UserLinux Releases First Beta

MohammedSameer writes "According to DesktopLinux, UserLinux has released their 1st beta CD, based on Debian. The project, led by the long-time open source advocate Bruce Perens, aims to provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options intended to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs."

Comments

User vs. Business

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if it's oriented to Businesses and support-conscious people, why is it called *User* Linux? Wouldn't BusinessLinux be more appropriate?

Re:User vs. Business

[Bruce Perens]

It comes from user-supported, because anyone can participate in Debian, the development organization we base our system upon. So, if a user doesn't like something about the system, they have the ability to change it directly.

Bruce

Re:User vs. Business

[DAldredge]

How is that different than Fedora?

Re:User vs. Business

[Bruce Perens]

IMO, fedora is way too Red Hat Corporation centric. RH management sets its governance. Any other partner is always going to be a second-class citizen. We can do better than that. Focusing development in a legal non-profit, Debian, with 10 years of history of successful work is better.

Bruce

Re: User vs. Business

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't take this to be me just mindlessly trolling, as I do in fact respect what you are doing. However, I just can't see too many businesses latching onto something so new, untested and with such a *dumb* name.

Is there any chance of getting that name changed before the actual release?

Re:User vs. Business

[DAldredge]

How do you plan on getting the closed source software venders to certify their products to run on UserLinux so I can get support on those apps from the vendor?

Re:User vs. Business

[KenSeymour]

My biggest complaint about Fedora is that they haven't fixed the dual boot with XP bug.

Some have described this as a feature, but for me it is a show stopper.

I now have XP, RedHat 9, and Debian 3.0 as my three OSes on my one computer.

I am liking the package management of Debian but there are too many quirks in my install to switch as of yet.

So maybe UserLinux would give me a phone number to call to fix these.
The quirks so far are:

1) No GUI program to start my dial up connection.

2) GDM kicks me out to the login screen during long downloads.

3) I can't burn a CD on my IDE cd burner. This is becuase the modules aren't loaded.

I had none of these problems on RH 9. I might eventually sort out these quirks but I won't switch permanently until I do.

Re:User vs. Business

[Bruce Perens]

We have to approach them with existing customers. They don't care to certify anything until there is customer demand. Which is why we are not approaching them yet. We intend to operate a certification lab with a small share of the revenue from our support providers userlinux business - that is part of what they trade for being certified as support providers.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:User vs. Business

[tacocat]

I think you are missing the entire point behind UserLinux and what they are doing here. If you read up on some of the essays by Perens et al you will find that they have an answer for this.

Open Source and Free software (compatable with Debian) has demonstrated the capability to replace closed source software in a great majority of the applications that a User or Business might require. For those areas where closed source software may still hold an advantage (financials?) the posit is that it is a matter of time before these areas of OpenSource/Free software shortcomings is closed and the entire Software landscape can be completed using OpenSource/Free software. Thereby removing any requirements for closed source software.

For many people and companies this is already the case, they just don't know it. So UserLinux is making the effort to provide those users and companies with working evidence that this is already the case and no longer an item for cocktail speculations.

Re:User vs. Business

[Bruce Perens]

There are a number of businesses listed here that you can call for support. They want money. Another alternative is to take the questions up on the mailing list and hope for free peer support.

Bruce

Re:User vs. Business

[Elektroschock]

Don't take it personal. I believe your Userlinux is pure vaporware. A wiki page as homepage, looks very professional.

And a User-Linux without KDE? forget it!

Re: User vs. Business

[Bruce Perens]

Please don't take this to be me just mindlessly trolling, as I do in fact respect what you are doing. However, I just can't see too many businesses latching onto something so new, untested and with such a *dumb* name.

Dear AC,

Consider that in 1998 they were asking the exact same questions. About Linux.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:User vs. Business

[mrroach]

Fedora is still struggling to reimpliment Debian's community, and is still making it difficult for "outsiders" to have as much say as RedHat folks.
</hearsay>

Debian and UserLinux have almost the reverse of the relationship between Fedora and RHEL. RHEL starts with Fedora and adds various things. UserLinux starts with the HUGE number of well-tested packages in Debian and whittles it down to a manageable core that can be depended on to be there. It's sort of a "Debian standard base" if you will.

One excellent feature is that instead of relying on stuff like Dag Wieers excellent, but still 3rd party, set of packages for Fedora, nearly every open source application of note is packaged in debian (and has been checked against Debian's very strict policy) and will be easy to install on a UserLinux system. When the next Debian and UserLinux releases come out, the upgrade path for those "add-on" packages will also have been well tested.

So, long story short (too late), what really makes UserLinux valuable is that it _is_ Debian, and has all the strength and experience of Debian behind it.

-Mark

Re:User vs. Business

[Donny Smith]

As a person involved in selling enterprise Linux, support and consulting services, my feeling is that users who buy big quantities of enterprise Linux licenses for single (high performance computing) or few (ISPs) purposes stand to benefit most by chipping in some money to get User Linux certified for that one or two commercial apps they need.
Government and research centers belong to these categories.

Say a customer with 400 cluster nodes that pays $100/node for enterprise Linux every year - $40K from one such customer could be enough to pay for User Linux certification (as it's not total cross-OS porting, it shouldn't be outrageously expensive) of that single app they use.

The last and most expensive to certify will be h/w and s/w in data center - Oracle, SAN storage, etc. so those I guess will probably be the last to worry about.

Re:User vs. Business

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone explain to me in layman's terms, how UserLinux is different from other Linux distros?

aims to provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options intended to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs.

Huh? Can someone translate this to english?

Re:User vs. Business

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, fedora is way too Red Hat Corporation centric.

Wanna guess what my opinion is? Clue: it involves you and a a horse's ass.

Re: User vs. Business

[edittard]

Dear Bruce, no they weren't.

Linux is also not vulnerable to spoonerisms. Well, it might be in Finnish...

Re:User vs. Business

[chris_sawtell]

So, if a user doesn't like something about the system, they have the ability to change it directly.

I can't see any small-town PHB suddenly having the ability to change it, merely by installing it. The right to have it changed, yes, but ability no. Poor marketing there. I like the overall concept though. The best one of each application type is a very good idea.

Re: User vs. Business

[rick_qcs]

Bruce, I have been supporting your DLC since it was made public, and am in the business community. When I wanted to show a collegue while at the office, the UserLinux Wiki. I was brilliantly greeted by the image from goatse. Not going to win a lot of points with the business crowd with that on the userlinux site :( Were you actually pwned or is that there as a joke? Rick

Re:User vs. Business

[Gleef]

But at the same time, having a migration path, for businesses who can dump all proprietary software except applications X and Y, is a good thing. Hence the eventual certification program that Bruce Perens was mentioning.

Re:User vs. Business

[G3CK0]

I noticed that you are visiting us here in the Islands later this month. I am wondering if you will be promoting UL for use here, or will you be discussing OSS in general? Also, how do you see UL fitting into our Island economy?

Re:User vs. Business

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of a cut of revenue are you demanding that UL support providers return to UL?

Re:User vs. Business

[rasz]

>Focusing development in a legal non-profit,
>Debian, with 10 years of history of successful
>work is better.

debian, development and successful in ONE sentence ? You gotta be kidding, just check repositiories, we dont have a stinkind KDE 3.3 jet ... Debian shrebian :/ SuSE is uberleet when it comes to support. Debian is 10 years behind that.

Re: User vs. Business

[Karn]

Do you know what a wiki is?? If you call some lamer editing a wiki so that things point to goatse 'pwning', then yeah I guess it was 'pwned'.

The wiki isn't an official site. I'm certain once UserLinux is officially released, there would be a static site for people to learn about it, and the wiki be for development.

