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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.
What makes Linux so great is that there are so many distros, and I can choose the one I like. One distro can never compare to hundreds of them.
If they're running Debian, then that's great. But you need to put Linux into the hands of the masses if you want to take over the desktop and the best way to do that is to seed the planet with Linux Live CD's with the same fury that AOL soils the planet with their CD's.
No gcc, no including twelve different versions of AWK; just the kernel, KDE or Gnome (pick just one), OpenOffice, games, and all the rest of the shit that makes everything go.
Right now, when you say "Linux" to a layperson, they don't know what the fuck you're talking about. A Live CD is a painless way for them to find out.
We can rebuild him. We have the technology.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Seems like a good idea to me. If everyone concentrates on one distribution, it would make linux stronger as a whole. Debian seems like a good choice....maybe someone will make a half decent package installer. On the other hand, seems like putting all the eggs in one basket...
You'll be packaged (.deb of course)
EOF
I was quite amused when at a recent conference someone described Open Source as Free Software with a politics-obotomy...
There are serious problems with Gnome at the moment, and I will explain them here with the Gnome-translate-o-matic.
/gnu/celeron gnu/packard gnu/bell gnu/box.
Ever since Gnome 2.4 was released, I have found more and more gnome zealots who MUST absolutely advocate GNOME at every possible moment. Here is a guide to some of their claims, and what they really mean.
Unlike KDE, Gnome is free
Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Novell and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now that Novell has taken over Ximian you can expect Gnome to get put under corpirate lock. With KDE you have the choice, you either PAY UP or pay with your source code.
Nautilus is much better than konqueror.
Wrong, if your using nautilus for anything more than a simple finder clone you can forget it. No split screen, no ioslaves and forget about being able to have a decent file dialog, not to forget that it is as unstable as hell and is STILL slow on >3 Ghz machines.
Gnome is easier to use
Yep, nothing like using gconf-editor to edit all except the most trivial of settings.
Gnome has eye candy
Yes, my pirated Win32 fonts with the patent infringing font renderer. Bit stream vera sans looks like Tahoma put through a shreadder! Of course I still reboot into windows to print using "Comic Sans MS.
Gnome has a new web browser
Yawb! Along with Galeon, mozilla, thunderbird, konqueror, atlantis, lynx, netscape and w3m. Yes I need another browser! Not to mention that its got a religiously offensive name and it dosen't allow bookmark folders. It also crashes like a crazy! Apple chose khtml for a REASON! its stable and light!
Gnome is themeable
Yep, choose from High, low and medium contrast, default, and clean ice. Wan't to change the colour scheme? USE GCONF NOOB, plus if you complain about it we will tell you to fuck off and go back to Windows or KDE.
Gnome has multimedia framework
Its a kludge of esd combined with broken xine libraries. No wonder it crashes all the time and dosen't work on 95% of video files
Gnome allows mac like operation.
x86 compatible 1 button mice are almost impossible to find, and it dosen't copy the whole macbar concept. Not to even mention their auto apply implementation is broken and dangerous! Plus if they did actually come anywhere close to copying the Mac the C&D letters would come flying up their asses.
Gnome is GNU software.
gnu/Yay, gnu/gnome gnu/for gnu/my gnu/debian gnu/linux gnu/500mhz
Inspired by the gentoo translate-o-matic.
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.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
the community is going to have to put more resources into Debian to keep it up to date. I won't use anything else, but you can't have an enterprise running on a mix of testing and unstable.
Why Debian, instead of, say Gentoo?
What I think is most important is that standards apply, so that users can mix n match between distributions more easily as new applications are developed.
It's a tough battle, though, because the commercial landscape for Linux is being advanced by companies that are trying to differentiate their particular distribution from the rest of the heard.
The best we can hope for there is that their new systems and add-ons are free.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
What makes linux so difficult to adopt in the business world is that there are too many choices and just confuses the market..
For a home user, who cares.. for business its a hindrance..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
the same thing the other day in relation to science, where we have 100's of institutions finding cures/treatments for the same thing, each basically reinventing the wheel all over again. Lot's of people united togeather on one project would probably reap more benifits that a bunch of smaller projects reaching for the same goal.
Steve Jobs unexpectly announced today he thinks you should use a Macintosh.
Bill Gates made an interesting proposal that everyone use windows.
Scott McNealy outlined a plan he has in which everyone uses Solaris.
Larry Ellison, in a widely-publicized press conference, stated that everyone should give him money.
More on these sudden and shocking developments as news unfolds.
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
What happens when the corporate backers of UserLinux decide that bills can't be met and they have to concentrate on an enterprise version? Bills don't pay themselves and there are reasons why RedHat isn't doing the consumer version anymore.
In some respects I can see RedHat's position regarding the desktop, because for the majority of desktop users, Windows isn't "broken" and why switch if you don't have to? Servers are cake to argue because Linux IS so superior in many ways and that aspect is very easy to demonstrate.
Probably what it will take to get Linux on more desktops is M$ trying to strongarm organizations and organizations doing exactly what Munich did, switch to Linux and then use WINE.
That's exactly what the CIO of the defense branch I am working for is doing right now. Evaluating WINE because he is just fed up with the tail trying to wag the dog and the bad news for M$ is that the CIO doesn't think they are so unique anymore.
I for one think that it's a horrible to "unite" behind one distro. One thing that makes Linux great is the diversity that allows people to experiment, and everyone benefits.
OTOH, it would be nice if there was a single specification vendors could support, eg. the LSB.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Nice idea, and I agree wholeheartedly. Too bad it'll never work. "Everything could be so much better, if only they did things Our Way." That's never been thought of before...
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
I think that one of the biggest negative aspects of Linux is that there are too many distros. It makes it too confusing for someone who is interested in switching to Linux to make a choice. If the Linux community standardized then it would speak with one strong voice instead of a confusing drone of smaller ones. For all of you that say, "But choice of distros is what makes Linux great," let me say this. What makes Linux great is the fact that it is more or less a group project. Thousands of people work on it to make it better. But right now those thousands of people are not unified. They don't work together and the result is that the wheel is often reinvented. But if we took the good things from all the distros and combined the into one "super distro" (for lack of a better term) and then everyone worked to make that one distro better I think that thirty percent figure mentioned in the article would be vastly larger.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
This is just so much noise brought to you by the same guy who brought you "Linux for hams."
Then he started Debian - but dropped out. It was brought to fruition by others years later.
So Bruce, why should we follow you on this effort? Why should we believe your going to follow through with this effort considering your lousy track record?
Have you compiled your kernel today??
This is good thinking. Allthough i have been a long time SuSE user (you can tell by my spelling :-) but with the recent developments i think that the only other viable alternative (sorry Mandrake) for the future will be a single base on which commercial companies can build their own desktop distro. This way all base functionality remains available for everyone.
This focus on smaller sample groups is nice to see. It is quite obvious that in certain situations, Linux has some major advantages over Windows. In my experience, web applications (Apache+PHP+MySQL) and embedded systems are good examples.
In support of the above quote, I find it highly unlikely that Linux will be able to spur a "mass conversion" -- but that probably wouldn't be the best course of action anyway. I imagine that a better way would be to focus on a relatively small sample group and let the versatility of Linux convince people that it's a good choice. If the product is as good as many think it is, then the conversion of the masses may be inevitable. Time will tell.
Whilst reading all of the recent dropping of Red Hat Linux and purchasing of SuSE etc. I did wonder if this would lead to a boost for Debian. Take the Fedora project, for example. It seems madness to contribute to this over Debian, since with Fedora you really are just beta testing Red Hat Enterprise edition for them - the whole 'giving back to the community' thing is better handled by Debian since that is not meant for feeding back into commercial distributions.
So yes - I have to agree. Debian would seem to be the way to go following the absorbtion of the big names. Let Red Hat do its own work in getting rpms ready for RHE 16.8 or what have you - concentrate your efforts on improving things for the community at large instead.
Cheers,
Ian
30% of enterprise desktops running Linux by 2006? Please. Makes me doubt other things he says if he's so quick with hyperbole like this.
"The people who develop open-source code," Perens said, "are getting tired of being told that they have to pay to use it."
include $sig;
1;
Thanks Bruce. I now open the Linux Holy Wars thread by stating: "I like Mandrake better!" Please feel free to reply and let me know why your personal favorite is better.
Maybe we should keep working on the LSB specs so all the distros can interoperate?
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
I don't think that the community needs to collectively focus their attention on one single distro. I just think that one single distro needs to rise above the rest and earn market acceptance as a solid desktop. The strength of Linux is that I can use a different distro suited to a particular task. If I need a quick solution for IDS, but don't have some powerful hardware, I can quickly setup snort and Acid on a Debain box and get it going. If I need a quick packet filtering firewall with easy to manage tools (for the IT staff here that isn't very Linux knowledgeble) I can setup Redhat 9 in about an hour and a half.
Somewhere in the near future we need a desktop distro that is every bit as good as Windows is when it comes to the desktop. Then I can say "when I need a quick desktop for someone that just needs web access, eDirectory, and Lotus Notes out of the box, I can use insert distro here."
I'm fed up with all this blather about Linux on the desktop. Is it ready yet? What needs to be improved? Why hasn't it happened yet? etc. etc.
There is one thing that is going to get Linux on the desktop, and one thing only. That is that the big PC manufacturers (principally Dell and HP) start to seriously promote and sell desktop PCs with Linux already installed.
If that doesn't happen, then Linux on the desktop will probably never happen to a significant extent.
i use Debian on a daily basis, but there are quite a few things that really turn me off from the distribution (and what makes other distributions more attractive). i'm not trying to troll here, but if my facts are wrong or perhaps i lack information, please someone let me know so i can adjust my thinking.
one of the number one reasons i don't like debian is that packages in the stable branch are typically full point releases behind! have you seen the version of vi in their stable branch? holy, say hello to the 90's please!
i sysadmin 5 debian machines at work, and all i gotta say about debian is this:
1995 called. they want their linux machines back.
however, i do feel very comfortable configuring debian. it's exactly like redhat 5.2, but with a good package management system.
personally, i'm going to stay the redhat route and use Fedora on my workstations (using freshRPMS as my apt respository).
there'll always be diversity. Linux isn't centrally planned, it's development model is essentially geeks playing with their toys (even when they convince themselves otherwise) and distro makers trying to fight their fractured creations into a usable whole.
