Slashdot Mirror
Linux Vendors to Standardize on Single Distribution
Jon James writes "eWeek is reporting that a number of Linux vendors will announce on Thursday that they have agreed to standardize on a single Linux distribution to try and take on Red Hat's dominance in the industry. " The vendors in question are SuSe, Caldera, Conectiva, and Turbolinux. However, as the article also points out - Red Hat has a very well established lead in the corporate market - and Sun's decision to create Yet Another Linux Distribution (Sun Linux! Now With McNealy Vision!) will make the waters even more muddy.
Lucky for Red Hat there are no bigger OS companies around!
just way too many linux distros out there
I've used SuSE for some time, and been happy.
However, many is the time that I wanted a newer version of software than was available from SuSE. An "uber" distribution, compatible with the assorted branded distros catches my interest because it may increase the likelihood of finding new software in rpm form that may actually work on my system.
Worth watching.
My first reaction to this was, "great! Finally someone to take on Red Hat!"
But I have since reconsidered.
Basically, there already is a standard distro. It's called Red Hat. Like it or not, Red Hat is a de facto standard in the all-important workstation and server markets. Mandrake and other popular distros are already based on it. Even Debian's package system is loosely based on the popular and reliable RPM system invented by Red Hat.
I'm all for competition, but it seems to me that we've already dealt with this particular issue.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I hope that they standardize on SuSE and add Turbolinux's clustering capabilities...that would be cool. Caldera blows and personally, I think that they've let SCO die a violent and unnecessary death.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
The number of distributions needed soe pruning anyway. In theory, you could have as many dists as there are Linux users, but in practice it seems the "supportable number" is far less.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Hmm, I wonder which distribution these four will standardize on.
/Me prays its Debian inspired. Perhaps this will put more momentum behind the campaign for destroying the useless (read: Surpassed long ago) RPM standard.
loply.com
McNealy is running it into the ground.
If they can pool the strengths of each distribution into the new one, that will make it stronger.
I think some major consolidation is way overdue for Linux. Of course, new distributions will always appears to fill in the empty spaces.
While all these big corporations are messing around, a lot of us will still keep using Slackware, and Debian. Proof you don't have to be a big corporation to survive in the linux market.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
It should read .."cash in on redhat's dominance"
These companies came in on the wave of redhat
So they wont use rpm then ?
and al along i thoought that linux wasnt about being a megacorporation, great convictions guys!
I want 2D games back.
However, when I think about it, perhaps that makes sense; I'm looking to run a desktop (mostly), whereas I'm presuming that when Linux is used in the corporate environment it is basically only on servers.
Is RedHat really such a good distro for corporate needs, or is it merely that it has a big name so everyone buys it? I always think of RedHat as the distro that's been around forever, even though no one seems to use it (here come the RedHat users to set me straight...) Guess I've been talking to the wrong people.
Corporations never did make good friends to talk to though.
Sun Linux will just be Redhat with a few tweaks, Cobalt already uses SGIs XFS filesystem for example.
Why would any distribution vendor want to ignore all the GPL work done by another.
They will just pick and Choose the extra features they want to add / delete.
This is great. What would be even greater would be if all the Linux vendors could standardize as far as possible on the core distribution. They should compete on the nature of their services.
They will announce ... on thursday. But to take the pleasure out of their announcement, Slashdot pre-announces it on wednesday. There goes their 5 minutes in the spotlight. How inconsiderate!
RedHat's success with businesses is not that their distribution is better than others; - although it's a fine distribution tailored for businesses - it's that they give manager's what they want - support contracts, courses and certificates for employees etc.
Businesses don't like to take risks, they want to see a shiny reliable company selling them a reliable product, instead of "some freeware distribution written by no good hippies in their spare time". RedHat gives them the comfort of that illusion.
When one OS or distribibution is enough, then you might opt for Windows. There is a need for standardisation, standardisation with Unix, for security, for standard Linux. Competition keeps everybody on their toes. With the combination of several distros a lot of duplicate effort will not be done any more. Less duplication of effort is good for all.
There are few details that I don't see being resolved yet..
All those companies mentioned don't give free ISO's just like RedHat (and Debian for that matter, as well as Mandrake) which kind of makes sense - a customer who downloads and uses the downloaded ISO's is one less customer who would like to pay for the distribution (not all of them - but most of them)..
I can understand RedHat point - they don't give a shit about people using Linux on the desktop - their eyes are focused only on the enterprise - thats why you won't see RedHat Advanced server available for free download, and you'll need to pay $800 for it (with the bare 30 days support - installation support) so how they're going to compete with RedHat??
This reminds me the LPI exams (which everyone but RedHat stands behind it) VS. RHCE training/exam - how many people here passed the LPI? how many passed the RHCE? somehow I got the feeling that RHCE is WAY more preffered then LPI..
Hetz (Heunique)
Well.. coming from someone who has had frequent use of the following OS's :
:)
Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP,
Red Hat Linux since Red Hat 5.0,
Silicon Graphics IRIX (6.2 & 6.5),
FreeBSD..
..i think Solaris has to be one of the most ugly and tough to work with distributions of *nix that I have ever seen.. but I guess to those who have used Solaris since day one, it makes perfect sense to them.
Not only that, but it runs soooooo sloooooow... earning the classic nickname of Slowaris
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
No, Solaris doesn't suck. It is a damn good, mature, robust, stable OS tailered for enterprise use. Linux doesn't touch it and probably won't even get close any time soon. However, Sun's first problem (and reason for a Sun Linux distro) is that the price/performance of the low-end Sun/SPARC servers is pretty bad. Sun has been loosing market in the segment to other x86 vendors, and so, they decided to start making x86 servers too. As to why they choose to run Linux instead of Solaris/x86 on those machines is still puzzling. Most likely Sun decided to get a free ride from the hype that surrounds Linux. I can't think of technical reasons why Solaris x86 couldn't be used instead. It's all about the hype.
If somebody is wondering what LSB is, well no, its not the pre-precursor of LSD; it is the Linux Standard Base
cheers
rmstar
Sure Red Hat is a nice distro and all, especially for new linux users. But from my experience I really see slackware as more dominant among Linux users than Red Hat. Perhaps it should be considered in the running of the "Big Distros"
Gentoo Linux my friends...less is more!
-brain
Linux Magazine has an article on why Debian would fill in a good role as 'arbitrator' amongst the distributions and why HP chose to use Debian as their standard distro.
A distro free from vendor squabbling and influence, that's exactly what the Linux 'standard' should be. Now all we need to do is get some LSB action going.
Why are they bothering to come up with a single uber-distro when Debian provides a solid foundation for this kind of work? If I were a Linux distributor, and was starting to realize that I can make money selling services and a name, why would I waste all this money making up yet another installer - hell, I'd hire 10 guys, slap a commercial release on top of Debian every 6 months, and let the community do the heavy lifting - all the while earning open source karma for supporting Debian.
For great Linux! All your distro are belong to us!
OMG!! the world is ending! Seriously, Whgen i read this, I didn't beleive it...can the different vendors unite? i doubt they'll ever agree what features and things to include in this one distro...watch it turn into a flame war!
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
I read about this last night, and had mixed feelings. It's certainly overdue in the market - there definitely needs to be simpler 'cross-distribution' compatibility for installing packages. Yes compiling from source is generally compatible, but not everyone wants to do that, nor should they have to. It's a waste of someone's time to do that in many cases.
I think it may be too little, too late, however. This should have been done over a year ago, and there still seems to be too little information on the specifics of the deal(s). Figure it'll take *months* before this has any impact on the installed base out there, it'll be a miracle if this actually 'saves' any of these distros from further marginalization.
Someone else mentioned Redhat feeds into an 'illusion' that businesses want - 'shiny support', etc. It's no illusion. It may cost money, but damn it - if someone in a business needs support for something (driver doesn't work, upgrade broke, whatever) having a *real person* to call who's been trained on that particular distro is invaluable. Yes, it may cost $200. Yes, you 1337 geeks out there could hang around in IRC for a few hours waiting to get an answer. *Businesses* can't afford to do that. Furthermore, they shouldn't have to put up with those channels of support (not reliable enough - quality of support is hit and miss, and they can't afford to wait for the 'hit' all the time). Whether or not they ever need it ('linux is so stable!') the fact that it's there is more than comfort enough to persuade people to go the Redhat route.
Furthermore, the Redhat certification and training and all the other secondary services simply help to bolster their lead in the mindshare of the business market. Maybe it's just that they had more cash to play with after their IPO - if so, they've put it to good use.
creation science book
I thought the whole point of Linux was that it was the same OS and any app written for Linux should run on all Linux distros. We all know this isn't true. Stuff is in different places in different distros, different libraries are included and at different version levels. Even though the kernels may be at the same version, an app written for Red Hat, may not work on SuSE.
Combining the other distros into one uber-distro makes some sense, but it seems that we really have the same old thing all over again. Has anyone ever heard of OSF/1? It was supposed to be a common Unix "distro". One Unix distro that all the vendors would support and could customize to make theirs stand out, but still be compatible with the others.
Yeah, right. It isn't possible and it will fail miserably.
"One distro to rule them all,
One distro to find them,
One distro to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.
In the land of Linux where the shadow lies"
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I can't think of technical reasons why Solaris x86 couldn't be used instead. It's all about the hype.
Maybe because there are next to no device drivers for solaris, and previous X86 versions have suffered from laughably slow performance?
It may be a decent enough OS for huge multiprocessor enterprise level servers, but it's an absolute slug on a desktop or the average web server (single or Dual P3/P4/Athlon, 512-1GB RAM etc). I've ever used it on Ultra 10s and its abysmal (and UGLY) performance on its native hardware didn't exactly have me running to the store to pick up Solaris for my PC! The standard install misses most of the nice touches of a base level linux install, and most executables seem braindead for anyone used to the gnu derivatives. Nice GUI daemon/service config tools? Non-existant.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
This should make companies like IBM that officially support 3 or 4 different Linux versions happy. This should consolidate things and make life a little easier.
OTOH, is this going to be like the OPEC of Linux? They "standardize" on one distribution in public, claiming to fight the common enemy but in private they still stab each other in the back and snipe at each other?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
All those companies mentioned don't give free ISO's just like RedHat (and Debian for that matter, ...)
No free ISOs for Debian? There's some right here!
So, will the SEC have to step in an approve this?
