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You've been using Linux since '95 and you can't find a distro's website?

http://www.stampede.org/introduction.php

And while Wikipedia is very useful, it's pretty lame for a longtime Linux user to use that as the yardstick for a distro.

Now, if it didn't appear on Distrowatch, I'd agree that it's obscure.

Please switch permanently to Windows or Mac; you're bringing down our technorep.

SLP is the Stampede Linux Package format. Just slightly more advanced than a slackware .tgz. And I mean just slightly. It was a .tar.bz2 with a struct fwrite()'ed to the end of it. It worked off of a "feature" in tar/bzip2 where it would ignore any data beyond the end of where tar thought the file would end data, so you could extract data from them with just standard tar.
The other cool part about them, was that the final byte in the file told you what version of SLP the package was, and a single fread() call would get all of the metadata extracted. The downside was that none of the fields were varible length, and that I never got around to implementing dependency checking.
All in all, it doesn't much matter, because the Stampede Linux Project is Deader than BSD ;). It was a fun little package format to write, I took over since the v2 packages (we went through a lot of versions). Oh well, enough reminicing(sp) for me.

However, I noticed that all source code was removed from the page of the developer. Does anyone know why the source was pulled? A mirror of the file ExtractStream-0.1.tgz is available at http://www.stampede.org/~skibum/tivo/ I't be a great pity if such an amazing hack were to be lost forever or for development to stop. What I want to know is, was the author threatened by TiVo or some other party? I'm not sure if they'd have any legal ground but it seems very unfair to threaten this man legally for his great hack.

Everything is back up and available. Source, binaries, everything.

http://www.stampede.org/~skibum/tivo/

I just don't get Suse, the company. Their YAST and YAST2 programs are under their own, non-GPL license. I believe the distribution as a whole is under a funny license as well. They refuse to release installation iso's for 7.0 or 7.1 for x86. If you frequent LinuxIso.org you know what I'm talking about. But Suse released "live evaluation" iso's of 7.0 and 7.1. You can install Suse from ftp. You can even download installation iso's for every other arcitechture that they support. But not for x86. It just baffles me.

Linux Central just recently added a Suse 7.0 disc to their Linux Cental CD-Roms selection. But not 7.1. I know I could roll my own and stuff, but the new Redhat, Conectiva, and Debian beckon to come and try them out as well. Rather waste my time messing with getting Linux From Scratch working, than trying to get Suse installed.

I know. The patent answer is "It's business, stupid", but that argument doesn't make much sense when *all* of your competition is offering 'free samples', but you're not. As a dumb American, what's the reason for going with Suse instead of Redhat or Mandrake, or even Storm or Progeny? I just don't get it.

One other thing, if anyone can help me. One of the most annoying things right now for me is the lack of good fonts in web pages under Konq. Do the boxed distros include fonts that aren't included in the download versions? I haven't bought a boxed distro in almost six months and it's about time to get one. I'll definately get one sooner than later if I can get some better fonts.

And finally, I feel the need to pimp some of the very cool distros I've come across. I've haven't been able to try these out yet (doh. got to get a cd burner.) but they do look cool. First, Caldera has released a beta for their upcoming 3.1 workstation release. Their is a review of it at Linux Planet. The coolest transistion distro I've found is Redmond Linux. Tries to focus on the destop and do away with the need for the command line. There is also Demudi. The Debian Multimedia Distribution. The name says it all. Then there's a few of the more hardcore, hacker type distros: Rock Linux, Stampede Linux, and Linux From Scratch. And last, but not least. The most vaporous of them all. Microsoft Linux.

Before I go any further, let me mention that I have zero inside knowledge, of this situation. I can, however, pass along a "suit's" perspective on why this happened. This is how this case would be analyzed in a business school strategy class.

Take a look at About Stampede. The most useful/workable definition of "marketing" is "meeting customer needs". What customer needs does Stampede address? I don't see one. They may have one, but they have not communicated it.

What they do communicate is a laundry list of features. Common mistake techies make: customers do not want features; customers want benefits. So, for example "optimized for Pentium." Who cares? "Ten percent faster"? OK, that would be something... but they only make that claim buried deep inside a bullet point, and the reader is tempted not to believe it. If the benefit of this system is that it is 10-30% faster (not faster than unoptimized, but faster than RedHat), put that at the top of the front page, and demonstrate significant support for the claim. Customers look for a reason to download, and to convince them you have to demonstrate that you believe it. And believe me, if it's really 10-30% faster, people would download it. So, I could go on in detail about all of the other features, but that would be another techie mistake... :) Gotta stay on-message.

RedHat is the de facto linux, and linux is the de facto "free-nix". I'm not defending the wisdom of that, just observing it. Take note, BSD, Stampede, et al: This situation will never change till your platform/technology/distribution-channel convinces customers that it offers benefits that overwhelm the benefit of using the one that everybody else does. And saying, for example a la OpenBSD, "we're more security conscious and therefore more secure" is not enough. Because RedHat+linux+GNU is pretty darn secure anyway. There are tons of em out there, and they're not all hacked every day: they're secure enough. A "customer benefit" must be something (a) unique to a product and (b) that fills a "customer need", i.e. in the case of security, customers need to need more security in order for the feature to be a benefit.