Maybe?

[Bruce Perens]

Maybe I'll get first post :-)

Bruce

Re:Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

what a karma whore you are ;P

Re:Maybe?

[kundor]

Hmm...leaving your "more mature forum that slashdot" to indulge in some puerile first-post attempts, eh? ;-) Just goes to show it happens to the best of us.

Congratulations on the release.

Re:Maybe?

[Codifex Maximus]

Funny. :)

I'd like this thrown in: LSB Compliant. After all, LSB has pretty much the same goals.

Re:Maybe?

[BenjyD]

You get *paid* to hang out on Slashdot and discuss Free Software? No fair...

Re:Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, your attempt at "fristage postage" fails it. I'm sorry

Don't worry too much, though. I failed it about 5 times before I got my GNAA fp, and you can succeed it if you try harder.

Please consider joining GNAA. http://www.gnaa.us/ contains instructions on how to join. -- Goat-see (GNAA)

Re:Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why the hell I even bother to show up.

Yeah, neither do I. Not only do you show up here, you take the time to write useless crap like this. Kuro5hin called, they want their troll back.

Re:Maybe?

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, but not yet LSB certified.

Bruce

Re:Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Want a more mature forum than Slashdot? Try Technocrat.net

Depends on your idea of mature. ;)

Re:Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does there seem to be no obvious way to register a new account on technocrat.net. Is that how they achieve maturity by making it hard to post as anything other than anonymous coward?

Re:Maybe?

[printman]

I didn't see this on the UserLinux package lists, but are you planning on including the LSB stuff so that LSB packages (RPM format, not my favorite by far but makes it easier to package software for multiple distributions) can be easily installed on UserLinux?

Torrent

[anandpur]

Do we need torrent for 4.5 megabytes iso image?
http://userlinux.com/installer/netboot.iso

Re:Torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you copied link right off the "1st beta cd" link.

Re:Torrent

[Daengbo]

If you don't want to waste a burn on that, do the following:

1. Create a Grub boot disk: http://i30www.ira.uka.de/~ud3/mkgrubdisk/
2. Download the installer .iso and put it in an EXT2, EXT3, or (V)FAT partition. Remember where it is.
3. Extract the initrd and vmlinuz files from the CD iso (mount -t iso9660 netboot.iso /mnt/cd -o loop) to this partition (again... remember the location)
4. Create a menu.lst on the Grub floopy with the following:

   title New Install
   kernel (hd0,0)/boot/newinstall/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram devfs=mount,dall ramdisk_size=17000
   initrd (hd0,0)/boot/newinstall/initrd.gz

   Or just type the relevant info into the grub prompt. Of course, edit these values to reflect your real file locations.
5. Reboot
6. Start the install... Woohoo!!!

Re:Torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not! I'd like to see bittorrent used for many more legal downloads.

I'd encourage anyone with significant files to download to save their own bandwidth and costs and pass them down to the users. In a previous company we were paying about $30000/month for downloads of 10MB files. If we used torrents, I think everyone would have been happier.

Re:Torrent

[Daengbo]

This was the real motivation behind the invention of BitTorrent, if I remember reading the writer's discussion of it on Slashdot a couple of years ago, when it was still vaporware. He wanted to save on bandwidth costs for FTP servers.

yet another distro?

[bwy]

Personally instead of seeing 100's of distros I'd like to see some serious work poured into maybe a handful of popular ones to make them more serious desktop contenders. There is a thin line between "choice" and "fragmentation".

Re:yet another distro?

[Bruce Perens]

Then you will be happy with UserLinux. We do all of our technical development within the Debian project. Our value-add is support and certification. The only packages in our own repository are configuration, like selecting a list of debian packages and debconf settings for them, and patches that we haven't been able to get into Debian's release (none of those yet).

Bruce

Re:yet another distro?

[kundor]

Ah, you're missing the point.

The strength of OSS is that the more different projects, and the more users, the better, because the core programs and libraries that everybody uses have their bugs fixed, features added, and generalizations taken care of even faster.

It's not fragmentation, because all the work of the different distros migrates upstream and benefits the entire community.

And it's been made clear many a time that having a choice of OS's specialized to your needs makes for a more satisfying experience than a "one-size-fits-all" OS that tries to be all things for all people and ends up being mediocre at all of them.

Re:yet another distro?

[salvorHardin]

You're not the only one:
No of Linux distros surpasses no of users.

Re:yet another distro?

[ClosedSource]

"It's not fragmentation, because all the work of the different distros migrates upstream and benefits the entire community."

I don't think that's necessarily true. There's no requirement for changes to "migrate upstream" in the GPL. You are required to distribute the source when you distribute the application. If you don't distribute "upstream" then your changes may never be incorporated there.

Re:yet another distro?

[techmuse]

Bruce: What are the advantages of this particular distribution over the other ones currently available?

On a semi-related note: I recently tried to install Debian, Knoppix, Mandrake, and Gentoo on my laptop. Of those, only Mandrake installed (mostly) successfully. Well, ok. Knoppix installed (to hard disk - I want a permanent environment), but had some serious bugs that forced me to keep re-creating user accounts. I also ran into a problem with Debian and Gentoo attempting to download packages, but not being able to get through our proxy firewall. (If only there were some way to get them to read the proxy.pac file...) In Debian, if I made a mistake in certain places, there was no way to go back and undo it. Does UserLinux have these issues?

Re:yet another distro?

[archen]

You base that off of the assumption that people want to work on another distro when it many not meet their needs or goals. Some people work on a Linux distro because it's THEIRS, or they signifcantly contribute towards that distro's direction. You just aren't going to get that level of control or experimentation in Gentoo or Fedora. Probably 90% of Linux is concentrated in the top 10 distros (offical made up statistc!) anyway. Why stop at a handful? Why not go towards ONE distro for all?

Linux will come down to a handful of distros when everyone is actually happy with those distros. Those who try their hand at a new distro aren't just sitting on a mailing list bitching, they're actually working at making their own improvments their own way. And that's not such a bad thing either.

Re:yet another distro?

[Bruce Perens]

Well, first look at the advantages of Debian over other distributions.

• 15,000 packages in one repository with no cross-dependency issues. 3 times Red Hat, 5 times SuSE.
• 11 architectures (12 if you count AMD64, which will not be "official" for this release but exists and runs fine).
• Open to participation by all. If you want something in the system and it's free software, you can be a Debian developer and get what you want done.
• Over 1000 active developers. One of the largest Open Source projects.
• More than 10 years of successful history. It's older than RH or SuSE.

Now, add what Debian hasn't been able to do: Commercial support, application vendor certification.

Regarding your installation issues. Please try the UL installer, which is based on the new Debian installer. It has a "go back" feature and asks for a proxy URL.Bruce

Re:yet another distro?

[sydb]

If only there were some way to get them to read the proxy.pac file...

Interesting idea, would require a javascript interpreter somewhere though.

Failing that, why not just wget the pac file and read it to get an address, the set http_proxy and/or ftp_proxy environment variables?

And of course that could be be stuck in a script if the pac file is simple enough.

Re:yet another distro?

[aardvarkjoe]

Looking at the web page, I wasn't really able to figure out what User Linux is. I mean, I see that you're doing commercial support and certification, but the impression I got was that the distribution is just Debian. (Especially comments like the best way to try out UL is to install debian and switch to unstable. If that's it, I've been running UL for years.)

I assume that's not everything, given that you have a seperate release and everything. What is the difference between the User Linux distribution and Debian? In other words, why aren't you just doing "Debian support" rather than creating a new project?

Re:yet another distro?