Seriously, though. Would any of us be happy if Volvo, Volkswagon, Ford, Hyundai, and Chrysler decided to "standardize" their automobiles to compete with one big vendor? I for one would say no. It would make some innovative new idea, like say a zero emmissions fuel cell car, that much more unlike the standard. New ideas will seem more outrageous if there's such a baseline from which to deviate.
I use Red Hat at home an SuSE at work and I frankly don't see any technical reasons why Red Hat has such a such market dominance here in North America. As a matter of fact, my home Red Hat box is less stable that all my work SuSE boxen, though this is probably because I am always installing weird experimental shit on my home box and they frown on experimenting with the corporate mail and web servers at work for some strange reason.
The main problem I have with running two distros is remembering which utility to use on which box; I occasionally look for rc.config on my home box or try to find up2date on my work machines.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
I think what we are starting to see, and what this development may reinforce, is certain distros becoming dominant in certain niches. We have:
Now I have to admit, I don't know where SuSE fits in here (I hear it has a strong German following). Perhaps there's another category: nice graphical desktops for users who want control.
Anyway I'm sure I had a point when I started rambling but it's 1am and I had no coffee yesterday...
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
If they're going to standardardise on one distribution, why don't they standardise on Redhat? No, Seriously.
Something needs to be done, because the Linux community is allowing itself to get slipped into the Microsoft mindset. With the LSB in place, there should be none of this business of "targetting a distribution" or other Microsoft-like lock-in nonsense.
1: The LSB needs to be in place.
2: All major distributions need to adhere to it, and the minor ones should too, for that matter.
3: Education is key, that LSB-compliance is the real crux of the matter, not some specific distribution.
4: Packaged software should state its requirements relative to the LSB. LSB+foolib+barlib, etc. Some distributions may choose to distinguish themselves by including foolib and/or barlib out of the box. The ISV should also have copies/pointers for foolib and barlib on their web site.
5: Distributions are good. More are better, as long as LSB can solve the interoperability and installation problems.
I'm disappointed to see LSB mentioned only once as of my writing this post.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have bad feelings when I read about the infighting between the various distributions. While it's certainly positive that SuSE, Caldera etc are standardizing their distribution, RedHat's recent competitive upgrades move and the bickering amongst the vendors reminds me only too well of the Unix infighting and splitting in the 70's and 80's. I worry that in the end the winner will once again be Microsoft.
If SuSe get their disto synched with the LSB (a few changes in the locations of configuration files) then they will have the strongest distribution. The SuSe installer totally rocks.
Actually not, they are just adapting to a new form of existance. Targeting geeks it was simple, every geek has it's own needs and would like it's own distribution.
Targeting masses actualy defines being more organized and more uniform. This way linux development actualy speeds up, what's one of the main things of this merging.
Setting one standard and deploying jobs across few companys that had to do all the work untill now. Speed is increasing, uniforming gets better and most importantly. There is a higher organisation level
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Since when was the debian packaging system based on RPM? It may be similar to RPM, but it isn't RPM.
And as for De Facto standards, one only has to look at IBM and Microsoft and the state the computer industry is in today. Fair competition is the Best Way(TM) to keep the market in check. We wouldn't want Red Hat to become the M$ of the Linux and UNIX world, now,would we?
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Stay true to GNU go Debian!
Later,
Phil
Show me Caldera's certification program. Show me Mandrake's certification program. I won't even bother with the other two. Caldera's certification is primarily around certifying that your apps and hardware work with their software. The 'education' part is pitched as standard linux admin stuff, nothing specific to caldera. Hardly inspiring, but in 2002, would someone spend money on Caldera-specific training? Probably not.
creation science book
It is official; Netcraft confirms: some variations of Linux are dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered some variations of Linux community when IDC confirmed that some variations of Linux's market share have dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that some variations of Linux have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. some variations of Linux are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict some variations of Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: some variations of Linux face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for some variations of Linux because some variations of Linux are dying. Things are looking very bad for some variations of Linux. As many of us are already aware, some variations of Linux continue to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Freesome variation of Linux is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Freesome variation of Linux developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Freesome variation of Linux is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Opensome variation of Linux leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Opensome variation of Linux. How many users of Netsome variation of Linux are there? Let's see. The number of Opensome variation of Linux versus Netsome variation of Linux posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Netsome variation of Linux users. some variation of Linux/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Netsome variation of Linux posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of some variation of Linux/OS. A recent article put Freesome variation of Linux at about 80 percent of the some variations of Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Freesome variation of Linux users. This is consistent with the number of Freesome variation of Linux Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Freesome variation of Linux went out of business and was taken over by DBI who sell another troubled OS. Now DBI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that some variations of Linux have steadily declined in market share. some variations of Linux are very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If some variations of Linux are to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. some variations of Linux continue to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, some variations of Linux are dead.
Fact: some variations of Linux are dying
"You're just scared like a little white pussy. I'll fuck you till you love me, you faggot!"
I don't see technical reasons behind this. In fact, most of the article goes on about market share, revenue, strategy etc., but it remains unclear to me how the vendors are going to tackle the technical issues and what pieces from which distributions will be retained to make this patched-up Linux distro.
This isnt as bg a deal as it seems, and yet it is also a a bigger deal.
1. So some companies that make a Linux distro are changing strategies, maybe to better compete with the other(s). In the end, linux will be better.
2. The big deal is, that this is possible, and even routine. Can you imagine anything even remotely similar in the Windows world?
Bottom line: red hat rocks. I've been in two different university settings recently and both use standardized redhat on all their machines (at least in the departments I've been in). Even on the sparcs. The solaris to linux switch really is easier with redhat.
Plus, it's a snap to make custom install discs to get the machines and networks setup right. I'm not saying that SUSE or Mandrake are bad choices if you've got a machine at home that you want to put Mozilla on and surf the web with a decent desktop, but for large networked systems, I'd have to recommend redhat.
Except this, we need the different flavours that the different distros provide. It is a strength that GNU/Linux comes in many flavours - but if RedHat is a different OS than TurboLinux, it has gone too far. Then there is no benefit from having GNU/Linux experience - you have to have specialized RedHat og TurboLinux experience.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
... that an idea like this (which was badly needed) may help to progress distros and releases. This is what the Linux community has needed for way too long to finally get Linux on more desktops.
-Cnik
Since we all know exactly what is in everyone's best interest, this is exactly what should happen.
We need a software company/product that everyone can use. And once we have a product everyone can use, we need to make everyone use it.
You know, there really aren't that many different needs in the computer industry; add subtract, multiply divide, write to disk. We only need one product out there. This one product will meet everyone's needs, from the largest corporation to grandma, from the router to the desktop.
When consumers have a choice, it only muddies their thinking. We can't have that, and I think this is the greatest news ever.
And to think the corporate world is running around without any standardization today. Why hasn't anyone thought about making this one, ubiquitous product, and putting it on everyone's desktop yet?
Personally, I've never understood the holy war of distros. Granted, I'm a relative newbie, but still... whenever I install a new distro, the first thing I do is remove about a quarter of the packages and recompile stuff from new source, including (especially) the kernel. Once I do this, I hardly consider it the original distro anymore, it's now just a conglomeration of packages.
All that being said, I really want to try gentoo linux soon as it seems to be most inline with my philosophy.
It all sounds just a bit to much like a merger where no one wants to spend any money, and no one wants to let someone else be a foot above them in anyway. (I'm CEO and want to stay CEO!?) As well as the geographical issues.
All in all, its got as much chance of losing customers/users as it does in gaining them, depending on how in the end they actually pull things off.
In some ways, I do hope they succeed, on the other, I hope they dont end up standadizing on none standard things akin to RedHat in some respects.
Guess its a 'wait and see whats happens in the next few days' situation for now..
I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... But it was just someone with a flashlight bringing more work.
Sorry, I haven't heard of a small company called IBM, nor of one called Sun Microsystems. Wouldn't they kinda be infringing the names of the quite large hardware companies with the same names? I mean, that would be even worse than "McDowell's" in Eddie Murphy's "Coming to America"!
standardize on a single Linux distribution to try and take on Red Hat's dominance
So instead of taking market share from Windows, the idea is to take it from Red Hat?
Doesn't this strike anyone else as just a wee bit stupid? After all, the strenght of linux is choice and now the goal is to limit that choice.
/me shakes head
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I heard about this a few weeks ago from a friend within one of these companies, who also asked me not to post it until it was announced (ahem!)
Apparently, the initiative has come from IBM here, they're going to call in Universal Business Linux (UBL - quite unfortunate) Word is that SuSE will produce the distro for the other three companies, although at the time, Connectiva weren't in on it.
Basically, what's in it for IBM is this: It reduces the number of distros they have to support to two: Red Hat and UBL
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
It can't be ease of use, that is not the point of UNIX-like operating systems. Some distros may get close to the ease of use of Windows, but is that really the primary goal of any distribution?
It can't be the prettiness of the desktop. Window managers are not tied to the distributions, although some prefer prefer certain desktop suites. However you look at it, there is a UNIX that takes the desktop beauty pageant hands down: Mac OS X.
Maybe you judge "best" by how much control you have over the operating system... does that require working with source in all cases, or is fine-grained package management good enough? They all give you incredibly control over the operating system, differences in the layout of /etc aside.
I could keep on going, but I'm sure you get the point. How much "better" a distribution is has to be looked at very subjectively and therefore the judgement lacks meaning. As long as a distro works, installs, is reliable, and essentially does what it claims to do, you have to give it the stamp of approval as a good distribution. Past that, everything is a matter of opinion.
Perhaps, for business, Red Hat simple is the best. Personally, that is the conclusion I've come to. I love Mandrake, prefer it, more or less, to Red Hat, however I've chosen Red Hat for the servers I build (and I build servers both for personal projects and for use by the large telecommunications company I work for) and for workstations. My workstation at the office is Red Hat, while at home I use Mandrake.
Each has their benefits. I've played with Debian, Storm Linux, Progeny (i.e., Debian+), Gentoo, and so on. Every distribution has something of value, some only as learning tools.
If we want to get very Darwin about the whole thing, then Red Hat is obviously the fittest distro. Its not the first, but it is the largest, most widely used, and has all but wiped out older "species" like Slackware, IMO.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
You know, I could care less if there are 5 or 5000 Linux distributions out there. But I'm really getting tired of the lack of binary compatability between distributions. And when I say that, I mean lack of binary compatability all the way from libc up to the desktop environment. I can compile simple command line apps and have it run on most distributions, but the second I start using extra libraries (like GTK+) I start running into compatability problems between distros.
