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Linux Vendors to Standardize on Single Distribution

Posted by Hemos on from the one-ring-to-bind-them dept.

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.

3 of 455 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More RPMs for more things more timely? by uebernewby · · Score: 3, Redundant

    I've been very happy with SuSE as well - it's very beginner friendly.

    Unfortunately, once you start looking at installing stuff that *didn't* come with the distro, it gets ver ugly very fast. Apparently, they've got a non-standard layout that many ./configure scripts choke on.

    Hopefully this standardization effort (which I've yet to read the details about - it's /.-ed) will put an end to this.

    Although I must say it's too late for me - I'm downloading Red Hat ISOs now, hopefully Red Hat will be a bit more usable.

    --

    News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
  2. More by loconet · · Score: 0, Redundant

    More alternative options is good.
    More competition is good.

    Monopoly is bad.

    --
    [alk]
  3. Re:hmm by Daemonik · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I could care less if they keep their own installers so long as they share the hardware compatibility with each other.

    One of the more maddening aspects of installing Linux is that Distro A will recognize hardware that Distro B doesn't, even though they were released within a few weeks of each other.

    Or Distro A will add obscure patches to their kernel that you never knew you needed till you try and install Distro B.

    As to the idea that one or more parties will drop their installers, I doubt it. The installer is part of the 'experience' that seperates one distro from another, such as Connectiva's use of games while you wait for the install to finish.

    While this consolidation will bring more consistency to the distros, look for more distinctive (and proprietary) touches to distinguish them from each other such as exclusive icon sets, graphical boot screens, branded GUI's, etc.