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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.

5 of 455 comments (clear)

  1. too late? by tps12 · · Score: 0, Troll

    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)
    1. Re:too late? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll
      I agree. There's been way too much fragmentation in the Open Source community lately. Branching Linux like this is only going to harm adoption down the road.

      I think it's time to clean up a bit. One package format (how many times do we need to reinvent the wheel?), a rewrite of X with the display manager, 3D acceleration, and event processing in the core so that we can resolve the speed issues that the competition just doesn't have to contend with because of their targeting of one platform, and digital signing of all drivers by a trusted Linux entity (Red Hat seems pretty standard) so that we can avoid 'amateurish' code from causing hardware locks and drive failures.

      Then it'll really be a contender on the desktop.

    2. Re:too late? by joestar · · Score: 1, Troll


      >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.

      Where did you see Mandrake is based on Red Hat? did you try it? Not the same install, not the same environments... Your statement is pure lie.

  2. And thus... by NetRanger · · Score: 0, Troll

    And thus, CowboyNeal Linux was born.

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    -- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
  3. Re:Red Hat's dominance in the industry by BlowCat · · Score: 1, Troll

    They are not purely OS companies. Neither are Microsoft, Apple, Palm and WindRiver. QNX may count, but they are not as big as RedHat AFAIK.