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Why Mandrake is Too Cool for UnitedLinux
An anonymous reader says "Mandrake's lastest community (spam) newsletter contains their explanation as to why they won't join in on UnitedLinux. Besides the obvious geek-fun of rolling their own distro, they claim that the underlying idea of UnitedLinux is based on a flawed comparison to the Unix world of the 80's. " I think the whole UnitedLinux thing is lame- the distros that want
to be compatible already are. UL is just the 2nd tier distros trying to get attention and ink away from the "evil forces" in North Carolina. I'll just
stick to the best distribution and watch
the fun from afar ;)
It's redhatesque but it's unique. It happens to be a damn fine distribution also.
I think that Mandrake tends to be an early adopter of new features... more so than other more conservative distro's like Red Hat. Whether that's a good thing or not is a whole other discussion- I personally think it's great. Mandrake was (one-of) the first to use a graphical installer, journaling file systems, etc. I imagine being part of a coalition like 'UnitedLinux' would entail restrictions as to what they can and cannot do. I'm glad that Mandrake has decided to continue choosing their own path.
Blender And Linux Fan
Best distro eh? Thats just *begging* to begin a flame war!
Well, yes, considering the best distros can be found here and here.
Personally I like the idea of United Linux. There's no reason that all Linux venders can't use the same base for rpm compatibility, etc. It'll hapen one way or another. Do you want one company to control the standards, or a shared effort?
I think the idea of UL is horribly flawed (and rather arrogant on its part), and the underlying premise of your reasoning for supporting UL equally flawed.
It isn't necessary to have One True packaging scheme, or One True distro to which all must maintain binary compatability, in order to effectively release binaries.
It has already been demonstrated by the folks at Blender, VMWare, Id, Loki, and others that it is quite possible to release binaries that are distribution agnostic. These real world examples, all of which install and run just fine on my Source Mage and Gentoo boxes, as well as my Debian, Mandrake, and Suse boxes, exist despite naysayers saying it isn't possible, and claiming that UL, or UL+Red Hat, bring a much needed cohesion to GNU/Linux.
Nonsense. It is an effort to impose a proprietary embrace-and-extended standard on a community that is doing just fine with consensual standards where they make sense, and a wide open, free and fair marktetplace that encourages choice everywhere else.
Telling commercial vendors that they should package their wares up as RPMs aimed at one (or two) distributions, when it is quite possible, and vastly more desirable, to package them up in standard tar.bz2 or tar.gz format along with a README listing the required libraries+versions, as well as a statically linked "last resort" fallback binary in parallel with the dynamically linked binary and thereby make them compatible with almost every distribution out there, is a terrible disservice to both the Linux community at large, and the vendors themselves who are being misled and excluding a big chunk of their target market.
This nonsense only serves the interests of the purveyors of UL, at the expense of virtually everyone else, and at the cost of our freedom of choice as GNU/Linux users. There is IMHO absolutely nothing good about this whatsoever, regardless of what your favorite distro happens to be, and even though I am not a Mandrake fan per se, I applaud them for their courage in standing up to this nonsense.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yes he does. A proper UNIX program will install files in /usr/bin, /usr/doc, /usr/share, /etc, and various other places, as opposed to a Windows program that installs everything in C:\Program Files\$progname, with the occasional library in C:\windows\system
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Any application that forces the user to use anything more than 'tar xvf' to install it is improperly designed, from an experienced UNIX user's perspective. Huh? "tar" does not perform configuration changes, like adding entries to /etc/services or /etc/inetd.conf. "tar" does not perform pre or post events to validate the install.
Simple app's can be done via "tar" itself, but a lot of software is NOT a simple install.
If I use the source from a "tar" image and then run "make install", you might be closer to being correct.
I would certainly agree that one of the biggest problems in the Unix environment is the lack of a common installation format.
Linux (RPM and Debian formats)
BSD (Packages)
Solaris (Packages)
AIX (Installp)
etc.
Many have settled on RPM or combinations of the above, but RPM does not address the entire issue either.