/usr/lib and you'll be okay" either!
Distro A has the library, but it's a different filename since it's a newer version than the one in Distro B. Bah! The best tech that MS stole was COM objects. Just cram all the necessary versions into a single file, and let the runtime linker figure it out on the fly.
Well, I'm not trying to say that we need that sort of extra functionality/overhead, but I do want to say that Linux will take off like a shot at soon as developers have a steady target to aim for. The sooner all the major distros decide on a list of libraries that make up a standard linux distribution, the sooner I'll be able to start telling my friends and family that they should switch.
RPM, apt, deb, and even slack's TGZ all have the same problem. The application/library is compiled and packaged for a single version of a single distribution. Sometimes you can take them to another version or distro and it will work, but most often not. With a little fussing, you can usually put together some symlinks on a few libs that will at least get the app to run, but certain features won't work correctly, or the app will crash because a certain interface isn't exposed by this version of a lib. Even if it did run 100% correctly after you made the necessary symlinks, that still isn't good enough, since you had to manually manipulate the system in order to get the app to run. I don't tell my family to run regedit when they can't get an item out of the "Uninstall Application" menu (I fix it for them next time I'm over there), so I'm not going to tell them to "Just make a few symlinks in
Man this continual problem pisses me off...
It's so basic that I was sure that it would have been worked out by now. I've looked and looked and found nothing. The Linux Standard Base doesn't even come close to defining everything that is necessary for binary compatability between distros, and google hasn't given me any other good leads.
If I'm missing the big red neon sign that points to the solution, then please do share it with me. But if I simply haven't found it because it doesn't exist, then we should defenitely evaluate the value that this would add to Linux, and seriously consider its immediate implementation.
Linux isn't ABOUT anyting, accept running your computer in concert with its peripherals.
Linus has said several times that he isn't some idealist promoting some grand utopia. It was a stupid learning project. His use of BitKeeper should have slapped some sense into you.
Red Hat has ONLY been about money from day one. They have been capitalising on the free marketing that is the rabid evangalism that so many beatnick youth lend to it. SuSE is no different. Caldera bought DR-Dos just to make money on a law suit, so what does that tell you about them.
Linux companies don't exist to magically whip up VC to pay the volunteers, and then go bankrupt. They exist to make a profit. And if you are going to make a profit, you need to constantly work on increasing that profit, or you slowly die.
Not to mention that this VC doesn't come from some grand benefactor but from a lot of savvy business people that have no clue what Linux is, just what a profit is. As soon as you accept their money, you have already sold your ideals down the toilet.
Linux isn't about anything.
Linux companies are about maximising profits while minimizing production (using other peoples IP) costs.
Besides getting your base install done, and everything like printing, fonts, etc., working nicely, it's a royal pain installing new apps that require X,Y,Z versions of libs X,Y,Z, which require versions A,B,C of libs Q,R,S, which require versions H,I,J of libs D,E,F... ad infinitum, which, when you install them, happen to break other things. A nice, standard lib control system would make things a lot better, IMHO.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
More alternative options is good.
More competition is good.
Monopoly is bad.
[alk]
And thus, CowboyNeal Linux was born.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
Please mod the parent down. Mandrake was at least originally based on Redhat, as you can see from the first story on slashdot.
*cough* DEBIAN *cough*
You need local Linux support person as much as you need support for your MS, Novell, Cisco etc.. products. None of these products monitor, fix, and patch themselves to the extent they are untouchable. If your local Linux support person does not know how to use IRC or Google then you might want to look for another one. If you do not have a Linux person, or another tech less experienced in Unix is handling the problems, $200 a call may be a good deal and much needed.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Want FreeBSD? Get it from the FreeBSD website. That's the only distro there is. Sure, people make modified distros for special use - Microsoft probably isn't using the stock distro for their Hotmail servers - but in general, all the distros are based on the same core.
The GNU/HURD kernel is supposed to be released Real Soon Now (maybe in the next 5 years, then). So whenever it is released, that means that GNU will, for the first time, offer a complete self-distributed GNU System. Undoubtedly, it will be based on Debian; so, quite possibly, when the Hurd is released, GNU might merge with Debian.
Once that happens, there will finally be a standard GNU System, and all vendors can standardize on it.RedHat can distribute a version that comes with extensive support and pre-loaded database software. Mandrake can distribute a version that by default installs 10x too much programs. Conectiva can distribute a version that by default is in Spanish/Portuguese. Even Gentoo can distribute a version that by default uses all source-debs instead of the standard binary ones.
And all of those distributions will support the same apt-get, have the same version of libraries, and put files in the same places.
No wonder there's a huge fragmentation in the Linux world - it's all a problem of excessive number of libraries.
Just look at this, they've done a foolib and a barlib - c'mon guys, everybody knows that foo.c and bar.c are just example names, why create a lib for each of them?
Next thing you know and they'le come up with a helloworldlib or maybe put a web site on example.org
As long as projects keep forking and drifting apart opensource will not be a _serious_ contender.
As a solution I propose a proletariat, and RMS should be the dictator, for he has capacity for all the quarrelling. Everyone should sign over their licences to this consortium, and we would finally move in a single direction.
(I know, it has been tried in the past and it never worked!)
Anyone who has messed with Caldera, SuSE and Turbolinux knows that they do NOT produce a 100% redistributable version of their commercial offerings. In addition to now allow redistribution of their CDs, most either omit major packages, or limit usage to "personal." As of 8.0, SuSE has gotten even more restrictive no longer offering free downloads of many components. This alone has turned off this user from considering their software.
Conectiva, on the otherhand, has gained a lot of notariety in their efforts. The two biggest being the use of Apt for RPM, and one of their lead developers managing a Linux kernel branch alongside Alan Cox and only one other. I have not used their distro, and DistroWatch.COM does not differentiate between "free download" and "100% redistributable" so I cannot tell if they maintain the same GPL-anal approach as RedHat. For now, I'll assume so (please let me know if otherwise?).
So, for this strategy to work, assuming the rumor is true, I make the following 2 recommendations to the resulting conglomerate:
These vendors don't have to stop value-adding to their distros. In fact, this approach could still allow them to do so. But they really need to build some mindshare with those of us who like RedHat and Debian because of their 100% GPL-focus. Release a 100% Redistributable CD set which they all agree on. This has kept me from using Caldera, SuSE and Turbolinux over the years.
Then each can include their own CD #1 binary, "alternate," non-redistributable boot CD in their commercial, boxed sets so the value-added stuff can be installed (in addition to other, non-redistributable CDs). The idea is that the install packages should be the same for both the freely redistributable and commercial non-redistributable versions, even if the default/base freely redistributable ones are replaced by those in the commercial, non-redistributable CD(s). Simple, no?
This will get the masses to join them. If the new conglomerate can build a new, 3rd party software repository for Apt like Debian has for Deb, this would get me to use this new distro. And they would quickly find that a number of 3rd party free software / open source projects would make sure their packages are built for and distributed in this new RPM-Apt repository. God knows I'd be sold in a heartbeat, assuming the distro quality is as good as RedHat. With SuSE in the mix, I don't see this being an issue, since I have used their kernels before (and trust them as much as RedHat).
Right now I mix a custom distro (usually installed via NFS so I don't have to build CDs that are outdated quickly) use RedHat with Ximian and FreshRPMS added. Ximian is Ximian, and I don't forsee not using their Gnome set (this new "standard" distro will make it easy for them to support). FreshRPMS is RedHat-focused and uses RPM-Apt, but it is far from "comprehensive" with only about 50 packages or so. This is a far cry from Debian's 10,000+ Going to RPMfind or the older contribs is just not viable, and I don't bother much anymore. But I don't have nearly the package selection as Debian with RedHat and this frustrates me since I will not use Debian for other reasons (I'm not going to expand on them here, just note I said *I* will not use Debian -- not that Debian is "bad," not at all).
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
No doubt these guys have technical expertise comparable to Red Hat's. Product, even combined one, is also similar, based on the same components. And that's it. Not enough for a big game - can't be won on technical merrits alone.
Red Hat is different. They (well, Bob Young may be more accurate) figured this long time ago and have been building the brand name, portfolio of products and services and awesome team of people. Red Hat now has all that. Their product kicks ass from Wall St. all the way down to my laptop, they've got name recognized all over the world, second ranked Linux authority and many more of the finest developers work for them, Red Hat's support is top of the shelf, their training program is ranked 1st in the world, their cash account is very healthy and they are still one of the greatest OSS contributors.
Oh yes, almost forgot - they're some 7 years ahead.
Hats down to them.
I don't know how typical I am, but I'm basically a non-coder (i.e. I "code" in very industry-specific languages but couldn't C++ my way out of a hardcopy) who has gradually gotten po'd_w/_M$ over the years. I know how to install a driver, which makes me a guru to my co-workers, and I've always wanted to recommend Linux to them, but until this last year or so I couldn't honestly recommend it to any of them. I still can't recommend it to most, but there's three of us at work now!
I want to use my computer for the most part, and all I really ask of a Linux distro is that a) I can do pretty much everything I do under Windows, which is nothing exotic, b) I don't have to spend a whole lot of time learning new ways to do the same thing I did before, and c) I don't have to study up for weeks before installing.
Red Hat has always installed pretty easily for me, and I haven't found RH's way of doing things too totally foreign. SuSe didn't install so easily but was far superior in terms of usability once I got it in. The others I tried either failed utterly to install, had no attractive interface (hey CLI fanatics, this matters!), or lacked flexibility.
I'm hoping and believing that a union of several major distros will provide a degree of uniformity which is sadly needed (damn it, shift-f1 and left-click-and-drag should do at least roughly similar things !), without leaving all decision-making for a particular interface in the hands of a single organization.
I'm really glad to hear that the smaller vendors are pushing towards standardization, something that benefits not only consumers like me, but software vendors that would be frustrated by the fragmentation in the Linux marketplace.
Anyone worried about loss of diversity should not be so worried. These vendors still make money by distinguishing themselves from their competitors. So despite the standardization efforts, you'll inevitably see quirks and spins on the various flavors, eg., we bundle StarOffice 6.0 for free, we have db2, etc.
