Upstream First: Meta's Linux Userspace, meet Linux Distributions

At Meta, even though our Linux fleet is primarily CentOS Stream (on servers) and Fedora (on desktops and laptops), we also need to support Debian and Ubuntu as well.

There are various reasons for this:

Continuous Integration
Our open source projects, and many projects we contribute to, are hosted on GitHub, where the Linux runners run Ubuntu LTS

Software availability

While for very popular software, one can rely on external community members to get them packaged, getting involved ourselves tend to help make our open source projects more widely available, especially as sometimes there are complications due to missing external dependencies, or shortcomings in the build process, which means it takes more work to get these packaged properly

Community involvement

Last but not least, by playing an active role in the development of some key Linux distributions, we have a seat at the table when discussions are being made, which helps us and the community understand each other's needs and priorities and find common areas to work together on.

for use cases ranging from Continuous Integration needs to ensuring our open source projects are accessible to a wider audience.

There are pros and cons to packaging for RPM-based and Debian-based distributions. This talk will discuss the rationale, our experiences working in two very different ecosystems, and lessons learned.

Between the two of them, RPM-based and Debian-based distros account for a significant percentage of the Linux install base, but the major community-oriented distributions, Fedora (which feeds into CentOS Stream and thus RHEL) and Debian (which feeds into Ubuntu and many derivatives) have significant differences in philosophies and working practices.

This talk will discuss our experiences working in these two ecosystems, and some lessons we learned.