One thing is for sure, the answer is not "tar"
It is a basic principle of dynamic libraries that versions and functionality changes between releases. Ever notice how many different versions of Microsoft's DLLs you have on your Windows box? That's no coincidence - Windows developers are forced to incorporate the version of the DLL that works with their application. Linux provides a far superior development model, allowing publishers to statically link the correct library into their binary. Mozilla does it; Oracle does it; why can't the rest of the vendors get a clue and do the same thing?
.so or .dll to fix a problem in a library used in a number of applications, without having to rebuild every single one.
Ugh. Is this a troll? Am I missing something? Staticically linked libraries are not a 'far superior' development model. Seriously. If you want to use your system efficiently, you really don't want every application completely self-contained. That's a lot of redundancy, and thereofre, al ot of waste. Not to mention the distribution of bug fixes. Linux or Windows, it's much nicer if I can download/build a new
If you want everything self-contained, then throw yourself back to some single-tasked OS from the 70's. If you want to take advantage of modern advances in application and systems design, you're just going to have to get "used to" the idea of some standard that applications can conform to. This could be the LSB or a guide from the OS vendor to which an application is tailored, but you have to have something. Otherwise, your wasting alot of (system/manpower) resources maintaining n-hundred copies of the same statically-linked library distributed throughout your system.
Welcome to the world of modern software. Have a nice day.
-Andrew
http://www.vasoftware.com/company/management/jenab .php
Any e-mail I don't want = spam
I guess Mandrake is sending their newsletter to *@*.* now, right?
Spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail with a specific commercial pitch or advertisement including a price. Introductory e-mails (especially sent to a specific address), newsletters and business correspondence is not spam.
Indeed, and I really wonder about the hostility against united linux.
Ok, they have caldera+ransom love onboard, that may explain it.
But the notion that LSB is enough to get a common base for installing binary software is complete nonsens. Yeah, it works in theory, but in practice, for enterprise ready software, you _want_ to test on an actual platform, not hope that everyone will play well along the standards.
LSB is a good thing, but nicely written standards don't compensate for excessive regression testing on a real environment (which is what united linux gives us)
Especially with such a complex beast like a GNU/linux/whatever environment - hell, this mindset fails with simple things like tcp and http. What does MDK think "reference implementations" are for?
And please, can we stop all this nonsens about "monopolisation", "per seat license" and stuff in combination with united linux?
The GPL is the GPL is the GPL
Yes, Red Hat and Mandrake are FOR PROFIT companies, and they will do things to attract people to buy their distribution. Duh! Many companies that "want to make money" are paying for people to contribute to Linux development full time. You make it sound like following a standard (anyone heard of LSB) means you must be part of United Linux.
United Linux is an attempt by several companies that don't have a large portion of the market to build name recognition for themselves, and to make more money. Don't make it sound like they are out to save the world, they want more people to buy their brands of Linux, just like Red Hat and Mandrake do.
The final frontier of Linux computing is the Windoze desktop. RH, Mandrake, and a few of the geekier distros have pretty much conquered the hardcore Linux community, but there has been minimal penetration of the desktop market.
What remains is the competition over whose Linux will be pre-installed on the next batch of lowball Walmart machines. Simplified installs, upgrades and desktop support will appeal to the "Linux for dummies" crowd, especially those who don't know or care about the GPL issues.
No matter who UL says their target market is, the only customers that would be interested in a "pay per seat" implementation of Linux are those who are trying to abandon a "pay per seat" implementation of something else. The UL product should have some appeal for PC manufacturers who want a cheaper Microsoft than Microsoft. I think UL will evolve into the "Linux Ultra Lite/Total Fluff" distro.
the biggest problem is NOT rpm.. it's software developers trying to use a package manager as an installer which is VERY wrong.
you dont try and use windows-update to install photoshop, so why the hell are linux programmers doing the same? There is an excellent installer package available to all and is top notch... It's from loki, and doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out...
the other problem is the overwhelming desire by EVERY programmer to use incompatable and bleeding libs.. if you are writing an app for the masses, USE COMMON LIBS THAT ARE ON CURRENT DISTROS. you dont see apps sold for windows that use pre-pre alpha graphics libs that are being designed for the next windows release... so why do linux users have to suffer? developers that cant keep their hands out of the CVS for the libs installed on their machine either need to be slapped or forced to publically state that "My program XYZ WILL NOT WORK ON A STANDARD LINUX INSTALL... See my requirements list for why"
and a standard linux install is RH7.2,7.3 Mandrake 8.2 or whatever. just list it, take the time to be sure your users can actually compile your app. Or offer up a completely statically linked version... no worries about libs there...