I've really like SuSE for its massive size. It comes with more stuff than RedHat out of the box. I've seen novice sysadmins install versions of RedHat for coworkers that lack some key tools like gcc or TeX (probably just picked some default "consumer" option).
"Provided by the management for your protection."
as long as the default windows manager is Enlightenment DR 17 I do not care
The other aspect of Red Hat (and, perhaps, all significant distributions) is the work that goes into developing a stable combination of packages. kernel-2.4.18-4.src.rpm is a long way from the generic 2.4.18 kernel: it has over 100 patches, including a 20 MB whopper from Alan Cox. GCC 2.96 is the most visible fork, but hardly the only one.
It's all free software, the majority of which makes it back to the original project, but Red Hat is the first to take advantage of its own hard work. That's an advantage.
(...) both SuSE and TurboLinux keep some of their own software (such as SuSE's YaST installer) non-free. (...)
Conectiva appears to be the odd one out; they're a fully free distribution as far as I know.
Man, if they drop Conectiva's Synaptic in favor of a proprietary installer I (and many many more) will be MAJORLY pissed. Synaptic is free, and it rocks.
This is indeed a moment that will change the Linux industry, because, in the not too distant future, there will be only 3 major linux companies:
Red Hat
Debian
-otherGuy-
Where -otherGuy- is the final form of these companies who insist on putting together a single distribution base.
Within 1.5 years, we will see only 3 "major" players in the Linux distro market, with Debian taking a distant 3rd in revenue.
I've read a lot of comments here about this unified Linux effort, and in doing so it's become perfectly clear that the majority of folks here are individuals speaking as individual Linux users.
MYTH #1: Individual Linux users are going to make Linux succeed as an enterprise/corporate OS.
BZZZZZZT!
I would be very, very surprised if I found out that the unified Linux effort had anything to do with individuals. There are CORPORATE motivations behind it because that's where the money is. Linux may work well on your personal desktop or on an individual server or two in your back room, but when you're talking about deploying 1,000 boxes with Linux across a WAN the stakes change completely. You can't just wipe out 1,000 machines if a Linux distro ceases to exist or changes so drastically that one rev barely resembles the previous rev. A lot of weight is put on the decision of what to go with. Having a unified Linux that is developed/supported by a consortium of major Linux companies and major ISVs and OEMs (remember, there's more than just Linux companies backing this. Read the scant press release closer) looks a hell of a lot better than trusting 100% of your company's IT infrastructure and workstations to one Linux company that is already stretched too tight. I don't think I need to name the Linux company in question...
MYTH #2: ISVs and OEMs love working with Red Hat.
BZZZZZT!!
Red Hat has a reputation, and it ain't exactly rosy. I have personal knowledge of a number of ISVs and OEMs that have been waiting for a viable alternative to Red Hat for quite some time. Some like Red Hat, yes, but more don't. It doesn't matter how good or bad their distro is because the company itself is arrogant and difficult to work with. Red Hat has a brand. Beyond that, Linux is Linux no matter how many of you want to try to convince the world it isn't.
Unified Linux will be a good thing. I hope they can pull it off.
Combining forces is a step in the right direction. But how can 4 companies survive competing for the same small services market for servers, where you are selling to system admins who know what to do anyway, and will buy only hardware related support? Yeah, some will sell as insurance, but I'd rather buy my insurance from IBM who will be around tomorrow.
.
The only market that would have bought in droves, and did between 1999-2002 is the academic and technical workstation market, where the need was plenty and the expertise thin. Where was the user centric product then? Today's linux companies are making the same mistakes that the unix guys did, leaving the desktop to be picked up by microsoft, concentrating on the server. And today, OSX is replacing linux as the desktop of choice for power users.
And whats with 1000 packages with 10 email clients, all substandard? Why package 2 desktops? Make a courageous decision and pick one! Why duplicate work, decreasing productivity? Do RedHat and Ximian need to both package gnome or evolution? Why not contract it out? Why not pay the gphoto developers a royalty, something you can do if you had just 15 desktop apps? Linux is presently sustaining programmers through VC, not through profits. This isnt a get-rich-quick scheme. Support the developers. Provide user testing for them. Give them a chance to live atleast part time of their software and consulting
But most of all, dont leave the desktop. For they who dont have the desktop today wont have the server tomorrow.
I wrote some more about this stuff, see http://3point0.nareau.com and the 2 links on that page. Also see
http://reno/~rahul/venn.jpg for an example of how an ecology of companies around a linux distribution and an application server(spacestation on desktop and cloudserver on server) could work.
And email me at tig@nareau.com if you want to do something about creating a distribution with one desktop(gnome as gtk is lgpl, i believe in letting developers choose their own license, so no religious nut jobs pls), few well done apps, attention to quality, user interface and simplicity rather than emphasis on service contracts, and a biz-model by which work is distributed to the actual package developers on a per-product sold royalty basis, and selling the software is supposed to bring in money.
The Inscrutable Gargoyle
From the perspective of someone who's had to spend months in the past figuring out how each distro's "install new/updated driver during installation" procedure is supposed to work, how and why it's broken and how to work around the bugs in it, this is a good thing. I formerly worked for a company that needed to be able to use our driver to install to non-SCSI, non-IDE disks (although they show up as SCSI once our driver is loaded). It took ages to get our driver included in the kernel, and then there was still the problem that it wasn't included in the installers boot disk, or we needed to supply updated versions, etc. I spent far too much time trying to decypher/document the procedure for the various distros. Hopefully, the new, unified, distro will use the SuSE facility to update drivers during install. It proved, by far, the most powerful and flexible of any that I came across.
no playing whereis that config file
Slashdot member barnaclebarnes posted a comment that he intended to post a comment on Thursday.
/b
[Please type your sig here.]
about all this icky patent stuff here which I'm assuming was the impetus for this announcements timing despite the fact that these four have been scheming for a while.
your = it belongs to you. you're = a contraction of you and are. Got it now?
Actually the LSB says you have to support installing RPM packages, but not that you have to use rpm to do that. From http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/refspecs/LSB_1.1.0/g LSB/swinstall.html I got the following:
"Applications should be provided in the RPM packaging format as defined in the appendix of Maximum RPM"
and
"The LSB does not specify the interface to the tools used to manipulate LSB-conformant packages. Each conforming distribution will provide documentation for installing LSB packages."
Debian supports installing rpm's through the alien program which converts rpm's into deb's (or tgz's for other distro's). I've done this myself several times. It also supports creating LSB-compatible rpm's through the lsb-rpm package. Hence, in this regard, debian is LSB compliant. As far as I know (and I admit it's not my domain of expertise) debian has no problems reaching full LSB compliance, and debian 3.0 will be LSB-compliant. At least that's what they're aiming for.
first when i read it on my newsfetchingportalsortofathingyimadeformyself (jnews.tk), i thought wtf, today isn't april 1st. sure, several companies say they'll try to do co-operation to battle a more dominant company.. it's far from every/most linux distrubution getting into the boat(as the topic would imply). and debian isn't listed (DOH! 'wonder why'), so nobody should care anyhow.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Although I don't like Sun, I must admit that the hole idea behind Linux is to allow everyone to ship the distro they want, and know we are attacking Sun for shipping another distro?! It's just me or we are playing hard to get?
thats just one of the reasons that any BSD is so great. Packages come in one way and they just work. If i could, i would hug the OpenBSD packages.
There isn't much like the scent of a fresh harddisk
So err...
The most difficult is the one you, by your own admission, never had "frequent use of".
Riiight, this makes complete sense to me.
Like a csh expert saying that bash isn't intuitive.
emmbee
We use RedHat for our business clients because it works out of the box and looks dignified and business like. For our non-technical clients - this is *very* important. I don't mean that in a snide way - it shows that the overall focus of RedHat is business, as opposed to games or kernel hacking.
Games and kernel hacking are important too. That is why in the Linux world we have choice - and why the Microsoft world is bad, even if it does provide regimented order that puts Storm Troopers to shame.
It is often popular, in the 1337 circles, to bash any *nix that makes things easy. Because of that, Red Hat has gotten bashed by more linux zealots that any other linux disto that I know of. And though all that, it has risen above the rest and actually shown a business model that appears to work.
Now, rather than embrace the standard set by a company that has grown in a hostile and monopolized market, they choose to, "try and take on Red Hat's dominance in the industry."
With this, I can only surmise that we now will see a new form of Red Hat bashing in the form of corporate Red Hat bashing. Kudos to you Red Hat, the more they bash you, the better you seem to get.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Connectiva doesnt use debs, but it does use apt. They adapted it to work with RPMs and to me, it seems like the smartest possible thing. apt-get blows the socks of red carpet and friends. apt-get blows the socks off urpmi (mandrake). apt-get is the greatest darn thing for system management.
If they combine the magic of lizard, apt, and yast2, this new distro could really rock.
Red Hat can't 'wipe out' Slackware. When the last businessman has sold his shares and the furniture in the corporate center is on eBay being sold off, Slackware will still be a small but influencial distribution run by a core of people who use Linux because it's more like the Unix they grew up knowing.
Slack is the only Linux I'll still consider, though for anything I can, I'd rather use NetBSD. Everything else Linux has, sadly, become shiny bright stuff for kids, or grey 'easy for MSCE' drivel.
RedHat is not the leader because the distribution is any better than the umpteen million other distributions. It is the leader because of name recognition and good leadership and money management. They were able to "brave the lean years" and somehow put a product ON THE SHELVES of Best Buy, CompUSA, etc....Without millions of dollars of VC or .COM wet dreams, etc...etc. Most people recognize stability in existence and lifespan much more than the average /. user would.
Sure if Suse, TL, Caldera, et all....Get together and combine strengths -- they may get a superior product out there -- but will still lag behind RedHat in the aboved mentioned categories.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Shoot! I happen to like the RedHat distro., mostly because that's what I'm familiar with, and recommend it to everyone else who asks me, but I sure wouldn't want to see them muscle out all the other distributions. Remember -- it's the competition that keeps these companies honest, and forces them to keep the customer at the top of the priorities stack!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
This is where the Slashdot crowd misses it completely. Red Hat does not barter in 'illusions' they give businesses what they want. Yes we can make that work, yes we can help you implement it, yes we can fix it if it's broke. What other Linux company is offering that? If you had millions of dollars at stake, what would you do? Go with a distro that is made part-time when the developers feel like it and will support you only through email or irc IF they feel like it. Or would you go with a distro that has a dedicated staff, that staff has been checked for competency, and will back up their claims in writing? Bag away on RH all you want, they are the only distro that gets enterprise networking.