What free software needs is a new, standard, OS that is designed for the desktop, won't have its driver APIs change all the time, won't use XWindows, won't have library hell, won't have a heap of different package management systems, won't chuck Unix at the user, won't have multiple desktop environments with different programs dependent on each one of them, and won't year after year run like a dog on anything but new hardware with desktop uses. Maybe put a little effort here.
a distro that's a little close to being usable by most folks as a desktop OS?
i'm sure that Debian is usable as a Desktop OS for 'anyone' - but, can 'anyone' install Debian??
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
Especially with Redhat's latest retreat into their proprietary turtle shell, I'd love to have Debian certified for apps like Oracle, etc. This issue has also come up recently among OpenACS developers.
Better CD burning tools than K3B? Best CD burning software I've used on any OS - completely painless. Sure there's always room for improvement, but I think there are bigger issues with multimedia playback (specifically with proprietary formats) and browser plugin management.
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.
i'm sure that Debian is usable as a Desktop OS for 'anyone'
Sure, as long as you don't mind running...oh... gnome 1.4 with mozilla 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0. And don't even think about going on and on about "unstable" being stable.
It seems like there has been allot of anti-Redhat FUD lately. While I have always been a Debian fan, and I agree that every distro maker should base their distro on Debian, all this crap about Redhat leaving a hole in the consumer market because they made Redhat Linux a community project that is still heavily guided and sponsered by Redhat... that just smacks of anti-Redhat FUD.
Truth is that Redhat Linux 10 was released several days ago, and for trademark reasons it is called Fedora Core 1. Anyone who has used Redhat 8.x or Redhat 9.x, will be able to tell that Fedora Core 1 is Redhat 10.
I would love to see one internet based community developed meta-distrution of Linux, with one comprehensive package repository. This would be the Linux standard. Then companies that want to make a newbie-friendly Linux could cherry-pick the best software packages, make custom themes, and tweak everything and also provide support.
In my opinion, the thing that Redhat 8 through Fedora Core 1 do really great is that they cherry-picked a nice set of software packages, made a nice theme for the desktop, and put everything together into one nice coherent package.
Note that the good things that Redhat does with its distro do not conflict with having a Debian-foundation, and the fact that Redhat has decided to fracture the internet community because it refuses to have Fedora Core 1 be a customized Debian is just plain silly!
Other distros have shown the power of using a Debian based core: Knoppix, Libranet, and Lindows, to name 3 distros, all accomplish something slightly different.
1. Knoppix is a live CD based Linux distro with completely automatic hardware detection. Knoppix is a great toy, a great way to advertise Linux, and it makes for an uber rescue disk.
2. Libranet aims at being a general purpose desktop/server distro, and it adds value by greatly simplifying the installation and maintenance of the OS.
3. Lindows is supposed to be a newbie friendly / user-friendly Linux distro that emulates the look-n-feel of Windows. It is aimed at a large target market of casual computer users that want to save a few bucks.
So please tell me why Redhat couldn't use a Debian foundation for Fedora Core? All they had to do was create a small community layered ontop of the Debian community. Their job would be to cherry-pick software packages from the comprehensive apt repository that Debian already has, and integrate it all into one coherent system by tweaking settings and theming applications.
In conclusion, lets drop this Redhat ditched desktop Linux crap, and focus on the fact that Redhat is duplicating effort by not basing their community developed distro on Debian. It is starting to remind me of Christianity with its many demoninations.
I really don't think this is too surprising. In my opinion, Red Hat made a mistake dropping their Desktop solution - sure, it may not have been giving them short term gains, but the reason Red Hat's so popular is because it is typically the Linux everyone starts with. Losing this mindshare I believe will ultimately lead to less Red Hat developers in the long run.
Aside from their departure, it really seems like free Red Hat has just been slowly turning into Debian anyway. Most RPM-based distros I know now offer apt solutions which of course users really like. And now all development on packaging is done by a community-powered group... sound familiar?
As time goes on, more and more events like these occur which make me really happy and proud of Debian. Obviously it isn't perfect and there's still plenty of areas to improve. But as I hear surveys saying the Debian is growing increasingly popular and as the free software community centers more and more around Debian - it's proving to be ultimately reedeeming for Debian's long persuit for purity and excellence.
http://www.talknerdy.org
It's good to have choices. Some distros may get things right. Others will emulate them or perish. Software evolution requires diversity in order to adapt. Darwin (the dude, not the OS) reminds us that it is not the strongest that survive, but those most able to adapt.
Besides, Gnome works the same in ALL distros. So does postfix. So does OpenSSH. Think of distros as particular mixtures of features of the same family. Not all your cousins look the same, but ultimately, they're the same blood (and I've got FOURTY ONE first cousins!).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Debian is the only distro for the sparc processors given the ammount of stuff to be tossed by universities this area has enormas potential. After all it's the students that still dumpster dive for parts and have time to write code.
I'm told you are what you eat, does that mean I can be you by tomorrow with some A1?
Technically speaking, no, and I have the certificate to prove it. But I assume you're being metaphorical. Care to explain your logic?
The funny thing about "desktop computing" is that despite 20 years of relentless progress, what the vast majority of home and business users need and want is quite simple. The true requirement for a mass-market PC (80-90% of the PCs in existence) is very simple: surf web, read email, play media, make documents, chat. Make it cheap, fast, simple, and safe, and you have your market and your product. Period.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Good luck! We have an ERP system where I work, running SunOS, but the rest of the place is 100% Microsoft. I've been clearly told by my IT manager that I cannot have Linux on my PC, not even as a dual-boot system. In addition to pissing me off personally, it makes me keep an eye out for another job. I think the pressure to adopt Linux may come from bottom-level employees rather than top-level managers.
One weakness as well as strength of Linux has always been the ability to choose. There are so many distributions that you can choose the one that fits you best, that you like best.
Focusing on one distribution has the advantage that this single distribution really would get boosted, but it would limit our choice.
I for one don't like Debian, for several reasons. Don't get me wrong, it is a very good distribution but I don't feel home on it for several minor reasons. So what, that's why I chose another distribution, SuSE, choice rules ! Many who picked Debian don't like SuSE for their own reasons. But after all this really doesn't matter, it's just each ones personal taste.
That's the same like many people suggested giving up GNOME or KDE and join the other, but that would be plain wrong and a very bad idea. Both are focusing on different things, and if someone doesn't like KDE s/he has at least the chance to try GNOME or vice versa (and if you don't like both you can still use some of not-so-integreated desktops).
That's also one thing that really disturbs me among many Linux zealots: bitching about the distribution/desktop/application choice someone else made. After all, that's what Linux is all about. That's what UNIX is all about: for most things I could use FreeBSD as well as some Linux distribution, or even a commercial UNIX variant. And we all are happy that there we can choose, so I don't understand why people bitch about the choice of someone else...
Ximian Evolution is the Outlook killer... I just hope Novell will be able to exploit it correctly to let people know about it ..
All your base are belong to us.
I said it before, and I'll say it again:& cid=6329 689
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=69340
One of the main reasons why GNU/Debian is perfect for a reference system, is that stable doesn't change that often.
Debian Woody (3.0) was released July 2002, with an update December 2002. How many version of Mandrake, SuSe, Gentoo or RedHat has come out since then?
If you are a developer, you really don't want a moving target like the other distributions. You really want to have stable target over some period of time.
Note that, even if Debian becomes the reference system, it doesn't mean that RedHat or SuSe, Gentoo can't have never libraries or KDE, or GNOME on their system. It just means that at the very least, they need compatible libraries installed by default.
And no, LSB is not enough. That is just a voluntary paper, and with no reference system, you still would have to test the major distributions to make sure your program is working.
With a working reference system, like Debian, you would only need to test against one distribution.
Je ne parle pas francais.
[I]n order to get Linux to the enterprise desktop, the Linux community should base their efforts on one single distribution... based on Debian.
If everything what based on Debian, how could we Zealots say that Debian is better than your distribution?
Seriously, is this really a good idea for enterprise, Linux or Debian? I feel the need to make a standard 'the strength of Linux is in the diversity of its distributions' comment. Also, I doubt that enterprise and Debian really see eye to eye. Debian is based on a community oriented software development model. Enterprise is based on $$$.
I'm not sure a world where everything was a fork of Debian would be good for Linux or Debian.
Long live Schrodinger's cat...
Trying to get people to change their habits is a terrible idea. Nobody wants to spend the effort to learn a new OS when they already have one that seems to work. If you are really that interested in expanding the linux userbase, suggest to your local school board that they invest in Linux labs. Even just one linux computer in a lab full of windows boxes would be great. Ideally, they'd have 1/3rd windows, 1/3rd mac, and 1/3rd linux, and everyone would be required to work with all three.
Scratched Emulsion
That is one of the killer components that is missing. Get people to use it at home and the office will stand a better chance.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
vEver since Gnome 2.4 was released, I have found more and more gnome zealots who MUST absolutely advocate GNOME at every possible moment. Here is a guide to some of their claims, and what they really mean.
/gnu/celeron gnu/packard gnu/bell gnu/box.
Unlike KDE, Gnome is free
Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Novell and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now that Novell has taken over Ximian you can expect Gnome to get put under corpirate lock. With KDE you have the choice, you either PAY UP or pay with your source code.
Nautilus is much better than konqueror.
Wrong, if your using nautilus for anything more than a simple finder clone you can forget it. No split screen, no ioslaves and forget about being able to have a decent file dialog, not to forget that it is as unstable as hell and is STILL slow on >3 Ghz machines.
Gnome is easier to use
Yep, nothing like using gconf-editor to edit all except the most trivial of settings.
Gnome has eye candy
Yes, my pirated Win32 fonts with the patent infringing font renderer. Bit stream vera sans looks like Tahoma put through a shreadder! Of course I still reboot into windows to print using "Comic Sans MS.