[SlashDread]

A sort of Debian Jr. with smaller icons?

Kidding aside, great idea, Debian needs more corporate influence, hmm questions:

- Will you actively search corporate certification? I know some vendors name debian as being tested, but the amount of cold feet is still staggering.

For example: I know Progress (Not all people use Oracle, yet :) names Debian as tested, but will not officialy suppport it. Now some Progress technicians will say we will help you anyway, and thatnks for that, but this is the sole reaon I can think of we are payingg RedHat rediculous amounts of money for a sub-excellent service.

- Selected a rep in The Netherlands yet? If not, are you hiring :)?

"/Dread"

Re:yet another distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the new sarge installer, I get the options

[ ] Desktop environment

[ ] ftp server

[ ] web server

...

Wouldn't it be possible to have another option,

[ ] UserLinux

which would install the UserLinux packages?

Having that would alleviate the need for yet-another-debian-based-distro.

Re:yet another distro?

[Bruce Perens]

Yes. We are adding a commercial veneer to the Debian project. The UserLinux distribution is a configuration on top of Debian, just a list of packages that we consider important for servers or workstations, and that we will support. The actual software, except for the configuration packages, gets downloaded directly from Debian's mirrors.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:yet another distro?

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, we will go out for vendor certification.

If you want to be a support company, you can list yourself as an uncertified one on the wiki (nobody is certified, we haven't opened that yet). Once we get certification going, we will expect certified support providers to contribute a portion of their revenues on userlinux support business to operate the userlinux vendor certification and marketing efforts.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:yet another distro?

[Lumpy]

yes and No. the seperate distros have their strengths and needs.

Example slackware is massively faster out of the box than Mandrake is. But Mandrake is massively easier to configure than Slackware. Gentoo is designed to be kept easily at the absolute bleeding edge.

The others also have their own reasons for existing. I mention only 3 because those are the two that I rely on at work home and at the LUG meetings.

I personally am hoping that userLinux takes time to make sense in the filesystem layout instead of the horrible state it currently is with linux. (every distro put's things where they think it goes, and almost none of them put it where the developers wanted it.) And that userLinux is geared more towards efficency instead of pretty.

I am excited about userLinux, I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Re:yet another distro?

[Bruce Perens]

It's really just another version of the Debian installer. We don't even change any of Debian's installer packages, we just add a few installer pacakges of our own and they are inserted in the menu.

e will put our packages into Debian's repository once they are stable, as Skolelinux has already done. Adding the selection to pkgsel or tasksel is possible, but we ask the question much earlier, right after the language and keyboard questions in the first-stage installer, so that we can do some additional configuration during the install process and save the user some questions. If we went in the tasksel menu, we would not get to do anything for the user until the second-stage install.

Bruce

Re:yet another distro?

[Bruce Perens]

I personally am hoping that userLinux takes time to make sense in the filesystem layout

This is LSB's job. We have to follow them.

Bruce

Re:yet another distro?

[kundor]

If you want sense in the filesystem layout, check out GoboLinux.

Another example of the strengths of many distros for many needs. ;-) A one or even 5-distro world wouldn't be able to have such cool projects.

Re:yet another distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fan of many Debian based distros so I'll give this one a looksee, but the easiest desktop distro out there has still got to be Libranet, free torrent download at:

http://libranet.com/trial_download.html

This system is really, really good.

Re:yet another distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your first arguement is a bit flawed. How many of those 15,000 packages will I really use or want to use? Of those, how many are not available in other distributions? The other distributions seem to offer everything I need. (Well except for RH's MP3 support but that's an easy fix.)

I ran into this arguement when debating with another engineer on which distribution to use at work. He favored Debian for this reason among others (he always listed this one first). I was advocating a distribution that offered commercial support and was a bit more proactive in incorporating new features (hardware support, interface design to ease management, etc.)

Never the less, congrats on the release. Glad to see you in the fray!

Re:yet another distro?

[tacocat]

So UserLinux has the same requirements for free software that Debian has?

As a recent example, I won't find Sender-ID support in UserLinux?

Re:yet another distro?

[lpontiac]

Interesting idea, would require a javascript interpreter somewhere though.

Not hard, apparantly. A developer I know recently slotted the Mozilla Javascript library into his app, to interpret one of those proxy.pac files. It only took him a day./p>

Re:yet another distro?

[myurr]

If you don't migrate your changes upstream, then when the next release of the software comes out you have to make all your changes again, or fork the software completely.

Re:yet another distro?

[ClosedSource]

Right, that's exactly my point. The grandparent post claimed that all the changes migrate upstream. That may be desirable in most cases, but it's neither required nor guaranteed.

Re:yet another distro?

[g4sy]

Ok, one small question about the installation proccedure: do you have an option for hooking up to ADSL (configuring pppd) DURING the installation, preferrably automatically?
the reason i ask is because the average user doesn't know to terminate prematurely the installation, and then configure the pppd, and then recommence the base-config program.

Re:yet another distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

download the proxy.pac file look for the address they are referring you to for the proxy. in debian you put the following in /etc/apt/apt.conf
Acquire::http::Proxy "http://proxy-server.com:8080";

Re:yet another distro?

[jbolden]

(every distro put's things where they think it goes, and almost none of them put it where the developers wanted it

Where the developers want it would make things much worse. Just consider that lots of those developers use Solaris file conventions: (so should runtime stuff be put in xyz/demo?) or use the /Library conventions or /stand for files that run standalone with no support from libraries or....?

Re:yet another distro?

[nutshell42]

15,000 packages in one repository with no cross-dependency issues. 3 times Red Hat, 5 times SuSE.

Yeah, and stable's packages are only a few years out of date while unstable not only *has* dependency issues quite often but is also slower than the update services of the other distributions most times (kdeaddons is still 3.2.3 weeks after 3.3 and weeks after most of the other kde packages got upgraded and it breaks a number of features, great)

11 architectures (12 if you count AMD64, which will not be "official" for this release but exists and runs fine).

I think most of your customers could agree on 5 or 6 of that architectures that noone needs and would prefer a supported amd64 instead. Apart from that even x86 is really, really slow in releasing - I never actually followed release schedules for the rest but isn't it even worse for some of the more exotic architectures?

Over 1000 active developers. One of the largest Open Source projects.

You should think they'd find some people doing builds on time then

More than 10 years of successful history. It's older than RH or SuSE.

It's not. SuSE was founded end 1992, Redhat in 1993, Debian in August 1993 IIRC.

I like Debian for a number of reasons but a lot of things are really dumb perhaps you can change some of them. (changing the attitude of the people in the #debian channel on freenode would be a good start =) Every time I have a question I get a "why would you want to do that" then some ridiculing or it's simply ignored then I join the gentoo chan or some other and most times get a helpful answer. I wonder why I still bother with #debian)

Re:yet another distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that comparison work with Mandrake in terms of packages? And why is Mandrake generally left out of such comparisons?

Re:yet another distro?

[Mr. Hankey]

In that case, it sounds like an excellent idea. Debian really needs a project (well, aside from Knoppix) to put it onto more desktops. The RPM package format, and Redhat to be honest, has been a bit of a disappointment. Although I don't agree with all your decisions (esp. regarding Gnome, but I suppose one can apt-get KDE) it does sound like a good direction in which to put one's effort.

Re:yet another distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Examples - gnome's standard install from a make install is different from Mandrake's install and redhat's install. yet slackware, gentoo and debian get it right.

KDE, apache, MySQL and other BIG packages are also good examples..

also why is /usr/lib excluded from most ld.so.conf????