Here's a slightly different perspective: I am still relatively new to Linux (>2 years), and I'm just a rank beginner when it comes to programming. I sit in front of a Windows box all day at work because I have to, and I have a Windows box at home, too, mostly for (in)convenience.
Why do I use Red Hat? Why do I use Linux at all? Well, frankly, the more I use Windows, the more I like Linux. It's stable, powerful, non-stupid, (don't even get me started about Stupid Automagical Windoze Tricks) and it does exactly what I need in a way that works well for me. Also, I think the interfaces are fascinating, so I'm writing a paper about them (for the arts/social sciences community) now.
On the other hand, I neither have the skills nor the inclination (yet) to spend hours tweaking and reprogramming config files so that I can get something up and running. I like that it works. I like that I can do what I want with it, and I don't have to tinker with it incessantly.
Sorry if that sounds kind of anti-hackerish (it's not meant so), but I'm still trying to master the basics, and I wouldn't try to drive a Formula 1 racer while on my learner's permit, either.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
I use Red Hat Linux for my servers. I'd not dream of anything else at the moment. Why?
1) Excellent support - whatever software I want to install, I can be quite sure that there's a RH version - often in RPM form. This reduces the cost of maintanence dramatically.
2) The RED HAT NETWORK is fantastic! I simply type "up2date -u" and 10 minutes later, I have all the relevant security patches installed! Just $5 per month, and their download servers are FAST. (I routinely see 15-20 Mbit connections - 10x-15x FASTER than an unfettered T1!)
3) Reliability. My Red Hat systems are stable. They work today, tomorrow and next year.
4) Stability of the distro. Red Hat has been around. They are profitable, or at least not burning capital very fast. I can feel good knowing that I'm investing my considerable time, money, and energy into a platform that will be there in the future, too.
With the above, I can fulfill my support contracts easily and cheaply, and focus on the delvery of service rather than simple maintanence.
Is Red Hat perfect? No. But it satisifies the above, and they are what I need to found my business upon.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Let us not hate Red Hat just for finally being able to do what we have all wanted to do for years: turn OSS into a viable marketable tool.
I fully expect Sun to fold in their own proprietary extensions and tools. I don't think they will use the same "Embrace and Extend" tactic as MS, where the end result is a corruption of the original, open API. Rather, they will be adding additional management and usability layers. They may even add in proprietary kernel modules (LGPL) for things like advanced file systems, though that could quickly get them into rather troubled waters...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
We all know that competition is good. It encourages innovation, progress and new directions. One of the reasons why there has been so little real innovation in the closed-source world has been the lack of competition to Microsoft's products (other than Windows Servers - which are seriously challenged by Linux).
;-)
Over the years, Suse, Caldera et al have offered little serious competition to RedHat when it comes to *marketing* themselves (technically, RedHat is no way superior to any of these distributions).
A "UnitedLinux" would actually be a good idea. It will encourage (spelled f-o-r-c-e) RedHat to improve their product (I am an RHL user, but I'll be the first to admit that RHL is about as exciting as a glass of water these days).
At the same time this will give the players of UL a chance at a bigger market, which in the end is good for Linux and OpenSource.
However, just like Linux chewed up the Unix market before it started spreading its wings, it is very likely that the initial gains UL would achieve would be at the cost of RedHat's share. There will probably be a bit of seesawing before things stabilize.
And *that's* where the fun really begins.
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
Now that's funny! Google uses RedHat, FYI. What bigger presence on the net could you find?
I prefer Mandrake, but that's another story.
---
I'd love to take you out tonight, honey, but I've got some
The Open Source community is not immune to the pressures of the real world and consolidation was inevitable. Combining resources is a great idea and I hope it works out for them and the rest of us. As long as there are enough distros to make for competition, I think its great.
Sorry about that. I HATE when people throw acronyms at me with no explanation.
Linux Standard Base
An attempt to fix fragmentation problems so that ISVs don't have to choose a distribution to support. Considered by many to be a prerequisite for Linux to really take off, commercially.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
as these others gather under the wing of IBM, the possible marriage of sun and mandrake, hinted at in mandrake's inclusion of star office 6.0 in mandrake prior to its formal release by sun, increases...stay tuned...
Most other distros (at least SuSE, TurboLinux and Caldera) offer exactly the same thing.
The real reason is that people wrongly *believe* that RedHat is the only one offering "shiny" support. - Just like you seem to do.
The only thing you are not allowed to do (and the only thing different in the YaST license compared to the GPL) is that you are not allowed to charge money for redistribution.
I hole heartedly aggree with you. I have been advocating the need for a Redhat sponsered version of Debian packages and/or *BSD ports.
Further, your point about a GPL'ed base distro is right on. If SuSE, Caldera, Turbo Linux, and Connectiva are after RedHat's buisness they might want to notice that RedHat is makeing money because it has a GPL base distro out there, NOT inspite of that fact.
RedHat user since 3.03.
By the way. I noticed your low slashdot user id. I thing it would be great if I could filter messages, not only based on score but also user id.
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
That's consistant with what I've been hearing too.
Within 1.5 years, we will see only 3 "major" players in the Linux distro market, with Debian taking a distant 3rd in revenue.
:)
Revenue has hardly any influence on Debian development, and has such it can't be used to prove which distribution would be more popular in your hypothesis. I will package things and help development without revenue in mind, at least for my self. That's one of the biggest strenghts of Debian (well, it can also be the root of some 'features' in development timing): it isn't really dependent on bussiness pressure or traditional revenue models.
As such you can pretty much assume Debian will always be there, and that's, well, conforting
regards,
fsmunoz
Why does NT barf before I have the time to read an interesting story?
Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0126'
Yeah. Right.
I first tried Redhat around 3.0.3 I think it was. What a piece of junk. I stuck with Slackware.
Later I got a cheap Sun Sparc 5 computer and after I got tired of messing with Solaris (lack of source, blah, blah, blah), I wanted to see what Linux would do. Redhat had a Sparc distribution at the time, version 5.1. With that I found that Redhat had improved. So I even tried Redhat on my next x86 box.
As time went one and I upgraded from 5.1 to 5.2 and then to 6.0, I started slipping deeper and deeper into dependency hell. The reason was I upgraded many things by compiling source, and the RPM database just got all out of whack. I was at the point of always doing forced installs of things I did install by RPM, so I was really getting no advantage from the package manager at all. But that wasn't what drove me away.
The system initialization scripts were a nightmare. There were bugs such as the fact that telnet/ssh sessions would not be properly closed when rebooted. The shutdown order seemed right, but maybe it was wrong. I tried re-arranging things but that either didn't help or made things worse. I was at the point of hacking the scripts with little success and a lot of frustration (too many source'd files, too many functions ... you are in a maze of twisty passages, all different). I finally decided I had enough and I'd rewrite the init scripts from scratch.
Now that I was going to make such a huge change, I also decided I needed go ahead and solve all my problems, first. I still had machines that were on Slackware that had (luckily) never been switched to Redhat. So I went back to Slackware at version 4.0, and soon 7.0 came out.
I did rewrite the init scripts, and replaced all the Slackware scripts with my own and it runs just fine. My init scripts do have separate scripts for each service to be started or stopped, but everything is in a single subdirectory. There are no symlinks. Run levels are coded in a different way. It's not SYSV, and it's not BSD. But it works, and it's not in source/function hell, and has been solidly reliable for a few years now.
But the real value of all these choices in operating systems and distributions in the free software community is ... the choice. The world is most certainly full of different people, and there are different things available for them, including different distributions of Linux, and different flavors of BSD. Not as much choice comes out of the Redmond Washington USA area.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
well, its good to see that Redhat has some dominance; it gives linux some authority and respectability from a business perspective. Its sad to see the other distros consolidate, because choice is what makes the difference. I think what they need instead of one united distro is compatibility, to keep choice but increase circulation/trade amongst the different parties.
Whatever happens, I'll keep using slackware.
The obvious solution is standardization in combination with version management that's how regular distributions pull it off.
... 3.0.1 came out more than a month after 3.0, so while I want the latest bug fixes and enhancements, I'm running an overnight compile of KDE at most once every 5 or 6 weeks. This is hardly a great burden, and the trouble saved by having packages compiled against the proper librarys, and the resultant stability, more than makes up for whatever time is spent starting the compile before going to bed (or leaving work for the day).
... I have Gentoo installed on an old Intel MMX 233, which did take 3 days (!!) to install, but as I've said before, I probably spent a total of an hour sitting in front of that box, and the rest of the time ignoring it while it churned away), in which case binary distros, with all their many faults, may be exactly what you want. Even with a slow processor, though, I suspect you would find the incremental time savings of having a more responsive and quick system well worth the initial investment of time ... my slower boxes benefit even more in some cases from the kinds of optimizations Gentoo and Source Mage provide than some of the quicker boxes.
Yes, of course, but there is a heavy price to be paid for that "standardization", namely the inability to have current software on your system, and the subsequent slowdown in providing timely feedback and bug reports to authors.
Debian, as an example (and as my favorite binary only distribution), had one of its developers respond to a question by a curious user as to when XFree 4.2 would be included in debian with the curt answer: "Leave me alone. It will be months." Source Mage ("Sorcery" at the time) had X 4.2 available within a day, Gentoo very shortly thereafter. Those of us who needed the bug fixes and additional hardware support didn't have to wait "months" for its inclusion into a binary distro, or alternatively have to compile it ourselves (by hand) and then watch as various distribution-provided binaries start to break because of X 4.2's differences from X 4.1.
On the contrary, we had clean, solid, good support from day one, which meant we got the bug fixes in a much more timely manner, and were able to deploy configurations not even possible with other distriutions. And we didn't have to sacrifice stability in order to do it.
As for Mozilla, it may have nightly cvs builds, but Gentoo and Source Mage both reference release builds (e.g Mozilla RC2, RC3, etc.), not nightly builds as a rule. So while those wishing to have the very latest may find themselves compiling mozilla once every two or three weeks, it certainly isn't a nightly affair. Ditto for KDE
It also makes keeping up with security fixes much, much easier than with Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, and Debian (stable excepted, but debian stable makes the Jurassic appear contemporary).