Gnome has a new web browser
Yawb! Along with Galeon, mozilla, thunderbird, konqueror, atlantis, lynx, netscape and w3m. Yes I need another browser! Not to mention that its got a religiously offensive name and it dosen't allow bookmark folders. It also crashes like a crazy! Apple chose khtml for a REASON! its stable and light!
Gnome is themeable
Yep, choose from High, low and medium contrast, default, and clean ice. Wan't to change the colour scheme? USE GCONF NOOB, plus if you complain about it we will tell you to fuck off and go back to Windows or KDE.
Gnome has multimedia framework
Its a kludge of esd combined with broken xine libraries. No wonder it crashes all the time and dosen't work on 95% of video files
Gnome allows mac like operation.
x86 compatible 1 button mice are almost impossible to find, and it dosen't copy the whole macbar concept. Not to even mention their auto apply implementation is broken and dangerous! Plus if they did actually come anywhere close to copying the Mac the C&D letters would come flying up their asses.
Gnome is GNU software.
gnu/Yay, gnu/gnome gnu/for gnu/my gnu/debian gnu/linux gnu/500mhz
Inspired by the gentoo translate-o-matic.
For this purpose, commercial distributions such as SuSE and RedHat exist.
One size does not fit all.
The market will decide as and when Linux is ready for the corporate desktop, and in what form.
Microsoft is doing a marvellous job already of comitting suicide due to over-pricing its software, shoddy quality and vulnerabilities to malicious code.
Linux has been doing just fine for my personal computing needs since 1996. If corporate America (or anywhere else for that matter) wants to enjoy the privilege of using Linux, it can make like the rest of us and make an effort.
Stick Men
...too many choices are bad. My Linux desktop doesn't resemble any other around because I like to customise everything possible, so I like the choice of applications, the freedom to choose different window managers, etc. I don't think that this choice will ever go away, because there's always a demand for that particular amount of customisability, in fact that's why some people liked Linux in the first place.
But many people choice is a scary thing. Last time I installed a Linux distribution for scratch there was loads of applications installed and the average user would have a hard job guessing what these applications did just by their name and icon, many apps were complete but some were obviously alpha quality.
I think a choice of distributions is a good thing, but any aimed at the end user should avoid trying to include everything including the kitchen sink 0.0001a!
Users that want to learn more and try out new apps can easily be directed to documentation to do so, either paper, on the machine, or by carefully chosen bookmarks, some users will want to learn more and explore the full choice of linux, others will want to stick with the apps they need in an environment they're used to.
(As I've not installed a linux distro from scratch for a while so things may have changed since then, plus I am no usability expert)
Yes, Perens used 3-D drivers as his excuse for proprietary software, but he did not limit his distribution of proprietary software to 3-Drivers. What else will he add?
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
have one main distro for the desktop market, and mainly a face for linux, and let others work on alternatives, because then if the "main" distro becomes corrupted or developer warfare occurs, you'll have a fall back..
what they're saying is stop any other disributions that you're working on and make just 1 distro.
yeah, then we all go work a picture of bill gates after we do that as well, huh?
linux is about choice, say, a company doesnt like the mainstream linux distrobution, they can look into the alternatives and see how well they work, or even have the ability to create their own linux distro to use for their company.
linux grants that freedom as well.
Why not use Gentoo then? It's got just as good package management as Debian but without the arcane cruft. It does take longer to set up, however.
http://www.gentoo.org
You also have to make it painless to do things like install/remove software and install/remove drivers.
I have been patiently trying to build up and use my Suse 8.2 system.
My biggest complaints so far?
- I don't want to have to do black magic command line crap to install my NVIDIA drivers
- Although I definitely agree with the root/user separation, its a pain in the a$$ to keep getting assaulted with a root password prompt when I want to change a system setting (flame away)
- many of the programs don't seem polished; that is, they seem to crash at odd times or don't do what they said they would when I hit 'ok'. (??)
- the interface needs to be more polished for the average user who doesn't want to understand the technical aspects of what a link is or what HDA1 is...
I LOVE that Linux exists, and I am growing to love it more....BUT...I am not an "average" user. I am somewhere in the haze between advanced Windows weenie and low level Linux novice.
I don't care how many LiveCDs you ship to my father-in-law or my wife (as examples). If they can't install drivers and programs, configure their systems, and navigate their PCs _easily_ and through the GUI _only_ you won't have an ice-cube's chance in He11 of getting them to use Linux. Oh - and if they can't buy software (games) for it at Best Buy you're screwed too.
Average users want a tool that looks pretty, does neat things, and makes their lives easier/more entertained. They don't give a rat's behind about shell scripts, Xfree, Xserve, CUPS, gcc or whatever. It just confuses them and turns them OFF to the product.
Hope you find these comments contructive - they are not meant to assault.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
Linux won't make ANY inroads in Corporate desktop america until there is an undeniably stable and certified foundation by which to support from.
Corporate america isn't based around the concept of "Free Software" it is based around Revenue Generation, using the right tools to get the job done and providing an IT infrastructure support revenue generation, sales force and back-office.
Linux doesn't have any sales force automation tools. Sure you can install Oracle 11i on Linux, but even then your talking servers. Oracle 11i doesn't even support linux as a workstation.
Until ACT is ported, until the average sales person can do everything he/she needs to do and very easily, linux will make "0" inroads into corporate america.
It is all about supporting your sales force, your R*D departments or whatever your business's revenue generation is from. Linux just doesn't do that right now and surely won't do that within the next 3 years.
RedHat has bailed the desktop market and gone for the workstation, but even then that is a UNIX workstation level NOT an "end user" level. Suse is making inroads, but not enough to do 20-30% market share.
I'll repeat myself again. Corporate America is about supporting your revenue stream. Linux simply can't do that at this point. Tools are built around simplicity, ease of training and what is common knowledge. Your average sales person only uses a PC when needed and does everything with a Cell phone, note pad and over a few beers at the local bar. Linux can't replace this. Especially Debian.
We need a unified Linux effort, the question becomes why debian? Theres Lindows which is based on Debian, theres also United Linux, why plain Debian?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The most stable, easiest to package manage,
featureful, and secure.
Fedora Core?
Gentoo?
Slackware?
There are many good Linux distros out there. Why unite behind one? United Linux flopped big time. Perhaps what we need is diversity!
Can't really put alot of $$$ proprietary stuff in there for $10. Acrobat? JRE/JDK? You have the option to install these now, this would help to simplify it for Mom and Average Joe.
Unite behind Fedora!
I mean, it makes as much sense as uniting behind Debian, right?
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
..."Open Source" developers bathe at least occasionally.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
window maker RULES
- ligh
- beautifull
- practical
and if u want.. u can put gnome and kde apps in it,
konqueror, nautilus...
I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
If I were a manager at a big computer company (like Dell, HP, etc) and the verdict had been passed that 20% of all new desktop machines will ship with a Primary Linux OS, my problems would be much different than if the verdict had been passed 6 years ago (hardware support, DVD play, Multimedia, Clean familiar desktops, etc..) But in a way the main 2003 problems would be just as complexing as the 1997 problems.
1. Which distro to include? Sounds like an easy question -- but in today's climate with most commercial distros begging for cash just to stay afloat 1 more quarter OR going the Enterprise route and kicking the "price the box $75 cheaper and go with Linux NO OS tax" in the pants with services that cost just as much or more than the competition....(RHEL RHAS) OR I could include "user supported OS's" that do not share all the "rounded edges" of some of the distros that are either going enterprise or hanging on by a thread. Tough Question.
2. Support. Whatever distro you choose will have to include some sort of telephone support for the end user.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I won't stand behind any distro that plasters GNU/ in front of everything as some kind of rituatlistic sacrifice to RSM. I will also not stand behind any distro with a manditory dependency-tracking package manager unless it happens to accurately track the deps for every single piece of Linux software available to me.
Anything less than total software dependency tracking means that at one point or another, I will ultimately have two dependency managers running: the one that came with the distribution and the one in my head. And that, my friends, is worse than having no dependency management at all. Give me Slackware and if you absolutely must have dependency management, tack on something. Hell I'm sure that Swaret will do it, and it doesn't get in the way like .deb and .rpm management does.
I recently tried Debian, going through setup was fine, until running tasksel. I did this a few times, and each time, tasksel crapped out. I also tried the dselect, or whatever it's called... tried wading through the 1000's of packages, and said screw it. I blew a few hours trying to get Debian up and running. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle, put Slackware 9.0 back on, and was up and running with a pretty KDE, TTF's, etc, within an hour. Slackware's setup is incredibly simpler. Plus, I hate trying new distributions and trying to figure out what goofy-ass utility is meant to do what. It's always a challenge to figure out what executable to run, and I've never seen a distribution that has a webpage with a nice, short, easy-to-read list of setup/config executables and what they do.
With Slackware, type setup, that's it.
While I like the idea of the apt-get thing, the crappy setup in Debian turned me off.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I need a stable release that evolves a few times a year, so that I can read reviews and decide when it's time to migrate to keep up to date. Debian only offers the choice between a year-old distribution several major releases out of date that nothing will compile on, and a testing release that moves on a daily basis, often jumping several versions back or eliminating a package entirely.
I also need a GUI installer, so I don't have to hold people's hands through the install. Nobody should ever have to use dselect, unless they're migrating from DOS.
The thing that upsets me the most about Debian is that the stable release is not always stable. The package for Galeon has been broken for a year now. The download manager for the Woody version crashes constantly, though the bug in Galeon was fixed well over a year ago. My choice now is between the unstable stable version and the completely unstable unstable version that stopped working entirely for me around 1.3.9 (yes I filed a Debian bug report). The testing version has since disappeared.
There have been numerous stable Galeon versions since last year on two separate branches, but I don't have an option to roll back to a useful version because stable is hosed and testing is gone. This ultimately caused me to give up on Galeon and just download the Firebird binary and install it by hand. So much for the wonders of apt-get.
Debian needs to either step up its glacial pace or make testing an honest milestone release before Perens starts touting it as an industry standard. I'm thankful there's still competition from organizations that put Linux usability over Open Source ideology.
