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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."
There's already tons of distributions that are focused on end users -- It's really unclear what the point of another one is. It seems like this is just an attempt to make Debian more popular by packaging it better, but it's not clear why a that can't be done by the existing Debian project.
Also, the idea that YA distro could become some sort of "standard" reminds one of SCO's "UnitedLinux" plan.
First, installation is being adressed. The currently-released installer is a rewrite of one I made in 1996 or so. It was great for 1996. I wrote Busybox for that installer, by the way. The new installer being tested for the next release has positive reviews. There is also a port of Red Hat's installer.
But the most important thing about installers is that they are run once. People base entire distribution reviews on the installer, which is just stupid.
Debian has Perl 5.6 in unstable at the moment. I don't know if 5.8 is very different, and what the Perl maintainer has to say about it. Why not ask him?
Unstable gets security updates to the main branch, rather than to security.debian.org . Security.debian.org exists because of the need to bypass the release management for stable to get fixes in immediately.
Regarding the security record of various distributions, I don't think the commercial ones will tell us if they are hit, unless it becomes obvious from outside. Who knows how often they have been compromised? Gentoo just announced a compromise, perhaps based on the same brk() bug.
The really impressive thing about the Debian breach was that it happened at 5 PM, they had detected and confirmed a breach and had the sites shut down by 10 PM, they announced the breach at 10 AM, and they did the forensics and found an unsuspected exploit within about a week. I dare you to show me a commercial Linux distribution that has been that timely.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Although we're all getting comfortable with it, I'd like to see the name UserLinux go bye-bye. In fact, "Linux" is getting to be scary word to a lot of execs, especially as Red Hat and Sun announce their pricing, which is getting up there.
I like names like MorphOS, which are much more friendly. Frankly, I'd love to see a catchy name withOUT the word Linux in the title and have th tagline be "Built On Linux" or "Based on Linux."
Does anyone else agree with that?
Toy Story character names are trademarked by Pixar and Disney. Disney is especially known for its legal department. We can't really make commercial use of those trademarks.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
But the most important thing about installers is that they are run once. People base entire distribution reviews on the installer, which is just stupid.
I think what you are going for is that using the system is more important than installing the system. But honestly, OS installers are very important, especially when evaluating for the home user. Most home users have never installed an OS, they got one with their computer. Besides, ease of use with Linux is usually less a function of the distribution itself and more a function of the environment (eg GNOME, KDE, etc.) which are essentially the same for all distros.
Package management is a problem which, IMHO, still needs solving. There are several package management schemes but only debian and the source based distros appear to have mostly killed the dependency monster (it still rears its ugly head in various ways). Both are fairly simple to use, but still not ready for Grandma.
I think that a user linux system should strive to be easier to use and administer than the current crop of commercial operating systems. I think that installation of the system itself and the software are going to be lynchpins in this process. Most users spend more time doing these things than performing any other administration task. Existing technologies will probably provide a good framework for this, but the key to usability is interface interface interface. I think all OSs have a long way to go in this area, quite frankly, not just Linux.
From LinuxWorld: This is an interesting proposal because Debian has as good a technology as anyone (arguably better by many).... The difficulty of installation of applications across distributions due to conflicts and lack of supporting libraries could be solved by Debian's apt tools, which are quite superior for the installation and resolution of dependencies in comparison to rpm.
.deb package, and they really are functionally equivalent.
:-)
Can we stop being so ignorant about RPM, please!!! RPM is a packaging standard, not a delivery/dependency resolving mechanism. Please don't tell me that RPM is worse than apt-get, because you're comparing a package to a delivery mechanism. RPM is the equivalent of a
If you want to compare delivery and dependency resolution mechanisms, try comparing Mandrake's urpmi or RedHat's up2date to apt. And urpmi is arguably better than apt:
$ urpmi evolution
takes less characters to type than:
$ apt-get evolution
...and vice versa
"Have only ONE GUI. No KDE vs Gnome, just standardize on one, but keep compatibllity libraries for leagacy gtk apps until they are replaced by modern QT apps"
I really wish someone could mod the KDE control center down to "-1, troll" for using that terminology. This pointless sniping makes both desktops look bad. It's just as valid to claim that QT libraries are for keeping compatibility with legacy GPL-violating apps, while GTK2 is the free toolkit to code future apps with. (I'm not saying that QT is still a GPL violator, just that calling GTK2 "legacy" is inaccurate in the same way as calling QT "un-free")
0 1 - just my two bits
Why not do everything inside of Debian? Because Debian is a non-profit, and needs the synergistic relationship with for-profit engineering and service providers to achieve the goals I am proposing.
Thus, I had to design a structure with Debian at the core, but which is a superset of Debian.
Were I starting with a for-profit, I'd have had to design an independent non-profit at the middle and a number of competing for-profits. Fedora fails the independence test, if you were wondering.
And before you accuse me of wanting to revitalize Debian, you should attempt to make a case that it has lost vitality.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
apt-get install --file
Sometimes you want to install a .deb that doesn't exist in any repository, but depends on packages in Debian. apt-get won't help you, so you use dpkg --install. But dpkg doesn't satisfy dependencies so you have to do it yourself.
It seems to me that apt-get is missing a simple and useful feature. Am I missing something?
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Why not do everything inside of Debian? Because Debian is a non-profit, and needs the synergistic relationship with for-profit engineering and service providers to achieve the goals I am proposing.
Ah, I think that this is the crux of the matter. You are not proposing a free distribution suitable for the enterprise that happens to be based on Debian. Rather, you are interested in creating a veneer of corporate respectablity for Debian; an arduous task, given the culture of Debian and it's shortcomings (which you of all people don't need itemised.)
Here's the thing; I really need a User Linux option, so do other people. You have identified this need. My proselytizing in corporate environments currently has to be Suse or Redhat for the server and the desktop for the obvious reason- Oracle (and like companies') certification causes these two distributions to be the only option in the data centre, with the trickle-down effect that it makes sense for me to push out the end user versions of these products to developer workstations. That they are easy distributions to install and maintain and contain recent software is a bonus that means the transition for users unfamiliar with the platform is smoother - the value of which should not be under-estimated.
Oh for an alternative! Unfortunately the equation you offer is chosing the lesser of two evils; RHE/Fedora | Suse E/Suse or UserLinux/Debian. I think that Debian is the major distribution least suitable for the corporate environment, and I don't see that changing in a hurry. For the forseeable future the decision is no contest; people like me simply do not have the time to mess around with Debian because we happen to share an ideological affinity with it when our employers demand best-of-breed.
Though I hope you prove me wrong.