Re:yet another distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Want examples??? /lib /usr/lib /usr/local/lib /local/lib /opt/lib /opt

and the 10,000 other iterations of places to put libraries, binaries and etc

Let's set up ONE. anything else is deem non-standard and not allowed to be used by a distro, although a user is free to modify his install to oblivion...

install all APPS in /bin and /local/bin all Libraries in /lib and /local/lib and all setup ot other files are in /etc and /local/etc

noWHERE ELSE!

Cripes try and find the apache setup files on a random distro..

Hmm...

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

I honestly don't think that the cost will have much of an effect on the success of this project. I mean, IT managers willingly pay $xxx to M$ for so much, anything remotely less than that is always a good deal. And then again, most people are apprehensive to the word free. Normally associating it with lower quality, hidden costs, etc. Honestly they could have charged $50 a licesnse, and it would probably increase its use. People like to pay for things they rely on, its just wierd.

Re:Hmm...

[4minus0]

Good points but the landscape with regards to budgeting is beginning to change. The company I work for does a mix of installations; fileservers, email, web...the usual. When given the choice, most businesses now like the sound of free.

It's basic economics...here's how we sell our open source services:
Companies are used to paying for a software license and support. It makes more sense to their bottom line to just pay for the support. Why pay more than you have to if somebody (in this case my company) will stand behind the product and support it?

Don't underestimate the power of free. We are beginning to deal with a lot of governmental type organizations (counties, city govts, etc) and they hate paying for a server license for Exchange, a CAL for the workstation and someone to support it. They simply do not have the funds for this kind of frivolous spending. If they aren't using the neat stuff of Exchange like shared calendars why not drop in a qmail|postfix|exim server and just pay for the support? Our backlog of contracts says that people will do that.

It comes down to this: the software is free for the taking...the support can either be absorbed in-house or outsourced, just like it always has.

Re:Hmm...

[Qerub]

The UserLinux ISVs are (probably) free to set their own price on UserLinux solutions. BTW, Bruce Perens takes $300/h. Now that's something for the IT managers you mention.

Re:Hmm...

[TheTrueELf]

People like to pay for things they rely on, its just wierd.

It should seem much less weird once you consider that the majority of people recognize (semi-conciously, usually) that trading value for value is what makes trading a good thing. People like paying for things they get because paying signifies their right to own and use those things.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

People like to pay for things they rely on, its just wierd.

You are thinking of the wrong model; people (managers) pay for things they rely on (employees) all the time.
In fact, they don't like free software because they can't pay for it - they don't understand how you could get something reliable if you don't pay for it. :)

Re:Maybe not.

[hugesmile]

wow, if you are Bruce Perens and have a low slashdot id, you get modded up for "First Post" messages?

I am impressed.

not Bruce

Bruce Hating Troll from Linuxtoday.com/NewsForge

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post your messages as replies to this one.

Bruce, how about Canonical

[ultrabot]

Bruce Perens, now that you are around, what's your take on the Canonical project? On the surface, it would appear to be along the lines of what UserLinux is supposed to do... not forgetting that neither is "final" yet, of course ;-).

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Bruce Perens]

Is that the outgrowth of KDE-Debian, or something else? Give me a URL.

Bruce

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[ultrabot]

Is that the outgrowth of KDE-Debian, or something else? Give me a URL.

No, it's a company (quite secretive so far) founded by Mark Shuttleworth. It's quite a bit in the stealth/rumour mode ATM, but you can see some buzz by googling for it.

The only url I can come up with now is http://no-name-yet.com/

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[ultrabot]

you can see some buzz by googling for it.

Forgot to say that "canonical debian" is probably a good starting point for the googling.

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Just Some Guy]

Bruce Perens, now that you are around

...says UID 200914 to UID 3872. Bruce isn't exactly the new guy around here (well, to most of you ;-) ).

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Bruce Perens]

I spoke with Mark about it a while ago, before it had a name. It is much closer to my original business plan for Progeny as a Debian support company, than UserLinux as a non-profit core with an organization of multiple competing support companies around it. Progeny didn't implement my plan, by the way. Then wanted to be a shared filesystem developer, and that didn't work out.

Bruce

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[ultrabot]

Bruce isn't exactly the new guy around here (well, to most of you ;-) ).

I was assuming that Bruce isn't reading & posting to all the articles that appear on slashdot. I just saw that he was reading and posting to this one. I apologize for the damage done by the phrasing in the original message.

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[ultrabot]

Then wanted to be a shared filesystem developer, and that didn't work out.

Ah, I remember that... as an aside, what happened with that effort? Did the fruits of their labour end up in the OSS pool?

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Just Some Guy]

It was a joke. Smile. :)

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be "I Love Bruce" day. How else would a non-rhetorical question get modded up as insightful?

Not that I'm complaining...

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Bruce Perens]

You could ask Ian, but I suspect the code is dead. They released a little layered-filesystem piece that I don't think has been kept up. I have not seen other code from that project released.

I may be able to go to South Africa in late November, in which case I'll try to talk with Mark and his folks more.

Bruce

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Canonical is the company. The name of the project is not yet unveiled (although it's not as secret as it used to be). The name, along with the project website and the company website (canonical.com), will go public in a few weeks. This is not an official declaration; I'm not an employee of Canonical and I'm not authorized to speak for it; but I'm a contractor and the things I said above were explicitly described to me as not-secret-anymore.

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Canonical's HQ is in the U.K. actually. Mark works (usually) from London.

Re:Bruce, how about Canonical

[Jungle guy]

Some days later, Canonical announced their projetc on Slashdot. Now it is named Ubuntu.

Wow, Something New...

[Anonymous Coward]

YALD Yet Another Linux Distro.

Your forgot something.

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to include you name in the first 45 characters of the Wiki. Please do this as we do not want you to miss any of the consulting revenue that you derive from this.

Hell, we all know that that is about the only reason you do anyting involving linux these days.

Prove me wrong by listing 3 major things you have done to help linux in the past 3 years that where not directly related to bringing you consulting revenue.

Re:Your forgot something.

[EightBits]

You have a problem with a man making money?

Re:Your forgot something.

[Anonymous Coward]

You got a problem with your wife renting out hoagie space in her ass?

A whore is a whore. Simply put, one who trades their morals for money is a whore.

Re:Your forgot something.

[EightBits]

LOL!!! No, I don't have a problem with that! :) Hahahaha! It's a good thing I don't have morals to trade or you might be right about me! :) Still LOL!!!

But, I would like an answer to my question, but I'm going to rephrase it after your last post. Do you have a problem with a man making a living from doing consulting, especially with regards to Linux? If not, then I don't understand what the problem is. I guess what I'm really trying to say is: please verify what you really mean by your statements.

And thanks. I'm not being sarcastic. Your last post made me laugh and made my day a lot better!! Despite not liking your point, it's funny nonetheless! If I were a moderator I would give you a 1: Funny

Re:Your forgot something.

[Anonymous Coward]

No: But I think that someone who says they are in linux to help people should show what he is doing to help people.

It appears he is now riding on the effort and work of others.

Re:Your forgot something.

[EightBits]

But that's ok. Riding on the work of others is done by everyone. Do you know Ohm's Law? If you do, did you develop it yourself? How about Calculus or, computers. Did you invent the microproccesor? If you are using these tools to make a living, then you are also riding on the effort of others. This is why humans form societies. It makes life easier for each individual and for the whole collective.

As for helping people, by merely helping linux grow in popularity in businesses willing to spend money on Linux, he is helping the linux community grow. Let's face it, while Linux can do just fine on it's own, it can do even better wth money. If I didn't have to worry about money, I would contribute a lot of time to Linux. So, if I can make money while helping Linux, both I and Linux win. By helping Linux in this way, the demand for Linux and Linux apps grows. The more this demand grows, the better the product will get due to more development. He IS helping the community and like everyone else, he is riding on the effort and work of others but still contributing to that effort and work.