Its true, for home users Linux offers no reason to migrate, but the article was talking about enterprises, aka Businesses and Corperations. This is where Linux has a chance. There was an article about how Ernie Ball, the gutair string maker switching to Linux from top to bottom in like 1999 and has saved, "At least $80,000" in licenceing.
I don't totally agree with Debian as the source because there needs to be support hardware. Traditionally, SuSE and Redhat have led this arena offering the most drivers for everyday devices such as printers and scanners.
I work as a technology consultant and damn near shot myslef in the foot due to last week. I had overseen two medium sized businesses switching from Windows to RH 9 Linux and was advocating doing so to three other businesses as well.
Those that had switched found that the $40 for a copy of RH linux 9 desktop would expand the life of their existing hardware by another year to two at least. Most of their computers were PIII 700 Mhz with 128MB of ram. It runs Linux like a champ and with Open Office, they are not loosing much in terms of capablities.
The other company is using thin clients so that employees that don't need a web browser doesn't have one. They have testified that they have seen "a measureable improvement in productivity". Exact numbers, he didn't say, but still...
Businesses are tired of playing the "Let's pay M$ another $xxxx dollars this year, especially SMB's that several thousand dollars is a big deal. This is why most businesses are stilling using Office 2000. Most businesses I have spoken with have no plans to upgrade to 2003, or if they do, its because they are purchasing new computers.
However, switching to Linux also has a lot of risk. Large Enterprises have their own internal IT departments that can supply support. Here is where Linux will gain their foothold first. However, most SMB's maybe has one or two IT guys. And then having Red Hat stating that RH9 will be unsupported in April and SuSE's future in limbo for the time being as led me to recommend the other companies looking at Linux to go back and purchase Windows PC's or Macs if they need a Unix workstation.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Perens really should've put a page up if he wanted it to be user friendly ;)
The article only says that Bruce is calling for it to be Debian because he helped design it. That's not enough support for the argument to spit at.
Debian may be superior in some respects, but it doesn't change the fact that businesses are already getting used to RPM based distros like Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake.
If he wants a sea change in the business view of Debian, there has to be better support for it than that.
I agree with the idea of having a core distribution with variations for specific tasks. I think alot of other people do to based on the mild success of the LSB and the -ideas- behind things like United Linux.
I think Red Hat leaving their free distro market to the Fedora project will either give support to Fedora becoming that core distro -or- will give up any chance Red Hat has of being such a core distro (or both depending on whether you view Fedora to Red Hat as the same relationship as Mozilla was to Netscape -or- as being completely 3rd party and a cold shoulder to the idea of free distros as some do).
Either way, it's going to take a lot for a business to even consider a Debian distro. Educational books, live cd's, RPM compatibility, LSB compliance and lots and lots of gruntwork.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Debian is losing developers because they are a rigid and well-defined organization.. one of their biggest strengths and their biggest weakness. People who volunteer their time don't like to be confined in little boxes. In addition, Debian just isn't cool, sexy, exciting, hip.. etc. it's your dad's linux.. who wants to work on that? Gentoo, Fedora, etc. are moving forward, taking risks and *successfully* meeting their challenges.
Circling the wagons around Debian is not the answer, fixing Debian so it has clear goals, integrates new technology better, and has less overhead is the answer..
*Disclaimer* I run Debian, Gentoo, and RH9 on my boxes.. trying Fedora later this week. I think Fedora is officially a Good Thing(TM).
So if I point out a flaw in debian then I'm "anti-debian", I guess then all the people pointing out flaws in the US just attacking whoever it feals like really are "anti-american".
No, there isn't (at least not how you are implying). There is a testing distro called "testing". It doesn't provide security updates, and things have to be "tested" before they get there. You cannot and should not use it is a regular distro. like mandrake/fedora etc. It is much like FreeBSD cusrrent, but I assume you meant it more like saying "fedora has current packages" ... which also isn't true enough at times, it's just much closer to the truth.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
Uh. He doesn't want FreeBSD, so why would he want Gentoo?
I'd use FreeBSD first. Gentoo is OK but I do all kinds of snmp development where I set up a box that gets put on a network segment and does 'things.' Then after it is declared stable, I mirror it (kinda). Gentoo takes WAAAAAAY too long to install. I need 1 hour as opposed to 1 day.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
So, we should promote Linux by writing and distributing worms that don't just DDoS the Internet, but also corrupt data and scrag hard drives on Windows machines?
Truly a hard-core suggestion, and I dearly hope nobody takes it seriously. I do enough friend-of-a-friend Windows support based on the current set of problems.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
"I use FreeBSD. But now, given the absolute shithead decision of RedHat to do the SCO/Caldera 'enterprise' thing -- read leech off Free Software developers -- I am going back to Debian for Linux solutions"
/. in a long time.
Pretty sad that you actually believe that FUD. Leech off FREE software? That's about the dumbiest thing I've read on
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
As wonderful as the diversity is, it will cause confusion for YourMom and Joe. When an 8th grader tosses Flavor-Z on the home PC, YourMom's friends might want to know where to get it. There IS a need for a single, unified, easy-to-use distro. That would cause even greater adoption of Linux as a desktop OS.
I love the diversity as much as any geek, but that same diversity makes Linux look daunting to most.
Um, do you need to see the full list of projects Bruce has started, and then dropped out of? The OP is not trolling, he's just pointing out an unattractive truth. Bruce is great at starting things, and less effective at making them succeed. Bruce is very good at taking credit for things he started that *OTHER PEOPLE* (cough, cough, ESR) turned into successes.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I switched my desktop to Linux in 1999. I had problems with my modem, recycled a jumper based ISA 33.6k, my Ethernet card (which was an older ISA model as well), my sound card STILL will not work under Lunux, scanner didn't work, printer didn't work, but I had Linux OS, Mozilla, and OpenOffice, and a native Unix-like platform for LAMPS development.
This served me well until last year when it came time for me to replace my old WIn 98 laptop. I purchased an iBook. I had my *iux enviroment plus a majority of my hardware just worked. Plugged in the USB cable and my scanner worked, printer worked, etc. Bottom-line, Apple beat Linux at the *iux desktop. Half of the developers I know are now carrying iBooks or Powerbooks to confrences and bought iMacs for home use. Why? "It just works". That's why I got fed up with both Windows and Linux. I was tired of conflicting drivers, crashes, or spending hours compiling or tweaking kernals. I just wanted something that worked and that saves me money by freeing up my time to do work.
Our company servers were all running Linux up until this past spring when I switched them all to FreeBSD or OpenBSD. Personally, I have liked FreeBSD as server OS for years. I find it much easier to write software for, because there is only 1 FreeBSD distro, and easier to maintain with a single update command. Its a shame to see the EOL for the Cobalt boxes, because the company had about 8 Raq 2's. I loved those systems with web-based, one click updates, but FreeBSD has the update cvs command and the ports tree makes installing needed applications, like PostgreSQL, easy and painless. Doesn't get any easier than Make && Make Install.
The company's desktop computers were all at end of life and I ordered all new Apple machines as replacements. Despite their higher front end cost, we didn't have to worry about the worm of the week. The employees bitched for about a week, and then startnig using the systems and began to notice they were resetting their computers once a month instead of once every couple hours. We have the stablity of Unix with commerically available software such as MS Office, QuarkXpress, Photoshop, and illustrator, pagemaker, and some nice apple only software like FCP and the iLife series.
After two weeks of bitching, the employees came to like the system's ease of use as well. And I know our productivity has increased because I maybe spend two hours a week Downloading updates compared to two hours a day helping with windows related problems...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
to realize is that in order for Debian to be taken seriously is that it needs to be upgraded to the level of commercial Linux distros. Its installer (I know everyone complains about) needs to be easy by default. The focus on stability while admirable IMHO is taken to the extreme where it almost appears that the distro is obsolescent when compared with the likes of Suse and Red Hat. Debian all in all still looks like a hacker OS. Show Debian and Suse from install to implementation and see which one a business type will choose. Companies are not going to choose Debian simply on ideological reasons. On a positive note Apt rocks, but now there is Apt for rpm.
I just installed Fedora and have it humming along nicely. So please, base it on Fedora.
Thanks.
(like the Linux community could decided on ONE distro!)
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
No matter what you say, the most effective way to bring Free Software to enterprises is by enhancing support. That's exactly what happened to Red Hat and to SuSe (even with Conectiva), they started growing exactly when they became a brand name in supporting GNU/Linux.
This proposition, to unite the whole GNU/Linux comunity around a single distribution is not new. LSB tryed to do this, but around RH distro (get ready for the flames). IMHO Debian would be a better choice (oh, no, even more flames). FYI, I use Slackware.
In both cases, what we really need is way to certify support companies. Uniting distribution is not that good, although it would be something good facilitating the support.
Be careful, free software works as Natural Selection, so the variety is essencial.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
...and now they're essentially closing (Cobalt's) shop. No wonder they're in trouble.
Working in the enterprise world myself for about 4 years, it has been my experience that management is more willing to use Linux when it is backed by a well-known and "secure" name.
This is true. The idea is to make "Debian" that trusted name. Until now it's been Redhat, Sun, IBM, or whatever. There's no reason it can't be something else, including Debian.
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?
With those things in mind, surely it would be better for pro-desktop hackers to concentrate on Fedora, stealing good stuff from Debian wherever that's appropriate?
--
What about Fedora? Isn't it based on the work RedHat has already done in making Linux suitable for the Corp world?
Somehow, I just can't take Debian seriously. I've watched Debian people put down RedHat users, and act like brats. They just aren't *mature* enough to handle being taken seriously by the Corp. world.
As far as I can tell, Fedora is doing everything this guy wants to do.
Brielle
one of the number one reasons i don't like debian is that packages in the stable branch are typically full point releases behind! have you seen the version of vi in their stable branch?
So use the "Testing" branch. The stuff there is as stable as the latest/greatest from Redhat, etc., anyway.
Not everyone needs the latest features, but they *do* need stable and reliable. Luckily Debian accomodates that.
Mozilla 1.5 actually, and it's never crashed on me yet, but I digress.
