Slashdot Mirror
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."
as opposed to what? closed source linux
Why is Slashdot wasting time with pre-hype about some vaguely defined 'product' that may or may not be released soon when there are so many much more interesting free software projects which are releasing code _now_?
What is this, marketspeak press release of the month competition?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
UnitedLinux.com has no information about this release however?
/really/ means?
From the article:
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
-- Azaroth
I predict that United Linux is going to become the Most Popular OS ever!!!
-Everyone is going to use it.
-Windows Will become Obsolete
-It will revolutionize the computing industry as we know it
Then we will find out that the Secret Owner of the Company is Bill Gates
How many months ago did they announce this happening? Now they are already set to release a real product. If this was a collaboration of a bunch of proprietary software companies, they'd still be hashing out legal agreeements. United Linux itself doesn't interest me that much, but the fact that such things are possible does.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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).
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Who beta tested this? I never once heard of anyone running this and they are ready to launch a production version of it? Maybe I should take my blinders off if I somehow missed this but I never heard of any beta versions.
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.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
I'll stick with RedHat myself. And let me tell you, corporations will do the same. Why? RedHat's proven. UnitedLinux (I thought it was just supposed to be a body of standards? Eh?) isn't. They'd best hope they have the venture capital to stick it out.
That said, what ever happened to Random Love or whatnot?
My second wife was a beta tester for the latest version (release candidate).
She told me all about it to stuff it in my face. One of the differences for us that caused the divorce was that I was a big Windows user (although I did run Linux on one of my machines, which she took through the divorce), and she was a big Linux and BSD user. I can honestly say that I am strictly a windows user because she took all the boxes with Linux on them.
Anyway, she said it has some features that will 'blow windows AND linux users away.' I'd say more, but don't know if I'm allowed to tell the info legally (trust me, she's already taken me to the cleaners, once).
Yeah, I'm a Republican AND a geek. It is possible.
With Caldera and SuSE each having a stake in UnitedLinux, which one actually does the "steering" (for lack of a better expression)? It seems that even when companies cooperate, someone ultimately emerges at the leader.
I get this feeling that, like a lot of other cooperative efforts, there will be a split between the involved parties down the line (different business models, philosophies, goals, etc) and there will be separate paths taken by the different companies, and the end result will be that no one has really gained too much in the way of progress. Am I alone in this line of thinking?
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
The main benefit of UL is that it will present a united spec to compete against Red Hat. From the ISV and hardware vendor perspective, this is good, because there will be only two Linux distro specs being used in the business world where they will hawk their goods. Debian ought to count as a third but it doesn't have the marketshare or mindshare (except among diehard admins, of course).
Only good can come of this, though I really don't see UL being able to overcome Red Hat.
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
So four companies merged to create United linux. I'm still confused as there's still Lycoris, Lindows, Mandrake, Redhat, etc.
In my PERSONAL experience in futzing with Lycoris, I went out and BOUGHT Redhat.
Redhat seems to suffer from Microsoftitis, that is, if it's a Un*x app, it's running on Redhat first.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
So which part of the Open Source Definition allows software that is barred by the Debian Free Software Guidelines, or vice versa?
(Hint: they're practiaclly word for word the same document, with a little editing done by the OSI since they based their definition on Debian's)
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
A subarctic creature, through a window slides,
A fractured system is united,
The Gates of hell opened,
A dot is slashed with the multitudes in great debate.
Why is that everytime we read about Linux - people mention how Linux is going to get users to convert from Solaris, HP-UX etc. and here the thing is that this distro is designed to get users from RedHat.
Shouldn't it be that the goal is to get users to switch from Windows? Who cares if they migrate to RedHat or Solaris or SuSE or United Linux? As long as its away from Windows. This is great that there's yet another distro (I guess), but I think they ought to target Windows users rather than existing Linux/Unix users.
A house divided...
So, will next year be : United GNU/Linux Year ? :-)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Our company has been using (and buying) SuSE distributions for years now and we were pretty happy with it until they got to 8.0 when so many things were broken/changed that we couldn't use it any longer as a server OS. The big changes were the loss of the ability to edit the configuration files; especially in regards to selecting which services start during boot. It proved almost impossible, for instance, to keep portmap from starting without mucking about in the bowels of the boot sequence. It seemed to us that 8.0 was aimed squarely at the desktop market and its functionality as a server was reduced.
Since most of our installs are servers, we stopped buying the 5 or 6 copies of the distribution we normally buy and instead went back to using the single copy of 7.3 we had laying around the lab.
What I'm afraid of with United Linux is that SuSE will have moved their own distribution (which I liked to call "The Lego Set of Operating Systems") from an all-purpose distro (at a great price: $79) to a desktop-only solution. The UL distro will be moved in (at a significantly higher price point) to fill the server niche. Thus we will have to buy two distributions from SuSE (a la RedHat) whereas before one did everything. (And yes, I know they had a $39.95 "personal" edition but that always looked to me to be the loss-leader for ads that brought people into the store to turn them for the higher value product.)
This makes me nervous. Our comapany's future depends on the solidity of the distribution we choose. Our competitiveness rests on our ability to buy the OS at prices that put our MS rivals out of the bidding. I am not comfortable with distributions that tinker with what I thought was a winning recipe.
