It’s not easy building a new version of Linux and establishing a large following. But with the Ubuntu project, one team of programmers has managed to do just that.
Ubuntu Carves Niche in Linux Landscape
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning…
Nah no trolling today. I’m happy to read about Ubuntu’s success, and waiting for the definitive Breezy to arrive. I still dislike some things about it, but it managed to be my only OS for 1 year, when I decided to give it a try (it worked so fine that I didn’t test anymore distros). All I have to say is : way to go
I have claim to be one of the biggest Ubuntu fans in the community. I’m the second highest poster on the forum, I’m a moderator there, I’ve helped over a thousand people with Ubuntu problems and I have helped with development.
And I STILL think that OSAlert runs too many Ubuntu articles. At some point OSAlert, people are going to question your objectiveness…
The only thing new in this article is solid numbers on how many Warty CDs were shipped (impressive).
Note to leaders of OSAlert:
The fact that Mark recently gained ImpiLinux to be a non-Free version of Ubuntu is about 1,000,000 times more interesting and important than this.
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=631
This was one of the better ones though…. It was a nice general history…
And I STILL think that OSAlert runs too many Ubuntu articles. At some point OSAlert, people are going to question your objectiveness…
I think part of the genius of Ubuntu is their use of guerilla marketing.
Their track record of making update deadlines also guarantees a certain amount of buzz every few months.
Also, aside from a few items that are missing out of the box (due to philosophical reasons), Ubuntu gets a lot of praise because moreso than any other Linux I’ve played with, It. Just. Frelling. Works. (Admittedly, I’ve not tried Xandros, but a friend of mine sings its praises.)
I feel comfortable sending friends of mine who want to try a Linux distro over to Ubuntu. It works, and when it doesn’t, there’s good wikis and the forums are full of the sort of people who are (generally speaking) nice when they answer a question.
So, I’m not surprised at all that there’s a regular stream of articles about Ubuntu. There’s a real energy around this distro, and there are more “complete” distros in terms of out of the box multimedia and wireless, but at the end of the day, Ubuntu has other qualities which make it the best, most “pimpable” linux.
(Which reminds me, It’s time to send some more “pizza money” to the cause.)
After the release of Colony 5 and the still huge amounts of buggyness of it – just days before the release – I’ve moved on kanoptix. Not only that, but the whole freeze/development model doesn’t work out that well when you consider that development is perpetually broken. Thank you, I’ll stick with Sid. Ubuntu doesn’t offer anything. I used it as my primary linux desktop for about a year or longer and now it’s time to move on.
Kanotix http://www.kanotix.com autodetected my infamous wireless realtek 8180 chipset, installed the new open source drivers (no ndiswrapper), detected my winmodem and installed sl-modem, sound, hotplugs my usb mp3 player. Everything works out of the box -unlike Ubuntu. Not only that, but it is compatible with debian sid and has its own value-added packages.
Give it a try, you’ll be very impressed.
So, after using a DEVELOPMENT release of an unreleased operating system you’ve decided that it sucks and you’re done with it? I think you’re too ignorant to be making comments or OS recomendations. You sound like one of those kids who couldn’t get Lindows to install on your EMachine and now hate Linux.
That being said, Kanotix is pretty cool. If you find that a FINAL release of Ubuntu isn’t for you, Kanotix definatelu could be. That, or Mepis. Or Sarge.
Are you insane and or just unable to read? I used Ubuntu as a main linux desktop for over a year. You should really try to understand simple things before you type. Colony 5 is still buggy as hell days before its release. The whole point is that Ubuntu doesn’t offer anthing compared to most other debian-derived distros. I know you’ve been using linux for a year or so and you think you’re an expert, but once you’ve been using it as long as I have then you’ll start to understand things more clearly.
No, really. And it’s not the hype. For a few years I’ve had strict requirements for my distro:
– based on Debian
– BUT targeted on beginners/easy to use
– Gnome centered
– with huge fallowing
– totally free
SO when I first stunbled into announcements, I knew someone finally did it.
– with huge fallowing (sic)
Good point. Specially if you consider that the forums[1] are highly active and friendly, and the guide[2] is extremely simple. So support won’t be a problem.
[1] http://ubuntuforums.org
[2] http://ubuntuguide.org
What you mean? With HP shipping Ubuntu laptops?