Then, the rest is just noise. Open/free source developers work for the psychic benefit. Where's the fun in working on something that nobody's using? In this atmosphere, normal disagreements are going to explode into "I quit" disagreements because there is nothing else holding the team together. Except the friendship that they've vowed to keep.

Meeting customer needs, this is key. Everything else revolves around marketing.

"Stampede developers past and present are invited to contribute their insight into what caused the rift." As stated in the resignation letter the reason why we left is based on the current administration model of Stampede GNU/Linux. I cannot comment for others beyond that as they all have different feelings and reasons which make them feel the way they do. So the rest of this comment is from my point of view and my feelings. Despite how it may be worded.

For one to be involved in such a project you expect several things. Some of them are legal protection, financial support and a say in how decisions are made. Each one of those issues will be addressed separately in the following:

Legal Protection: Being involved in an Operating System distribution there are concerns that your advice to persons on IRC and elsewhere could damage someones data or files. Although never the goal, it does happen and is inevitable. The user types in the command wrong or misinterperates the advice or suggestion given. I have a brain fart and am not thinking straight and miss a step. . . These are just a few examples of what could happen.

I am not 100% certain about my legal protections if a user damages their system while following my advice. The Stampede Linux Foundation is indeed a Non-Profit Organization in Utah, but I was never shown any proof that it was a Federally recognized non-profit (I believe the technical name is 401-C3 status). Thus I have no legal blanket protecting me from a lawsuit. Although I am a poor college student and they would not get much from doing so (besides a few computers... which would hinder my Free Software development projects) it is still not something I want to see happen to myself or others.

Financial Support: Being so involved in the Stampede GNU/Linux Distribution and other efforts I have been traveling to the Linux World COnference and Expo's in both NYC and SJC (the past 2 anyways) and was also at The Bazaar. My trip to The Bazaar was partially funded by Earthweb, but my trips to LWCE were not funded by anyone but me.

The issue of funding trips for core developers had come up and was never addressed. It is in my opinion that at least some of the cost should have been deferred off onto the distribution. Stampede does have some money (not a lot but enough to do that a few times for several people). Also being the college student I am there is only so much money to go around. I get a lot out of meeting those who use what I work on. I also learn a lot about up-and-coming projects from other groups.

Although I see nothing wrong with the development model we used for a long time for other groups, it did not work for ours. The above issues and others could have been easily resolved in what would seem to be a more 'fair' manner if there was a group of individuals who could vote on such issues.

On April 6 Rob Aagaard attempted to switch Stampede over to a Board of Directors from its current model. Matt Wood was disagreeable to doing such and I didn't like his response. Not to mention the fact that he refused to be at the meeting. This is not to say that I agree with the manner the meeting was conducted, but Matt should have been present to diffuse the situation and discuss the issues with us openly like he says he will. At any rate this situation led me to believe that there would be no change and that action must be taken. Voila, the resignation.

Although I was not the developer to say "Business is Business, Friendship is Friendship", those sentiments are mine exactly. And even more than that I will continue development on tools, utilities and new specifications for which Stampede was working only under a different group which aims towards supporting my efforts. The Marble Horse Free Software Group (MHFSG) is working on a new revision of the Stampede Linux Package format, specifically version 5a. Not to mention a few other projects I am working on. The projects are less Stampede centric as they should be useful to all distributions and homebrewed systems alike. None-the-less Stampede is free to use them and their input will be regarded at the same level as others.

Lastly I would like to thank Stampede for the good times I had with them. I have no hard feelings and would like to continue a good relationship with the people involved. Those who need to contact me know where to find me (IRC: openprojects.net NICK: khemicals).

Regards,

David Burley

former Stampede jack-of-all-trades

try here.

The SLP format is basically a bzip2'd tarball. That tarball has some metadata appended to the end of it for use of the SLP tools (slpi, slpl, etc. etc.). However, that same SLP can be extracted using tar and bzip2. When is the last time you installed a distro without using an installer using only a boot disk which had lilo, tar, bzip2, and a few other utilities.

I can't recall another packageing format (besides Slackware tgz) for which you can do a 'tar Ixvf packagename.slp' to install it if you don't have the special utilities needed for the package format.

For those of you who want to know how to install Stampede GNU/Linux without using the installer check out the manual installation directions as they contain the needed information on how to do so.

> there is no such thing as GNU/Linux
Look here and here to see that GNU/Linux exists.

As for the price of distributions, they seem to want to make some money off it by selling free support and/or a book with the distro. There is nothing wrong with that, but I don't like the impression it gives to new users. (i.e. the impression that linux is expensive just like windoze. (it isn't because you can legally copy it, see below, and because you don't have to buy any more stuff to do useful work.))

