Today’s Linux schisms are a blessing in disguise

It’s been a tumultuous year for Linux. Alan Cox quite publicly took a break. Canonical started shipping local desktop search terms to Amazon without really telling anyone, then upped the hubris level to 11 when it was discovered. The systemd wars rage on, and x.org is under attack from a number of angles. Wayland and Mir are up in the air as successors, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t both win in some form, depending on the distro.

We’ve also seen a number of Linux kernel brouhahas, with Linus Torvalds telling several individuals and companies to — ahem — screw themselves. And there have been relatively recent changes in the Linux kernel release scheme, leading to stable kernels in the 2.6, 3.4, and 3.8 trees — a situation that never would have occurred back in the days when 2.6 was released. To some, all these issues might seem to indicate big problems within the Linux community, which has been closely knit since inception, raging the open source war against commercial aggressors. The tables, it might seem, have turned.

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But I don’t think so. I think we’re seeing the growing pains of a platform destined to break into several pieces and has already done so in many ways. That may ultimately be a good thing for everyone.

The four main forms of Linux are easy to identify: mobile (Android), server (Red Hat, Debian), desktop (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and so on), and embedded (usually customized Debian distros). Sure, Ubuntu Server is out there, and yes, many people run Debian or CentOS as a desktop, but these distros seem to be gravitating to one side of the line or the other, concentrating on enhancing its value as a desktop, a server, or what have you. This is where the fault lines run.

I can see a future where Linux desktops are successful, not because a general distro breaks out of the mold, but because a company like Ubuntu puts enough time and money into modernizing the desktop experience to compete with Microsoft and Apple. Given enough marketing dollars and OEM agreements, we might actually see the long-anticipated rise of the Linux desktop.

However, that Linux desktop will not necessarily carry with it the same foundation as a server-level product, which has generally been the case with desktop-centric distros in the past. Forgoing the latter for the former makes sense if your focus is on the desktop, damn the consequences. On the other hand, we’re seeing a rise in the use of Red Hat (and CentOS) on the server side, along with Debian. These are clearly aimed at the needs of physical and virtual servers, providing toolsets that make those deployments easier and more robust.

Now, tailoring a distribution for a particular arena is not exactly new, but in the past, the tweaks were made to a common base. The changes were generally found in window managers, desktop environments, themes, layouts, and fiddly bits like menu bar widgets. The underpinnings were essentially the same between a desktop and a server system, as well as across different distributions altogether (generally speaking). However, we’re currently seeing major changes in the fundaments, not just the presentation.

Ubuntu seems to be the most bullheaded of the bunch, dispensing with concerns from veteran Linux users with a wave of a hand or a half-hearted explanation, as Canonical continues its quest to divorce Ubuntu from the rest of the known Linux world. It may succeed in doing so, but at the expense of longtime, knowledgeable users.

This may be a calculated risk — it’s more beneficial to Canonical to attract newbies than to listen to the (righteous) concerns of power users who see what Ubuntu is becoming and continue to point out where the Emperor’s undies are peeking through. That’s the nature of the beast and perfectly consistent with the Linux philosophy. If those power users don’t like what they see, they’re more than welcome to move on to another distro more in line with their needs and desires.

This provides no guarantee to Ubuntu that this gamble and power play won’t ultimately cost the farm, however. Many newbie Linux users are introduced to Linux through more knowledgeable friends, and the more knowledgeable that friend, the less likely they are to be running Ubuntu now versus even a year ago.

On the server side, the landscape is vastly different. Debian and Red Hat/CentOS are the go-to server distros right now, and though they differ in day-to-day administration, they tend to more closely follow the historical Unix tenets, favoring stability and maturity over bling and rash changes. They also benefit from not having to be at all concerned with x.org or any GUI tools, building their stability and reliability on solidly constructed kernel versions that are meticulously maintained, alongside extremely mature service frameworks.

However, Red Hat/CentOS appear to be heading in the Systemd direction, based on Systemd’s inclusion in Fedora, while Debian’s reluctance to make that change has been well documented. In fact, many articles could be written about Systemd’s questionable impact on Linux in general and the hot debates it has inspired from all sides across many distros. Even with these back-end changes, Linux server administrators seem to be consolidating on only a few distros for their servers. In fact, perusing through various Linux VPS providers shows that while CentOS and Debian are almost always present in the OS options, Ubuntu is less prevalent than it used to be.

A schism within the Linux community is a laughable concept — as a whole, the Linux community could be characterized as in a constant state of schism, with many of those involved expressing strongly held beliefs very publicly and without temperance. Linus Torvalds, the personality tying the whole thing together, is very much an example of this.

Although the Linux community may appear to be on the verge of explosion every now and again, the end result is usually a net positive for Linux and for the community. Those who disagree vehemently will generally head off in a different direction, and over time the best parts of those tandem efforts come back together in some way to form a more solid whole.

Let Ubuntu careen down Canonical’s chosen path. Let Wayland and Mir battle it out, with poor old x.org watching from the sidelines. Let all manner of tumult occur in the bleeding edge. No matter what the eventual outcome, my wager is that it will be for the best.

This story, “Today’s Linux schisms are a blessing in disguise,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Paul Venezia’s The Deep End blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.