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Ian Murdock On 'Pure' Vs. 'Commercial' Debian
Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian.
The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would.
Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "
The Storm install holds your hand, which is a good thing for mere mortals.
2) Because of the X configuration module. It is an X application, which is nice. It doesn't suffer fools gladly, which is bad. If you get something wrong, you are out of luck. Maybe you can run it again after the install has completed in a broken manner.
The Storm X configuration lets you try, try again until you figure things out.
3) Because Debian comes with the lousy MBR program that sits on top of LILO. My laptop is intended to dual boot between Win98 (I get $$$ from some clients for consulting there :) and Linux. Let's just call MBR 'unfriendly' and not call names.
Storm uses LILO straight, except for a graphical options selector ("Linux or Windows"). I don't understand why Debian complains so much about trying to set my root as hda6 (it uses MBR and hda3) and Storm thinks it to be just fine.
4) Because Debian uses xdm for X-based logins (assuming you didn't screw up the install!). Not nice like gdm like Storm does.
5) Because Storm comes with reasonable versions of KDE and Gnome, already configured within gdm.
6) Because Storm comes with Storm Package Manager, a friendlier version of dselect capability. With dselect I've managed to screw up things, or not be able to prevent an installation of what I didn't want. Call it user error, but I don't make those errors or have those problems with SPM.
All that being said, one of the first things I do with the Storm distro is to install the Debian 2.2.17 kernel from potato because the 2.2.16 Storm kernel doesn't support APM (grr...).
First, my rant about windows (hehe, this is bound to get me some carma ;-)
What's your best thing to test and compare operating systems? mine, as stupid as it may sound is to put it on a laptop and check what happens:
The more the system is processor hungry, the shorter the battery life and/or the warmer the power suply.
Agree with me or not, this is my opinion. I don't have all the figures, but bear with me.
Win 2000 on a tecra 8100 (tosh) is a dooggggggggg. I thought the power supply was going to melt! Deleted it straight away to install win98 on it and it was much better. If you change in your system.ini the shell to read:
it's slightly better. YMMV.Compare win to linux (Y-A silly comparison, and still on my laptop) The computer requirements are always low, unless you are hammering the computer with a specific task (running vim won't, starting solving some equation systems will).
Also, be careful what widgetset you're using... like, try pressing on something in xv and keep pressing: mhhh... where did this 100% CPU coming from?
Finally, just to get back in the subject of debian
I'm running debian and upgrading the kernel the debian way is as difficult as
(from somewhere in the debian docs)What Debian needs is not a prettier install (or maybe it does) it's an automatic one (... oh wait!)
Also, we-need-a-better-dselect! (oh, wait again!) Actually, looking at the state of aptitude, people may do just fine with dselect and apt-get... that's why it hasn't been upgraded (I guess) in a lonnng time
I think debian is great, linux is cool especially on a laptop and that when it comes to windows, yeah YMMV! If you like it and can do anything you like/want in it, go for it... mmhhh uhhh and talking about 'doze in good terms on /. is bound to get you flamed anyway ;-)
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"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
Your post is just flamebait. However, the blind RMS and open source bashing on Slashdot has gotten way out of hand, so I feel obligated to respond.
> they're all hardcore Stallmanists
Not true at all. Debian is an Open Source movement, not a specifically Free Software movement. There are plenty of packages in Debian that are non-GPL. But *all* of them must conform to Debian's guidelines, which basically coincide with the Open Source definition. I would say that Debian, as a whole, shares more ideology with ESR than with RMS. How does this make them "Stallmanists"?
> who believe that communism onlt failed because of the oppression of evil American capitalism.
Blatent troll here. I follow Debian, and I have never seen any discussion that smacks of Communism, just solid software design and openness. Sharing source code is not at all the same thing as sharing material items, let alone *enforced* sharing of material items. If you honestly believe the sharing nature of free software is fundamentally evil, then there is really nothing I can do to reason with you. If you don't want to share your software, don't contribute to open source projects like Debian. But don't deride them for having beliefs.
> Unfortunately this is spoilt by its overeager adherents who are all too willing to bash other distributions for not being as "pure" (a term that brings to mind connotations of eugenics and ethnic cleansing) as they are.
Who are you arguing with? I haven't seen any such comments around here. Debian wants to ensure that their distro is completely open. That does *not* mean that they are attacking anyone else. Does their mere existence threaten you?
And the last point, RMS himself has no problem with businesses. His problem is with closed software. If a business (such as Red Hat) produces and uses Free Software, there is nothing for "Stallmanists" to get upset with. I am on Debian-devel, and I see plenty of support expressed for the Debian spin-offs. I have *yet* to see an attack on corporations basing their distros on Debian.
--Lenny
I think you'll have to take different types of users into account to find an acceptable answer.
The first type of user can be described as the purist. The poweruser who knows Linux inside out and has chosen Debian for exactly that reason. This type of user knows what he wants, and chooses his software for exactly that reason. He/she likes to tinker with it, and loves to spend hours and hours tweaking his system.
For instance: among the readers of this reply there are many people who probably choose Window Maker 'cause they like the way it behaves, that you can configure it to behave in the way that YOU want, etc... there will be many others who choose Enlightenment because it's flashier, etc... We didn't have the window manager discussions for no reason.
