Are distributions still relevant?

2024-07-29T20:00:00Z

In principle and the traditional vision, the roles were clear enough. Upstream developers had to create and support their own projects, including multiple libraries, tools and modules, possibly for multiple operating systems. Distribution maintainers had the responsibility of collecting a significant software set, porting on various architectures, choosing versions that work well together for each piece of software, patching for coherence and well-established policies, eventually providing a build and installation system for the end users. At the end of the day, a quite complicated and articulated work that many people out there do for fun, others as a full-time job.

Some distributions have been around since the beginning of the 90s and still release new versions regularly, including Debian GNU/Linux, an ecosystem where I have lived and collaborated for almost 25 years. That was an ideal workflow, managed differently and with diverse goals by multiple non-profit associations and companies, including the Debian project. Distribution aimed to have the most stable and affordable daily-use system, especially for servers and enterprise ecosystems.

That was until 15 years ago or less, when virtual machines and later containers changed the games and the whole cloud computing revolution started. In prospective, that has not been the only driver for the change. Another important aspect has been the great relevance that dynamic languages and their ecosystems assumed during the same period.

The new world of hubs

Hubs, hubs everywhere and for anyone. For programming languages, as well as for containers and virtual machines. Starting from Perl and its CPAN archive, all currently used languages have their own ecosystems of packages/modules hosted on some third-party delivery networks. Most modern applications are based on the distributed efforts of thousands of developers who create and maintain thousands of tiny or large modules to solve some very specific goals, which inevitably live in their respective language hubs.

Your latest applications, almost for sure, could only exist thanks to dozens - or hundreds - of include/require/use clauses written in some of the prime-time dynamic languages that currently ride the wave of popularity. Sub-modules that are often developed by small independent teams or even single developers, packages that are mostly open source and come with no warranties for their use and destination.

Hubs for developers

In recent years, developers learned to distribute their own laptops with their applications: let me simplify. Instead of creating minimal, well-engineered traditional packages for some target platforms and eventually installers, we are now distributing container images on some cloud computing resources with all required software piled up within them. If those images are based on Docker, Podman, Lilipod or Apptainer it is absolutely secondary. Often, most applications are written in a dynamic language and install gigs of dependency modules and libraries (often in multiple versions) altogether. Giant software blobs stacked on top of some very tiny operating system layer. All that started from continuous integration platforms for testing and development and exploded in a plethora of subsystems and tools used for deployment to the end users.

Hubs for end-users

Talking about common users, thanks to new container-based systems thought for that - such as flatpak, snap, or appimage - even ordinary users can now use programs that are not more strictly dependent on distribution package managers. Those are the equivalent of Windows installers in the Linux environments for end-users. Installing new programs or sub-systems is now simplified: no building from sources, backporting and other more technical workflows. Just install and update the latest product, kindly made available by multiple upstream teams, in terms of some containerized image with only a minor runtime overhead.

It seems like a new ideal development and user world for Linux ecosystems, at least apparently. Probably it is so for advanced and self-aware users, but ...

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened (Obi-Wan Kenobi).

The splintering of the Linux ecosystems

The Linux ecosystem has always been extremely fragmented from the point of view of a Windows (or Macos) user. There are too many distros, too many desktop environments, and too many programs that often do almost the same things, but differently in some regards, always in the name of freedom of choice. However, all this is nothing in respect with the future. Distributions are going to be always less and less relevant for running applications in the cloud and even on the user's desktop. For instance, in the case of Ubuntu and many derivatives distributions, even a big part of the desktop system is now based on snap, and its Ubuntu-specific containerized hub. Soon, all distributions could become very compact core systems with most of the system applications moved onto multiple external hubs with different frequencies of update.

Who is responsible of the whole supply chain?

At the moment, one of the main challenges for the security of applications - that have become more and more complicated and dependent on a plethora of different third-party software - is certifying the whole supply chain. A software bill of materials is nowadays required in multiple contexts, but guess what? A splintering of the whole software stack management responsibility among multiple third-party hubs, development teams, and end-users is a game changer. As a user or developer, you will be directly responsible for updating all your applications and keeping them stable. Not more your distribution, but you. Most hubs do not have clear, well-established, and just-in-time policies for security updates. In most cases, it is a task to be managed by every development team in order to re-collecting all required pieces - in a consistent way - and rebuilding containerized images when needed.

Sure, there are continuous integration workflows available in some cases. Still, I don't know so many application teams that are seriously interested in timely reacting on security reports, starting from some obscure CVEs, patching, updating multiple source trees and even ensuring to not break anything by accurate testing platforms. A grunt work done by distribution secteams until now.

Even if basic container images were bricks accurately managed and updated, the final build and deployment of application images is a different matter, and while the current approach could be helpful to have the most recent software installed for the end-users desktops, I'm pretty sure that most of the thousands of embedded devices that now populate our homes are in pathetic conditions for security. Many of them have opaque and short-term supports, and the use of multi-hub sources can only render the whole thing worse: we all are potentially living with multiple little time bombs permanently connected to the net.

This has been so since the very beginnig in the embedded environments, now we are changing the things in the same way for desktops and cloud applications.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny (Yoda)