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Which Desktop Distro Will Die First?
Over at NewsForge, Roblimo asks the musical question of which of the several recently released "desktop oriented" Linux distributions won't survive the coming year. It's nice to see user-centric distributions at all, but it really is a niche market for now. Apropos that,
psykocrime writes "The fine folks at UnitedLinux have issued a Press Release announcing UnitedLinux 1.0.
Should be interesting to see whether this sinks or swims, considering the general ambivalence (at best) or even outright hostility (at worst) that most of the talk about United Linux has met, from the Linux community.
Questions about GPL compliance, per-set licensing terms, etc... is this the future or Linux or just another albatross?" And J. J. Ramsey writes "BeyondUnreal reviews not only Xandros Desktop's installation, but also shows what this distro's $99 price tag actually gets you. Read more here. LinuxPlanet also has an in-depth review of its own."
1. Bad marketing plans redolent of dot-bombs.
2. Onerous licensing not in keeping with Linux's mission.
3. Just plain bad distros.
4. Unprofessional behavior.
The latter will kill a company that deals in Linux very quickly, I've found, since the Linux community is very aware of a company's behavior, far more so than most other communities. If company X with distro Y is seen as "in bed with the enemy," they're going to get shunned faster than a sweet potato that's been up Rush Limbaugh's butt for safekeeping during the winter.
Maybe this is why small companies like Slackware are still around: they cater to a specific need, they do it well, and they don't try to shoot themselves in the foot with pretentious We Need To Grow Our Business jargon/corporate newspeak.
I think you swapped around all of the distro descriptions. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to sort them out. :)
In a sense you can say distros never die, as their GPL source will always live. Corel came back from the grave with Xandros, let's just hope that it doesn't 'die' again.
IMHO it's hard to sell any distro without giving some kind of 'sample' (i.e. ISOs online.) I can see that distros will not be a success as they don't really make any money at the moment. It is my belief that RedHat is not successful because of their desktop distro but because of their server distros and services they provide.
I'm sure we'll go through tons of forgotton distros but as time progresses, so will these distros progress, and eventually we'll have a distro with the true stability of Linux along with the smoothness of something like OS X/Windows/[insert favorite desktop OS here]
I figured I should make sense of this post before some newbie actually believed it If you are new to linux and want a clean desktop to get you started select one of the following: 1) Redhat 8.0 2) Mandrake 9.whatever 3) Suse (what number are they to?) If you are a bit more seasoned and want to play a bit more try these: 1) Redhat 8.0 2) Debian If you are a wizard and want real control: 1) Redhat 8.0 2) Slackware 3) Gentoo These are all my opinion...disagree if you like, but I am right in my little world :)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Completely free distros do not disappear, but those that require pay-per-seat because they have proprietary components are at much greater risk of disappearing. If the company loses interest, the distro goes away, as distributing it without their permission is not legal.
This is one of the things that puts Lindows at risk.
They already did and lost so far, what more as a result the name Windows as a trademark for MS' OS might not be protected. Lindows might be doing us all a favor.
Help fight continental drift.
One of my friends bought a Wal-mart PC with Lindos pre-installed and it was awful.
From both the perspective of a linux user and a windows user. It failed at everything. It was tough to use, the menus were cluttered with software you didn't have but you could pay for. It was slow, it couldn't run windows programs the way it advertised.
I can't believe wal-mart would have agreed to let them ship it on their systems.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
They're both proven, reliable, and fast. Reiser is a bit faster and more efficient. Ext3 is good for backwards compatibility: you can switch an ext3 filesystem to ext2 and back. Reiser is based on a very advanced balanced tree algorithm, which gives it fast speeds and very efficient of small and large files. I.e., files less than a kilobyte don't use a 4k block like they would on an ext3 filesystem. They use exactly their size plus the space needed in the address tree. Reiser 4 is very incredible: files can be directories, so things like ACL's and UNIX permissions are stored in actual files! Reiser is also so efficient it can be used as a database! So it would make sense to choose ReiserFS as it is much more advanced than Ext3/2, and even JFS and XFS.
The Latest info I can find is from last month where Lindows asked the Judge to dismiss the case filed by MS. There can not have been any ruling yet as the press would have written about it regardless of outcome.
Help fight continental drift.
Hate to break this to you bud, but I don't think there's a Winzip for Linux ;-)
You do have gaim, yahoo messenger, gimp, abiword, gnumeric, star office, real player, xine, mplayer, audacity, xmms, evolution, pan, and at least 2 other applications though...
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
Where is the page to order and download a $5 version in order to pay their bandwidth and server upkeep costs? I don't see it. Where is the page to order just the CDs for $10/$15? I don't see it.
The GPL doesn't require them to provide it. They're perfectly fine under the GPL only selling it for $299.
What they can't do is stop you from giving away (or selling for $5) the copy you bought from them for $299. The GPL doesn't say anything about you having to give away your software, or about charging only what it costs to physically transfer the copy. It just says that you cannot then place any restrictions on further distribution of that GPLed software.
-Rob
"What the hell is wrong with Mandrake?"
Lib dependencies when attempting to install packages even via the vaunted urpmi. I tried Mandrake on my laptop, got a lib dependency, gave up, installed Libranet, updated it to Debian testing and continued working. I used rpm based distros for 2 years. Never again.
As for "United Linux is crap", I just hope it incorporates Conectiva's rpm management tool and maybe it will be more widely used and bring about well maintained apt repositories and other rpm-based distros might fix the rpm install mess.
This guy is way out there
Ext3 actually has "four" modes to it:
Here in Europe, the picture is reversed. Germany, the country with the highest Linux use per capita in the world (netcraft et al) is mainly SuSE country, this mainly because SuSE is the first distro that people there hear about and because SuSE is German and has, surprise, better German documentation. (Not that I like SuSE though, my own experiences with them and their distro have been very bad). Mandrake also has a higher density in France than elsewhere, and has, surprise, good help in French. The localisation of these distros is what gives them their strength. Internationally though, RedHat has the best chances of success. Debian remains the friendliest non-commercial distro, once it's installed, with apt-get being the real choice item in the distro.
My prediction: Linux should devise a method of device support that lives outside the kernal and can be changed on the fly without rebooting.
You are right and I am wrong.
Not only does the fsf gpl faq address this, but section 3 of the GPL makes it clear.
You must either
- Include source code
- Accompany with written offer to ANY third party
- Accompany with written offer received from someone else -- but this option available only if YOU are a NON-commercial distributor, and yourself received the second option above.
It's the ANY third party that I was hung up over. So yes, Lindows, must either include source on the CD's or include downloadable source to anyone, not just their customers.Of course, they don't have to make it easy to find.
This written offer good for anyone who visits our web site between 2:00 and 3:00 AM CST on the 2nd Tuesday of the month.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!