Of course, the best way to get into linux is to find a local LUG, since you can ask questions, and get extremely useful info about how to set up linux to work with the local ISPs unfriendly setup. Even better, you can take your computer to a meeting and have some expert hackers work on getting your (random hardware X) supported, etc. Also, you can get someone with a fast 'net connection and a burner to make a CD of the distro of your choice for $2 a CD. (even ones like Stampede, which is available only by download. I don't know if Debian is being sold or not, I heard something about a retail Debian. (and I _don't_ mean Corel's linux.))
#define X(x,y) x##y

Stampede Linux also is optimised for i5/686 chips; there's another distro that produces versions for Pentiums, P2s, P3s, K6s and Athlons, but I forget the name :o(

Cheers,
Tim

I don't know if you guys know about Stampede, but it certainly has seen more progress than I'd ever though possible over this year. Stampede is a distribution built completely from scratch to provide an optimized distribution for not only Intel (with pgcc), but also the Alpha platform. Stampede has progressed rapidly such that a new development version of .90 is out every few weeks.
I'm biased, but what the hell! I vote for Stampede!

------------------------------------------------ ----------------
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...
www.stampede.org

It's sad to think that Corel thought they could get away with this, and hopefully they will rectify the problem promptly. I wonder if we might start seeing dodgy licence terms more often as large corporates try to get in on the Linux bandwagon.

One would think that, in assembling their own distro, Corel would have had at least a few staff members with Linux experience and a familiarity with the GPL. As such, it seems unlikely that this Licence was an honest mistake, although here's hoping i'm wrong.

Until the Licence is changed to a GPL, I think this is one distro that doesn't deserve our support. There are plenty of other distros out there that are willing to play by the rules that need a hand. (Yay Stampede!).

Looks like we might see how well the GPL holds up in court sooner rather than later.

Apologies for my grammar,
hummer

hehe.. these grumpy hackers are probably the same people who screamed and shouted at AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc when they first made their forays into the Internet.... everything has its place in the scheme of things. How else are as many new users going to be introduced to Linux? How else will market penetration on the desktop be successful? Besides, like how people usually "graduate" from AOL and go on to better things like @Home, or DSL, these days the same is likely of fledgeling Linux users "seeing the light" and going with a more powerful distro -- like Stampede or Enoch.

right on :-)

you might also want to check out the .slp format
(Stampede Linux Package format) or perhaps,
Standard Linux Package format? (plug)
anyway .. it's .tgz compatible .. check it out
at stampede.org

This article is very informative and gives a good kick in the pants towards a direction. And it is also reminscent of the same old trash (I'm even unafraid to say FUD) I saw before the DOJ case against Microsoft.

Linux is a morass of arcane text commands, bewildering options and incomprehensible Unix concepts

Linux is not Command Line dependant. In *very* easy instructions that comes with Redhat I removed any command line boot up on my computer at home. Once KDE was installed (is 'rpm -ivh kde*' that hard? If it is the package manager in the control panel is easier!) I only had trouble setting up the menus to handle everything I wanted to do. But that wasn't harder than learning Win95.

the Achilles heel of their open-source software development model -- the need to get cool people to take on uncool tasks. [i.e. make it simple for non geeks]

There is Stampede lite, Simple End User Linux, Corel, and other potentialy good distributions working on just those problems. There is a lot of work being done in this area already.

Installing Linux as many have pointed out can be easier than Windows, and when something goes wrong, it is even easier to fix.

I didn't accept this trash before, and I don't see a reason to accept it now. This is where I draw the FUD line, when they project an image of Linux that is not true. It isn't a cryptic mess of command lines (unless you like it that way.) Non-Geeks won't be abandoned by the community, just by Ivan.

Remember when the community won an award for its support? As far as I know the Linux-Help IRC channel is still an invaluable help line. Maybe we've gotten lax with IBM and other companies promising support? No, it may sound like it until we remeber back that its just a rehashing of fud with the same old answers we've maybe forgotten because we haven't been challenged by them in a long time.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~

Linux is a desktop operating system; ask Linus, or any of your other advocates. What you need is a server operating system.

You mean one of these? Oh, wait... that's Linux. Maybe I was thinking of this one. No, I guess that's Linux too, ain't it?

Actually, all it demonstrates is that Linux 2.0 is slower than 2.2. Which is what everyone's been saying all along.

Like this.

Isn't that one of them arcane UNIX(tm) things? Didn't they go out of style in the 80s? I think something a little more modern is in order.

I just did this, sort of. I started out with Stampede GNU/Linux, installed only the nessesary things, rewrote the initscripts (I like BSD-style), and then compiled the apps I normaly use, and now I have a nice system that I have complete control over and it's not bloated with stuff I never use (like Redhat-systems tend to have). The Stampede package system is quite nice, it somehow make you fell like you have total control over it, you can rip out parts of a package without breaking the package database etc. So my vote goes to Stampede GNU/Linux!

www.stampede.org