CollegeLinux Released to the Public

YOU ARE SO FIRED! writes "It seems that the Swiss Robert Kennedy College (with the aptly named website) has released CollegeLinux, a Linux distribution based off of Slackware, to the public. If only my employees could've used this in school - I wouldn't have to fire them so much! See the interview with the dean of the school for more information."

Comments

Will it ever stop?

[mschoolbus]

Linux is great and all but I feel half the reason it isn't doing as well as it could is because there are just so many distros in general. I know the nature of Linux is about choice and open software but this hurts Linux in itself. Why don't hardware companies put out Linux drivers as much as they do Mac drivers? Because they expect certain things within the Mac OS, not everything is different from system to system, which makes it easier and more attractive to companies to write Linux code and drivers...

Re:Will it ever stop?

[Billly Gates]

Why not more distro's ?

If you want to follow the herd install redhat or suse. Linux is about choice. I think Microsoft has bullied the industry so long that people have trouble with more then one way to think or have more then one way to do something. They want consistency and familiarity. The people I see complaining most about both gnome and kde for example are newbies and Windows users who are afraid to switch. People who use Linux/Unix understand that having more then one desktop environment is not bad.

How does this hurt Linux? You mean commercial support? They all target Suse, Redhat, and Debian. Companies like Oracle for example are specifically targeting RedHat advanced server since it changes the least. Also if you go to nvidia's website you will see drivers for quite alot of distro's.

Their are not numerous Linux versions, just distributions. They only look different because of different scripts and WindowManager themes running. Some of the package versions may differ but they are %95 the same from other distro's that are out at the same time. Mandrake 9, Redhat 8, Suse 8.1 all have the same versions of gcc, perl,kde, and apache for example. Its not like they are totally different beasts. Its easy to port.

Also I do not understand about your rat with hardware manufactures supporting mac users over linux ones. I find the situation opposite since Linux has more users and they use different kinds of hardware. Only ATI is behind and they are already at work with a unified driver model for Linux and Windows to compete against nvidia. Isn't competition great?

Companies and certain users want only one way of thinking are already in Microsoft's camp and will not change. A one and only one version of Linux will not convince them to switch. They are the ones already in .NET development, which once it's in is impossible to get out. They know it and do not care since an all Microsoft solution in their minds will lower support costs and its what everyone else is doing so they must stay with ms. They will stick with Windows as long as companies like PeopleSoft make Windows only products and mcse's are a dime a dozen and plentifull.

Re:Will it ever stop?

[fucksl4shd0t]

huh....its like soap. you can get many flavours. The most popular is RedHat but you know this driver is supported better in the other distro but you know the security is best in Bastille but you know debian is the best in stability so you have to decide what you want to do

Looks to me like you failed to provide a unified front. People ask me about Linux and I say "It's a free OS, you can download several for free." Then they say "Where?". I just tell them "Well, you should check out Mandrake first. It's the one I use, so I definitely recommend it. There's a lot of choice in distributions, but they're all built on the same stuff, so they interoperate well. Mandrake's a great one to start with, and you may never need another one. The beauty of choice, though, is that if you like Linux but you're dissatisfied with Mandrake, you can check out the others."

It's every bit in how you present it. Just make sure you're telling them the truth, and you're doing everything you can to help them (and charging an appropriate fee if you prefer).

From a university's standpoint, say they want their students to use Linux, but they don't want to support a few different distributions? Fine, roll their own and tell the kids "use this one or find someone else to support it. You're tuition covers this one." Anything unreasonable about that? They can give their kids something that installs out of the box and works on their network. Can they do that with Windows? Nope. They can achieve a close approximation, but not the real deal. Linux is the way...

Wireless

[ShadowDrake]

Colleges are ahead of the curve regarding wireless. GNU/Linux is nasty to prepare wireless on. This comes from experience. I had to pull the packets to my Thinkpad by hand!

Really valuable for a college environment would be a completely idiot-proofed wireless network setup utility. This utility or package should:

-Have all the driver modules compiled, and the configuration files kept up to date about different manufacturers' model identifications.

-Have a convinent popup tool, ideally triggered at the card-insertion time, and iconifying shortly after, that provides helpful stats and diagnostics. How hard would it be to convert 700 lines of iwconfig, ifconfig, and driver messages to:

"Discovered SSID "foo"."
"No IP number available after 20 seconds. Respawning DHCPCD." (to make up for some setups that seem to make DHCP have a fit if you pop the card and suspend, then pick up later."
"DHCP results: IP number is 127.0.0.43"
"Current situation: Signal/noise = 54/40. 353 bad sends, 107 bad recieves"

Absolutely wrong

[gorjusborg]

Having so much effort wasted on many different distributions is stupid. Can you imagine what type of improvements could have been made to Linux in general with the programming time invested in maintaining many different distributions?

You mean you would already have a free clone of YOUR favorite OS NOW if everyone would just team up and agree that your favorite GUI and OS's philosophy is the best?

The problem is, there are people who actually work on projects, and those who criticize other's projects. The reason that there are so many projects is that people disagree on what the 'correct' way of doing things is. If you want a windows clone, use windows. Otherwise, choose the distribution that fits your computing style the best.

Oh, and by the way, ctl-alt-+ and ctl-alt-- changes your resolutions in X on-the-fly, if you compile your quality sound driver and insert it into the kernel, you'll have reliable sound, and xfreee86 +xinerama works great for MULTI-monitor setups, not just dual-monitor setups.

Furthermore, the developers that work on making different distributions have totally different skill sets than driver developers and applications developers. In other words, you can't assume that if these people weren't developing their distribution they would be fixing problems with sound, video, etc.. In fact, if they weren't developing their distribution, they would probably be posting nonsense on slashdot, and complaining about how all the current distributions are crap.

Sorry if I come off as harsh, but I hate this type of thinking. Some people are so lazy, but expect the world of others. Parasites.