Re:Your forgot something.

[Karn]

If he is successful in launching UserLinux, and it looks like he will be, I will definately be switching from Fedora to it in the future. When Redhat told us that we couldn't use their 'stable' distro anymore, I switched our few servers over to Debian. I've been waiting for the day when my clients can once again run the same OS as our servers, but that day just won't come with Debian's conservative release cycle. It's just much nicer to have to support one distro.

I suppose I could have switched to Suse or Mandrake or some other one, but how do I know things won't change for them? If the money is calling, they WILL change, but the same cannot be said of Debian, and that's why I like it - I don't want to be distro-hopping every 4 years when some company gets sold.

motherhood, apple pie....

[eludom]

> he project, led by the long-time open source advocate Bruce
> Perens, aims to provide businesses with freely available, high
> quality Linux operating systems accompanied by
> certifications, service, and support options intended to
> encourage productivity and security while reducing overall
> costs."

Did I hear "buzzword compliant" ?

---eludom

Re:motherhood, apple pie....

[Briareos]

Did I hear "buzzword compliant" ?

No, but you'll get a buzzword complaint from me for quoting all that...

np: Mouse On Mars - Send Me Shivers (Radical Connector)

Re:motherhood, apple pie....

[jbr439]

Nothing is buzzword compliant without the use of the word synergy (or one of its derivatives such as synergistic).

Re:motherhood, apple pie....

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously not.
They left out "web services", "paradigm shift", and "excellence".

Collective Yawn

[Ars-Fartsica]

Userlinux is an answer to a question no one was asking.

Re:Collective Yawn

[gclef]

Except for that guy the other day, who was looking for support for Debian. 'course, he was looking for more than that, but support would have helped his case.

Re:Collective Yawn

[ultrabot]

Userlinux is an answer to a question no one was asking.

Umm, it's an answer most of people in the Linux-using IT industry have been asking for a few years - "where's the free-beer enterprise-grade Linux we've been expecting?"

I don't like the anti-RH attitude some less mature Linux enthusiasts seem to have, but boy, do I love to see the competition it will be getting from free alternatives (i.e. not just Novell/SUSE).

Re: Collective Yawn

[er_col]

I wish I had points to mod you up.

Re:Collective Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

very insightful - hope that guy sees your post - mod up to give him a better chance of noticing.

Re: Collective Yawn

[ultrabot]

I wish I had points to mod you up.

It's a well known secret that posting a MOD PARENT UP is as efficient a way to communicate your appreciation. Though then you might risk getting modded down yourself if you are obviously wrong, like the original poster here ;-).

Re:Collective Yawn

[Ars-Fartsica]

"where's the free-beer enterprise-grade Linux we've been expecting?"

See: Debian, White Box, Fedora Core 2, etc etc etc.

Re:Collective Yawn

[tsstahl]

Do you not see any value in a commercial organization centered around profit as an outgrowth of a non-profit organization organized around Cool Code? UserLinux aims to bring the Debian distribution to the paying masses, yet not corrupt Debian development.

Show them!

[Bull999999]

freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options intended

Best of luck to you and show them that it is quite possible to make money off of supporting open source softwares.

Re:Show them!

[Xabraxas]

Best of luck to you and show them that it is quite possible to make money off of supporting open source softwares.

It's already been shown. Remember Cygnus, Redhat, etc.

Re:Show them!

[Bull999999]

More the better as most non techies still thinks that OSS are free as in beer and also believe that you can only make money in the software business by selling them.

I don't get it

[stratjakt]

...freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options

Why a distro based on Debian? Why not just certify, service and support Debian itself?

I know there has to be a seperate distro for every ego in the OSS world, but from a technical point of view, why is a new distro needed?

Re:I don't get it

[Too Much Noise]

Probably to standardize on a (small) subset of Deb that can be kept simple. The better question would be, if Deb releases a new stable (yeah, I know, before Duke Nukem Forever, yada-yada), how will this distro fare?

Also, if anyone would care to explain the broad "accompanied by certifications" statement - do these guys hope for some sponsorship in getting official certs?

Re:I don't get it

[Bruce Perens]

Why a distro based on Debian? Why not just certify, service and support Debian itself?

We would end up certifying Debian, at least a specific subset of Debian packages, because our policy is not to do development outside of Debian except for configuration and temporary fixes.

Regarding service, we need to be outside of Debian to operate for-profit enterprises. Debian is part of a legal non-profit. So, we created a separate brand, and we will certify service providers to that brand and market the brand with funds from those service providers. But it makes sense to put the free software development in the non-profit, and that's where it will stay - in Debian.

Bruce

Re:I don't get it

[phreakv6]

From the FAQ on UserLinux Q: Why another Distro? Why not work on the Debian (Desktop) project and installer? Is improving an existing distro not better than creating a new one? A: [Jeff Waugh] The easiest way to answer this for yourself is: UserLinux is not a new distro. It *is* Debian. It just happens to have a different - or arguably more - focus. Concentrating on business and enterprise users and concentrating on what they want/expect rather than trying to be a general Linux ditribution.

Re:I don't get it

[DavidNWelton]

afaik, from reading the mailing list, UserLinux will be released when Debian is. Hopefully UL will also have a positive influence in terms of making Debian's release cycle better.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I very much like this positioning statement for your product.

Much of the User Linux PR has made it sound to people in my company like yet-another-distro. People here like Debian but fear the lack of commercial support and the awkward-for-corporations product naming ("you want me to run my enterprize on Deb and Ian's Unstable OS?!?").

If UserLinux can select a small subset of Debian, and produce a stable/supported version of this subsest that's more current than Debian Stable -- and more importantly, position the product as a supported, modern Debian, we'd love it.

_

PS: Is there a way I could point my sources.list from a Debian Stable machine to UserLinux? I know I should google it, but I think other lazy people here would have the same question.

Re:I don't get it

[Bruce Perens]

You will need to upgrade to "testing" first. Then add this to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://userlinux.com/ unstable main contrib non-free

You will get a few "userlinux-" packages, they are just dependency lists for all the packages we believe belong in a desktop or server. Thanks

Bruce

Re:I don't get it

[Bruce Perens]

Well, we need to certify to LSB, which we have not done yet. Then, we will pursue certification from proprietary application vendors and hardware manufacturers, because business people want that. We hope that people port their applications to LSB, not to UserLinux. The whole Linux world would be better for that.

Bruce

Re:I don't get it

[flossie]

Hopefully UL will also have a positive influence in terms of making Debian's release cycle better.

What's wrong with Debian's release cycle?! Debian is released *when it is ready*. It has always seemed to be a very sensible policy to me. It is certainly part of the reason that there are so many Debian installations that just keep working without causing major hassles.

If you are waiting on a new software release to fix some terrible bug or provide a much needed feature, then long release cycles can be a problem. However, with Debian, you always have the choice of installing packages from the testing or unstable distributions if there is a new feature that you want.

So, why would you want to change their release cycle. If it ain't broke - don't fix it.

Re:I don't get it

[tacocat]

We would end up certifying Debian, at least a specific subset of Debian packages, because our policy is not to do development outside of Debian except for configuration and temporary fixes.

What extra does your configuration provide that Debian does not? What's the value added, besides $upport options and Service Level Agreements?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! Trying it now.

(PS: I agree with they guys who say that UserLinux isn't as appealing to the management guys as CorporateLinux or EnterpriseLinux or BizLinux or CertifiedDebian or ProLinux or ExecutiveLinux. You don't need to sell us, you need to help us sell our bosses)

Actually

[zantispam]

if you are Bruce Perens and have a low slashdot id, you get modded up for "First Post" messages?

