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I had to check what UnitedLinux is... But who the hell wrote that page? It should be in brazilian portuguese (all the PR is in it), but look at the title...

Okay, I'll grant that competition from Linux distributors probably has taken business away from their Unix offerings. (Not that there's a problem with that, it's just the way markets work.) Of course, I'm sure their "we'll sue our customers!" antics didn't help, as the distributors behind such Unix varieties as Solaris, AIX, HP-UX etc. don't seem to be in quite such dire straits.

But let's not forget that a few years back, this SCO was known as Caldera. They were a Linux distributor. They were a founding partner in UnitedLinux. Then they bought Unix -- well, they bought something -- and changed their name to sound like the old SCO (Santa Cruz Operation), and refocused their business on Unix and lawsuits.

Anyone want to bet that if they'd stuck with Caldera Linux as their primary business, they'd be doing a lot better today?

To pull out an old analogy, it's like they started out as an automobile company, and then decided to switch to the buggy-whip business -- and now they're blaming the automobile companies for their business failures.

Wasnt it United Linux? What happened to that?!?? I guess its been dead/stagnant for 3 years now...

Linux had a movement towards a single distribution--it was called UnitedLinux. It died due to lack of interest.

The problem is, when you put companies in the driving seat for a push to a single Linux distribution, you get crap like RPM being made part of the standard. Personally, I'm glad UnitedLinux failed to gain overwhelming momentum, because life's too short to have to deal with RPM.

Hmmm, this smells like UnitedLinux with a newer website. This time around it's the current second-fiddle linux distros, instead of the old ones.

The only marked difference seems to be that unitedlinux mentions 'servers'. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad idea, but for some reason UnitedLinux fizzled, with the last PR 2 years ago. So what's different this time?

This guy oviousely hasn't done his homework. A great case in point that a "Linux Union" would never come to be is that it has already been tried (at least in one form). United Linux was one effort that was rejected over and over again by the GNU/Linux/OSS community. It was an effort to standardize and it failed horribly (though they called it a success). In fact, every "Linux Geek" I had conversations regarding it was met with sarcasm and disgust at the very thought of it (rightfully so, I believe). Read for yourself...

However, I kind of like the idea of ruling the world...jk :)

If you look at UL's website, they SCO is still members of united linux . how ironic

http://www.unitedlinux.com/en/partners/index.html

I though it was called United Linux.

Damn... That link was supposed to be for UnitedLinux, NOT TurboLinux.

Corrected link.

TurboLinux, SCO/Caldera, SuSE, and Connectiva were once part of an alliance called UnitedLinux, intent on creating a united Linux distribution.

No member of UnitedLinux owned another. They put out one release, and once the litigation started, everything stalled. United is effectively no more--they still technically exist, but all operations are dead.

One thing interesting is that UnitedLinux had one member for each major geographic area except Africa. North America had SCO/Caldera, South America had Connectiva, Europe had SuSE, and Japan had TurboLinux.

Pardon me, but isn't that what UnitedLinux was supposed to do?

look at the united linux page. looks very 'commercial' to me, you can't even find a download link easily, or can you even download it?

while the fedora page has a nice and simple download link.

Is this the page you meant?

The can hardly do that. They were quite proud of it at the time.

Those SCO guys are just playing with the Linux Community, right?

"proprietary, secure software"?

I wonder if anyone remember what was like when Caldera was a Linux distro... What happened with those guys?

"we have also announced the suspension of our own Linux-related activities"

Then what are they doing at UnitedLinux yet?

I've heard some hummors about Microsoft helping SCO at this case. Anyone knows some concrete facts about it?

Novell sold rights to SCO. SCO teamed up with SuSE through United Linux to bring Linux to the masses. Novell buys SCO's United Linux Partner so they can bring Linux to even more of the masses and therefore must be sued for competing with SCO. How can you be a competitor when you're in a partnership?

Nice idea, and I agree wholeheartedly. Too bad it'll never work. "Everything could be so much better, if only they did things Our Way." That's never been thought of before...

One thing I want to know is what the so called SCO Partners, like Conectiva and SuSE (the whole Unitedlinux shebang) is going to do about it.
Conectiva, at least, has issues a very vague stated saying they don't agree with SCO. But they are still working with them.
I'm sure there are many other companies that say they support the Linux comunity and the GPL, and are still working with SCO. Is that supposed to mean something ?

"United" Linux I do not think so :
The four partner companies in UnitedLinux LLC - Conectiva, the SCO Group, SuSE Linux and Turbolinux -- continue to support products powered by UnitedLinux Version 1.0 and customers deploying these products.
No mention about Red Hat...

