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Perens: Unite behind Debian, UserLinux
An anonymous readers writes "Infoworld is running a report on the Desktop Linux Conference, at which Bruce Perens suggested that in order to get Linux to the enterprise desktop, the Linux community should base their efforts on one single distribution... based on Debian.
Perens went on to say that enterprises will be willing to pay Linux companies to engineer versions of Linux to suit their needs, but that the base distro should remain free. He suggested that by 2006, 30% of enterprise desktops will run Linux." Here is a wired story with more information about his proposed UserLinux project.
I think an important Perens quote from the article is:
"UserLinux would only depart from Debian for software that is not open source"
so, UserLinux will be Debian + proprietary software. A dissapointing step back in my opinion.
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The key components are almost there:
- perfect device detection
- modern file manager
- office suites
- smooth browsing
- good email clients
What's missing?
- in-built p2p
- better CD burning tools
- better attachment handling in email
This is from watching people use Xandros over the last 6 months both for business and home.
A home/office distribution built around Debian, OOo, Kmail, Konqueror, and a file manager such as Xandros' is almost exactly perfect.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Mepis - Live Debain-based distro which you can also install to your harddrive THROUGH the liveCD version.
Good stuff - I've been running it as my primary distro for months now.
Because few people want/need to build their own system. Debian has shown an incredible ability to package stable and consistent software which has already become the basis for many different desktop distributions (Corel/Xandros, Lindows, Knoppix). Also Debian supports more architectures than any other Linux Distribution (correct?) and hence all the work done by the various parties would help to ensure that the computer market is held in balance in terms of architectures (i.e. if every Linux distro used Debian as a base, and Linux gained 30% of the desktops, then the ability for "the market" to switch architectures in the event of gross arrogance (i.e. AMD and Intel push through DRM technologies which require annual licensing) would be vastly improved compared to if the Linux distros in use were all derived from RedHat). Of course ideally Gentoo would also collaborate in this enterprise and would become debian derived (i.e. you could do a debian base install and then do "apt-get install gentoo-stageN" to have it use debian as the toolchain to build gentoo, perhaps even building the system out of debian source packages (with gentoo patches)).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Nobody is asking her to install Linux.
Just to run it.
You can boot from a Live CD, play with Linux, then reboot, take the CD out, and resume your regularly scheduled programming under Windows.
This is the beautiful thing about Live CD's. If it's done right, the user is completely insulated from all the usual crap we have to do to make Linux work, and without assuming any risk whatsoever from the experience.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I see all these people saying "what is so great about Linux is all these different distro's to try, and Debian is only one".
I don't think you have used Debian. I love Debian because I can put the bare minimum on my machines and then build up from there whether it be Gnome or KDE or a strict web server box with no GUI. To build it up all I have to do is grab the packages I want with apt. I can roll my own distro in a way.
Not to mention Stable, Testing and Unstable are really all different distributions anyway.
That's not true. If you have a server OS, then you can use "stable" and it is likely to be what you want (assumnig you don't need a feature from this millenium). As far as "unstable" and "testing" go ... neither provide security errata. and are thus useless for normal people. Unstable can be ok for the very experienced Linux user who is watching bugtraq.
...
Well... isn't that pretty close to what I said?
Where it seems obvious to me that I might want MozillaFirebird (comming soon in 2006 to a debian stable near you), but not want to move from apache httpd-1.3.x
You can mix'n'match the various branches... sometimes you pull in lots of new stuff, though (like a new libc6 - that's always worrying, but usually works just fine).
And there are always security updates to stable; usually it's just the security fixes back-ported, to minimize changes - because having the security updates break stuff is very very bad. Just look at Microsoft's Windows Update.
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Knoppix, Live CD, includes a simple, graphical install for the harddrive that can be run from the live cd, very nice. Knoppix is another Debian based distro one can consider. It runs from the live CD, with wicked WICKED auto-hardware detection. You can install to the harddrive by running one command that brings up a nice user-friendly graphical install. Knoppix has blown me away... the thing detected everything I have these stupid USB speakers that sony made, deemed Microsoft USB Speaker system... and it detected that, amazing! Microsoft Windows can't even get the speakers picked out right on the first try!
No, this is
Why must it be so difficult? I'm not a Linux newbie, and should have no difficulty installing another distro to try out, but Debian is worrying me.
