerPC users are already looking for a new Linux distro which has also played a big part in deciding to move to Debian. That said I will still support Ubuntu and keep my current 6.10 installations on my PC at home and work while my iBook will now begin the big migrate to Debian. [...]
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December 22, 2006
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Thanks for posting a comment on (and a link to!) my blog.
It takes three good people to maintain an entire architecture, plus a whack of processor time for compiling. It’s possible to cross-compile (i.e. do the PowerPC compiling on an x86 machine), so processing power is really pretty cheap. Some of the Ubuntu developers already use PowerPCs for coding and whatnot. What part of that signals a detraction from the x86 version?
Many people have been saying “That’s it, I’m going upstream to Debian”. I myself considered a move to Fedora. The idea of moving is incorrect - Fedora and Debian don’t care about PowerPC users’ needs. Maintaining someone else’s distribution is also a bad idea - constantly having to hack around with x86-specific code to make it work on PPC is not my idea of fun, and it means that you can’t work on making the user experience better.
My idea? Take the excellent work that has been done, make it more applicable to Mac owners, and see where it takes us. Small steps to start off with: A bit of customisation work to make the desktop more comfortable, plus some programs useful to Mac owners. Then some custom-written programs and bugfixes.
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December 22, 2006
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Thanks for posting a comment on (and a link to!) my blog.
It takes three good people to maintain an entire architecture, plus a whack of processor time for compiling. It's possible to cross-compile (i.e. do the PowerPC compiling on an x86 machine), so processing power is really pretty cheap. Some of the Ubuntu developers already use PowerPCs for coding and whatnot. What part of that signals a detraction from the x86 version?
Many people have been saying “That's it, I'm going upstream to Debian”. I myself considered a move to Fedora. The idea of moving is incorrect - Fedora and Debian don't care about PowerPC users' needs. Maintaining someone else's distribution is also a bad idea - constantly having to hack around with x86-specific code to make it work on PPC is not my idea of fun, and it means that you can't work on making the user experience better.
My idea? Take the excellent work that has been done, make it more applicable to Mac owners, and see where it takes us. Small steps to start off with: A bit of customisation work to make the desktop more comfortable, plus some programs useful to Mac owners. Then some custom-written programs and bugfixes.