Why else would they have created United Linux?

For those of you wondering what this whole SCO vs. Linux thing was about, I can finally reveal the truth.

As chairman and CEO of Canopy I've done a lot for the Open Source community. I've promoted investments in companies like Linux Networx, who make the third fastest supercomputer in the world and use Linux to do it. Companies like Lineo the masters of embedded Linux. Also Trolltech producing the incredible QT widget set used by the KDE project. And of course Caldera, producing the finest Linux distribution and pushing forwards the United Linux initiative.

But one shadow lay over my record of achievements. Despite all I had done for the Linux and Open Source communities, I still had never achieved the triumph I most desperately sought. Not once had an article I submitted been accepted by Slashdot :(

I'm sure my fellow Slashdotters can understand how this gnawed away at my soul.

Together with Darl McBride and David Boies I hatched a master plan, to achieve my dream of an accepted Slashdot article or to destroy Linux trying.

Caldera would purchase IP rights from the Santa Cruz Operation and with funding from Sun and Microsoft would use them as the springboard to launch a devastating legal and PR blitz against Linux. As part of this Darl would write a searing open letter to the Open Source community, drawing responses in return. One of these from Groklaw would give me the opportunity I needed...

As you can see everything has gone exactly to plan. I have my successful Slashdot submission, and I'm sure that looking back on it you can all see it was worth any 'collateral damage' along the way.

Darl, you can call off the dogs now.

God bless you all.

Ralphie

Just in case that SCO ever tries to deny that they never planned on integrating Unix code into their distro of Linux...
I have found an audio file that will prove they did.
Go to the UnitedLinux press page, you'll find This mp3 file of the Teleconference.
from 7:21-7:39 into the sound file, Ransome Love states his intentions...

Just in case that SCO ever tries to deny that they never planned on integrating Unix code into their distro of Linux...
I have found an audio file that will prove they did.
Go to the UnitedLinux press page, you'll find This mp3 file of the Teleconference.
from 7:21-7:39 into the sound file, Ransome Love states his intentions...

You also realize that IBM is a partner with UnitedLinux?

Labeling SuSE as evil because of it's association with UnitedLinux is as wrong as labeling TrollTech as evil because it's association with Canopy Group.

Mandrake is a product of MandrakeSoft.

UnitedLinux is the parent company of SUSE, the European arm which produces SUSE Linux. There is also the Asian arm, TurboLinux, and the South American/Latin arm, Conectiva. Yep, all these major distributions fall under the same parent company. So you're pretty accurate in asserting that there's only a few big players as far as corporations go.

The four partner companies in UnitedLinux LLC - Conectiva, the SCO Group, SuSE Linux and Turbolinux -- continue to support products powered by UnitedLinux Version 1.0 and customers deploying these products.

heh! heh! heh!!!

Anyway, I'm suprised that (...) IBM is going to claim SCO fscked themselves by distributing under the GPL, as a court is obviously going to find that there isn't a way SCO could have known right away. Does every company rigorously scan all their in-house code against all GPL'd code before deciding on distributing it?

Of course I don't know what a judge would decide but... Back when SCO was Caldera, they were promoting their Caldera Linux and actively involved in enhancing the kernel. And SCO is still part of UnitedLinux. Considering all that and the fact that they're in the software and operating system business, I would expect they should damn well know what the GPL license agreement says and means.

Sure, SCO is down in Germany but they are STILL hurting SUSE nonetheless with their broadside attack on linux itself. SUSE should sue in Germany, Mandrake in France, and RedFlag in China(?). Get SCO scrambling to simultaneously defend themselves in independent courts around the world.

Except for the fact that SuSE is part of United Linux, along with Connectiva, TurboLinux, and SCO. Therefore, I doubt that SuSE would sue one of its partners, and as a courtesy, SuSE users probably will get off without being attacked by SCO.

Does the new SCO Linux licensing program imply that UnitedLinux customers are not immune to litigation? I would gather that the other partners are not so happy with such a prospect.

I'd suggest looking into UnitedLinux; heck, even SCO likes it! Evaluate it and see if that's more compatible out of the box with your stuff.

If you want a second opinion, here's some more advice; he also confirms that it's easier to move existing SCO stuff over to UnitedLinux than it would be to switch to RedHat Linux, for example.

Just in case anyone missed this connection: UnitedLinux was founded by four companies, including SCO. Please bear this in mind when making purchasing decisions.

From www.unitedlinux.com:

"The four partner companies in UnitedLinux LLC - Conectiva, the SCO Group, SuSE Linux and Turbolinux"... ... ...