Linux is ready for prime time.. now only if the app developers would start getting ready.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Nobody else cares? Excuse me?
/usr/share/doc) working towards LSB compliance. As I understand it they're still a way off, but they've been committed to it forever.
Debian has gone through hell (ask any debian developer about
I'd bet money that debian has a larger market share than any of the UnitedLinux companies.
Mandrake is right on when they say "MandrakeSoft would gain nothing by joining United Linux, and doing so would damage our reputation." Mandrake's claim to fame is their ease of use and GUI utilities, which have been praised and touted in this thread. They are not limited to the desktop, but they do it very well and that is their core competency. The are traditionally not the hardend server Linux you would think of (yes, of course Mandrake makes a fine server, I'm talking about their focus and perception). The UL crew have been very specific on what their target market is; not the desktop, the enterprise server, even to the exclusion of the desktop. Why then would Mandrake be interested in joining such a server focused group? As state, they wouldn't. Joining UL would force them to compete in an area where they are neither the leader or have a competitive advantage. Sure, you can believe all the sanctimonious hoorah they spout if you want, but bottom line is it's bad business for a desktop focused distro to join a server focused organization.
The biggest missconception about UL is that it is some Borg like entity that once you join you must fall in line with. This is just not the case. Each participating member can do whatever they like outside the UL organization. SuSE has stated quite clearly that they will continue to offer a desktop version. This version will (probably) not have the UnitedLinux tag on it, but then for a desktop, who cares? What UL offers is the ability to have your OS certified on enterprise hardware without being lucky enough to have the "defacto Linux standard" in your title (that's RedHat incase you missed it). With that in mind, there's no reason Mandrake could't join UL and realse a UL version, fully certified on all major hardware, with the added value of it's GUI tools, etc. Then Mandrake could continue to sell their deskop/server versions that would appeal to a broader, more price sensitive, customer base.
The second biggest missconception about UL is that it limits competition. This is just the opposite of the truth. To date there is only One distro that enjoys certification across all major hardware line, RedHat. Now, either RedHat has been unwilling or unable to convince it's hardware partners to certify agains all Linux distro's or, say, a Kernel/libs version of Linux. Sure, their are hundres of distro's out there, but only one certified for your enterprise needs, nice if your RedHat. With UnitedLinux there will not be two distros certified on all major hardwere, but five. And, because of the open (gasp) whey UnitedLinux was founded that could grow into as many distro's who care to achieve that level of certification. So, while UL does nothing to prevent a distro from producing whatever they like (thus not hurting competition), they provide the avenue through wich all distro's, not just RedHat, can achieve hardware certifications and compete in the enterprise market.
UnitedLinux is not a bad thing. It is focused on what it wants to do, but ultimately it does what RedHat never cared to, bring the rest of Linux along into the enterprise space. . . if they want to come.
Opus
Indeed, they are different.
My experiences with Mandrake where poor at best.
It was explained to me that their version of CPIO was allowed to output the filelist, with the -v option, to stdout. Never mind everyone else sending the output to stderr.
When reporting catastrophic filesystem failures, I was informed it was a known bug. That?s it, no options, no fix, just wait and see. Meanwhile clients where losing data, and crashing systems.
Easy enough to remedy the situation, migrate all clients from Mandrake to Redhat, problem solved.
IMHO, installing Mandrake, no matter how easy it is to install, is a mistake,
Your mileage may vary.
Sure, the GPL is the GPL is the GPL. *BUT*, when you have a distro with a closed-source installer and configuration utilities, with a license that only allows installing it on one system, you've still got to pay the per seat license to install it on all your boxes. You're still welcome to twiddle the Open Source/Free Software stuff, but the stuff that makes your distro what it is is untouchable.
To Moderators of this thread: Its sad when people are modded troll for having an opinion on Slashdot. Save the points for the real trolls or for modding up something that you agree with, but don't smack down people for having an honest opinion.