No way
check
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=631
Somebody really cares about Linux on the desktop.
Dear Mark Shuttleworth,
Nowdays OSAlert reposts ubuntu did this, Ubuntu did that, I am getting tired of these small dents in big gorilla MS. It almost looks like we are riding Ubuntu hype. Why do Ubuntu release these small upgrades every weeks. Why not fix something at once and then go on…Read at Ubuntu forums they have exactly same silly difficulties of installation maintaining upgrading etc etc as other distros…. The hype will not overcome these problems…
And again Mark, it takes lot of time and efforts to “make it debian incompatible, isn’t it???'” So finally Ubuntu will be neither debian nor anything compatible….by 2010
Think why businessman like Mark will invest millions of $$$ to promote OSS? It doesn’t make any sense. He must have some ulterior motive to gain profit or make money from this distro…….
Why do Ubuntu release these small upgrades every weeks.
Ubuntu releases every six months.
And again Mark, it takes lot of time and efforts to “make it debian incompatible, isn’t it???'” So finally Ubuntu will be neither debian nor anything compatible….by 2010
Ubuntu resyncs with Sid after every release. You have been eating some DCCA FUD.
Think why businessman like Mark will invest millions of $$$ to promote OSS? It doesn’t make any sense. He must have some ulterior motive to gain profit or make money from this distro…….
Ever heard of “its fun to him?” Not everyone with millions wants to blow it on cars and women….
“He must have some ulterior motive to gain profit or make money from this distro…….”
And making money is wrong because??
“He must have some ulterior motive to gain profit or make money from this distro…….”
And making money is wrong because??
Nothing wrong. But then don’t claim to be a saint
and don’t blame MS also.
Think why businessman like Mark will invest millions of $$$ to promote OSS? It doesn’t make any sense. He must have some ulterior motive to gain profit or make money from this distro…….
Why do I have to think about it? He set up a company using OSS software, sold it for lots of money, he creates Ubuntu as he way of giving money back. Maybe he will make some money with Canonical, maybe he won’t, he doesn’t care as he has already made his millions, so it isn’t about the money.
Dear Mark Shuttleworth,
Nowdays OSAlert reposts ubuntu did this, Ubuntu did that, I am getting tired of these small dents in big gorilla MS. It almost looks like we are riding Ubuntu hype. Why do Ubuntu release these small upgrades every weeks. Why not fix something at once and then go on…Read at Ubuntu forums they have exactly same silly difficulties of installation maintaining upgrading etc etc as other distros…. The hype will not overcome these problems…
And again Mark, it takes lot of time and efforts to “make it debian incompatible, isn’t it???'” So finally Ubuntu will be neither debian nor anything compatible….by 2010
Think why businessman like Mark will invest millions of $$$ to promote OSS? It doesn’t make any sense. He must have some ulterior motive to gain profit or make money from this distro…….
but it’s still brown.
Which can be easily changed.
but it’s still brown.
I said it before and I’ll say it again.
Ubuntu is brown like Chocolate. And Ubuntu’s no Hershey’s — it’s Godiva!
Hmm … what other good brown things are there? Tea, The Water of Life (aka “coffee”), Cola, Dr. Pepper, UPS, and Whole Wheat Bread come to mind.
Don’t mock the brown.
The real “water of life” Whisky (and whiskey) are brown as well. Mmmm – Ubuntu and Blackbush…
I started Linux with RH 7.3, then 9.0, then Mandrake 10, then Mepis, then Knoppix, then Fedora Core, then Kanotix, then Ubuntu, and pure Debian. I’ve tried a number of other distros as well.
After all that, I’m pretty much in the Debian (and derivatives) camp. Nothing beats apt-get, as well as 15,000 well tested packages.
Pure Debian is awesome for it’s speed and stability. It’s a bit more work out of the box, but still pretty easy.
For a more easy experience, some of the derivatives are the way to go. Ubuntu is great – good installer, good hd detection, excellent Gnome implementation. Kanotix is great – good Sid compatibility, nice installer, has the Knoppix scripts and cheat codes. Mepis is great – great out of the box experience, nice installer, nice look and feel, great hd detection. Of course, Knoppix is great – despite it’s rep as not being good for hd install, it actually does work out quite well for hd install. It’s hd detection is stellar, it’s speed is the best of the lot, and if you do a Debian type install (one of the options in the installer), you get Deb Etch/Sid compatibility. And Knoppix is fantastic to run live, with all of the scripts for saving files and savings – Linux on the go.