Even stranger than that, is UnitedLinux, which people seem to be forgetting about. If SCO knew that there were IP violations in Linux while they were working on and promoting UnitedLinux, something isn't lining up right.
Also, this was almost certainly an exit stragegy. If you look at there stock price before and after their filing the complaint, its very obvious they wanted to use this to bump up the cost of the company long enough to get bought by IBM to make them go away. Unfortunatly for them, companies started coming out the woodwork to actually fight them.

...This story continues to amaze me...

What continues to amaze me is the following...

Netcraft reports that SCO's own website is running on Linux.

SCO is still apart of UnitedLinux

SCO's own phone number is 1-888-GO-LINUX

They sure have their hands in a lot of Linux for it being so "illegal".

Perhaps they didn't go after SuSE because they are partners along with TurboLinux in the United Linux thingy... and they all want Redhat to join in the worst kind of way. Seriously, IBM represents a big market share in the proprietary Unix space, and that is what SCO is gunning for. If they can get IBM in trouble for contributing to a technology from which they also benefit (Linux) then that is just a bonus.

The UnitedLinux web page lists IBM as Partner Resource and provider of the Software Evaluation Kit.

Isn't SCO presenting two opposing faces on handling IBM, an UnitedLinux face which expects IBM to help make UnitedLinux as marketable as possible and a SCO face which expects IBM to protect the "intellectual property" from the dead joint project?

If SCO is willing to attack IBM for it's "over" contributions to the GNU/Linux system, is any of the other UnitedLinux partners safe from ever being SCO lawsuit targets (Conectiva, SuSE, TurboLinux)?

But surely they wouldn't do anything against their very bestest friends SuSE, Conectiva and TurboLinux ?

After all, they are United, right ?

If Redhat is pushing (or wants to push) the linux community towards more standardisation, why don't they join the unitedlinux effort then ?
If suse, caldera, conectiva and openlinux can put aside their own goals for the sake of profitability errhm standardisation then Redhat should be willing to make this step as well.

Funny... I was just checking out UL (United Linux) earlier today. Seems to be moving up the ranks in popularity at distrowatch.

However, I'm kinda scared about UL. It seems to me like a few of the big players in the linux industry are determining what *should* and should not be. Just check out the UL white paper and count the number of occurrences of "de facto standard".

Personally, I like the distro war. The competition that results just keeps fueling innovation. And in the mean-time just use gentoo.

The real question is, of course, with the Linux Standard Base around, why do we need an additional set of standards, driven by a handful of companies as opposed to an independent organisation? I don't know the answer, but I guess it's a good thing that UnitedLinux claims to be open, in the sense that any Linux distribution that chooses to adhere to their standards can join the group. But will we ever see RedHat become part of UnitedLinux? I have my doubts...

Apart from price, UnitedLinux is introducing new features, such as larger memory support, to differentiate itself from the competition, Hunter said.

Uhh, large memory support is standard in the kernel? Any idea what this /really/ means?

note, that's larger memory support.

According to this whitepaper they are increasing the supported memory size from 1gb to 64gb. Here is a quote from it:
Large memory support
The Linux kernel is ordinarily limited to 1 GB of physical memory on the x86 32-
bit platform, with 4 GB of virtual addressing space. With large memory support,
Linux can take advantage of the Intel Physical Address Extension to support up to

64 GB of physical RAM and the full 4 GB of virtual addressing space per process.
In addition, with AMD x86-64, Linux can enable highly efficient flat 64-bit memory
addressibility for enterprise systems.

UnitedLinux.com has no information about this release however?

From the article:

Apart from price, UnitedLinux is introducing new features, such as larger memory support, to differentiate itself from the competition, Hunter said.

Uhh, large memory support is standard in the kernel? Any idea what this /really/ means?

-- Azaroth

Is Microsoft really the "enemy"? Do the distros need to against this common foe? I don't think so. The OSS movement wasn't started to fight Microsoft, it was started to provide freedom and choice .

Yes, commericial distros have appeared, and their competition is Microsoft (and Sun, and the BSDs, and Apple), but that doesn't mean that the non-comercial distros (a la Debian) need to join in the fight also. They don't have a competition per se because they have no real financial stake in the product. Debian is developed by volunteers and hobbyist who enjoy the work they do. If they didn't get satisfaction from it, they wouldn't be doing it. Do most Debian developers think they are competing with Microsoft? Probably not...

Plus, cooperation between Linux distros is somewhat implicit. Since they are required to provide the source under the GPL, they are already sharing with the community.

I think that the number of distributions is a good thing for the non-comercial distros. As for the commericial distros, well they are already decided to join forces.

I started digging around to find out about different certifications and I was a little annoyed.