What problems are you having with unstable? I run it on all my desktop systems and development stuff with no problems. Admittedly, there are occasionally glitches with package management when one package wants to update, but is held back because of another. These are normally resolved within a week, so are nothing to worry about. I also run orths CVS KDE packages with very few problems.
Of course, unstable isn't stable, it's not designed to be. But it's hell of a lot better than the likes of Mandrake Cooker or Redhats Rawhide
Just my 2c
The "Politically Correct" distribution.
Instead, give me "Tastes Better, Less GNU" distribution.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I like debian because in stable they don't take risks.
My OS isn't a toy to play with, it is just something that lets me run my applications.
I had the same debian/stable box for about 4 years, it died. Put the drive in a new machine, rebuild the kernel and I'll probaly run the same install for another 4 years.
That's a good thing.
I would say that if you want to play games, you do not need Linux or Windows, you need a PlayStation/Gamecube/Xbox.... (Assuming games is all you care about)
...remember good 'ol times when IP used to mean Internet Protocol....
i don't have too many people i converse with day to day, but so far i have met one person who's purchased an XP Liscence / actually purchased XP / is using a real copy of XP straight from install. EVERYONE i know who is using XP is using a ripped version. the killer app? that you don't have to commit 'piracy' to use linux. that and you don't lose intellectual property rights to your works by creating them on linux systems...
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
This is an honest question, as I'm not sure if this works or not, but it sure does on win32 since forever now. 1. highlight a block of text. 2. cut. 3. paste it in another window. Seems pretty useless unless this works properly.
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.
That's nice. What makes him think we all have the same goals? Or should?
There are tons of people who contribute to GNU/Linux/OpenSource without the intent or goal of having Linux on more desktops. Maybe their intent was to learn how to use CVS.
-... ---
Now we have many 3d cards supported. I play very cool games everynight:
1. quake 3
2. enemy territory
3. savage newerth
4. unreal 2003
5. quake2 ctf
6. ALL the quake3 mods some of which are totally different games:
RA3, urbanterror, truecombat, navy seals.. and on and on.
Those are all top class games, the ones i'd be playing in windows. Sure they are mostly FPS. But those are the kinds of games I like and that's why I found them. I'm sure other people play other types of games on their linux boxen.
Liberty.
Slashdot (CmdrTaco) is exagerating, again. The words "single distribution" do not appear in the linked article. This is not about a single distro, it's about filling the gap of RedHat not supporting RHL anymore. Which is no biggie. Fedora Core 1 was already released and it's essentially RedHat 9.1. It's also more free than RedHat for that matter. RedHat Linux users will obviously use this or switch to the RedHat ES/WS offerings.
It'a a good thing Perens wants to start UserLinux or whatever, but I'm wondering about its success, thinking about past projects such as Progeny. The ideals behind this sound pretty cool, but what will come out of this?
So I'd probably have to end this with "Good luck Bruce", I hope these ideals materialize (somehow), although I'm king of skeptical.
Just ask any of the users of failed server/desktop environments - what makes a platform sink or swim? It's the applications, stupid.
Apple is now building an environment of third-party UNIX desktop applications. While there may be architectural/performance problems with Objective C (everything is late-bound), why has the Linux/BSD crowd mostly ignored the question of a little poaching of this developer base?
Why not get GNUSTEP into shape, then approach Adobe and get a Photoshop port for Linux/x86?
Of course, expect Apple to begin to introduce components into Mac OS X that would be (even more) difficult to replicate in open source code.
Apple is supporting itself on gcc and BSD. I see no reason that GNU and BSD shouldn't take market share in exchange.
I suppose when Wired write :
.. they are referring to this article, in which the RedHat CEO was not talking about corporate desktop, but about consummer desktop (ie. your mom computer at home) :
Are Wired editor getting as bad at quoting as Slashdot ?
:wq
"He suggested that by 2006, 30% of enterprise desktops will run Linux."
I've been hearing this forever. Does anyone have any links to articles from the late 90s predicting that Linux would be everywhere by 2003 or 2003, i.e. now? Not that I don't love Linux, I just think it's funny.
I also wish news channels programs would keep track of how accurate they were: On Monday, we said in our 5-day prediction that it would rain today. We were (right|wrong)." But that has nothing to do with Linux. Bring on the OT mods!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The number of us non-debian users is far greater than the number of debian users ..
Why aren't we speaking about why this is such a wrong idea? Why aren't we speaking up about all of debian's flaws ? Why are we letting our voice be trampled by some debian fans/finatics/bigots/etc ?
Sunny Dubey
Hey, shouldn't Bruce be working on his answers? . I know he is a busy guy, but I was really looking forward to them. By the time he gets to them some of the relevant ones will be outdated.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There are several playstation one emulators for linux that work quite well. ePSXe is a good one.
Not to mention the standard SNES, and NES emulators that are rock solid.
Scott
1) Download 2MB sid disk images and tarballs (drivers.tgz and base.tgz IIRC)
2) Burn the whole thing to a bootable CD (Using the boot disk as the CD boot track.)
3) Boot the CD and when you get to the bit where it asks you if you want to enter apt sources, enter the unstable ones by hand.
4) Hope to God that unstable's not broken at the time (It was on my last laptop install, causing X to not work until I figured out what was going on.)
If you're not careful, you end up downloading all the sid packages you want and then re-downloading all those packages again in the unstable branch. Which sucks. But it does work.
Installing testing instead of unstable might work better, but there's a lot of stuff in unstable that probably won't make it to testing for a while. There's also some stuff in experimental that would be kind of helpful on my laptop (Like Xfree86 4.3.0 with better radeon support.)
If you screw up your dependencies by dicking around too much between two different releases (testing/unstable or unstable/experimental) then you may end up having to delete and reinstall an entire subsystem to put things right. Which sucks (But is still better than what happens when you do this on RPM based systems...)
Once you get it all installed and working, life is beautiful (except when a package maintainer screws up a package you use a lot, like galeon) which is why I still prefer Debian to anything else, even after all that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'll admit I don't know as much as I should about Linux to be reading slashdot, but here's my thoughts on the current state of linux, and the issue of making one distro for all.
Although I am all for Linux I aggree that it has shortcomings to what MS/Apple has to offer. Mainly ease of install and use. Combine that with a bunch of distro's that you can choose from until you find one that works/fits what your doing, the process of downlaoding and installing Linux could take a while for non-techies.
Basing efforts on one distro would limit choice and could be seen to a detriment to most people that use linux. And I aggree with that. But what if there were a main flavor of linux that was slightly stripped down. If you want features of a certain distro you can install an add on. (About 100-200M in size) This would add all of the features of that distro and still give you choices of distro's to use.
I understand that this is basically what the linux kernel is, but instead of packaging the kernel with every distro, just distribute the kernel where it can run (graphical interface and easy for end users) without any changes but you can add on distro packages.
Corps don't want people mucking around with their desktops. Hell, they probably won't even give them root anyway.
What the corps would really love would be the ability to change configs site wide at the 'click of a button' or a few command line commands.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It claims to do for file servers what Smoothwall does for firewalls. It looks nifty, although I confess I've yet to try it out myself.
You win again, gravity!
I must have missed that "or as little as $10".
If it has a minimum cost, making "uncontrolled" copies of it will be a criminal act. This is terrible.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
She prefers it to windows xp because "it has better games", "cooler menus", and "no blue screens!"
Windows XP blue screens? What are you trying to run it on, a p200? I think I've seen my win2k install blue screen like 2 or 3 times in as many years. I've also never seen (or heard people complaining about) XP blue screening.
Oh, but maybe it's all those memories of windows 95/NT from when she was what, 4?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The link to the google records showed that linux had 1%. They listed "Other" as 5%. They had pretty much every major OS up there. What other OSes are out there that could have a larger user base then linux, but aren't already listed? I'd question those results.
I love Gentoo 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 emerge. I can roll my own distro in a way.
heh
Yeah yeah, I know I know, Debian has its stable version where Gentoo is a constantly moving target, Debian has been around longer, supports more architectures . . . I would probably have migrated to Debian the last time I went distro shopping if I hadn't found Gentoo first.
Someone you trust is one of us.
It used to be that you had a choice between BSDi, Solaris, Irix, AIX, DIGITAL UNIX, HP/UX, and, erm SCO. No one complained about 'too many choices', because they were products of competing companies. And they were much less cross-compatable then various Linux flavors.
Big corps will simply standardize internally on one of the large distros, just like they did with UNIX.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If we're going to unite behind Debian, then we need to pour resources into better X software for Debian, and a better manual. Until then, I'd rather put my money behind Fedora or Gentoo.
Finding God in a Dog
Wasn't what Bruce is suggesting just a restatement of the Linux Standard Base Project?
But, mostly, I don't see why everyone needs to get behind a single project like that. All of your examples can be handled by different groups.
I like all of your examples and I'd like to add a few of my own.
#1. Service packs. Personally, I prefer lots of little updates so I can quickly back out anything that didn't work but it seems that others prefer their service packs as one big patch. That means that the desktop and Xserver and kernel all get updated at once.
#2. Distinct server and workstation versions with different installations. The workstation version should not ask to install server type applications like SMTP servers but the server install should. These would be useful when you're adding Linux installations to an existing Windows network.
#3. Thin client and supporting server installation options. This is where Linux surpasses Windows. But it is a new concept for Windows administrators. I'd also put NFS mounts of user directories under this option. Or it could be a different installation option.
I don't see why Bruce doesn't just take some of that money and start this project on his own. It shouldn't be that hard to get the basic structure functioning. The real problem will be testing all those applications together to find the bugs before you release the service pack. I believe that Bruce should focus his spending on that issue. People and machines paid for and dedicated to finding the bugs and getting them reported or fixed.
It would be nice to see some published test cases and testing methodology for that. I wonder if it would be possible to join forces with the OSDL.
This is nice, but everyone won't agree on using Debian as the base. It is developed by the right kind of organization for this and it's stable, but it's old. Like, Mozilla 1.0.0. Hello? Old GNOME and KDE as well.
Sure, I can use unstable, but that's not a good solution. Using another distribution that's based on a snapshot of Debian unstable could work, though. (I suppose it could be called UserLinux.)