Our move to SuSE was away from RH during the glibc debacle (version 4 or 5 of RH, I forget now). Our move away from SuSE (to Debian, perhaps) might be imminent. It will all depend on how they price this new United Linux offering and what it offers our customers.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Yeah, it's a real shame that they passed the APSL, because otherwise you'd be able to say the two terms were exactly equivalent, rather than having to get into complicated caveats.
I imagine that OSI will comit the same sin, and pass the Real license recently mentioned in TheRegister, since that license seems to have been inspired by the APSL, and has the nasty 12-month forced publication drivel.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
Why do people try to put UL and RH against each other? UL is een open initiative in which Linux distro's can participate. This includes RH. So i don't understand the fuss.. what i do know is that people are still thinking that RH is big in the entire world. IT'S NOT!!!. Here in Europe SuSE is one of the biggest distro's and RedHat is, although known to most, over here what SuSE is to u in the US.
Furthermore, the fact that this UL distro looks like a mix of SuSE and SCO's linux distro is because they put the most effort in this for the moment.
It remains to be seen if this initiative attracts ISV though. And that is not because of lack of support but more an economical reason. Since it is not easy in this economical climate most ISV would rather stay on the beaten path then try to find new roads..
Seriously, migrate to Debian. It's rock solid stable, you can choose exactly how it runs and it won't cost you a dime.
You could download it over the net and start playing with it on a beta machine today if you wanted.
This parent is a troll.
Read the developer's mailing lists for any given distribution that has one. It's not easy--in fact, its really quite hard. Private software has it tough too, but getting all these new software packages that often break binary compatibility to interpolate properly is exceedingly difficult--often times packages fail silently and it takes time to even detect a symptom, and after that finding the source can take weeks! The private software authors have this problem to some extent, but not like distros.
Actually, I'd venture to say private companies re-use as much code as OSS developers. As for the individual packages, many of the core utilities in Win2k have been around with few or no updates since '95! These issues just aren't as prevalent or detectable without sites like distrowatch which tabulate the various packages and version numbers that make up a distro.
UnitedLinux is a joint commercial venture by respected Linux distributors. Their product must be good--plenty of venture capital has been invested in them, and the individual members have burnt a lot of funds on UL. Just because they draw mostly from tools developed via a different software development model doesn't mean that they aren't trying to compete in the business world via the same means as "private software companies." In fact, you contrasted a hypothetical "private company" to UL, even though UL is, more or less, a "private company!"
Nice rebuttal there. Unfortunately, UL is a private company, developing distros is as difficult as private ventures, and you sir are a troll.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
It will be harder to get Windows people to migrate to Linux if the trend of adding more flavors :) I've only tried out Red Hat, but I won't migrate away from Windows until I've :)
continues. To me it's like they're making coffee from the same set of coffee beans, and then add
their own special flavor to it, like milk, sugar etc. All these different versions makes a beginner
rather confused. I bet a lot of people ask themselves "Which Linux shall I choose???"... Well,
at least I do.
figured out why there's so many different flavors of Linux. I don't think I'm alone in this quest for
knowledge. Anyway, I'm not in a rush... I'll waste the time to STFW.
If what you need to use is closed-source, then use it. If you can find an open/free alternative that works just as well, then use it. If you find something which costs nothing but doesn't offer source, then use that if you need to. Saying "use the right tool for the job" doesn't necessarily have to involve any discussions about openness or freedom if you have an open mind to begin with.
I've never understood why some people consider having a choice to be a bad thing. I suppose I've always valued liberty over equality, I guess.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I still don't accept your argument. Win2k had thousands of developers in separate departments, sort of like OSS development. Therefore, a correct comparison would be the team that would "glue" the system together vs a distro (if there were such a team; there might be). In this case, the Win2k "glue" team (again, I'm not asserting it exists) has a much easier job than the distro team, and I think the reasons are obvious and tied to the (albeit loose) centralization of Win2k.
I think we have come to the point where we both agree that the parent was Wrong (TM), since we both agree the comparison was moot, and the original parent's evident assumption that UL itself is an Open Source project is completely untrue. That being said, I believe you are still not thinking of UL as what it really is--a corporate entity.
Anyways, I did not accuse you of trolling because of your views, but because you made rather bold statements that in my original reply I showed to be huge jumps. By calling you on them in the harsh manner I did, you were forced to represent yourself in a more sensible light.
Cheers,
The Grey One
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
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.
Time to dig in and stand against companies who are treating the spirit of Linux like an afterthought.
There is plently of BSD code out their so I wish these companies would just stick to that instead of using mostly GPL code and then throwing in their "special sauce" thus polluting the distro.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I believe that rpm is required by the LSB, so they pretty much *MUST* support it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Use the power that opensource provides and create your own distro and maintain that.
If you are mainly interested in server installs, then you wont have much maintenance to do once its stable and running.. You dont want bleeding edge stuff in the first place.
Or just switch to FreeBSD and forget the distro wars once and for all ( its part of what drove me away ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
considering how much the Red Hat installer sucks (especially for inexperienced users).
Eh? You are kidding me right? I started off with Red Hat back when it was at version 5.0 - and even then I could work out the installer having come fresh from Windows.
The Red Hat installer is now easier than ever.. in fact I would probably consider it easier to use than the Windows installer! Whats so tough about it?
Pick your keyboard + mouse, pick a place to install to, pick your timezone + location, pick the type of install you want (server, workstation, etc) and off you go! It ain't exactly rocket science!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"