Yes.

Re:Maybe not.

[ultrabot]

wow, if you are Bruce Perens and have a low slashdot id, you get modded up for "First Post" messages?

Come on, it's the real Bruce Perens ;-).

Userlinux is weird

[Anonymous Coward]

Their wiki states that UI consistency among administration tools is a big problem in Linux. And then they choose Gnome, the environment which CAUSED that inconsistency with their HIG.

Re:Userlinux is weird

[Slack3r78]

Could you explain this to me, because I'm missing the point you're trying to make. The HIG is designed to provide a consistent interface, specifically so the user doesn't have to guess about what they need to do next. All config tools are cleanly filed under System Tools or Desktop Preferences in Gnome, all clearly labeled as to what they do. If a tool is properly following the HIG, it should be consistent in layout with any other config tool. I guess what I'm trying to say is I fail to see where this is "Gnome's fault."

Re:Userlinux is weird

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem, glad you asked!

Certainly Gnome didn't create ALL UI inconsistencies, but it created the most noticeable one. Pre-Gnome HIG, every Linux app used what I call "natural language" button order. That is, they presented their options in an order that was natural for their language (in English, the Yes option precedes the No option). Although Linux apps were created from dozens of toolkits, this thing at least they could agree on.

Then Gnome published their HIG, which abandoned the natural language button order in favor of "flowchart/wizard" button order (where No counterintuitively precedes Yes). Now, I don't disagree that a published set of UI standards is a good thing. What I have issue with is that the Gnome HIG re-standardized things that had already been standardized in a totally different fashion decades earlier. [NOTE: I realize Gnome didn't just pull this decision out of their collective behinds, but that they were following the recommendations of the usability studies which led to the MacOS making this same UI mistake years earlier]

This is how the Gnome HIG produced the most noticeable UI inconsistencies in Linux today. Had the Gnome HIG stuck to standardizing things upon which there was disagreement, it would have been more helpful than harmful. But as it is, I'm afraid, it is very much like the US trying to convince the rest of the world to use a 48-hour day, cutting the duration of each hour in half. It's simply a change for the sake of change, and the world has already decided what they want.

Thanks for your interest. I'm glad I could clarify matters for you.

Re:Userlinux is weird

[wasabii]

You rationalize the choice and then immediatly dismiss it without rationalization. The switch of te button order was made because of the results of a usibility study. The study was pretty simple. When a user pops open a dialog box, their eyes gravitate to 4 places: the corners of the dialog. Naturlaly then, you want the prefered operation to be immediatly reachable at the exact same offset of every dialog. Yes is the bottom right of every window where Yes is the prefered choice. Then, when the user decides to move away from teh prefered choice, he simple moves his eyes left to the next prefered choice. This *IS* much easier on users: the usiblity study proves this. That's what they're for. It is however different from most traditional Unix programs and Windows. In the former case, there was never any standard. People just put the buttons there because it's how they'd always done it, because they never think about it. In the Windows choice, MS says to put them that way. MS did not have a usibility study for this, they simply chose it because it's what they always did. What it does however, is put the default prefered choice, usually OK, at an undetermined location. If the window is 400 pixels wide, it might be here, if it's 300 pixels wide, it might be there. There is no natural tracking. Gnome took a gamble by following the "better" way of things. They certainly recognized that it would be inconsistant with Windows, and with KDE too, and most other Unix programs. But they took that chance. They said "we can do it better", and IMO, they did. If you only use Gnome applications, which is of course the goal of the Gnome project, this works out. ;)

Re:Userlinux is weird

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that it was a gamble. I simply believe they lost, that's all. The usability study open which this was based was quite flawed on a number of grounds, only one of which is that the "spatial logic" of where to place buttons only makes sense if the only reason the user is clicking the button is to make the dialog go away. In other words, annoying informational messages (usually single-button anyway) and annoying wizards. It pretty much went into the dialog discussion trying to answer the question "what's the fastest way to make this dialog go away?" instead of "what's the best way to communicate information to the user and get a response that reflects the intent of the user?"

There's a lot in the HIG to like. They say "label those buttons with meaningful labels, not just OK and Cancel" which is great to see (and arguably more necessary because if the buttons are all switched around, you need to label them more clearly). But the simple fact is that natural language order pre-dated Windows. It goes back to the very first graphical and linedrawing-based apps. It was settled, and no users complained that there was a problem (unlike when Windows moved the "close" button to the upper-right corner and users suddenly started accidentally closing apps they meant to resize). User complaints about button order just plain didn't exist. Apple commissioned a usability study, and while there are good things about usability studies, every now and then you find usability specialists changing things that are already fine in order to justify their commission. Case in point: Exactly how much easier are microwave ovens getting after all of the "usability" improvements?

When someone says "I just want to cook this for 30 seconds, does that mean I should hit "Reheat" or "Popcorn"?!?" I think to myself, "This is usability gone horribly wrong." The makers of this microwave would certainly say "But we did a study! People respond quicker to task-oriented buttons!"

The fact that there was a study, I guess my point is, is meaningless if the study is crap to begin with. I and many other Linux users would have no problem using Gnome if it weren't for the button-order problem. But as it stands, the Gnome HIG created two camps of Linux users that can never be reconciled--where previously there had only been one group in complete agreement. And for Linux users to agree about ANYTHING is amazing--but they did in fact all agree about button order once upon a time.

It's fine to disagree. Disagreement is good. But somehow this strikes me as more of a manufactured difference of opinion than one that would have naturally occurred if the Apple study had never occurred.

Marketing Image

[nurb432]

While that may be why its named that way, i agree with the first poster that it should be renamed..

Remember its not 'us' that need to understand, its the rest of the world.. And its all about effective marketing..

Poor naming ( regardless of accuracy ) is NOT good marketing.

Re:Marketing Image

[Bruce Perens]

Why do so many people object to business people being referred to as "users"?

Bruce

Re: Marketing Image

[Anonymous Coward]

I do agree that it should be called something like "Business Linux" or something similar. "UserLinux" just is not a well thought out name as far as marketing goes.

It may suprise you, but something as simple as a name can make a world of difference to business people, you know, the types that you want to purchase "UserLinux?"

Re: Marketing Image

[Bruce Perens]

I do have some marketing experience. Hey, my name is a trademark for a successful series of books. I am attempting to appeal to the people who sit behind the computer. They do have some influence upon their management.

Bruce

Re:Marketing Image

[MikeMacK]

I think it may have to do with the fact that most of us deal with two different types of "users". There are the "users" in the business - the people who do their main work on their machines, develop software, write reports, etc. Then there are the "users" who may only use their machines to do email and surf the web, management. Unfortuneately, it is management who makes most purchasing decisions, and whether or not to go to a product called "UserLinux". I think the name is fine, but I understand where the other posts are coming from.

Re:Marketing Image

[Anonymous Coward]

In my role leading the most profitable division of a publicly traded software company, my CEO always told me to distinguish between "users" and "customers". In our case, a lot of the sales were through various channels (OEM, retail) and some was direct.

The distinction was that often the "Customers" had slightly different goals than the "Users". For example bundled software on a HP machine is beneficial to the Customer (HP) if a lot of users upgrade and HP gets a cut of the upgrade. The same bundled software for "Users" (the buyer of the HP system) would benefit if the product were feature complete. In this case it was important to be "Customer" focused instead of "User Focused", because HP was paying the bills.

In our direct channel, the User _is_ the Customer, so it is important that we offered them fully feature-complete products.

