Where can i get the tarball of complete ubuntu source code?

[hegde1997]

I wanted to download complete ubuntu source. not just kernel or something but the complete os source code including the gui. Can i get it? if so where?

[sounds]

No, you can't get it. The sources for each part are separate. Which part do you want to get first - stage 1 gcc or a kernel?

[NickJohnson]

Ubuntu is made up of a bunch of different software projects, probably summing up to near a billion lines of code. You can't get it all in one place, and even if you could, it wouldn't help you much.

[hegde1997]

Kernel is same the same linux kernel right? Why i asked like that is that i have seen few OSes which tell that they are ubuntu based distros. so ithought that they got the ubuntu source code and devloped their OSes on that.

Then how do they do it? the so called ubuntu based distros obtain which part of ubuntu to develop the distro?

[Brendan]

Hi,

Kernel is same the same linux kernel right? Why i asked like that is that i have seen few OSes which tell that they are ubuntu based distros. so ithought that they got the ubuntu source code and devloped their OSes on that.

Then how do they do it? the so called ubuntu based distros obtain which part of ubuntu to develop the distro?

Linux is a kernel and nothing more. To make a usable OS you need a lot of other stuff on top of that - things like init scripts, a file system layout, a package manager, software repositories, daemons, etc. "Ubuntu based" probably just means they use similar/same init scripts, similar/same file system layout, similar/same package manager, similar/same software repositories, etc.

Now, let's think about those software repositories. You type "apt-get something" and everything is taken care of for you, right? In reality, for most distributions there's about 10000 packages (probably more for a popular distribution like Ubuntu). For each of those packages, someone is responsible for monitoring the original project, making sure releases actually work reliably (on different architectures), tweaking it to suit the distribution's particulars (file system layout, init scripts, etc), figuring out dependencies and compatibility, packaging it so that it works nicely with the package manager, handling bug reports, etc. If (on average) one person working full time can do all of this for 5 different packages, then you'd looking at about 2000 people working full time just to handle the software repository alone.

It makes a lot of sense for a distribution to "borrow" most of the work done by a different distribution. Instead of having a few thousand people working full time, a "Ubuntu based" distribution could rely on Ubuntu/Canonical to sort most of the mess out and avoid a large amount of hassle. Of course Ubuntu itself is "Debain based", so Ubuntu/Canonical aren't actually doing all of that work on their own either.

Now, if you're smart you'd recognise that this is pure insanity - with many different distributions the total amount of effort expended on all the different packages across all the different software repositories is likely to be extremely large (and if the distributions could be united, we'd probably be able to solve world hunger or something with the time saved).


Cheers,

Brendan

[turdus]

Yes, you can. Ubuntu OS (not confused with Linux, which is only a kernel as Brendan pointed out) is an OpenSource project meaning you have access to all of it's source.
1. First copy all "deb " lines in your apt sources list and replace "deb " with "deb-src ".
2. Do an "apt-get source" for every package that's installed on your Ubuntu box.
3. You'll find all the sources under /usr/src (hell lot of data, be sure you have big enough storage).
If you don't understand any of above steps, you definitely have to do some homework.
Also note that NickJohnson is right, it won't help you much.

[JamesM]

I notice that your forum avatar is the Ubuntu logo with "ManuOS" replacing "ubuntu" and the colouring changed.

Hmm.