And of all of these, none are perfect. Some work better on some hardware, while the other work better on other hardware. All have plusses and minuses for features and package selection.
So for me, it’s a combination of pure Deb, Ubuntu, Kanotix, Mepis, and Knoppix.
At the moment, I’m running mostly Knoppix (I’m really happy with the 3.9 and 4.0.2 releases), both live and hd install.
“but it’s still brown.”
You are so right and the second you try to change this an Ubuntu swat team will storm your apartment and force you to stay with the default theme.
Ooh, can I be on the swat team? I have experience with mosquitos and horseflies…
The community art team coordinator is armed with his paintball gun full of brown ammunition. Who’s going with me? :o)
Really, I didn’t have anything to do with the defaults in Hoary (and won’t in Breezy yet either), but most often I stick with the defaults. When I do move away from the defaults it’s usually toward the blue Clearlooks stuff – which is just as basic, just a different hue.
What I really look forward to is hardware rendered SVG themes and fonts, hopefully a dialog to simply change the color of a theme without having to making a whole frickin’ new theme, and a gnome-art (or gnome-art-like) app for previewing/downloading/installing artwork from art.ubuntu.com and various other sources that want to be involved.
So I guess you’re not really stuck with brown. :o)
Ubuntu is one of many linux distribution based on Debian, there's really nothin special about it, really nothing, it is one of hundreds …
i agree
it is old wine in new bottle
i used it for about 160hrs (4 weeks full time) and found that it crashed just as often as fedora but in more annoying ways so I went back to fedora.
I do think they should atleast create a new theme for each major release. give it a sense of some progress.
“I do think they should at least create a new theme for each major release. give it a sense of some progress.”
I agree with that.
Ubuntu does it run on Windows?
Does it install a porn toolbar on my AOL interweb?
Three naked people it must be porn.
I enjoy coming here and keeping up with the news in operating systems space, but some people are ridiculous.
Some people hate to see something become succesful and gain momentum, not because of compatibility with Sarge/Etch/Sid (whatever else) but because Ubuntu doesn’t bend it’s development model to your approval. H
ow many arguments do you see about Xandros, Mepis, (insert your favorite distro) and ESPECIALLY Linspire? The company that takes open source, themes it up and sells it…
Ubuntu gives alot back to the Debian community. If you don’t realize this, then you’re not qualified to make a post about it. Search around the web, look at what these guys have accomplish in relative time.
Side note: I also respect Ian Murdoch, but IMHO he wants to lead and control the future and direction of Debian and its derivatives from the outside. If you’re not with his plan, then something is wrong. Yawn. Gimme a break.
I should make a distro based on Ubuntu called, “GNU/Kiss my ass, it’s GPL’d so I may do whatever I want with it”
I use Ubuntu everyday for desktop/workstation, Debian Sarge for servers, I encounter few if any problems. Thanks Debian and Ubuntu developers for your hard work.
I should make a distro based on Ubuntu called, “GNU/Kiss my ass, it’s GPL’d so I may do whatever I want with it”
Word.
Oh no, wait, that’s heresy! Because although it’s a public sandbox, you’re only supposed to build the kind of sandcastles a few self-appointed guardians of the sandbox think you’re supposed to build.
Here’s my ubuntu Breezy desktop:
http://pubcrawler.org/2005/09/08/gnome-212/
where’s the brown? Took 30 seconds to change the theme if you don’t like the default.
-jamin
“I should make a distro based on Ubuntu called, “GNU/Kiss my ass, it’s GPL’d so I may do whatever I want with it”
Now that would be a cool distro.
The default desktop background could be some pasty skinned, over-weight nerd in his parents basement, standing next to one of his 5 PCs, next to empty Dr. Pepper cans and Pizza boxes, hanging a BA to the camera.
Such a distro would be symbolic of the many distro zealots who post at Slashdot and OSAlert.
You better watch out with that description. Linux weasels for miles around will come marching in droves to find and get that.
You’ve just described every Stallmanite’s wet dream!
The following is from the August ’86 issue of the DEC Professional.