Re: Marketing Image

[Anonymous Coward]

I am attempting to appeal to the people who sit behind the computer. They do have some influence upon their management.

Personally, I think Linux already has strong support from those influencers of buying decisions. It's the other people who influence the buying decisions that need the handholding -- the risk management groups who want support -- the legal department with intellectual property concerns -- the marketing people who want to go to their users and brag about the infrastructure ("our product is built on .NET").

The guys behind the computer are already on your side for picking Debian as a core. The thing they'll appreciate you most for are if you help them sell Debian up in their organization.

IMHO Debian's biggest failing in the corporate world is in naming. While we use Debian Stable, with specific packages from Unstable, no marketing person in their right mind will go "buy our product because it's build on Debian Unstable technology".

On the other hand, I have had an experience where the California Highway Patrol was looking at a Windows product that I was selling, and was extremely interested to hear that it

"could run on Novell's ASP.NET implementation running on Novell's Linux".

Had I told them

"some mexican kid named Miguel's hobby is going up against microsoft and we'll run his stuff on Deb and Ian's Unstable OS."

I would have been a huge fan with the developers but got nowhere with the other, sometimes more important decision influencers.

Re:Marketing Image

[Enahs]

Agreed. The name is more descriptive. I'm sure we've all had a well-meaning relative send us a forward of a fictional Abbott and Costello routine about the names of Microsoft products. Somehow "Windows" means "Operating System" and "Office" means "Word Processor, Presentation App, Spreadsheet, Low-End Desktop Publishing, and Database Frontend"

*shrug*

Re:Marketing Image

[jusdisgi]

Seems I heard someplace that software was one of only two industries that referred to clients as "users"...anybody guess the other one?

Re:Marketing Image

[tacocat]

What?

You want to call it, "ThemLinux"? That'll go far...

Re: Marketing Image

[volkerdi]

It may suprise you, but something as simple as a name can make a world of difference to business people, you know, the types that you want to purchase "UserLinux?"

Plenty of people have said the same thing to me about "Slackware" over the years (at nearly every trade show), and at this point I'd have to concede that it hasn't made it any easier to sell it to the PHBs. They'd all feel much more comfortable running "Trustix" on the company servers. However, sysadmin types don't usually have any problem with "Slackware".

Name matters, and you have to think about who the name is going to appeal to. If your focus is business, it should appeal to the executives, the tech department, or both. I'm not sure the name "UserLinux" will accomplish this.

Re:Marketing Image

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to call it, "ThemLinux"? That'll go far...

It may attract an audience we hadn't had in mind...

Re:Marketing Image

[grmoc]

Bruce-

I'd imagine its because many engineers think that business people smoke crack, and thus they are users.

In other words, People object because they're already confused enough figuring out which 'free' is 'free', having to figure out which 'user' is 'user' would be the foam on the beer..

*chuckle*

Re: Marketing Image

[Kethinov]

As a person in your target audiance, I have mixed feelings about Debian as your basis.

Let's examine the issue from all sides. Pros and cons.

• Strictly as a community, I agree with you that Debian is superior to Fedora's RH corporation-centric community.
• Strictly as a product, Fedora posesses a suprior installer and a smoother looking distro. Cross toolkit themes are essential
• Strictly as a package manager, I agree with you that Debian is superior to Fedora.

So two out of three isn't bad.

But we're neglecting Gentoo.

Gentoo's got Debian beat in all three. With Gentoo, you have top notch community support. It's just as open a community as Debian and the Gentoo devs are a pretty nice bunch of guys besides. With Gentoo, you have a package manager with the stability of Debian and far more packages available. Source based distro historically always = more packages because there is too much competition between binary distros. There is simply no standard Linux binary package. As a result, source based distros like Gentoo update their repos sooner because it doesn't require as much work. Source is source. App makers do that much for you. ;) Finally, you can easily setup Red Hat's BlueCurve cross toolkit theme in Gentoo with a few emerges.

I like Debian. I used Debian for a long time. But its installer is sub par, something you're hoping to change methinks, and its package manager is sub par. Apt-get is simply too slow to update and is missing too much stuff to be viable. So if you're committed to Debian, and by all means don't let me stop you, please find a way to make apt-get better than portage. It really does need it. The day apt becomes as up to date as portage and isn't missing tons of software will be the day I switch back to Debian in the form of UserLinux or otherwise.

Re: Marketing Image

[EvilAlien]

I think what we're seeing here is that a few of those people, i.e., your target audience, don't like the name and are having trouble expressing why. Being able to express why a dislike exists is not a predicate for acting on that dislike. In other words, it is entirely possible that the people who you need to get the support of may not support the distribution due to poorly forulated, illogical, and irrational reasons.

Personally, I don't like the name "UserLinux", but I'm prepared to evaluate the product on its technical merits regardless. I think name is a bit awkward and unfortunately triggers some of the negative feelings many sysadmins have associated with "users". I don't want a Linux distribution targetted at "users", even though we are all users. I want a distro that has a blend of the features, power, elegance in design, cluefullness, and ergonomics. I want a distribution that can be used equally well as a server or desktop. I want a distribution that is rewarding to clueful administrators, not overly cumbersome to novice users, and is based on a solid design. I don't think I can really justify my personal dislike of the name UserLinux further right now, so take these comments for what they are worth.

As a member of your target audience, I'd suggest you adopt a different name. ClueLinux ("clue" being generally considered to be the opposite of "user" for most BOFH's... hell, BOFHLinux would be awesome, but inappropriate for business) would likely generate more excitement without any rational basis to explain it ;)

Re: Marketing Image

[edittard]

Hey, my name is a trademark for a successful series of books.

-1: up himself

They do have some influence upon their management.

Do they? I guess it must have just not occurred to anybody to say "hey, please don't give my job to paki".

Re:Marketing Image

[Anonymous Coward]

because it rhymes with, "losers".

Re: Marketing Image

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, "Slackware" is an even harder sell than "Debian Unstable". At least with the latter an exec may think it could become stable over time.

Re:So its "fixed"?

[Bruce Perens]

The kernel is 2.6.8 at the moment, from the Debian package. It is so fully modular that it loads the IDE driver before it mounts the root drive - IDE isn't compiled in to the kernel, it's a module. Discover and hotplug are used to detect hardware and load drivers. As far as I can tell, it addresses the problem of normal people adding hardware.

Bruce

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Freely avaliable...

[demon_2k]

Freely available hight quality product with support? Who's paying for the developement?

any provision for...

[zogger]

... a floppy based install instead of a mini cd? Reason is old machines with just floppies and smaller hard drives.

Like some of mine for instance.... like my old laptop still running 95.....and no way to attach a cd to it.... and stuff

Re:any provision for...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not at present.

Re:any provision for...

[Bruce Perens]

They aren't really in our target audience, but Debian does support install from floppy. Get the "sarge" installer here. There is a minimum RAM limit, as it has to get the kernel and initrd.img both into RAM. If the kernel won't boot, you could build a custom one but a new motherboard might be easier :-)

Bruce

UserLinux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft, where's my RootLinux?

Re:UserLinux?

