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UserLinux Proposal (And Analysis) Now Available
Lucky writes "Bruce Peren's idea for UserLinux was much discussed on Slashdot some weeks ago; however, there was no formal proposal. Linuxworld is running an analysis of the proposal and links to the first draft."
Using Debian to start with is a very bad decision. Everything in Debian is extremely out of date, starting with the most important packages and moving on. There isn't even a package for Perl 5.8, which has been out for a long time. Security in Debian is a joke seeing as four of their servers were recently rooted. If you use the stable branch of Debian, everything is insanely out of date. Unfortunately, it's also the only way to get security updates. Debian is nothing but a mess, and should be avoided at all costs.
If UserLinux is to be successful, they need to start with a better distro such as Redhat Enterprise Linux or SuSe.
Why start with Debian at all, though? Why not start from a better distribution such as SuSe, Mandrake, or Redhat Enterprise Linux? Debian has a history of trouble and should be avoided.
First of all, Debian is extremely user-unfriendly. If nothing else, it has a reputation of being next to impossible to install. If you can get it that far, there are no simple tools to use and maintain the system with, unlike the other distributions I suggested.
Second, Debian is extremely out of date. Even if you use unstable, packages such as Perl 5.8 are not available. And Perl 5.8 has been out for a long time. If you want software that was new two years ago, then Debian is the way to go. Otherwise, you're wise to choose a different distribution.
Third, Debian only applies security updates if you use the stable branch. This means that if you want to be confident that your computer is secure, you have to run even more out of date software. For most people, this is clearly unacceptable.
And fourth, the Debian project itself has a horrible record of security. Just recently, four of its machines were compromised. They weren't hit through some unknown exploit, but because a user sent an unencrypted password over the network. Use of encrypted passwords has been standard for some time around, and if the maintainers of the distribution can't practice basic security measures on their own machines, I can't trust their software running on mine.
I'm sorry, but if you don't pick a better distribution to start with, UserLinux will never take off. Debian is just not the way to go.