You may be personally allergic to compiling large packages (or have a processor that is painfully slow to do so
In any event, for those of us working with this stuff every day, who have reasonably modern CPUs and who are required to troubleshoot live systems whenever anything goes wrong, having quick and painless access to the current bug fixes and features is an invaluable asset. In short, for many people (I would venture to say most), once they've tried a source-based distro, binary distros feel klunky by comparison and a person will never want to go back. The benefits are simply too great, naysayers notwithstanding.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
apt-get could just as easily be made to work with a set of .rpms, no?
yep. it's been done here. i've used it for a while, and it works really well. it's espeically useful for someone coming from an rpm backgorund.
i've also used debian, and (once many years back) slackware. the deb/rpm thing is getting just as bad as the vim/emacs thing. while i can see the merits of a vi vs emacs debate, i would have to agree with you. the packages are more or less glorified zip files, and it doesn't really matter how the metadata is stored.
i'm not familar with ports, but i understand it's very nice.
-- john
Oh... I didn't read that right, I thought this was an effort to make Linux as a whole much better by helping out the current Linux leader.
It's nice to see Linux evolving into a healthy competitive ecosystem. An ecosystem of true competition vying for customers by offering better products at better prices.
Contrast with Microsoft's vision of an ecosystem where they are the big predator and everyone kow-tows to them and their whims. Nothing really happens in this ecosystem without Microsoft doing it first.
So far from being a disturbing development in Linux's history, I consider this a good sign that, contrary to Bill's opinion, the Marketplace works!
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
i thought you LIKED the spaghetti-progammed pseudo-diversity that made linux so superior.
is that why there's still no reliable support for professional audio (cf. your other article), to name one of dozens of things which windows has been doing well for years?
Just my thoughts, everyone should form their own and there is no reason not to given the freely available nature of most (sorry SuSE) distros these days. Just stop treating 'nix like a religion, use many different systems and you will soon learn that no distro is the best for every situation.
I think you are missing the point. Sun creates servers and has a very large R&D budget for improving the performance and quality of such servers, unlike Dell and HP who, arguably, are merely Intel resellers.
From a layman's perspective, Sun sees a demand for Linux. With Sun making cool servers and looking to enter the low-cost server market, Linux is complementary. If you want to run Windows, do you consider a Mac? IMO, Sun is branching out to a new set customers and satifying their needs. I don't really see Sun's Linux as competition with Solaris. Certainly Sun's current customers are happy and not the ones buying a non-Sun server and adding Linux. Free Linux + kewl compatible Sun hardware + targeting the Intel + Linux market = $ for Sun + more Linux developers and users in the world.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
I used to call Solaris x86 on '486 machines Slowlaris because it really ran slower than Solaris ran even on ancient IPC's and SPARC I's. Ever since the Pentium I felt that Solaris was reasonable on Intel hardware.
As far as ugly and hard to work with I'd have to give that crown to HPUX. Their default dekstop is even uglier than Solaris's and their X11 libraries are a disaster. You have to build your own X11R6 tree in order to have much success building your own X11 software. I'm still a fan of good old SunOS 4.x but have had to go the way of Solaris 2.
Getting back to the original question I'll bet Sun is producing their own Linux distro so they will be able to support it better. Sun is a company that sells solutions rather than hardware, software, and/or support. Sun will sell you the whole bundle. It would be easier for Sun to support their own distro than to be at the mercy of other companies for updates and bug fixes.
Let me speculate a little here...
These 3 companies have large market share in different regions of the world:
SuSE == Europe (Sans France => Mandrake)
TurboLinux == Asia (Well, more SE)
Conectiva == South America
I don't know where Caldera fits into the equation... maybe their IP is worth something or they have lots of support/consultancy staff with Linux expertise...
IBM have enough presence in North America, and also Australia (which probably services New Zealand as well...)
So... lets say IBM is behind this "merging" of distros... which in reality is a conglomorate of Linux services/consultancy companies which spans the majority of the world (Sans Africa/Middle East -- there's probably enough IBM staff there to cover the demand, although maybe SuSE services this region as well...)
Genius? I think so.
I would not be surprised if these companies were receiving funding from IBM... or if they were bought out by IBM in the future...
Time to invest in IBM, I think.
According to the Trademarks:
Linux is the OS,
GNU is this blurry "system" that includes the OS, compiler and tools.
If only RMS had taken an OS class, he wouldn't need to spread misinformation.
If only Bill Gates had taken an OS class, he would see that some complexity is needed and wouldn't need to reinvent UNIX starting with QD O/S.
Sun knows they can not compete in the price/performance arena at the bottom end. The $1,000 Sun Blade isn't a bad attempt though. I'm not sure what makes you say an Ultra 10 is a slug though. It can saturate a couple T1's with web content or email. I agree that it isn't that great any more but it still does the job. I agree with the first poster; the reason why Sun is choosing Linux for its low end Intel based machines is hype. Every mindless dweeb who has read a few compouter mag articles knows that Linux is cool and that they are supposed to like it. Every pointy haried boss is afraid of missing out on the Linux bandwagon. You have to be buzzword complient these days and Linux is a good buzzword checkoff.
consolidation is one step above coordination, but does not only not require a complete merging and loss of individual identity but would suffer from it in most cases. The whole idea of distributions is great. The whole idea of distributions is horrible. Given the right context, both of those statements could be agreed upon as being 'right.' If you have say, standards that are applied across all distros (or a large number of them) much like an API, then you can still very much have individual flare and customization. Like a common UI, it would be much easier to switch back and forth, not to mention port applications and packages.
These have got to be the worst distributions around, I can't even see how the best bits combined would even rival Mandrake, let alone the might of RedHat.
This might be a Good Thing(tm) for ex-Windows users who want these dumbed-down distros I guess, but you wouldn't catch me using anything but Mandrake on the desktop and RedHat for servers.
#include <sig.h>
Does this imply that tools like SuSE's YAST will also be compatible?
"I don't tell my family to run regedit when they can't get an item out of the "Uninstall Application" menu (I fix it for them next time I'm over there)..."
Windows XP fixes this problem. If you try to uninstall something and it can't find the uninstall file, it asks you if you want to remove that program from the list of installed programs.
Windows XP is a really good choice for people who know little or nothing about computers. My mother instantly fell in love with the digital camera wizard, for instance. Much better than any 9x-based OS...
does anyone have any info on when sun's distro is expected to ship?
-- john
Now, I'm most productive on Slackware. Because I know the system so well that doing stuff from scratch is _easier_ and _faster_ than using tools like rpm and linuxconf. (overall, of course, some things are still faster with linuxconf).
i'll admit that i use redhat, and have for about 4 years... i didnt realize it had been so lon until i typed it. now wrt linuxconf. you dont have to use linuxconf in redhat. it's basically a graphical front end to all the stuff in
similarly, you can compile your own programs, and roll your own rpm's. you have pretty much the same freedom in redhat as you do in the other distros. the only difference is that they have extra stuff for those who dont want to take advantage of that freedom. to me this is rather ideal. from what i've read about suse, it has really good configuration tools also. i'm not rushing out to change though-i'm pretty satisfied with redhat.
the only dist's i've been tempted to try out are gentoo and sourcemage which have been mentioned before. the're the ones doing things in a different manner which i think sets them apart from the rest.
-- john
And one Linux to rule them all.
It couldn't last forever guys. Eventually the "open-source" concept would be beaten buy sheer $$$. Thus we end up with 2 large linux distributions.... then 1.... then its Linux vs M$.....and who knows... maybe a good fight.
Anyone who thought open-source was going to last in a capitalistic society is kidding themselves. Sure you can jack around with what ever you want on your home machine, build a beowulf cluster out of old machines, but when it comes down to business. You better have sales guys and a company to relate to, which means corporation, which turns the distros against each other thus forcing the fight.
Anyone who thinks I'm full of crap feel free to flame on but it won't change the future.
I'd love a Linux distro laid out like Solaris, with all the same things working as expected, and all the other things NOT working (also as expected!).
Imagine a Linux distro with a functioning, but lamely configured SysV init, complete with run level changes that do NOTHING. Imagine a Linux distro with a SysV package system that makes it super easy to locate what file belongs to what package - so long as you are willing to write that tool (3 lines in awk, I swear!). Imagine a Linux distro with a syslogd configured out of the box to log all critical messages to the console, instead of some out-of-the-way log file. Imagine a Linux distro which included a completely broken BSD compatibility API, and plenty of warnings not to use it throughout 10 years' worth of OS documentation. Imagine a Linux distro every bit as half-assed as the one YOU would put together yourself, but with a Big Important Company's logo stuck to the box.
Sign me up!
Edith Keeler Must Die
"This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put." -- Winston Churchill
No, no, it's "This is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put."
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I came to GNU/Linux about four years ago because I was tired of the corporate computer world of crappy software. People are trying to "mainstream" Linux. That may be good for businesses who finally can have decent uptimes and stuff but what about us hackers who use Free Software because it's free? I don't believe that competition is good for progress. Look at Debian. Debian, IMHO, is the most advanced distro and it's non-commerical! I'm just saying that maybe I'm a nostalgic old hacker but I look misty-eyed at the BBS days of old and of command lines. Sorry, but big corporate deals and Quake III matches don't get me as excited as a group of hackers coming together to "scratch their own itch" (in ESR's words.)
ESR was a jerk to me and I know he has been to a great many other people. I don't always agree with RMS but I think that free software is better than so-called "open source software". I believe in the Public Domain and X Consortium style licensing (as free as possible).
The community is the only way we can say alive. There is no need to go commerical. If some people need money then we should get together and make sure they have money so they can spend more time hacking. I'm sure Linus, ESR, RMS, Alan Cox, etc. would be fully supported by the community.
Peace,
An Anonymous Coward
Who know? Perhaps this is the sign we've been looking for indicating a turnaround at Sun. I know some people who run Linux on UltraSPARC hardware, and it's a slick combo (especially running on an Ultra II dual processor if you can get your hands on one), and it's one of the few true 64bit architectures out there, but it is a constant uphill battle trying to get apps or updates to tools, unless you want to rebuild EVERYTHING from source RPMS.
I'll be watching this one closely!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
and thats slak...........who in their right mind would want anything but? folks that cant use slak need to stick with winblows and macblows..
