United Linux is Here

pstreck writes "Red Hat watch out! Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE and Turbolinux have made good on their promise and United Linux is here! According to their website 'United Linux is a standards-based Linux operating system targeted at the business user. It is developed, marketed and sold by an experienced partnership of Linux companies.'" I just don't get it I guess, it just seems like there are already so many standards.

Comments

Re:So what happens to the distributions?

[kylus]

From the FAQ:

"Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux will collaborate on the development of the UnitedLinux distribution in order to provide migration pathes from their former releases to UnitedLinux. However, each UnitedLinux partner will still have its own Linux distribution that is "Powered by UnitedLinux." Existing long-term relationships with leading hardware and software companies - as well as the current UnitedLinux partners - guarantee the compatibility of UnitedLinux with relevant business solutions. HW and SW manufacturers have the opportunity to join the alpha and beta test circles, thus reassuring in an early stage that UnitedLinux supports their products."

If I read this correctly, it means that the future versions of SuSe, Connectiva, etc will be forks of the main United Linux distro.

Re:So what happens to the distributions?

[pointwood]

If you actually took the time to check the website before asking the question, that is actually explained there:

Next Steps
* Each UnitedLinux partner continues to sell Linux under its familiar Linux brand and product, "Powered by UnitedLinux"
* Caldera OpenLinux "Powered by UnitedLinux"
* Conectiva Linux "Powered by UnitedLinux"
* SuSE Linux Enterprise Server "Powered by UnitedLinux"
* Turbolinux "Powered by UnitedLinux"
* One core development team benefiting several partners * Other Linux companies invited to join

Furthermore:

Competition
How will Linux companies in UnitedLinux still compete?

Pricing: Each company will set its own product pricing
Channels: Retail stores, reseller channels, direct, etc.
Support: Each company runs its own support team
Education: Independent training and certification
Professional Services: Custom implementations
Applications: Management, administration, messaging, etc.
OEM: Industry partners still choose products to bundle

New Distro ?

[rasjani]

Few question. How many of the current redhat/enterprise users are going to change the distro just because few competiting companies are now making up some standards ? Havent read anything about the case but.. what standards ? LSB ? Isnt redhat also supposed to follow that also ? blaah. This is just marketing hype...

Red Hat is not the standard

[Epeeist]

Unfortunately for SuSe, Caldera, et. al, the standard most American businesses are choosing is Red Hat.

Emphasis and addition mine.

I think you will find that outside of America the picture is quite different, with SuSE and Mandrake doing well in Europe and TurboLinux doing well in the far east.

Re:This is a wonderful thing..

[_Sprocket_]

2) This gives everyone more competition. If I remember correctly, SUSE or Mandrake was THE Linux distro to get. Red Hat came along and pushed the bar. Whether or not you like Red Hat or not, they have made a major impact in the Linux world.

I completely agree that competition is good. Standards aren't proven to be good by decree; they must be proven in a trial by fire. They must compete with other ideas and (marketing and politics aside) rise on their own merrits.

However, I think you're a bit off on your distro timeline. I seem to remember RedHat being the first push towards a commercial Linux distro. SUSE came down the line. Mandrake was a test of the Linux fabric - it started pretty much as RedHat with KDE (quickly differentiating itself with its own install apps, diskdrake, and other nifty contributions to the community). But RedHat was there first pushing in to the US market with business components the IT Industry has been used to seeing from a commercial OS vendor.

Here is the simple truth, I was once a tech. I loved learning all the arcane commands and symbols, but I don't have time for that anymore. I need stuff that helps me work faster, better and *simpler*. That is what Windows *does* have in its favor currently. Most things are just a few dialog boxes away and I'm done. I'm waiting for that in Linux and I hope with a decree that they are going after business that they will realize that business isn't interested in the arcane. They want simple, fast solutions to common tasks.

I am still a techie. I came from a Windows world and found myself quickly adapting to Unix when an opportunity presented itself. And I discovered that, for the most part, I preferred Unix. I found a degree of simplicity and power in "man foo.cfg" and "vi foo.cfg" that didn't exist in "clicky-clicky". But there was some learning curve and a suprising amount of philosophical change between the two. It comes to no suprise to me that Unix and Windows admins seem to talk two different languages and come from different cultures. Because they do.

Having said all that... sometimes a GUI is a nice tool to have. HP/UX and Solaris both had config GUIs that were nice to quickly churn out some common admin task (such as adding a couple users). But they were compatible with the old editing flat text files.

Linux offers that now - although different distros tend to favor different admin GUIs.

Re:They better correct this:

[Col. Klink (retired)]

does it further specify that being online is a requirement

Having recently taken the Free Software Quiz, I can tell you that not only is "being online" not a requirement, but it is not even sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the GPL. From the GPL FAQ:

I want to distribute binaries without accompanying sources. Can I provide source code by FTP instead of by mail order?

You're supposed to provide the source code by mail-order on a physical medium, if someone orders it. You are welcome to offer people a way to copy the corresponding source code by FTP, in addition to the mail-order option, but FTP access to the source is not sufficient to satisfy section 3 of the GPL.

When a user orders the source, you have to make sure to get the source to that user. If a particular user can conveniently get the source from you by anonymous FTP, fine--that does the job. But not every user is on a network. The rest of the users are just as entitled to get the source code from you, which means you must be prepared to send it to them by post.

If the FTP access is convenient enough, perhaps no one will choose to mail-order a copy. If so, you will never have to ship one. But you cannot assume that.

Of course, it's easiest to just send the source with the binary in the first place.

KDE 3.0.1 and GCC 3.1 issues

[NZheretic]

In the UnitedLinux Roadmap it states that both GCC 3.1 and KDE 3.0 are main components.

I have been trialing GCC 3.1 and the C++ compilation is a major improvement over past version of GCC. Being C based the GNOME 1.4 and GNOME 2 libraries and most applications compiles and runs without too much hassle. However KDE 3.0.1 is somewhat more problematic, even when neither debugging support nor strict syntax checking is enabled..

This is not the fault of either the KDE or GCC developers. KDE was coded to support the "older" C++ style of pre GCC 2.9x and Microsoft's compilers and the GCC Team is following the new C99 & ISO 14882 C++ standards.

After kludgeing around the defects in the older GCC C++ template and library implementations, GCC 3.1 C++ is real joy to use. It makes it possible to program C++ in a completely new styles, that IMO can be far more productive.

It is difficult layering one type of programing style over another, the older C++ style libraries certainly make Windows programing a pain.

Would it not be better to wait for the KDE team to port KDE to a pure GCC 3.1/ISO 14882 style?

At the very least the debugging support is required for GCC's Profile Driven Optimizations which can greatly improve application performance.

GNOME 2.0 is due for release soon enough, at the very least the GNOME libraries and core should also be included at a United Linux "main component".

just Linux (and a small matter of testing)

[_|()|\|]

the fact remains that glibc is glibc, libm is libm, the kernel is the kernel, etc. Red Hat, Caldera, et al differentiate themselves using little chunks of code like package managers and installers, but when the system is installed it's all just Linux.

Actually, distributions also differentiate themselves by adding patches to things like glibc, GCC, and the kernel.

As I mentioned in "Red Hat's little forks," there are over 100 patches in kernel-2.4.18-4.src.rpm, including a 20 MB whopper from Alan Cox. As I recall, SuSE incorporated ReiserFS, JFS, and LVM before they were in the Linus kernel.

Wearing your optimistic programmer hat, it should still just work. Wearing the pessimistic hat of a user or a tester, it has to be retested. It will be interesting to see the extent to which a "Powered by UnitedLinux" distribution is allowed to add patches.