I do a little research, and find that debian-stable has pretty dated packages, so debian-unstable is what I need. So far so good. Much of the Debian discussion refers to versions by codename, so I look around for a bit and learn how "sid", "sarge", "woody" and such map to stable and unstable. Now I know I want to try debian-unstable, a.k.a "sid". I go to the "Getting Debian page to look for a mirror with some ISOs. They encourage me to use jigdo to download it. I don't want to use jigdo. Maybe when I download the next version, but for now please keep this simple without throwing in extra steps. I click on the "fetch full CD images link" instead. All the mirrors listed for unstable are in Europe and Asia, whereas I am in the United States. I frown and click on one and am presented a list of the 11 ISO's for sid. WTF is in Debian that takes 11 CDs? I research a bit more to see if this is really what I need before initiating this multi-gigabyte download, and find a page saying you shouldn't install unstable directly, but install stable first then switch your install over. More annoyance, Fedora Core doesn't tell you to install RH9 first then change to an unstable version, if I know up front that I want an unstable version I should be able to just install it.
At this point I began to rethink whether I really wanted to try Debian enough to deal with this. I hadn't even begun the install process yet, but this is still much further than Random Windows User would get.
Debian advocates, please help me out. I'm interested in giving debian-unstable a shot, but if it's going to be much harder than "download two or three iso's, burn, boot, install, see if you like it" that makes me wary right off the bat. Am I going about things the wrong way? Can someone point me in the right direction as to the simplest and most straightforward approach to getting debian-unstable onto a system to try out?
Of course, the problem with Wine is usability. It takes a good deal of learning to do it yourself. Linux PC sellers just need to provide a gui-based way to install pre-tested versions of Windows programs (ala Crossover Office). List the program versions that have been tested on the box. For programs that don't yet run under Wine, list superior alternatives that run natively.
I suspect the average person thinks that if they switch to Linux they will have trouble finding software for it. This is only true for a few applications. And that gap can be filled with Wine.
When you ship the volumes that those vendors do, and agree to pay Microsoft a license fee for every machine sold, rather than every machine the products are shipped on, the cost of Office and Windows likely drops below $50 each.
:-)
A simple visit to Dell's website and browsing thru the PC config pages will show you that the price of just going from XP Home to XP Pro adds $70. Now considering that XP Pro OEM costs around $140-160 when you buy it with a new mobo from an online vendor like Newegg, MWave, etc, so probably somewhere between $50-70 should included in the price of that new Dell machine for the XP Home so you're really not too far off there, BUT... the Office suite is another story. A *BIG* 'nuther story.
On Dell's website, Office 2003 Basic will set you back $129. Office Small Business is $249 and Office Professional is a whopping $349!!! That's no chump change.
WordPerfect Office 11 suite is only $49 in comparison.
My personal choice would be, of course, OpenOffice for free
on production servers, security is a high priority while new features can take a back seat. if a new hole or exploit is found in some service, will the 'STABLE' package be upgraded for protection?
Yes, in fact security updates are where 99% of the updates come from in Debian-Stable. Here's how it generally works (slightly oversimplified):
All this happens in a time comparible to (or often faster than) the security updates from the big commercial distros.
This is how Debian-Stable maintains security and stability. For more info, check out the Debian Policy Manual. A strict and careful policy is how Debian makes sure that things just work, and makes the distro a joy to administer in an enterprise setting.
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Open mind, insert foot.
I wouldn't tear apart a single one of your line items. I'm someone migrating our small office to a Linux backend and, in the future, a Linux desktop as well. Our customer-facing services are being rewritten in Python to run on Linux as well.
.deb for each of those bullets. Most already exist in Debian testing/unstable or the 3rd-party archives: openoffice.org, kernel drivers for some very odd hardware configurations, Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird and their respective plugins, and Wine. The only thing there that can't be handled by a well-crafted deb is ISV support; that will always have to be purchased, but I assure you it is possible to pay money for this service.
Your list is not only accurate but pretty complete. With these things, almost any workplace can use Linux.
Here's the thing: All of those capabilities exist in the Linux world, but they are not all integrated seamlessly into any single system. They can be, of course, and such is the power of Linux, but doing so basically means rolling your own distro. Rolling your own distro is labor, and labor costs money, and there goes your free.
I honestly think Debian has the best chance of integrating all these features before any other distro, because Debian is focused on integrating packages with each other. "Integrating" in Debian just means creating a
Once the debs exist, the Debian-based system becomes bulletproof and idiotproof. Then you discover that your maintenance costs on the whole installation go to practically zero.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Linux on the desktop will never be truly successful until it atleast has a file system that makes sense as well as a simple and reliable method for software installation. And of course the former greatly helps the later. Naturally, there are the other points such as game and application support, but these will come when the basics become standard and Linux becomes more accepted. Personally, I believe everything Linux, as a whole, needs to succede already exists but is not yet embodied in a single distro. I find it ironic that no one's fully taken advantage of the freedom of information that open source entails and encorporated the best ideas into a "super-distro".