It would help if you supported your claims with argumentation. Why is using alien a dodgy proposition (it's worked fine every time I used it)? Why is deb any less standard than rpm (both are open formats, both have widespread support in more than one distro, both don't actually exist outside the linux arena)? Why is dpkg/apt-get "quirky"? Why is rpm better than dpkg?
As an ex-redhat and current-debian user I can attest that the debian packaging tools are in no way inferior to those in redhat's system. And there is not a single reason for debian to invest man-years of effort to move over their entire system (of over 5000 packages on 11 platforms) to rpm, breaking the whole distro in the process, especially given that it's not even a requirement for LSB conformance.
For who would they need to do it anyway? People using rpm distro's don't install deb's because a) everything is available in rpm format anyway, and b) deb's are all in apt-get repositories. And most people using debian like it's current packaging system, and don't want to see it replaced with rpm. They're more than happy to use alien for the occasional rpm package that needs installing.
I wonder what will happen when Microsoft comes out with it's own distro later this year. See http://www.mslinux.org LOL
Too late. I've patented it! :P
This will get the masses to join them. If the new conglomerate can build a new, 3rd party software repository for Apt like Debian has for Deb, this would get me to use this new distro. And they would quickly find that a number of 3rd party free software / open source projects would make sure their packages are built for and distributed in this new RPM-Apt repository.
As a debian user, I can assure you that it's not as simple as just putting a repository out there and letting stuff "figure itself out". The problem is policy decisions. There would be a constant struggle between the distro makers and the community in what packages are in the database, and what versions of them, with what features. Obviously you can't support everything, because a lot of stuff isn't ready to be offered to end-users (who would download from that package database), and you can't offer bleeding edge versions, because they're not stable enough yet (although you wouldn't have to go to the length of debian's effort in making sure you're doing amateur archeology). And that's not even getting into the whole mess of QA testing packages on arrival into the package database, vouching for package maintainers not being secret agents from the evil empire and the whole pletora of problems debian had to conquer. Even today there's plenty of arguing about this within the debian community itself (despite extensive policy documentation and sharply defined leadership/maintainer roles), so I can hardly imagine this even succeeding with such a disparate bunch as "the rpm users" and "the commercial distro makers".
It'd be nice, but my official opinion on it: it'll never work.
I learned linux on turbolinux 3.0.1 The Ncurses based configuration programs were the best around. I don't know what happened to them though. Long live Crux
Suse is bloated.
Caldera is amusing.
Connectiwhat?
Turbolinux blows.
Maybe they should band together and fight Microsoft, instead of falling against a foe whom against they have no chance to survive.
Make your time.
i said it before and i'll say it again. the success of linux depends on these companies not trying to sell it, the os. rather they must converge around a primary standard distribution, if they wish to crack the mass market. and instead they should be focused on selling "content" that runs on top of that platform, not the platform itself! i hope that is what is going on here. and yes i too hope they will take up the debian way.
:T:R:A:N:S:
in memory of the recently departed President. Once you start running it you get the feeling it is never really in control and then it suddenly pancis and retires.
Usama Bin Linux?
Noooooooo!!!!
There seems to be a lot of meta-creepy groupthink going on around here - seems some people think that "Slashdot" is some unified, collective entity and not an aggregation of individuals, many of whom do *not* have the view that "____ is evil" where ____ is any entity or concept.
Well, it isn't.
Also, many individuals who might call Microsoft "evil" do not base this evaluation on Microsoft's profitability, or its large market share, or the fact that it is based in North America, or because they believe that capitalism is evil. Rather, some people believe that Microsoft's predatory behavior within the capitalist system adversely impacts things that said individuals might value - e.g., the benefits of improved products at lower prices that have traditionally result from competitive markets.
I personally believe that where a market is not competitive, and as a result, the products are not getting cheaper (consider the static absolute cost of Windows) or are increasing in price (consider the cost of Windows relative to the cost of a computer today, vs. even 2 years ago), then either the structure or operation of the market is flawed (e.g. lax or non-existent antitrust enforcement), not that the monopolist is "evil."
Of course, this belief is predicated on the concept of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" - i.e. markets should be structured and regulated such that participating entities (producers and consumers) operating in a totally avaricious way will advance a given end. The question is, ultimately, "is the given end good or bad," not "is Microsoft good or evil." (The question of who gets to chose the given end is a good one - I believe some recent attempts to regulate the system of legalized bribery known as our current campaign finance system are germane to this issue.)
If our society believes that an appropriate social policy goal is that Bill Gates should get richer, then we have a system today that works well. If others believe, as I do, that the benefits of competition (e.g. lower costs and improved products) should accrue to consumers (not necessarily end users, though end users would ultimately benefit), then the market for desktop operating systems is not optimally structured or regulated.
This has nothing to do with whether Microsoft is good or evil, or the question as to whether Red Hat would behave as Microsoft does, were it in a similar position (IMO - Red Hat management would be rational to do so).
- http://www.greycatlinux.myweb.nl/
I use GCLinux 2.xVery easy to install, and if you have a hardware modem (external) then connecting to the internet is very easy. Soon, Grey Cat will have a minimal install 3.x version, with a GUI.
The 2.x version installs on a MS-DOS machine, and the 3.x will be a partitioned install. I doubt this will have all the tools that Mandrake has to partition your drive. I mention Grey Cat Linux because it is a minimal installation, something to play around with, especially on old 486 computers that otherwise would be a drag to use RHL on. (you won't like it, believe me) I have RHL 6.1 on a couple of older pentium class machines (runs ok), and I like the fact that you can set it up the way you want, with your own configurations. I am making this post on a RHL 7.1 machine, and it is a wonderful distribution, to be sure, but I'm having to run it on a 200 MHZ 128 MB machine. As soon as GCL 3.x is ready, I'm going to try it out and see if it can keep up with Windows 3.x on some older machines:-)
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
I must just be too US-centric. Nothing at conectiva.com in English about certification.
Conectiva develops a series of products and additional services directed to the attendance of the market demand that seeks to adopt Open Source Tools; including books, manuals, additional software like Linux Tools and embedded systems, OEM programs, applications port, training kits and the "Revista do Linux" (Linux magazine). In addition, the company provides consulting services, training and technical support in all Latin America through its own service centers and certified partners.
That's all I find - a mention. No links to 'how to get certified' or anything like that. It's a pretty bland site - at least the English version.
SUSE - again, if they've got it, they hide it well.
creation science book
Red Hat Says:
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
no really I am hoping they will be the M$haft of linux - why? yes im a shareholder consumer whore - but I also use there 7.2 distro and theres was the easiest to install - save suse which would have been good but im to lazy to install ANY OS that uses 6 cd's
Ave Molech Setting
RedHat should join the United Linux front/consortium. If it means changing their package manager to something better, they should go for it. Maybe instead of the Redhat Package Manager they should transition to the General or GNU Package Manager.
anyone who's not using Debian is an idiot
I'm a *very* happy Libranet user too! I wanted to use a debian based system but had heard the horrors of installing debian pure. These guys smoothed out the installation like crazy and they offer great support! The product is solid and I am extremely pleased. I'd probably be the first one buying the next Libranet....
If the ./configure scripts don't work, it's because they were created with some kind of dependency on a nonstandard (non LSB) platform such as RedHat.
/usr/lib where they should be in /usr/share. Suse specifically breaks the LSB definition of /opt. Both have newer versions of RPM than the standard.
/usr/doc -> /usr/share/doc in Red Hat, /sbin/init.d -> /etc/init.d in SuSE. Someone will finally write an RPM 4 reference the LSB can use, the LSB's will be updated, and distro's will have new, major releaseswhere they can afford to move things round.
That is completely and utterly false. Red Hat is a contributor for the LSB standard, having joined late in the process precisely because smaller distributions would be worried about their dominance. A guide to the FHS is part of the Red Hat Linux reference guide, and Red Hat is the author of many of many of the LSB standards. Jump of the FHS list sometime and see how many Red Hat employees they are, and how responsive they are to queries regarding certain packages.
Both SuSE and Red Hat do non LSB things. There is no 100% compliant LSB distro. Both have a tendency to put nonlibrary, non-binary files in
But both distros are improving, and these should be ironed out over time, same as many older issues were -
These things take time. In the meantime, quit it with the FUD.
They're still around, they indeed have best Asian languages support. Their current release is 7.0 for Work/Server. But they're barely surviving due to mismanagement and their current CEO will pretty much finish it off. With only one support eng. and minimal dev. and sales teams they scaled down everything and are trying to survide on one product called PowerCockpit. They made some big mistakes when there was still some money to throw around. Today's market is unforgiving, not growing, so they also aren't growing. It's the cause and effect called karma.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
They should just ditch their own distros and support the Debian project instead. Why keep re-inventing the wheel? If they want something more user friendly, they should develop an alternative Debian installer but stick with the team, not fork. That's why all the Debian-derivative dot-bombs failed. Making money with Open Source is not about packaging software that's already been well packaged by somebody else (Debian project, not RedHat). It's about providing support, consulting, and custom development services. They way you differentiate from your competitors is by price, quality service, and comprehensive solutions -- NOT your own quirky distro!
I haven't tried it, so I don't know how easy/difficult it really is, but it's an available option, and certainly a viable one for anyone who has the bandwidth to download ISOs, especially since (at least in theory) you'd only be downloading the packages you were actually installing. There's certainly nothing stopping anyone from simply burning their FTP directories to CD
:)
Only problem with that scenario is if you have a fast connection @ work that you can download the ISO's, burn them to cd and take them home or elsewhere where you don't have the quick connection.
Sure, as you say, you could ftp it and burn them to cd, but then you have to worry about burning groups of files to the cd's making sure they fit. It's much easier to just burn 2-3 files that create a whole cd from you, and the installer then knows which cd contains which package. I would have to believe that if you burned the packages yourself, you'd have to take all the cd's and then copy them to a hard drive so they're all in one place for an install...(?)
So, I'm not sure what my point was other than there's more to ISO's than needing a fast connection
Place sig here.
Thats the question. You have a computer. What do you want it to do?
It sounds like you don't have any sophisticated needs. Some of us have sophisticated needs for computing. Things that 99% of the rest of us never have to bother with. These people are really what computers are for. Then there's the rest of us who enjoy messing with the software. I suppose some of see GNU/Linux as hope that at last the computer can do things the way I want it to do it.