Are dpkg installations interactive or does it just seem that way? I like that way rpm:s install without asking any questions and just give me a basic config file I can edit. Now that I have apt-rpm I'm pretty happy with my RPM-based distro. It's got recent, modern software, it's user-friendly and it works well. Why start over with Debian?
A lot of people who aren't geeks, per se, still like to fiddle with computers.
Alot of people who are geeks may not have a "geek degree", but they are still geeks and are likely to fiddle with just about any machine they can get thier hands into.
The funny part is that today, there are more people who have the "geek degree" that are not geeks than there are geeks who don't.
The best programmers I've met are not the ones who learned it in school, nor are they necessarily the ones who were given a computer early in life, but the ones who happened upon computing almost randomly and simply took to it due to unspecified interest. They have a drive to implement thier ideas that is not dependant on a paycheck or notariety, but rather springs from thier natural curiosity and a strong belief in doing things the way they see as best (which often makes them nearly unemlpoyable).
Read, L
I've set up two Debian boxes using Knoppix hd install. It takes one CD iso (plus a little apt-get play when you're done). You need to know what you want in terms of partitions etc., but it's not that tough.
The first of those boxes has been running for three months now with two reboots (plus a power outage restart), and those reboots are because I'm still too much of a noob to know how to restart the network connection when it's been lost without rebooting. I've not seen any reason in practice to be worried about this being unstable-based.
It's running 100 miles from here being used by my mother (who's over 70) and her 50something roommates, none of which is terribly geeky. Their only complaint is that a work-related site they use frequently requires IE, and they can't do that through Firebird.
FWIW
The Red Hat fanboys must be seeing red, they can't mod the article as troll and it gives the lie to all the rubbish that's been written about Fedora. The end of the Red Hat distro was a huge mistake and left an obvious gaping hole in the Linux market (it's like the management at RH just completely lost it). This makes it obvious and now we have something on the way to fill that gap. It's great, I was wondering which distro to jump to, Debian was looking good, now this from Perens means I'll go Debian now and probably contribute to the new distro.
Yep go on mod this as troll again for pointing out the obvious that RH made a mistake.
You do not need to be opposed to something to hear and understand the arguments of those who are. Again, thank you for raising this argument of the anti-Debian camp in a manner which promotes rational discussion.
Technically, things are in Testing in order to _be_ tested subsequent to their promotion from Unstable. My point is that nearly everybody that I know who uses Debian/Testing uses it in the sense that I implied; that it is current. The itch that is being scratched is the desire to use current packages, not the desire to help test Debian, although that's nice too.
All I'm trying to say is that Debian's distributions should be named to reflect the actual usage patterns. I apologize if you think I can't and shouldn't use Testing as my desktop distribution, but I _do_, as do others. Currency is dangerous -- but it's nice to have the choice.
Compare the same hardware. Not what you think people ask.
You're right that the home user won't move to Linux. Not unless Linux can offer them something that Windows can't.
Corporations are a different story.
I, for one, welcome our debian nerd overlords!
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
IMHO, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is closer to being a suitable foundation for a community-driven enterprise-class Linux distribution. There is very little at all to trim from it (mostly removing Red Hat's trademarks). Say what you want about Red Hat, but they have until lately been the most unambiguously Open Source friendly Linux vendor out there. I say "until lately" because their service agreements stifle traditional GPL rights granted to the end user.
That said, a number of us are working on liberating RHEL through the cAos project. First public beta should be available this month. We have a very Debian-like social contract, but the tech is all based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
For those of you who prefer RPM-based distros, wouldn't it be nice to install all system packages with yum? The new install floppy image we're testing now is working towards this goal. What this means is all of your packages are installed with the latest stable version from the getgo.
I agree with the sentiment of banding behind one Linux distribution, but it won't be Debian. I'm not saying that it *should* be one or the other technically. It's just I don't think that it's a coincidence that Redhat and Suse are the two distributions that I see on the shelves of Fry's or CompUSA, and also hold the two largest user base. They make larger marketing pushes than any of the other distributions. There are also other some new commercial contenders - RedFlag, Lindows... These are probably joke distributions for most Linux users. Whoever the winner is, they must have some commercial exposure and be willing to take the lead in publicity and marketing.
Incidentally, I'm a slackware user but always keep a RedHat installation handy.
The new installer was just announced to be in beta. It's coming along, just be patient. If you want, you can even help test and contribute to it. Details here.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
The biggest interest I've seen in linux has been in response to someone seeing me run something on linux that they can't get on Windows. Be it Evolution, the gimp, Xaos, a game, or an Xscreensaver, there are some cool apps for linux that are only for linux.
"Hey, where can I get that?" "Linux only, sorry." "Huh. Maybe I'll have to check that out sometime."
At this point a knoppix cd comes in handy.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
In a word, DOCUMENTATION.
As a newbie, how many times were you advised " RTFM ?"
And how many times did that advice send you scrambling from reference to reference to <span style="extend-dots: infinity-1>...</span>
It's a daunting task, but if Linux is going on the desktop --OUTSIDE organizations with top-drawer IT support-- the documentation is going to have to provide answers at the first or second refence; not after the "family IT support staff" has to spend endless hours helping the father-in-law (or whomever) add a feature, switch anti-virus s/w or whatever...
FWIW
[this sig has been trunca
I switched to RedHat Linux back in March--a few months after buying a brand new laptop that had hardware specs that would have made it 3 times faster than my previous laptop but it actually ran the same apps SLOW (i.e., I had Office 2000 on my old laptop and installed Office 2000 on my new laptop and it was slower). Yes, the old laptop ran Win98 and the new one ran XP.
I had been running a Linux desktop on my home office server and used it as my file/print server and my stereo system. I'd thought about trying to installing it on my laptop but was sure it would fail miserably. Finally, after months of frustration of my new laptop running slower than my old laptop I ordered a brand new hard drive for my laptop. I yanked the pre-installed XP hard drive, installed the new hard drive and installed RedHat on it. Worked perfectly. It was no harder to install than Win98 (can't speak to WinXP, I've never installed that). Detected everything fine including my USB keyboard and mouse and inserted LinkSys 802.11b PCMCIA card. For my legacy Windows apps I bought Win4Lin so I can run Windows under Linux. The few Windows apps that I actually still use actually run faster under Win4Lin under Linux than they did under WinXP! And I still ahve the original XP hard drive in case anything ever goes wrong with the laptop hardware--I'll just stick the XP HD back in before I take it in for warranty work so they don't freak out.
Now, about 8 months later, I'm still on Linux on my desktop. Yes, I do miss being able to go to BestBuy and buy any old piece of hardware without checking first to make sure it's supported by Linux.
Sometimes I even think, "What the heck... I'll just go back to Windows." Then I think about the speed hit I'll take. I think about the crashing problems (I had more crashes under XP in the 3 months I had XP on my new machine than in the 2 years I had 98 on my previous laptop). I think about having to worry again about Microsoft's latest DRM plan and whether they'll let me continue to use my computer in the way I want [I used the DVD player on my laptop twice under XP, one with a region 4 DVD and once with a region 1 DVD. Windows told me I could only "switch" regions 4 more times and that was it. No such problem under Linux]. I think about the viruses that used to be a threat and all the security problems of last summer that I totally was able to ignore. I think about the fact that I'm 100% legit on my licenses and can safely tell the BSA or anyone else to take a leap. I think about the fact that my Linux install came with OpenOffice that does MORE than MS Office [at least more useful. I'm sure MS Office has some features I don't use or care about, but OpenOffice came with a PDF converter built in... no need to buy a PDF converter or Destiller... and every Word document I've opened has only required minor pagination adjustments and has saved to a file that is 10% as large as the original Word document].
Windows is a drug. It's easy to be tempted to use it. But I'm on Linux and am not going back to Windows. At some point I'll need a new laptop (I have an HP laptop so, of course, it's not eternal)--but I'll be installing Linux on that too. Or maybe go to a Mac... But Windows? Nah, I've had enough.
Whats the rational for not including GCC? Even if you're not doing your own development, you need GCC to make install lots of software packages out there. Without GCC, you're really sunk if you want to install anything from code, and it can be hard to find RPMs or whatever lots of OSS software.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Security is the real killer these days. Lots and lots of non computer literate people have seriously Spyware infested machines. I honestly believe that non-computer literate people should not use Windows anymore. Windows should only be used by people knowledgeable enough to keep their machines secure and Spyware free. I was infected with Spyware once, an obnoxious dealy called "surferbar" or something (the file was called 'win32.dll' and didn't actually have then word 'surferbar' in any files, just a graphic.) I had to go through the registry myself to kill it. Ad-aware didn't detect it at all. I don't know how it got installed, since I didn't remember clicking 'yes' on any Active-x security queries, and I switched to Mozilla right away.
I've looked at a few people's computers and they are a huge mess. On one person's machine, spybot cleaned it. On another, all the stuff came right back. She's told me she runs spybot every day but everything comes back. (and she's a CS grad student... *sigh*).
It's really frustrating and disgusting, and I think it should be as illegal as any hacking. But it happens, and until it stops computer illiterates would be much better off using Linux.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Web Browser
I think we have this better covered than Windows (since you didn't say we had to access all sites made by IE-only people)
E-mail
I think we've got this covered too. You didn't mention calendaring/scheduling (where we are still behind).
Office Software
OpenOffice.org is achieving about the same compatability you get between different versions of MS Office.
Custom/Special Application compatibility
In a lot of cases, it's feasible to migrate some of these to Web-based apps. For scientific/engineering applications, ports are already available for many products. For anything else, this is problem (that can be solved for a price and some inconvenience via win4lin server or similar).
Central Authentication/Access Control
This is done with OpenLDAP (unix clients), Samba3 (for Windows clients). Enforcing settings has not been integrated yet (but they could be enforced - at least with KDE - via config files which could be distributed via the package management system). Updates should not be pushed via AD IMHO. apt-get, urpmi, yum etc can do this well enough (only thing is setting this up initially is not automatic).
Windows Update-like mechanism
apt-get, urpmi, yum etc in cron. Use multiple repositories/sources/urpmi media etc to achieve the effects you want.