From what I understand, the Red Hat exam is the most comprehensive out there. However, I'm not a big Red Hat fan. So I'm stuck between getting certification that screams Red Hat, or getting something that an employer may not care about, or if they do and I get hired, may still put me under the guy with the RHCE.

Living in the D.C. area I will say that certifications definitely count here, and I'd love for the guys at United Linux to come up with some great certifications.

The Jews can't stand to see success unless they own it. They feel they must tear down Red Hat and replace it with a Jew-spawned Linux distro.

I think their distribution will be based on "Red Hat Enterprise Server". here may be some slight tuning for the exact hardware they will be shipping (although it dosn't look anything special) and I dare say the menus and splash screens will be customised, but that's it.

If you look at the product line for Sun ONE software (formally iPlanet), you'll see that most of it is becoming available for Red Hat Linux, which is a good thing but a bit of a set back for those of us hoping for more applications for Uniited Linux, I guess we can keep lobying...

Red Carpet makes all other package management systems look silly, including rpm, and up2date.

In a world like ours with Joe and Bob trying to unify/standardize their linux (United Linux, LSB), and Fred and Sam trying to stabalize theirs (Debian GNU/Linux), users are left to figure out what might be best, safest, easiest to use.

If your a newbie, do yourself a faver and use Ximian Gnome, red-carpet in particular. I use KDE, but still use red-carpet to keep my system up to date when a new security hole needs patching, or to do cool stuff like install ruby.

There is life beyond apt.

Doesn't my hometown have beatiful girls?

Today, four development members - Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux - make up UnitedLinux, but the initiative is open for additional Linux companies to participate.

The author summarizes his article in the following points:

• An RPM-based distribution is risky to upgrade.
  That is usually true, but it's not the usage of RPM that makes it so, but the lack of a strict packaging policy. Applying the Denian policy to a RPM-based distro can make it much easier to upgrade. On the other hand, using .deb without following Debian's policy would make a mess out of it.
• A more complex binary RPM package is often hard, if not impossible to install.
  This affirmation makes no sense at all. If it was correctly packaged for your distribution, it will be as easy to install as any other package. If it was designed for a different distribution, it can also happen with dpkg packages. Please note that the package manager offers a mechanism to deploy binaries, all the rest is policy.
• The incompatibilities between different versions of the RPM Package Manager added anotherl ayer of complexity.
  True. RPM is a mess in the point that it is not an implementation of a design, it is being continually modified in both design and implementation. RPM needs to be stabilized, continuing development should go to a different product.
• The developers are forced to consider differences between distributions and create multiple binary packages.
  Not RPM's fault. It would happen with .deb packages if multiple major distributions used it with conflicting policies.

1. Binary packages are not compatible between distributions, unless they're statically linked and conforming to some kind of packaging standard. Dependency to libraries doesn't mean much: that particular library can be compiled with different options in different distributions. It's not RPM's. Assume that distributions are 100% compatible only because they share a package format is a mistake. Third-party, distribution-agnostic packages should obey a policy shared by all distributions, and that's one of the major points behind UnitedLinux.
2. Allowing multiple version of the same package to be installed isn't a good idea at all. Packages are different in nature, some will allow multiple versions, others won't (e.g. binaries vs. runtime libraries). Doing so only makes the upgrade process harder. Debian simplified it using a good packaging policy. Note also that, even in runtime libraries, you should replace versions that have binary compatibility. If you don't explicitly set a soname in the package name, this information is not available at the upgrade time.
3. Very confuse, non-intuitive pre- and post- install execution order.
4. Transaction processing and dependency resolution is too slow, due to file dependencies. As stated above, file dependencies should not be abused, and that can only be enforced by a policy.
5. Too many unnecessary or confuse packaging features, such as triggers. If you have a good packaging policy, you will never need triggers. Read the librpm sources and you'll find hard-coded dependencies for a number of packages. That's stupid, and a symptom that you've done something very, very wrong and didn't notice it until it was too late because you didn't have a packaging policy.
6. Moving target. Please stop adding features to RPM and modifying existing behaviour, otherwise we'll be always fighting against the package manager while trying to make smooth upgrades happen.
7. Immediate configuration of packages after installation in a multiple-package transaction. Dpkg's deferred configuration is a better strategy.

Its not Microsoft we have to worry about, its United Linux. Even the name suggests 'monopolistic evil'.

Pee Ess
Lighten up its a joke.

Maybe this one deal alone is enough to keep SuSe in business and by extension United Linux.

I wonder when the government of the United states of America will get on the bus.

Yeah, god forbid someone in charge of open source software usage should have to actually build that source in order to evaluate it.