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106 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
106 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 855
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Title: HPR0855: Packaging for your distro
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0855/hpr0855.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:35:15
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---
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Hello, my name is Mike Kingley and you may recognise me from previous HPR episodes such
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as HPR episodes 797 how I got into Linux by Mike Kingley.
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Now today's episode is about a topic I gave a talk about at OckCamp, back in October
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and I wanted to revisit this topic with the HPR listener community and that topic is content
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packaging for your Linux distro.
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So when I explained my idea of content packaging at OckCamp I wasn't entirely sure it was
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as well understood as it could have been, I think that was a failing on my part and I'd
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like to try again to explain the idea behind content packaging.
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So all the points I want to raise now are related to Ubuntu but the principles apply
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equally to almost any other distro.
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So what is content packaging?
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So content packaging is the process by which content and by content I'm thinking about
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things like video, music, e-books and artwork are packaged, allowing that content to be installed
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using the distro's mechanism for installing software.
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This sort of raises content at the same level as applications.
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So the question is why bother packaging your content for your distro and it's a good
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question because you could just pop your content onto a web server or pop it onto bits
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or something but I think it gives us a number of advantages.
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So for the producer packaging your content for your distro provides a safety net for your
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content so if your site falls off the net or you stop paying your bills or for whatever
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reason your website falls over, that's okay because the content still exists in the distro.
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It also provides a packaging platform to push your content forward.
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Mark Shuttleworth has said that he wants to get 200 million users on Ubuntu next four
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years and maybe three years now.
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All your content would be automatically available to those users.
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You can update your content and you can push updates out through the standard update process.
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So if you've written a book and you think it's great but you get some bug reports from
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people saying you've got a few spelling mistakes or a few grammatical errors, that's okay
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because you can push the updates out to everybody who's downloaded the package and just
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increment the version, just increase it, push the new version of the book out, everyone
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gets the vixies, everyone's happy.
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It's a potential revenue stream for producers as well.
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The software sender now allows you to sell content, sell games and that same sale mechanism
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could be used to provide a revenue stream for people who can't produce content.
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You can use it to distribute your content in a continuous manner through the update system
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we talked about earlier.
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This is ideal for cereals.
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So if you're recording an audio book chapter by chapter, ideal, you can push each chapter
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out as an update.
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For the consumer, content is easy to consume, it's the same mechanism we use for store applications
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but we just use it to install content.
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Content also becomes discoverable because all of the packages are indexed.
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You may well find content that you didn't know existed by searching for things.
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So the example I've got for that is I packaged up all the podcast episodes for Linux reality.
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So if you go to Linux reality.com, there's a placeholder site saying that all the audio
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recordings for it are available on archive.org, which is great, except none of the tags
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or none of the index information goes with that recordings or we get this 100 MP3 files.
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What I did was package that for Ubuntu in a PPA.
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Then when I search for things like other DNS mask, yes, it shows me that I can store DNS
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mask and repository, but it also shows me that I can download episode 13 of Linux reality
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where they were discussing DNS mask.
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Content is safe to go for the release process for Ubuntu, accuracy and licenses are checked.
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We can't use the system to push copyright material out now and we wouldn't be able to do
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that with content.
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And content could be rolled into a distribution, making it part of the DVD or CD.
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So if you're a university and you want to roll out desktops with copies of Shakespeare
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or copies of literature on them, you totally can.
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And your students can take that CD home, put it on their machine and have the same experience
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at home as they would have at university or college or weather.
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So in a distribution, content offers an opportunity to compete against other distros.
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In the same way they couldn't do with applications or support or services.
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So it's another mechanism by which Ubuntu or Fedora or OpenSUSA or whatever your distro
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might be can differentiate itself from the other distros.
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As said earlier, content can be sold and software centre offers support for selling content,
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but also provides a certain financial benefit to those distros.
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And when distros start supporting more and more hardware devices, I'm thinking here about
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Ubuntu and perhaps tablets, then content consumption is going to become more and more important
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because you're not going to be able to necessarily create the content on a tablet if you get
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that content safely and securely and legally, it's much better for you.
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So I think that I've broken this down and I've identified some benefits for both for
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the producer, the consumer and the distribution.
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What I'd like to do is to explore these further with the community.
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So if I've said something during this podcast and you thought, yeah, it's not a bad idea
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and it intrigued you or you're interested in it or perhaps you write books, perhaps you
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write tutorials, perhaps you do screencasts, perhaps you do podcasts recordings like this.
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If the idea of taking content and putting it into a distro making it easy for people
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to get hold of is interesting.
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And what I've done is create a content packaging team and launch pad for Ubuntu.
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So if you're interested, join a team.
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It's open membership, just come and join up.
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Take part in the poll, it'll be a poll on there until the end of the year, asking whether
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or not content packaging is a good idea and you can find me on my website, titaniumbunker.com
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or you can mail me, micatitaniumbunker.com, and perhaps we can have a discussion about
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the relative pros and cons for packaging content for distros.
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Thanks a lot.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio, or Hacker Public Radio does our own.
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