Integrated Virus protection/Firewalling
Firewalling is no problem (available on all distros), Virus protection is *only* necessary on file/mail servers that serve Windows machines. If it really does become necessary, pay Sophos some more money to cover your linux desktops as well. Most distros ship with an open-source virus scanner (such as clamav).
Hardware Support
Choose your vendors. Those that don't support Linux will soon see why they should. But, this is an issue still.
ISV/Vendor Support
This is probably one of the bigger hurdles.
If he has a friend at M$, he can get his friend to do internal purchasing and get all that software for free.
You can also run OpenOffice on Windows.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
(about your sig)
The ability to edit posts is a very bad idea in a forum where people can reply do what you posted.
Don't give people the ability to falsify the record of the debate. Picture this:
"I think Hitler was a bad guy."
"I agree"
"I wholeheartedly agree"
"Yeah, me too."
Now you go change the original post, so it now looks like:
"I think Hitler was great."
"I agree"
"I wholeheartedly agree"
"Yeah, me too."
(I don't even like the fact that the signature isn't embedded into the text of the post. It lets you say something in what looks like the last line of the post, and then remove it from record later, rendering anyone's response rather silly looking if they replied to it.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Having a bunch of distributions that do the same thing different ways definately helps things.
Seriously, it was good, it is nice that linux can do well...
but do you know why, for instance, Macintosh has the most consistent and best user interface out there? Because they aren't developing it for 100 different platforms.
I'm not suggesting things should be closed.. but doing something different just for the sake of doing something different holds linux back now. Developers need a solid target.
There is no good reason why we can't standardize on one basic layout and packaging system.. it wouldn't stop or even slow down anyone from doing whatever they want.. there is nothing fundamentally better about the way Redhat lays things out, -vs- Mandrake -vs- Gentoo -vs- Debian.
Dicking around with filesystem layout and packagaing standards doesn't help anything nowadays, it just fragments the platform.
Developers also want to be able to compile Boost.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Many, many times I have heard the same thing from other, far less luminous persons, usually in this forum and seen the idea uniformly poo-poo'd or worse. And yet, Bruce Perens says it, and suddenly it's not such a bad idea.
... thy name is /.
Oh, Irony
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Dude, if in the next 18000 years no operating systems, or complete alternate computing methods reach maturity then humanity has some really problems on its hands, men of our day like Linus have seen Linux grow from a simple terminal emulater with some disk I/O features into a full blown multi users OS, in only 11 years or so. I really hope inovation does not slow to the point that 18000 is insufficent to reaplace Linux with the next great thing.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Most posters here are way too technic-centric. You folks don't get it. From a technical standpoint (and some are comparing KDE vs. Gnome, Red Hat vs. Debian, etc.) it hardly matters what you run. This totally irrelevant.
The main point is whether your, or your customers', applications run, which in turn boils down to whether the ISV supports the respective distro. Debian hasn't had a lot of support from ISVs lately. So calling for people running Debian on the desktop is just bogus (albeit cool). Running Linux on the desktop (which I have been doing for the past 10+ years or so at home, and on my various computers at work if I could) involves more than just the GUI or maybe OpenOffice.
For example if you offer to roll out 10,000 or more PCs in a governmental organization you have to think about some other things, like emulating legacy Windows apps, software maintenance, remote support, user help desk, educating users, end-user acceptance and so forth. These things have little to do with the choice of distro, which is only the first step of many.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
If you're going to pick a single distribution for the desktop end user, Debian would be damn near the worst choice possible. There are four reasons for this.
1. Debian is the least user-friendly of all the major distributions. This should be immediately evident from its popularity among the most technically-skilled users.
2. Debian packages are much, much harder to create than RPMs. Sure, they're technically superior in many ways, but it's already a major pain in the ass to get commercial vendors to produce RPMs; how are they going to react to the increased pain of producing Debian packages?
3. The Debian organization is ideologically rigid and openly hostile to the very commercial software vendors whose support is a prerequisite to serious penetration into the desktop market.
4. Debian follows a "release late, release rarely" model that appeals (with good reason) to sysadmins, but which will not appeal at all to individual users who want to take advantage of the latest hardware.
If the goal is to unite around a purely non-commercial distro, Slackware is the obvious choice. If the goal is just to replace RedHat, then SuSE is the obvious choice -- certainly Novell should be enthusiastically friendly to developers these days.
On the other hand, it is worth asking whether we need or want a formally-defined standard distribution is commoditization of the operating system is a goal. Distributions should adhere to standards, not be standards themselves. We need to get to the point where it doesn't matter whether you're running RedHat, Slackware, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, etc.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Many people are talking about Linux on the desktop similar as Windows especially with home users administering their own machine.
However the IBM and Perens articles hit me with a nice different viewpoint. Corporate driven with clearly targeted applications.
I think that might be a good strategy indeed. Having professional IT administrators design corporate desktops with all the control and power administration can offer. Similar desktop rollout and administration of windows machines is hard as well and needs a highly skilled staff.
Professionaly administrated machines is something Linux already excels in, and this can hold for teh desktop as well. That means that Linux might already be on the right track with ease of administration FOR PROFESSIONALS in organisations. This might be a quicker path to desktop succes than easy installation and administration for home users (and lets face is, most home windows PC's are a mess).
So if I point out a flaw in debian then I'm "anti-debian", I guess then all the people pointing out flaws in the US just attacking whoever it feals like really are "anti-american".
... which also isn't true enough at times, it's just much closer to the truth.
/etc/apt/sources/list:
No you're not anti-debian, just ignorant. Your argument has been thoroughly rebutted years ago.
No, there isn't (at least not how you are implying). There is a testing distro called "testing". It doesn't provide security updates, and things have to be "tested" before they get there. You cannot and should not use it is a regular distro. like mandrake/fedora etc. It is much like FreeBSD cusrrent, but I assume you meant it more like saying "fedora has current packages"
Again more ignorance. Try adding this to your
deb http://security.debian.org sarge/updates main contrib non-free
You can replace "sarge" with "testing" if you prefer this.
I mean, he could have supported Morphix, which is moving in exactly the direction Bruce wants to go (even the 3D-drivers), and I really could use all the help I can get on it. I love the competition, but if you want integration of distributions the last thing you need is yet another one.
Bruce, if you want integration: put your weight behind one of the existing distro's (doesn't have to be mine, but I wouldn't mind ;) If you want yet another distro then go right ahead with UserLinux. I hope it would rock well enough for me to (ab)use in the true Free Software spirit, but get ready for a serious amount of work getting everything up to speed. I've been there and am still enjoying the ride after 8 months of work :)
Cheers,
Alex
This sig is intentionally left blank
Actually, regarding my second statement. I should retract that, as this page says otherwise. :-)
However, this contradicts also. So maybe testing does have security fixes after all?
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.
if Debian starts being based on Gentoo, why, then I'd happily use a Debian-based distro.
What are they, idiots?
Because Debian's foundation is arguably farther ahead of Redhat's. While dpkg vs rpm isn't so much of an issue any more, there are still some smaller areas where dpkg appears to outshine rpm (see here for details). apt is better than up2date, and Debian has the majority of stuff codified in policy or the developer's reference, both of which are very practical documents brought about by years of experience in cooperatively dealing with the problems of assembling a coherent distribution in a cooperative setting, which is something the Fedora project is brand new at. They could have leveraged this sort of experience, but chose to redo it themselves.
This ignores the social contract which is a practical set of recommendations for the overarching ideas of a distro. Gentoo basically lifted this for their own when they started their work. Debian also has a very mature and powerful (if a bit arcane at first) bug tracking system, mailing list setup, and mirror system, all of which provide the extensive ifrastructure needed to run a massive project that is completely independant of any one corporate entity. This stuff was built from the ground up for its purpose, and it provides an extremely solid foundation that keeps the project moving along. Fedora might have some newer packages, but the foundation of Debian down to the social and technical infrastructure is even more solid because it's been hardened over many years of experience.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Ask and you shall receive....
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html
In testing (which I now run) Mozilla is still 1.0, which is what I was referring to. I'm running 1.5 as well, but I had to compile it myself for testing. I guess 1.5 must have crashed for *someone* or it would be in testing by now.
I've had unstable continually break on me. The worst was the event that recently made me switch to testing. After an update, suddenly ALL my GTK apps just segfaulted. No amount of uninstalling/reinstalling/reconfiguring seemed to fix it. I tracked the problem down to something to do with fontconfig, but just couldn't solve it. Dropping down to testing finally made things work again.
I now suspect it might have been something to do with xtt and fontconfig in XFree but I'm not sure. I had tried both Xfree 4.3 and 4.2 in unstable with no luck.
I've had many similar cases. I don't mind so much when something is held back, but when things really break, a week of downtime is a really really really high price to pay.
And I really really don't want to use only the old applications in stable for everyday desktop use.
Oh, you wanted benchmarks:
h ttp://home.comcast.net/~jcunningham63/linux/GCC_O ptimization_apollo.html
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/performance.xml
I've used Debian for 5 or 6 years and Gentoo for about 1. Gentoo stable is far more reliable than Debian's testing/unstable. In fact, Debian's testing is a PIA because often security updates don't make it into that branch for quite some time.
I know this, because I've used Debian testing(and unstable before testing even existed) on production servers for the last 5 years.
Debian is a solid distribution and it's stable/security branch will be in production use for me for quite some time on server installs for even future clients. It's the single best plug it in and forget it distribution around. In fact, the one I setup 5 years ago is still running strong without me being around.
But Gentoo is also very solid on the server and has a lot of technical merits above and beyond Debian.
Don't forget that you can script one machine to just download the updates every night so you can test them and then deploy them to all your other machines. Instead of having each machine download its updates from Debian's website. Much nicer on Debian's internet connection if you do it that way.
:)
But the corporations don't seem to like that idea. They seem to want larger service packs delivered on a quarterly or so basis. I think this might be a leftover from Microsoft's packaging.
Using Debian, you could accomplish that. Just make a meta-package that references all the individual packages. Presto! Instant Microsoft-styled service pack.
And it's good in TWO ways. You can update the individual packages, if you are so inclined, and the mega-service-pack will be able to handle that.
