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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."
do you really think it matters if us end-users dislike people like United Linux? dont you realize that they only have to sell it to the corporate execs? so if its flasy enough, and at the right price, it doesnt matter what we think. raise your hand if your business' software was chosen by accounting or some other department that knows nothing about the actual need you have...
thought so
this isn't insightful either... :p
And if thats the case, you'll still have debian. You'll still have your precious apt. Me, I prefere Mandrake. Difference of opinion, no big deal. I would like to know an example of shit to put up with Mandrake and RedHat though. What the dependancie hell that debian users tend to throw out? I cry bullshit. I update from mandrake's cooker ftp, one rpm at at time. Mandrake's urpmi tool kicks ass. Resolves dependancies, tells you what you need and will fetch it for you. All it requires is a urpmi *. Is it a matter of free software? Mandrake is LSB certified now and tries to remain as free as friggin possible. Damn near everything is open source, and if it isn't there will be another package that does a similiar thing and is. Along with this they try to give you commericial software if you want it. RealPlayer, Blender (pre-gpl days), Star Office, Nvidia's drivers all came with the 8.2 ProSuite set and would be installed for you if you agreed that it was alright to install non-free software on your system.
As for UL... well you're right they're not gonna gain much ground. But it really isn't like they're banding together to crush Red Hat. Ransom Love sees how well Red Hat is doing and decides "Oh no, Red Hat will become the Microsoft of Linux... I want some of that money too" and concocts this scheme. What I'm saying and explained in another post is that Xandros, Lycoris and Lindows if they all have the same goals and ideals should become one distro. Not a series of distros based off of some new standard, but one distro. One distro aimed at the desktop. By pulling their collective resources and talent I'd say they have a better chance of taking on Microsoft (not fighting for contracts from Walmart amoungst themselves). And if they merge? You don't have to fucking use it. Christ you're like the people that bitch that they're putting MacDonald's in the sims or someone is carrying a violent game. Don't fucking use it.
As for one distro gaining too much power, theres this little thing called the GPL. So I'd say it would be damn hard for anyone to have too much power when someone else can have the complete source code for their product.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
What...Goatse Linucx?
But I bet OSDN won't be around to see it :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
its not a troll actually... when i say merge, I don't mean debian, gentoo, mandrake and assholenux. I mean lycoris, lindows and xandros. The distros who all do the same thing and have the same goal: desktop share. Jesus christ, you throw out one word and all of a sudden everyone is screaming "troll, troll". Debian and gentoo aren't exactly going to merge with mandrake or redhat. Why would i even suggest that? I like gentoo. I like mandrake. I've been known to occasionally like red hat. Debian i'm not too keen on, but to each their own. They all have their own unique little niche. Lindows, Xandros and Lyrcoris? They have the same fucking niche.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
The sooner we get rid of all these stupid special-purpose and commercial distributions, the sooner people will realize that ALL the legitimate money in Open Source software is found in consulting and services. We only need ONE popular Linux distribution: Debian. And before anyone goes flaming me for being a "debian elitist" or starts criticizing how Debian's installer sucks and is unsuitable for home users, consider this: Debian is the only distribution that is fully community-driven. It is the only distribution with a formalized policy and social contract. It is one of the oldest distributions and has a solid track record in security and timeliness. The size and popularity of the project is growing rapidly--Debian now packages far more software than ANY other distribution.
And yes, now that Debian has begun to move far beyond its "techie-core" roots, there is a large interest in developing newbie-friendly installers and system maintenance utilities. Interested? Get coding! (:
he's being funny, stupid......