Ubuntu Contributions

Many Ubuntu developers are also prolific free software developers and contribute to other projects, notably to Debian.

System Boot

• Canonical employee Scott James Remnant developed from scratch Upstart, a modern event-based init daemon. Upstart is now default init system for Ubuntu, Fedora and Frugalware Linux.

• initramfs-tools was originally written by Jeff Bailey for Ubuntu, and later became Debian's default initramfs system.

Package Management

• The dpkg Breaks field was implemented by Ian Jackson for Ubuntu.

• dpkg triggers were implemented by Ian Jackson for Ubuntu.

• Ubuntu developed a simplified front-end to apt called gnome-app-install (originally written by Ross Burton, but then developed for some years by Michael Vogt of Ubuntu).
• Ubuntu developed a system to notify users about package updates (update-manager, update-notifier).
• Ubuntu is heavily involved in the development of apt, python-apt and synaptic.
• An application to view and install deb packages called gdebi was developed by Ubuntu.

Installation

Ubuntu developers have made a number of important contributions to debian-installer:

• debootstrap progress via debconf, and a good deal of what became the first-stage task installer glue
• base-installer kernel selection refactoring and test suite
• much of udev support and devfs path removal
• pcmciautils support
• chunks of debconf maintenance effort such as the progresscancel and escape capabilities
• reserved username checks
• some of rescue mode
• translation handling work in cdebconf that saved about 20MB of run-time memory

In addition, we developed a custom graphical installer, Ubiquity, which uses debian-installer for many of its back-end tasks.

Jockey

Third party driver installation UI: https://launchpad.net/jockey

Crash interception

Apport intercepts signal and Python crashes, package installation failures, and potentially other problems, creates debug reports, sends them to a bug tracker, and has tools for post-mortem recombination of core dumps and debug symbols. It was ported to Fedora by Will Woods a while ago.

Brainstorm / IdeaTorrent

The engine that powers http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com is open and is being modified to be more project-neutral. http://ideatorrent.org/

LTSP5

https://launchpad.net/~ltsp-upstream

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPQuickInstall

Ubuntu was the first distro implementing the ltsp upstream MueKow specification of the next generation LTSP in 2005/6 (more detailed history).

The implementation is including some improvements like:

• Dropping the insecure XDMCP model that allowed you to even take screenshots from a networked X stream
• New sound implementation based on alsa
• A new way of handling local block devices as well
• New printserver to replace the unlicensed lp_server shipped with former ltsp versions
• Deep integration with the GNOME Desktop
• An LTSP specific display manager called LDM which simply acts like a graphical ssh client
• Multiple appserver support out of the box
• Deep integration with the debian installer and the Ubuntu alternate CD for a comfortable out of the box install for LTSP servers
• Deep integration with the Ubuntu hardware autodetection mechanisms dropping the need for configuration of thin clients in most cases
• Automatic swapping over the net if ram on a client is low
• Dropping the need for nfsroot resulting in massive client speedup through a unionfs/aufs mount on top of an nbd blockdevice that uses squashfs

Debian joined the development after 6 months supplying large contributions

Fedora recently picked up the Ubuntu code as well with the Fedora 9 release

Gentoo is working on an LTSP5 implementation based on this code as well.

OpenSuSE uses the existing LTSP5 code to implement a similar setup wrapped into their kiwi liveCD build scripts.

The upstream development which was led by ubuntu for 2.5 years was switched to a completely new model of cross distro team effort in October 2007; each participating distro has an upstream development contact in the ltsp-upstream team through which they can directly submit code to the launchpad bzr trees.

OpenSSH

• Host and user key blacklisting support, mitigating the OpenSSL RNG vulnerability

• ConsoleKit support

OpenSSL

• Cert blacklist checking, generation, and packaging, mitigating the OpenSSL RNG vulnerability

OpenVPN

• Cert blacklist generation and packaging, mitigating the OpenSSL RNG vulnerability

Xorg

• Fixes and quirks for variety of issues in -intel, -ati, other drivers, and the X server.
• Participated with Fedora (and later Mandrake) in the early development of the Xrandr-1.2 gnome-display-properties capplet (subsequently taken upstream), contributing significant QA and stability bug fixes, and a revert dialog.
• X-Kit, a python library for parsing/modifying xorg.conf files. Used in EnvyNG and elsewhere through Ubuntu.

KDE

System Settings, the KControl replacement, was maintained and pushed into KDE 4 by Kubuntu developers.

printer-applet, part of KDE 4.1, was written by Jonathan Riddell

guidance-power-manager, part of KDE extragear, was written by Kubuntu developers.

Bazaar

Canonical sponsors development of Bazaar, a distributed revision control system used by many projects. Also, Bazaar is now a GNU project. http://bazaar-vcs.org/

Gnome

Canonical employs/employed some Gnome developers: Jeff Waugh (employed in 2004-2006), ...

Patches

During package maintenance and bug triaging we develop countless fixes and send them to upstream. (e. g. the ones we submit to Debian, see also http://patches.ubuntu.com ).

Servers/Bandwidth

http://svn.gnome.org/ and http://l10n.gnome.org/ are hosted by Canonical. Launchpad provides hosting to many projects including Inkscape and Miro.

UFW

Ubuntu developed ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall), a frontend to iptables: https://launchpad.net/ufw

Netbook User Interface

Canonical has developed a new UI for netbooks (mini laptops), licensed under GPL3. https://launchpad.net/netbook-remix

Uncomplicated-VM-Builder

Soren Hansen and many others are contributing to this tool. https://launchpad.net/vmbuilder

AppArmor

John Johansen still contributes to AppArmor since he joined Canonical, along with a few others. https://launchpad.net/apparmor

Launchpad

Which has been recently open sourced. https://launchpad.net/launchpad

PowerNap & PowerWake

Thanks to Dustin Kirkland https://launchpad.net/powernap

Byobu

Thanks again to Dustin. https://launchpad.net/byobu

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