My reply to this post: That said, what is the best Linux often depends on what you as the user wants. That is the beauty of Linux, there is a tool for every job. Those who want (at least percieved) ease of use can go with Red Hat and Mandrake. Those who really like to tool around or really want to customize the system inside seem to prefer distros like slackware.
Speaking of bloat, Debian recently passed the 10,000 packages mark. Many of them are silly or superfluous. However, the redeeming quality is that you don't have to install much unwanted software. When a package depends on oodles of unnecessary crap (like kde and gnome libraries), there's usually a lighter alternative.
As an example, I have about 250 packages installed on my firewall (including many I don't really need, such as complete X and gui programs), and about 550 on my desktop.
The only area I think is uncomfortably bloating is that each new version of a package is slightly bigger than the last. This is probably feature creep, but some of it is also probably new documentation (which is good!).
Anyway, my point is, you have a ridiculous number of distributions to choose from. Don't judge Linux as a whole based on the mainstream distros, which are trying to gain marketshare by making Linux more Windows-y. Linux is trying to be "everything to everyone," but each distro caters to a different subset of "everyone."
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
Someone please mark this date.
Inter-Linux FUD takes over any rational discussion of things.
What do SuSE, Caldera, Conectiva, and TurboLinux have in common? Simple; those four distros are practically the only ones that continue to try to make a profit, and consistently fail. RedHat is profitable, and Mandrake is getting closer every day; Debian, Gentoo, and myriad others are noncommercial distros that have no profit incentive. But SuSE, Caldera, Conectiva, and TurboLinux all want to be the next RedHat, and outside of very small markets, they all failed.
SuSE is RedHat's biggest competitor in Europe, and has the greatest marketshare in Germany. Caldera was formerly RedHat's biggest competitor in the US (until Mandrake came along). Conectiva is RedHat's biggest competitor in Latin America. TurboLinux is RedHat's biggest competitor in Japan.
So, these four distros realized that in every market, there was generally three corporate competitors: RedHat, Mandrake, and one of them. They decided to merge, so that there would be a common distro with worldwide marketshare; but kept the companies separate, so that they could leverage their brand in each market - would Latin Americans suddenly buy a copy of SuSE? As it is, they might fully merge someday, if/when the UnitedLinux brand becomes stronger.
Mandrake knew that they were a strong competitor throughout a very large geographical area; as they said in this statement, their worldwide marketshare is larger than the four UnitedLinux companies combined. Mandrake would have nothing to gain if they had to pool their resources with four companies who are much weaker then they are, and declining all the time.
I wouldn't be surprised if UnitedLinux ends up in a full corporate merger, and later the whole thing goes bankrupt; after reading Mandrake's statement, I get the feeling that they wouldn't be either.
I have great respect for the Mandrake Linux, or any other Linux distribution, for that matter. Making a distribution of any software is hard, and an OS is more complex than most.
But Mandrake is missing the boat... and so is United Linux.
In Mandrake's FAQ entry, explaining why they have decided not to participate in United Linux, they state:
"Since all distributors use the same base
components, there are relatively few binary
incompatibility issues. And even when a
binary compatibility problem arises, it's
easy to recompile an application for a given
Linux distribution."
and they claim:
"It is extremely hard for us to understand
why some software publishers and hardware
manufacturers only support one Linux
distribution."
To me, the answer is obvious: a third party developer would have to not only internally certify their software for support purposes, but it would have to also maintain seperate SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) for each of the Linux versions on which it runs. For commercial applications, "recompile" is not as easy as the act itself. It's clear, these people have never produced a third party shrink-wrapped packaged software product intended to run on a UNIX system.
The intent of United Linux is to try and make it possible for a manufacturer to build shrink-wrapped product that they can know will run on any United Linux labelled platform.
But here, United Linux must fail, as the LSB has failed.
In the original UNIX Wars (of which I am a battle-scarred veteran), the problem was that each distribution of UNIX, even for the same processor family, was "standard plus extensions". Each vendor tried to provide "value add"... and, in doing that, they introduced incompatability between nominally standards compliant platforms.
