UnitedLinux Ready for Official Launch

Anonymous Coward writes " PCWORLD has the word that UnitedLinux has completed beta testing of the first release of its open source Linux operating system and is ready to launch the product as planned next month, said company manager Paula Hunter Tuesday at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Frankfurt, Germany."

Comments

IMHO

[Znonymous Coward]

I have beta tested SCOs version of UnitedLinux. UnitedLinux is basically Caldera mixed with SuSE. It's not hat great unless you really like SuSE stuff (YASTA, etc).

Re:IMHO

[haggar]

Me too (betatested, that is). I was dismayed they didn't integrate COAS into it. I liked COAS.

On the other hand, I have to admit they packed a LOT of server and network management-related utilities in it.

All in all, it felt rather solid and professional. yast was a bit buggy and some features were missing, apparently. I am totally curious how the configuration is in the final product.

Re:IMHO

[NeonSpirit]

As SCO/Caldera and SuSE are the two big development companies in the consortium such a mix is what I would expect. Presonaly I found it to be mainly SuSE. From some of the presentations I have been to, the two other members of the consrtium Turbolinux and Conectiva have mainly contributed language support and will be actively marketing thier distribution in thier individual regions as they have branding.

Shame they don't know what "Open Source" means

[Phil Hands]

UnitedLinux has completed beta testing of the first release of its open source Linux operating system
(emphasis mine)

Given that United Linux uses YaST as it's installer, the operating system is dependant up on that non-free (and hence non Open Source) program, which renders the whole thing non-free.

United Linux, like SuSE, is not Free Softwae, so it is not Open Source.

Re:Shame they don't know what "Open Source" means

[DickBreath]

From section 3 of the YaST license...

It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data carriers which have been reproduced without authorisation for payment without the prior written consent of SuSE Linux AG or SuSE Linux. Distribution of the YaST programme, its sources, whether amended or unamended in full or in part thereof, and the works derived thereof for a charge require the prior written consent of SuSE Linux AG.

Re:Shame they don't know what "Open Source" means

[NeonSpirit]

UnitedLinux have commited that the base distribution CD will be freely downloadable for "Non commercial use" in thier FAQ.

Will users be able to download free versions of UnitedLinux for non-commercial uses, similar to how Linux is freely available today?

Yes, UnitedLinux sources will be made available for free download as soon as version 1 is released.

UnitedLinux is intended for commercal use, rumours have it that the original name was going to be United Business Linux, until 9-11 made the UBL TLA unviable.

Therefor it will be free but not,as you say, open source.

Re:Shame they don't know what "Open Source" means

[Phil Hands]

Since when does free software == open source?

since the Open Source Initative was initially set up to market Free Software to corporate types that don't like the F word, but do like the software.

Alternatively, since the Open Source Initiative based their Open Source Definition on the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

In other words, Open Source was always supposed to refer to the same thing as Free Software.

Of course, the Apple license went and screwed things up slightly, because the OSI decided to accept that as Open Source, whereas Debian, and the Free Software Foundation don't like the 12-month pulication upon deployment clause for various reasons. If you ignore that slight wrinkle, FS == OS

Either way, YaST isn't either of those things.

Re:No Info on UnitedLinux.com?

[Alarion]

Apart from price, UnitedLinux is introducing new features, such as larger memory support, to differentiate itself from the competition, Hunter said.

Uhh, large memory support is standard in the kernel? Any idea what this /really/ means?

note, that's larger memory support.

According to this whitepaper they are increasing the supported memory size from 1gb to 64gb. Here is a quote from it:
Large memory support
The Linux kernel is ordinarily limited to 1 GB of physical memory on the x86 32-
bit platform, with 4 GB of virtual addressing space. With large memory support,
Linux can take advantage of the Intel Physical Address Extension to support up to

64 GB of physical RAM and the full 4 GB of virtual addressing space per process.
In addition, with AMD x86-64, Linux can enable highly efficient flat 64-bit memory
addressibility for enterprise systems.

Re:No Info on UnitedLinux.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

So say's the 2.4.19 that shipped with Mandrake 9.0:

CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM:

Linux can use up to 64 Gigabytes of physical memory on x86 systems.
However, the address space of 32-bit x86 processors is only 4
Gigabytes large. That means that, if you have a large amount of
physical memory, not all of it can be "permanently mapped" by the
kernel. The physical memory that's not permanently mapped is called
"high memory".

If you are compiling a kernel which will never run on a machine with
more than 960 megabytes of total physical RAM, answer "off" here (default
choice and suitable for most users). This will result in a "3GB/1GB"
split: 3GB are mapped so that each process sees a 3GB virtual memory
space and the remaining part of the 4GB virtual memory space is used
by the kernel to permanently map as much physical memory as
possible.

If the machine has between 1 and 4 Gigabytes physical RAM, then
answer "4GB" here.

If more than 4 Gigabytes is used then answer "64GB" here. This
selection turns Intel PAE (Physical Address Extension) mode on.
PAE implements 3-level paging on IA32 processors. PAE is fully
supported by Linux, PAE mode is implemented on all recent Intel
processors (Pentium Pro and better)...

Re:Red Hat Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the blatant dislike for RedHat? It's the distro that most newbies cut their teeth on and gets them ready to move onto more complex stuff. SuSE is OK, but it's not really that much better than RH. Especially where standard hardware support is concerned.

A freind of mine has tried Linux on and off the past few years. SuSE is the closest he said that he came to feeling that it was made for him. But his major gripe (well placed) was that it didn't have out of the box support for his PCMCIA WLAN card (Linksys), his CD-R/RW/DVD drive, or the ability to play back DVDs. These are pretty standard features on most laptops these days. When he tried RedHat, the installer wasn't as easy to use as SuSE, but at least his hardware worked. So that's where it falls apart... RedHat is "six of one" and Suse is "half a dozen of the other". All the blatant in-fighting and competition is doing nothing to further the cause. The only way this is ever going to work is if everyone cooperates. SuSE should open up YAST and RedHat should use it. RedHat should let other distros have access to their kernels, and SuSE should use them. That would go a long way to getting Linux out there. To hell with the businesses, it's the software and the users stupid.