That would be an improvement over Microsoft's current handling of hot-fixes and service-packs and making sure you get them loaded and re-loaded in the correct order.
Bruce should start work on the meta-package for the work he has envisioned. But he should keep is very simple.
One meta-package with all the components.
A service pack released every quarter with all the updates. With lots and lots of testing to make sure all the components play together nicely.
Use the practices that the corps are most familiar and comfortable with. Then show them how to handle it better with less work and less worry.
First, why is it everyone is so hostile on this site?
"Corporate america isn't based around the concept of "Free Software" it is based around Revenue Generation, using the right tools to get the job done and providing an IT infrastructure support revenue generation, sales force and back-office."
I think you missed the point. The only ones who care about Free Software are us, the geeks and programmers who want to know how the programs we use work. That is our interest. Now, for that to happen, we have to get the rest of the world to cooperate--not because it is in their best interest, but because it is in our best interest. If it happens to be in their best interest, thats fine. But if it isn't, then we'll have to find other ways to compell them to comply.
We're not marketers, not advocates, but tyrants, dictators, higher criminals who know how to work the system. To get what we want.
And I've got one too. I've been using Linux since '91. And this year alone I've installed about 20 to 30 different systems using, RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Slackware, FreeBSD (yeah, I know...), my favourite: gentoo, and I tried to install Debian once. All of the installs, except for the Debian, went without a hitch. I really wanted to give Debian a try as a few of my friends, whom I respect, have been Debian users for a while. But natch. No go. I've kept the disks and labeled them Caveat Emptor. Now I am certain Debian is not reeeeeally as bad as I think it is. But to tell me to get behind Debian right now is like telling me to get behind Belkin. Not this year.
Linux is not a desktop OS... it's like a tweaker OS. If you don't like to really do anything to your OS... which most users don't... you're fucked. Plus if you buy a brand new computer, most new graphics cards and sound cards don't work properly in Linux. So that was a waste. In addition, Linux doesn't particularly have a lot of traditionally "fun" stuff to use it for anyway, so the graphics card and sound card basically were a waste. Beh. Linux needs a lot of work before it'll ever become anything remotely like a desktop OS.
Slackware would make a much better base and I used Mandrake for 99.9% of all computer use including "gaming."
I still would perfer Slack as the base for a "standard" Linux.
It may just be the fanboyism I have see surounding Debian over the years has turnd me off but having run it I think it's nothing special.
Perins is a smart fellow but he has this one wrong.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
My kids would lynch me if they had to deal with stuff Tux Racer and others of that ilk.
Would you consider StepMania, a GPL rhythm game, to fall into "others of that ilk"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
"Just get a copy of the DDK"? Does the DDK work with compilers other than Microsoft Visual $1000++? I am between graduation and my first job; I neither qualify for student discounts nor earn a fat paycheck. Many Windows programmers, such as myself, use MinGW as their primary C++ compiler because they can't afford to pay a thousand dollars for a compiler. And the file system development headers are an extra $1000 on top of that.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Dude, you just called Debian a Ford. I would of been ok with a Volvo, but a Ford? You sir, deserve to be shot!
Here's more on what to do about Redhat on OpenACS. Some are definately leaning toward Debian, and more would if they could get Debian certified for Oracle.
= 9J =
Oh - and if they can't buy software (games) for it at Best Buy you're screwed too.
I can buy games for Linux at Best Buy: just install a $50 TV tuner card from Best Buy, hook up your $100 GameCube from Best Buy, and you can play hundreds of games bought at Best Buy.
I can buy games for Linux at Best Buy: buy a GBA and games at Best Buy, connect the GBA to your PC with the MBV2 cable ($20 at lik-sang.com), dump your own carts (as is a cart owner's right under 17 USC 117), and emulate them in VisualBoyAdvance.
In addition, many (but not all) Windows games work in Wine.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Currently I get away with playing Quake3 and Wolfenstien.
What about those gamers who aren't fans of first-person shooters? What about platform games, RTS, console style RPGs, or MMORPGs?
Will I retire or break 10K?
How many software packages does the OSI provide?
The Open Source Initiative doesn't seem to maintain software as such, but its president does. I count at least a couple dozen apps by Mr. Raymond alone; the web pages of other board members show their contributions. Notably, Michael Tiemann wrote G++, and Guido van Rossum wrote Python.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Skip step 2
Nobody wants to.
Oh, and instead of ctrl-v being the paste operation, middle-button on the mouse is (or a 2-button chord, for those without a third button).
A common GUI idiom on Mac and Windows is select, copy, select, paste, where the pasted text replaces the selected text.
There are clipboard programs which will allow you to manage many different "cuttings"
Has the X clipboard system matured to where the user can copy rich text, spreadsheet cells, images, or audio and have everything Just Work?
Will I retire or break 10K?
You must mean graphical interfaces.
There must be the option of a graphical interface around every feature exposed to the user of a desktop-oriented OS distribution. For example, get CD recording to the point where the user can right-click a folder, choose "Record to CD", and pick options in a dialog box, and then mkisofs and cdrecord run automatically, and grandparent will be happy.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is fundamentally dishonest to be talking about desktop linux and then focus on the terms for the Enterprise Server version when it comes to RedHat.
True, but is it "fundamentally dishonest" to discuss the EULA for Red Hat Professional Workstation (part of the RHEL family) in the context of desktop GNU/Linux OS distributions?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I like Bruce (or at least his public persona) and I know that he has a great fondness for Debian. I can't agree that Debian would be the right choice for this. Debian was once my favorite distro. They had (and probably still have) the best packaging system. They were all about putting together an excellent system with ton of useful packages and they had a strong focus, it seemed, on technical details. They have a clear and atractive statement of how they would server the users. (Something that I hear is finally going to be ammended to better reflect reality.)
In the time I used them though, the focus seemed to move more and more toward petty politics inside their organization. It got the the point that they were patting themselves on the back for creating Virtual RMS (a package to nag you if you were running non-free software) and bickering over the types of election rules to use since one type would guarantee the the non-free packages would be left unchanged while an other rules might get the non-free package moved to a different server or discarded altogether. This was at a time when a number of the packages in question (the ones I used at least) did not have reasonable free replacements. They appeared to become less concerned with technical merit and general usability and fell into a long running debate about how much they ought to appease RMS. All the while, you could count on Debian to be no less than a year behind all of the other distro's stable releases on software versions. Debian has been, and I believe still is the victim of Free Software Fundamentalism. (Not a term I coined, but one I agree with completely. I'm not certain the person I heard it from would like to be credited.)
Also, Debian seems to be, shall we say slow at adding usability features for end users. Again, I am speaking from the time I used them, and they might have changed, but it would have had to be dramatic. Back when the other distros were picking up the various desktop environments and had them in their stable releases, I was having to go to some third party site that tried to maintain compatible packages for Debian's stable an unstable releases because debian was still being rather indecisive about how or if they wanted to include the packages.
I've often heard this type behavior being justified with explanations that Debian is a distribution for the very people who make it, and that is great. That is one example of why Free Software is good. They have the talent and the freedom to use it. But given the focus of those people, given their disposition toward political deadlock and given the near hostility that many of them have toward non-free software (a stance not shared by the enterprise users yet) I cannot believe that Debian would be the right organization for this. I can understand putting it in the hands of a third party, non-profit and having a base distro to work from, but Debian is not it. Perhaps a clean fork from Debian could provide a good foundation, but if the target audience is the enterprise, then the baggage of the Debian organization must be left behind.
Edd
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".
I may not have explained well, having "current" packages brings it's own problems ... but most people who would care know how that goes (even comming from the win32 world). The problem is that, for example, the cvs security errata earlier this year took a few more days to come out for unstable as it did for stable ... but it took over 3 months IIRC to get into testing. Therefore recommending "normal" people use testing is not going to help debian, IMO. Obviously you, and your friends, can use it ... I presume you know what you are doing ... it just isn't a general solution like "fedora", mandrake, etc. etc.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
From "http://www.debian.org/security/faq"...
Now given that people I know have had to work around security updates not being available for testing for months at a time. Then I'm included to continue in my "ignorance".
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
When you think monoculture you get MSCEs, promote monoculture in your company and yoou will get the cheapest money can buy which normally means the lowest skill set.
Promote diversity in your company (between reason, it is OK tyo have two or three different solutions for different problems in your company) and you will have people that have a deeper understanding of technology in general.
IMVHO of course.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
While I certainly join Bruce in liking (and using) Debian, there's certainly absolutely nothing wrong with RPM-based options such as cAos and Fedora.
Not to mention that getting "Linux distributors to unite behind" any one thing is doomed, anyway.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
You are not lisitng your needs, you are listing the products you know or are comfortable with that do something you currently do.
And unsurprisingly, many of your needs have only one provider. That is exactly how vendor lock in happens and it is a sad state of affairs when people don;t even realize the big mess in which they are and think temselves that they are evaluating their needs and choosing accordingly.
Office suite: I need compatibility. Pathetic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sarge updates. I am not sure what these are for then. Can anyone shed some light?
I have to reboot my machine weekly due to memory leaks managed ungracefully all the time. This been my office machine, is running only MS software. It is *that* bad.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If she is seven years old buy her a skipping rope and take her to the park.....children should learn to appreciate such things instead of giving wise judgements abbout bsods.
Sawan
You get a full blown, constantly improving, OS for freee that is free. And the only thing you have to do is use it and report problems.
I don't see where is the raw deal.
If one group of people choose to make business and another one choose to support a political agenda I think both are very commendable things to do.
Having both kinds of organizations ensure Linux has a name recognition while allowing us access to cutting edge technology and promoting a political point of view in regards to the use and sharing of software.
So honestly, what is your point?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Also, just an addendum about Samba. It outperforms the corresponding Windows alternative.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
AIUI they "sometimes" provide them, but make no guarantees. Which might be fine for developers (my friend with the cvs security problem using testing just compiled his own version for those couple of months) ... but isn't much use for "normal" people IMO. I'm also not sure how it works in practice, as the updates there for testing seem to be the stable versions ... which I thought were behind testing.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B