So paying lip-service to a standard gets you nowhere. The LSB gets you nowhere, and POSIX gets you nowhere. You may be able to compile the same source code on each of these platforms, and, if you are lucky, and did not need to use any platform proprietary information to build your product, it may run without errors. But all you've achieved with this is source compatability.
The LSB doesn't give you binary compatability, and neither does United Linux. And it won't, even if they specify the ABI, even to the point of install tools and other minutia, like IBCS2 did (and neither BSD nor Linux has *full* IBCS2 compliance, until the IBCS2 installation and packaging tools also work -- it's not *just* the ABI, it's the environment).
Why will United Linux fail, since that's what I'm leading up to?
United Linux will fail because it's not possible to *turn off* the vendor "value add".
This seems counter-intuitive at first, but it's a fact. It's the same reason the LSB has failed to deliver on the same promise. And it's the same reason UNIX was never able to be defragmented, when everyone started using Intel processors and commodity PC hardware. Here is the reason:
Standard plus extensions is inherently non-standard.
Let me repeat that:
Standard plus extensions is inherently non-standard.
Until it's possible to turn off *everything* that isn't covered by a standard, it will be impossible for a third party developer to build something that they *know* will run on all platforms that conform to the standard.
Linux vendors: if you want to become the #1 developement platform for United Linux, then strip out everything that isn't covered by the definition of United Linux.
That -- and only that! -- will guarantee that any program that runs on your platform will run on any United Linux platform.
It will guarantee that there is no possibility of a third party developer accidently using a vendor specific extension (OK: "enhancement", but we know that it's really there for vendor lock-in).
It will also make you a commodity.
*This* is what the vendors in the UNIX Wars feared, and refused to let happen. And, in doing that, they lost all the third party development resources to Windows, which *was* a commodity, even if it was one only because of the Microsoft Monopoly.
Will this happen? Will the Linux Vendors wake up to the fact that they nust agree to *commoditize themselves*? Probably not. It's a lot easier for Caldera or Mandrake or Red Hat to compete among themselves, and try and beat each other down, than it is for them to try and take on Microsoft.
So Mandrake... you're avoiding doing the wrong thing by not participating in United Linux, given it's current vender differentiation model permitting vendor lock-in of third party developers.
*But*... you are doing it for the wrong reasons, and as long as you stick to your guns, you aren't going to be doing the right thing for the right reasons, either.
-- Terry
When the LSB was first being kicked around Bruce Perens happened to be on board and he suggested using Debian's set of core packages as a test distribution. However, Caldera (and to a lesser extent SuSE) didn't want a binary standard base that you could actually install, because the leaders at these companies knew that many people might simply deploy the test distribution and not pay for the proprietary extras that Caldera and SuSE had to offer. After all, if all you need is a Linux distribution that you can run Oracle on, it really doesn't matter which distribution it is as long as it is supported by Oracle.
That is why we have a written LSB standard and a set of tests instead of a much easier to create and use binary standard.
Well, Caldera and SuSE (and TurboLinux) have finally realized that their developers want a binary standard, and if they can't have one from the LSB they will simply use RedHat which is a very popular and extremely open.. Once again that leaves the proprietary distributions (Caldera, SuSE, TurboLinux) out in the cold, and so they have banded together to form a proprietary alternative. You see, they have created a binary distribution, but they want to charge people to use it. Since most of the software is GPLed, they can't deny sources to most of the distribution, but you can bet that they will be up to the same old tricks that they have always been up to. Caldera has said unequivocally that the UnitedLinux core would be licensed "per seat."
The truly unfortunate bit is that it would appear that Caldera is going to use UnitedLinux as a chance to drag SuSE into bankruptcy. SuSE gets to pay for the development and maintenance of UnitedLinux, and Caldera stands to receive a disproportionate amount of the benefit. Meanwhile Caldera still has revenues from the old SCO Unixes to keep itself afloat.
Personally, I use Debian, and think that it would make an excellent binary test platform. It is well-maintained, non-commercial, and it is a relatively slow moving target. There is lots of room for adding value to the Debian core packages. That being the case, I would much rather see RedHat or even Mandrake (both of which have firm policies of releasing source code under the GPL) become the binary standard than UnitedLinux.