Unix is Dead! Wanna Fight??
John C. Dvorak
Summer is over and a plague of UNIX programmers is upon us. College kids, wet behind the ears; greenhorns, rubes. They pour out of various campuses talking about ROFF and ED and pipes and paths, and they look for work. They’re impressed with themselves. After all, they’ve learned the language of a secret society. If they’re from Berkeley, they’ve learned the secret language of a secret society.
They all program in C, and wherever they go they change the prompts on whatever computer they get their hands on so it resembles a UNIX machine. They creative ones go into whatever operating system they have to use and find a symbol or token table; then they change the commands to look like UNIX. The *more* creative ones customize the commands further so they are even more cryptic and weird than UNIX. Whether these people ever do any real work is a mystery.
“Yes, weeell, to list my files I merely type P; MJOI.”
“P; MJOI?? What they heck does that mean?”
“It just so happens that if I put my coffee cup on the keyboard and rock it a certain way, that’s what it will type; so, I do that to list my files!”
While it’s good to see these kids doing something other than wasting quarters on endless games of Pole Position, I’m not so sure UNIX dabbling is much better for society.
I feel this way, not so much because UNIX is an old-fashioned OS that has a special place reserved in hell, but because its time has passed. UNIX is dead, but no one bothered to claim the body. It lives like a zombie on college computers and serves as a gateway to all sorts of weird networks.
UNIX haunts marketing men, too. I remember when Fortune Systems was getting started. That’s about the time that a bumper crop of college-bred UNIX drones was dumped like mulch into the marketplace. They all were singing the praises of UNIX to the low end of the market.
So, I went to this strategy demonstration given by one of the vice presidents of Fortune Systems. These guys surely were ahead of their time, and it was a perfect example of having too much bad information. The Fortune 16:32 (or was it 32:16? In either case it looked like a biblical reference…) said unto us: “Come to me for thine microprocessor and spend, spend, spend!” it was the first camel of microcomputers. Like a horse designed by committee (aka camel), the Fortune was preceded by too much market research. A lot of this was skewed by the hordes of UNIX maniacs running through the valley waving the UNIX flag.
First of all, I was shown a slide that clearly showed the Motorola 68000 as the world’s greatest microprocessor.
The 68000 beat everything. Personally, I can’t remember what it was pitted against — probably the 8080, the 6502 and a 4004. Whatever, this was the chip to use.
Then the company did some market research and, because writers, pundits, researchers, secretaries, publishers, and programmers all said that UNIX was the next hot operating system, they chose it for their own little machine.
The UNIX community yelled, “Yea!” But, they continued to use free university-provided time, and none of the UNIX hackers bought the little UNIX boxes. Well, that was okay, it was intended to be a business machine, anyway.
Ooops! Gee, it seems that the businessmen couldn’t cope with UNIX and “$ ls /bin/pr -p -t” or any other such nonsense. So they had to build a performance-sapping shell around the system, code name: SLOW. So much for the UNIX world takeover. I figured that would be the last I heard of it.
No so. Last week, a guy walked up to me as I was writing this column on a portable computer in a San Francisco bistro. he had been reading it through binoculars from across the room. “So, you don’t like UNIX, huh, Dvorak? What’s better, MS-DOS?? Hahahaha!”
“IBM’s VM is the happening operating system,” was my quick rejoinder.
“VM doesn’t run on minis and micros. It’s just a shell, anyway,” he shot back.
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
“Is not!”
He took a swing at me and I caught him a good one in the stomach. We punched each other for a good 15 minutes. All of a sudden he stopped and yelled,
“Hey, what’s going on here? Where am I? Wow, I remember my name! What happened?”
“We were fighting about UNIX,” I said.
“UNIX? I was fighting about UNIX? My God…I was hypnotized!”
True story.
So, try snapping your fingers in the face of one of these UNIX maniacs next time he flies off the handle.
See what happens.
“No so. Last week, a guy walked up to me as I was writing this column on a portable computer in a San Francisco bistro. he had been reading it through binoculars from across the room. “So, you don’t like UNIX, huh, Dvorak? What’s better, MS-DOS?? Hahahaha!”