The other type of user is the corporate kind. The user here has lots and lots of work to do, and doesn't want to spend hours and hours on installing and then maintaining the OS of his choice. Even though the user might like this, and want to do this, his time is expensive and sparse.
The last type of user is the kind who sees an OS as a tool, he wants to spend as little time on it as possible so he can get on with other tasks, that he finds more important. Take a gamer for instance, he doesn't want to spend hours on installing and tweaking, but wants to get down to playing his games... Or a video editor, who wants to fix up his latest video project. Or a coder...
In conclusion, it is great to have a choice! If there are people who'll choose debian because there's a commercial version available that facilitates setup and management, why not? I think the people that'll choose Debian in stead of RH, because they HAVE the choice, they'll be better off.
4) Because Debian uses xdm for X-based logins (assuming you didn't screw up the install!). Not nice like gdm like Storm does.
You might want try woody together with helix gnome, you will get the nice graphical login from gdm, and you get to apt-get upgrade your GNOME desktop!
5) Because Storm comes with reasonable versions of KDE and Gnome, already configured within gdm.
Ditto, plus you can use KDE2 with woody.
6) Because Storm comes with Storm Package Manager, a friendlier version of dselect capability. With dselect I've managed to screw up things, or not be able to prevent an installation of what I didn't want. Call it user error, but I don't make those errors or have those problems with SPM.
Actually, SPM doesn't buy you much compared to other modern frontends like aptitude (great, but text-based) or gnome-apt (needs some work, but is quite useful). I think many people here will agree with me when I advise you not to use dselect! It is evil, plain and simple.
Notice that most of the perceived advantages of Storm comes from you're comparing it to potato. You might have a different opinion if you try woody.
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Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I would not go for one of the variants not because someone somewhere is making money off of them. That does not bother me. But simply because none of them to date really offers anything to me or I think most Debian users. Most people these days come to Debian kind of how I did start out with something like RH gain some knowledge and skills get pissed off at something look at Debian see the answer (In my case the fact that if you don't buy the RH boxset up2date is broken and that apt is a dream) Now the other distros based on Debian Corel (shudder), Storm frankly I ,and I think most Debian users would agree with me, don't need the pretty install. As far as Ian's new venture goes if he is able to repackage Debian sell it and support and make money doing it more power to him. I will stick with regular Debian for myself but I can also see how this might get it into more server rooms. So to sum up it is not ,for me, about whether one has a person behind it who wants to make money or one is regular Debian it is about which one meets my needs the best and for now regular Debian does very well thanks.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I personally think that it would bring debian to the masses...
Linux users, who are using RedHat, just have a lot of trouble moving on to debian after they have worked on RedHat (ppl might differ on this) but i'm talking of not so geek linux user.
So a commercial debian, which simplifies the installation a bit, and gives the same power of debian to the users would be more than acceptable, and would include one more distro available in the linux arena..
I really like debian. Apt-get is very cool. However, for me, finding support for debian was a bit more difficult than finding support for Redhat. For instance, for 2 days I attempted to get my 3dfx card working with debian linux. Every time I attempted to compile the driver, I would get a bunch of undefined symbol errors. At linux.3dfx.com, they have fancy rpm installations available for specific COMMERCIAL versions of Redhat. I switched to Redhat 6.1 and had the 3dfx card working in about a half hour. I also could not get my sound blaster live working under debian. Same problem as 3dfx, a bunch of undefined symbol errors when compiling. Under Redhat, it compiled and loaded right away. The point is, the more commercial a product gets, the more likely hardware vendors will support that product. I want apt-get for Redhat!
i only fear that progeny has come into the game a little late. i will talk a little about some of the good things progeny will bring to debian. first and foremost they will remove some of the mystisism about using debian. many new linux user's don't use debian due to the more archaic installer, and also because the documentation is harder to come by. progeny will sport an easier install and better hardware detection, which will inturn attract more users. progeny will also provide the latest software from woody, but in a stable form. i imagine the selection of software will probably be similar to the current, but little known, testing version of debian. having the newer software that redhat, mandrake, and other distributions have released will increase interest from users of other distro's that previously would not use debian due to the thought that it is out of date.
what interest me most about progeny though is their linux now (network of worskstations) project. linux now will be a highly scalable implemenation for managing distributed computing enviroments. it will be an out of the box solution for easier system administration. it does this by creating the appearance of a single computer which will actually consist of many. this gives a consist look and feel to both the end user and the administrators. it is supposed to be simple, and highly configurable. something one doesn't often find in the same piece of software... the neatest feature though will be the ability to use process migration to minimize lost cpu cycles, and provide more cpu power.
i am not ready to make the switch to progeny yet, but i will definately keep my eyes open.
Not to be flamebait, but what's the big deal? One of the nice things about open-source operating systems is if you don't like one version, you can use a different one. No matter what happens, some people are going to use the commercial version, and some aren't; that's a given.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
If 32% of people, used to getting something for free, say they are prepared to spend cash on a commercial variant, then doesn't that sounds like good news for the companies involved?
Whether that's good for Open Source, Unix etc.. is a different question, which, I think, might have been discussed sometime before on Slashdot. :-)
As someone who spends an unhealthy amount of time infront of my computer, anybody who can help make that experience more enjoyable for me is going to be my friend - I might even ask my company to pay them for it....