Frankly, I don't understand what you are getting at:
"On the other hand, I neither have the skills nor the inclination (yet) to spend hours tweaking and reprogramming config files so that I can get something up and running. I like that it works. I like that I can do what I want with it, and I don't have to tinker with it incessantly."
I don't know what you are talking about. You sound like you have a perception problem. You may have read someone else's trials with getting their system up and running after they changed something that might have made you afraid of the effort.
But in contrast to postmodernism, perception isn't the same as reality. Config files are usually no big deal, unless your needs are exotic. Other than a few exceptions, config files involve no programming.
So...this is the task that confronts people like us. Decide what we want the computer to do for you; install a flexible and powerful system on your computer like GNU/Linux; and set your course.
There's nothing hackerish about it.
Red Hat's!
Since when is Debian "shiny bright stuff for kids, or grey 'easy for MSCE' drivel"?
Why go through the trouble of doing this when Debian has already done it? If this is the way to go, why not just build on Debian? This sounds a lot like re-inventing the wheel to me.
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
Ok.. so that was a typo. I own a Sun Blade 100 system, so its fair to say I have had frequent use of Solaris :)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
This sounds like a golden opportunity to ditch all the dodgy hit and miss implementations of RPM and move to something better. Maybe Gentoos Portage system adapted for binaries and wearing a nice GUI, or APT (or whatever it's called) from Debian.
I imagine that it's not Red Hat they're scared of, but of IBM, HP, and other big names using Linux on enterprise class machines. Unless they can reach some critical mass in the market place, which requires some true innovation and real expertise, these smaller distros won't make it in the big leagues. One fat enterprise deal on some big hardware with some support bundled in is going to pay for a hell of a lot of $49 boxes for Joe Hacker.
- Sig this!
Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, Turbolinux Partner To Create UnitedLinux, And Produce A Uniform Version Of Linux For Business Majority of enterprise system and software vendors including AMD, Borland, Computer Associates, Fujitsu Siemens, Fujitsu Japan, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, NEC, and SAP, support effort to create standard Linux platform
LINDON, Utah, PARAISO, Brazil, NUREMBERG, Germany, and BRISBANE, Calif. -May 30, 2002- Linux Industry leaders Caldera International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD), Conectiva S.A., SuSE Linux AG, and Turbolinux, Inc., today announced the organization of UnitedLinux, a new initiative that will streamline Linux development and certification around a global, uniform distribution of Linux designed for business. UnitedLinux addresses enterprise customers' need for a standard, business-focused Linux distribution that is certified to work across hardware and software platforms, accelerating the adoption of Linux in the enterprise. Under terms of the agreement, the four companies will collaborate on the development of one common core Linux operating environment, called UnitedLinux software. The four partners will each bundle value added products and services with the UnitedLinux operating system and the resulting offering will be marketed and sold by each of the four partners under their own brands.
Nearly every vendor supplying a piece of the technology infrastructure used by businesses has expressed support for UnitedLinux, including systems and software vendors AMD, Borland, Computer Associates, Fujitsu Siemens, Fujitsu Japan, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, NEC, and SAP. Independent hardware and software vendors spend considerable effort certifying their products and services on individual Linux distributions to ensure product compatibility for their customers. UnitedLinux will significantly diminish the number of distributions that vendors are asked to certify and will provide a true standards-based Linux operating environment.
Customers Benefit Through Unity
According to research firm IDC, a 2001 survey of 800 North American and Western European companies found that 40% of the respondents were either using or testing Linux in their organizations. UnitedLinux will help further speed enterprise adoption of Linux by providing businesses with a greater choice in the number of applications and hardware certified to work on the uniform version of Linux. Customers will also benefit from the global sales, localization, education, support and services that all four UnitedLinux vendors will collectively provide. The collaboration of the four leading Linux companies will result in an enterprise Linux offering, which is truly global by virtue of the companies' ability to provide local language support, training and professional services, in addition to the support of strategic partners. UnitedLinux will provide one unified Linux code base for IBM's complete eServer product line and AMD 32-bit and 64-bit platform and Intel's x86 32-bit and Itanium(tm) processor family platforms. UnitedLinux supports LSB, Li18nux, and GB18030 standards, as well as enabling installations in English, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese languages.
In addition UnitedLinux unleashes a massive research and development organization for Linux in the enterprise. Effectively, the four companies involved in this process will shift dollars and resources once allocated to creating and maintaining custom Linux operating environments and divert them to new R&D on Linux enterprise software. UnitedLinux is dedicated to bolstering the enterprise readiness of the platform, but in the same collaborative spirit from which Linux was founded and continues to flourish.
Participation and Availability
While today's announcement outlines the founding members of UnitedLinux, the initiative is open for additional Linux companies to participate. The four partners currently plan to each offer their own server products based on UnitedLinux by the end of 2002. For additional information on UnitedLinux, contact Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE or Turbolinux or go to www.unitedlinux.com.
About UnitedLinux
UnitedLinux is a standards-based, worldwide Linux solution targeted at the business user and developed by Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux. Designed to be an enterprise-class, industry-standard Linux operating system, UnitedLinux provides a single stable, uniform platform for application development, certification, and deployment, and allows Linux vendors, Independent Software Vendors, Independent Hardware Vendors, and Original Equipment Makers to support a single high value Linux offering. For more information, go to www.unitedlinux.com
go there http://www.unitedlinux.com
Debian is grey Stalinist stuff for the angry kids, and the permanent adolescents who make up a 'counter culture.'
What you have to remember is that you are trying to install hundreds of megabytes from the other side of an ocean (the best mirror is ftp.gwdg.de), and adjust accordingly.
The most reliable method is to install the least amount of software initially (there is an option for that, or you can adjust the package list to taste). Get a running system, then fire up yast again and install more packages (move to a higher profile, for example). Two or three steps is usually enough to have a kicking desktop/development install.
Bugs? Ya, 7.3 had that nasty yast bug, but that got fixed. 8.0? I haven't heard anything bad about it in #suse on irc.openprojects.net.
As far as 7.3 being out-of-date, you're right... as far as I can tell, SuSE does what it can for a particular release, irons out any bugs shaken loose during the post-release period, then moves on to the next release. The developers do try to back-port any bug fixes to the older releases, but most of their energy is spent getting the next batch of 1337 4PPz ready for the next versioned release.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
To my knowledge, YaST1 has been dropped from the 8.0 release. YaST2 can of course be used in text-mode.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Debian had its time, and more time... and MORE time. In fact time is all that debian produces anymore.
Personally, this week I have been (silly me) trying to solve a little niggling problem (old gnorpm can't download new version files) and ended up having my SuSE system rendered untrustworthy, lost mail, and now have had to switch to Win98! Here's what I've seen - it is NOT SUPPORT. It is the problem of keeping up with new software in a RedHat (already?) world. How often do you see binaries that are not in RPM format? How often have you seen some hairy dependencies and backed off, decided to compile it yourself?
/etc/passwd from some other source like a db I guess). Change "compat" to "files" and back in action. This took time out that I should have been spending on a project that pays the bills.
..
- RedHat is more viral than SuSE, and SuSE
binaries of apps are "RedHat Package Manager" binaries, and redhat.com seems indispensable it seems to keeping up with libs needed to install them.
- I installed SuSE from CD on a laptop a couple years ago, and have found it very difficult to add new RPM-based software sometimes, especially if you miss a few iterations. This is like rpm's "this application can only install software with version number = 3" or need for yast2 for new installation. How stupid to make the one important app (yast2) you need to get SuSE software so difficult to get!
- using rpm can destroy your non-RH system insidiously.
For example after installing something with RH suddenly I lose my usernames - system tells me there is no user called "root" and all file listings use user id numbers instead of names. After hunting in google and some detective work, I discover that nss-switch has been surreptitiously updated so that the default now breaks functionality (it wants to read
- rpm dependencies don't check for manually compiled code. fix that.
Silly me, thought that between compiling GNU software, looking at the iBiblio archives, and using rpmfind/gnorpm webfind I'd be safe. The end result is an RPM CD (no don't have/can't get yast2) telling me I have to install 400 MB of crap, half of which I already have, to just update rpm and gnorpm. Finally I compiled rpm manually and got gnorpm-static, but it still ain't enough. First time sh configure told me "Checking to see if gcc works... NO" NO!!!!! So how about somebody building and managing a real online source/binary archive that helps you get away from RH and update non-RH systems with security, peace-of-mind, and no destruction of current functionality. God-forsaken rpm hell, never should have let RedHat start rebuilding my entire machine without saying exactly what was going on.
- Very recently I have seen ultimate horror of having to stop using email on linux.
I finally buckled under installing major amounts of RPMs with gnorpm so that I could do some basic things. Now gcc is broken (worked fine when compiled manually.. damn) and suddenly fetchmail is happily deleting mail off the server while refusing to save it in var/spool ! Christ! Now I am using Outlook Express on my used Win98 laptop and about to erase SuSE once and for all, and put RH in, as soon as I can back the whole bastardized thing up to a new 100GB disk, when I buy that. Not like I'm not swimming in RedHat cds. Now I am looking forward to upgrading KDE and Gnome (never enough libs and compiled parts it seems..) and being able to actually type Japanese and maybe even print on the printer 10 feet away. The reason I ended up inputting Japanese and printing on Windows is that the PJE package never built correctly on SuSE no matter how much it got fiddled with, and anyway all the other important things end up being proprietary in both distros. Fear, Doubt, and
- RedHat has beaten TurboLinux in Japan as far as I can see. I waited 2 years for SuSE's promises to enter the market here, even talking to people I heard were going to be involved. Poof! I hate RH and like very much the SuSE distro I installed at the time. And yet, I will inevitably have to get local language support (Japanese fonts, front end processors, input dictionaries, printer drivers, etc.) from distros which have those components in Japan even if some of those are commercial parts. A recent mook (magazine book, which is how software gets around in Japan - embedded cds) had 6 or 8 linux distros and a ton of CDs in it. No SuSE. Well-known names, like Laser5, but all different. Maybe nice right after install, but are you sure you are going to be able to keep up with the world? That's how RH sells to my mind. Not the support model, it's the software update system. I now recommend RedHat to customers while hating it and most people do the same. Talk about sowing seeds of failure.