“IBM’s VM is the happening operating system,” was my quick rejoinder. ”
Oh, boy!! I actually have to log into a VM mainframe periodically, and it is a religious experience. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the command I typed wasn’t executing. It just sat there. I called up the help desk. They said, “does it say ‘HOLDING’ in the upper-right corner?” It did. They said “Oh, then just hit the Pause/Break key.”
I let the statement sink in for a minute, before asking, “you mean the Pause/Break key on the keyboard? That’s ridiculous!!” But it worked, and at that point I realized that VM is a relic from a different time.
I recently installed Ubuntu Hoary on my laptop, just to see how Breezy performs (yea, I know it’s still in a pre-release phase but nevertheless). I really like what Ubuntu has done in automatizing the many configuration options that you have to go through in Debian. For a newbie it’s likely a big relief that most things “just work” without any need to configure things. X server works without running “dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg”. Sound works without running “alsaconf”. All the necessary packages for running CUPS have been installed by default. Debconf is set to “High” instead of “Normal”.
However, Ubuntu has done something that just doesn’t agree with my hardware — it feels sluggish. This was also the case with Warty, and the same problem was present in Hoary — and now it appears that Breezy follows the tradition. I’ve had the vague subjective feeling that Ubuntu is slower than Debian. This becomes apparent in scrolling pages in a pager or applications such as Midnight Commander. “glxgears” runs MUCH slower on Ubuntu than it does on Debian. (“glxinfo | grep direct” tells me that direct rendering is enabled. I copied the xorg.conf to Ubuntu from my Debian installation, so that isn’t the problem. Also, I experience the same sluggishness in console, after I’ve quit my X session. I have no idea what Ubuntu does wrong but obviously it doesn’t agree with my current hardware.)
Anyway, I’ve spotted one difference between Debian and Ubuntu, that may or may not be important (depending on the person viewing the issue): Mark Shuttleworth plans to make money on Debian and the free software community in general. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, as far as I’m concerned. But it’s one important difference between Debian and Ubuntu. The Debian project is committed to remain a non-profit community effort.
As far as I’ve figured it, Mark Shuttleworth does “the Right Thing”(TM), in providing the software for free and only charging for product support. This is about the only generally accepted way of making money on Free/OpenSourceSoftware. Even the most ardent GNU fans are likely to agree that this is precisely the way to do it.
But in order to make money by providing services, there has to be an audience of customers that need such services in the first place. So Mark Shuttleworth has decided to gamble with high stakes. He has invested a lot of money to make it easier for MS Windows users to make the switch from Windows to Linux. All the decisions that have taken place in Ubuntu’s development seem to point towards one coherent goal. Mark Shuttleworth wants as many people as possible to switch to using a GNU/Linux system (and preferably Ubuntu).
This allows Mark Shuttleworth to appear as a philantrope and a GNU/Linux benefactor. But the real goal is to make money on Debian and the free software community in general. As I’ve already said, I’ve got absolutely nothing at all against such plan, personally. If someone wants to make money on Free / Open Source Software, then this is precisely the way I’d like to see it’s done.
My only personal gripe against Ubuntu is that it performs slower than Debian on my hardware. So I’ll continue to use Debian instead of Ubuntu. But I like most of the things that Ubuntu has been doing. When Ubuntu fixes this performance bug that makes it slow on my hardware (HP OmniBook XE3 with i830 onboard graphics card), I’ll seriously consider switching from Debian to Ubuntu. Until then, I’ll follow Ubuntu’s progress with active interest.
PS. I agree with poofyhairguy: Unnecessary exposure in media will at this point rather serve to create ill will against Ubuntu instead of good will. When Breezy Badger has been released, I’ll be very interested to read the reviews. Until then, please cut the crap and only report any actual progress on the Ubuntu front.
Ubuntu is popular for one simple reason: It is well done – it embodies excellence, thoughtfulness, and polish. Now many zealous Linux nerds do not have the brains to comprehend this, but 99% of the Linux world is basically crap, and Ubuntu is one of the rare exceptions. Such nerds are so lacking in refined taste that if they would not recognize elegant simplicity if it sat on their faces. Truth hurts, don’t it?
