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.

Comments

Re:Standards

[bfree]

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)).

Re:Unite behind Live CD's

[corebreech]

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.

Ever Tried Debian?

[mbrod]

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.

Re:do i need educating?

[Gleef]

golgotha007 asks:

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):

1. Someone finds a security hole in program foo version 1.3, it gets announced to all and sundry
   
2. The developer of foo fixes the security hole, and releases version 1.3.1, and announces that 1.3.1 is fixed and everyone should upgrade to it.
   
3. The Debian maintainer of the foo package, which is at version 1.2.4 in Stable, verifies that the Debian version also has the security hole, backports the patch to 1.2.4, verifies that the hole is fixed, and uploads the new foo-1.2.4-2 package to the security server.
   
4. The Debian-Stable release manager makes sure that the update is legit, and that nothing stupid happened (eg. the PPC port broke), and then releases the updated package to the security apt-source.
   
5. Any users of Debian-Stable can read the security report, run "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade", and get all the security holes fixed, without having to worry about the fact that version 1.3 of foo changes the data file format, the API and configuration file.
   

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.