You’re forgetting one thing, though: OSAlert publishes news items about and relevant to operating systems- Note the plural. That means Windows, embedded Windows, Mac OS, other Apple gadgets, Linux distros, Linux itself, BSD, Haiku/Zeta/BeOS, AmigaOS, Solaris, SkyOS, MenuetOS, SyllableOS, SymbianOS, Visopsys, people reminiscing about the VAX, the SCO litigation, setting up systems, new system software releases, new hardware, etc…
Not just Windows, like a few weeks ago; and not just Ubuntu now. Balance.
ALL Linux distros I’ve tried feel sluggish. The only one that feels even somewhat as snappy as Windows is Gentoo.
Seconded. The entire Linux environment running on X feels much slower than Windows.
http://funroll-loops.org/
…from listening to an ogg of one of Mark Shuttleworth’s addresses at some Debian conference or whatnot (where, incidentally, he addressed the main issues re. Debian/Ubuntu) the guy makes so much money simply from investing his vast dotcom fortune in a sensible manner that he can afford to put a decent amount into creating a Linux dist of his liking, as a job/hobby that consumes much of his time.
If that’s the case, I really don’t see why Ubuntu has to be a moneymaking venture at all. It could run at a substantial loss (and probably does) for a good while without denting Shuttleworth’s bank balance.
Given his many other philanthropic activities (open source school admin software etc) I see no reason to question the guy’s motives, though I admit he may turn out to be some kind of James Bond bad-guy with a secret underseas lair of sorts, a secret ulterior motives of world domination.
As an aside, I’ve been running Ubuntu for something over 6 months and I think it’s the best Linux dist I’ve ever tried, though I’ve by no means tried them all. Given that even with Ubuntu I have to recompile the friggin kernel to get my Thinkpad’s trackpoint working properly, and do numerous other technical shit, I don’t think I can be bothered to try a new one again any time soon.
It’s still great though. Kudos to them.
Somebody really cares about Linux on the desktop.
That may be good, but I find it terrible that it doesn’t come with little utilities by default. Nmap, traceroute… of course a desktop doesn’t need Apache, but to throw out the small stuff isn’t good.
I’d also wish they didn’t make OO.o a default. At least have a CD without it.
but it’s still brown.
I find the brown great. I can’t understand why people don’t like it. Incidentally, I’m tantalised how so few people notice something like the default KDE dock – yes, I know u uses Gnome – is blatantly awful, beginning with the humungous clock that looks like it came out of the Jurassic, passing by the buttons that spurn menus which is something most DE’s still didn’t understand is ugly and confusing, and ending in the oh so subtle toolbar left edge – something only Windows Classic seems to have gotten right.
“Given his many other philanthropic activities (open source school admin software etc) I see no reason to question the guy’s motives, though I admit he may turn out to be some kind of James Bond bad-guy with a secret underseas lair of sorts, a secret ulterior motives of world domination. ”
After reading this, I wonder is it possible that Ubuntu Linux can have a ‘call home’ application with it that we don’t know off? Of course someone might say the distro is open source stupid ! but hell what comes on the pressed CDs that Shipit sends – binaries right- not the source code! And has anyone compiled Ubuntu from source and compared it to the pressed CDs bit by bit. Is it remotely possible to put a call home app and not let anyone get a hint about it… Of course anyone can see the source but not from the pressed CDs because they contain binaries ? [Correct me if I am wrong]
Hell I know I am trying to make a consipracy theory out of nowhere. I am not blaming Mark or something – we need more philantrophs like him.
But I was just wondering whether such a thing is remotely possible. Not that I believe the above, i just wanted to know whether this can work ?
Please let me repeat this is fiction /my speculation and I m just wondering if such a thing is possible!!!
Ubuntu. Ubuntu. Ubuntu. There you have it. Okay, Ubuntu is a great distro. As some others also are, almost any point of view and taste can find a good one. That said, I’m beginning to feel an uneasy itch when I yet again hear the word. Yeah, Ubuntu. Great. Nice. Can we get on ?
“He said it’s this African word that means ‘I am because we are.’ It focuses on community. It’s all about sharing and consensus,” Waugh said. “Everyone in the room was just gobsmacked because it really expressed what we believed as free-software and open-source contributors.”
Except for the small problem that they didn’t value consensus with regard to the DCCA project.
Ubuntu is based on Debian Unstable. The DCCA is based on Debian Stable. Making Ubuntu part of the DCCA would require making severe changes to Ubuntu, and remove the POINT of Ubuntu packaging and validating the latest packages on their own.