[kundor]

http://www.lindows.com

advantages of UserLinux

[phreakv6]

From a FAQ on UserLinux

Q: What will be the advantages of UserLinux?
A: [Brock Frazier] Key UserLinux distribution advantages:

1. Streamlined: UserLinux is a streamlined distribution with one key application in mind for a given piece of functionality. One web browser, one word processor, one mail client, one web server. This reduces support overhead both for users and for maintaining security.
2. Standards compliant: UserLinux encourages cooperation with other open source organizations, and values compliance with open standards.
3. Designed for business: The UserLinux distribution is specially tailored towards the needs of business.
4. Professional Services: The third party network of UserLinux affiliated commercial Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) allow for choice in professional services and custom application design options. The separation between the UserLinux organization and the ISVs is a win-win proposition allowing both the support advantages of a service provider network and the neutrality advantages of an operating system not tied to a single company.
5. Flexible: While each UserLinux configuration is designed to support common functionality as shipped, the systems are also open for expansion beyond the standard UserLinux set.
6. Disclosure: As a not-for-profit organization working with software developed in the open, the UserLinux organization as well as the development process for the UserLinux distribution are in the open. Critical system updates are clearly and promptly announced so systems remain properly secured.
7. Lack of lock-in: There are no licensing fees for the UserLinux distribution or related development tools. Service is available from your choice of service providers, but is never mandatory.
8. Free to obtain: ISO images and the source code are freely available.
9. Inexpensive to maintain: The streamlined nature of the UserLinux distribution assures less software to update. There are no per seat charges or OS licenses to be tracked and audited.
10. Secure: Leveraging from the power of open source, the code used in the UserLinux distribution not only has thousands of hours of development but thousands of hours of peer review.
11. Certifications: Hardware, software, support and professional certifications will be available.

Re:advantages of UserLinux

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Streamlined: UserLinux is a streamlined distribution with one key application in mind for a given piece of functionality. One web browser, one word processor, one mail client, one web server .

I was under impression that desktop was the main target of UserLinux. Apparently, that does not appear to be the case, with web servers and all.

Re:advantages of UserLinux

[demachina]

"1. Streamlined: UserLinux is a streamlined distribution with one key application in mind for a given piece of functionality. One web browser, one word processor, one mail client, one web server. This reduces support overhead both for users and for maintaining security."

And the problem being if you don't like their choice of the "one key application" its basically gonna suck, KDE being the obvious application set in the second class citizen category. Since I dumped Red Hat, or actually Red Hat dumped me, and I switched to Gentoo I'm happy as can be and I'm never going back to a distribution that wants to make choices for me. I'm sure UserLinux might fit some businesses that want everything done for them and Gentoo is not for everyone but if you like having control over your distribution instead of your distribution controlling you its the ticket.

Re:advantages of UserLinux

[fmckee]

I was under impression that desktop was the main target of UserLinux. Apparently, that does not appear to be the case, with web servers and all.

UserLinux has configurations for soho desktop, enterprise desktop, and server stacks. Each stack is a streamlined selection of packages to provide both solutions for businesses.

Re:advantages of UserLinux

[fmckee]

Gentoo I'm happy as can be and I'm never going back to a distribution that wants to make choices for me.

I've used Gentoo for about 3 years now, and I agree with what you say about it being wide open. It is my preferred distro.

However, Gentoo is not the best option for businesses, especially from a licensing perspective since you have to manage that yourself. Nothing commercial will enter the Debian, and by extension, UserLinux streams. Besides that, for technical reasons, most businesses would not choose Gentoo as you or I would.

Re:advantages of UserLinux

[Kethinov]

This is why I think Bruce should have based UserLinux off of Gentoo. The Gentoo people can continue to release and support their livecd and Bruce can make informed choices for newbies or businesses without using a binary package manager.

Now, I like the idea behind apt. But unless everyone unites behind it, it simply won't work. And isn't working. I switched back to Gentoo out of frustration with apt. Source code is the one standard that all Linux distros support. All software is available in portage due to that. Debian, despite its massive repos, is missing tons of stuff. And is never up to date.

Re:advantages of UserLinux

[fmckee]

You are not alone to express that, and I too would have probably preferred Gentoo's GRP route to apt for binary installs. Essentially the same kind of streamlining could have been done, with source support built right in. Best of both worlds.

Unfortunately for Gentoo, I believe another reason Debian was chosen is because it is supported on more platforms and in more languages.

Regarding dependency problems, now you know as well as I do portage is not exactly problem free either. Not so much with dependencies themselves, but with broken ebuilds, etc. Besides, for businesses package rollouts will be a managed event, with perhaps only power users given the authority to do things themselves. As far as the versioning issue you mentioned, I bumped up my apt repository to unstable and have the same revs of packages as I do on Gentoo. FWIW.

Re:advantages of UserLinux

[demachina]

For a business with very machines I'm not sure I can see ANY justification for binary packaging. Your admin should have a dedicated Gentoo build machine(s) used for nothing but building system images. For an upgrade you nuke the old system image and copy the new one on, and run a post install script to do the host specific customization. If you update the whole system image you correct damaged and hacked systems as part of the upgrade. Though you do still want an automated script to propagate a merge from a single ebuild to every machine to do urgent security patches.

I don't think I can see any comparison between the headaches of binary package compatibilities and an occasional broken ebuild. A broken ebuild is usually trivial to fix and you really can fix it yourself.

The place where Gentoo wins the distro wars is the whole Gentoo team and their servers could fall off the face of the earth and I could, with a little work maintain my distribution myself, doing my own cherry picked updates and security patches, indefinitely. You don't really have to worry about some assholes, in North Carolina for example, deciding to end of life the distro your business depends on.

More info, please?

[kollivier]

I realize this project isn't at the "released" stage yet, but the web site and even the article linked here don't really provide much info on what makes UserLinux "special". Not only is there little to market specifically to suit types, but to me as a geek there's no info on the site that shouts "here's why we're different!" Specifically, information like: how does it intend to improve the Linux "desktop" initiative? This really needs to be fixed, IMHO, if people are to take a serious interest in UserLinux. To me, it's looking like "yet another distro" which is more upsetting then anything, because I'm getting tired of having more and more similar but slightly different choices that leave me wondering why so many distros are considered to be a good thing. Maybe if everyone decided to work together, rather than all start their own distros, the Linux platform would be in better shape than it is on the desktop.

So, why will UserLinux not be just another one of the pack?

Re:More info, please?

[steve_deobald]

Bruce has already answered this many times here, but I'll reiterate: UserLinux is Debian.

The differences between UserLinux and Debian are slight: branding, configuration tweaking, and temporary fixes where necessary.

The value of UserLinux does not come from technical achievements - everything we have, Debian has (and vice-versa). UserLinux selects a supportable subset of Debian and provides it to the customer in a neat package which any number of ISVs around the world can support.

Maybe if everyone decided to work together, rather than all start their own distros, the Linux platform would be in better shape than it is on the desktop.

So, why will UserLinux not be just another one of the pack?

You just answered your own question. UserLinux is already in the "pack." Debian has been around for 10 years - working together is what we're trying to do.

Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[mdproctor]

It has been reported the Pruce Berens, from the KickMeInTheGooliesILikePainLinux fame, is attempting to bring slashdot down by furiously typing at his keyboard to reply to every single slashdot post creating a human DDOS attack. Luckily slashdot has survived this onslaught and he's on his way to achieving a world record for the most number of posts on slashdot for a single article, as long as his smoking keyboard withstands the punishment.

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[flossie]

It has been reported the Pruce Berens is attempting to bring slashdot down by furiously typing at his keyboard to reply to every single slashdot post creating a human DDOS attack.

LOL! :o)

It certainly looks that way. According to his user page, he has only replied to 10 so far. He certainly does a good job of getting noticed!

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[Slack3r78]

Heh, I noticed the same thing, and while it is amusing in a way, I'd also like the thank Bruce for doing so. Instead of lots of conjecture or half explanations, we're getting clear, thought out explanations directly from the source.

This tends to happen on Slashdot anyway (John Carmack in particular comes to mind) but seeing Bruce's name in just about every thread on this topic was impressive and I for one appreciate it. Thanks. :-)

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[Bruce Perens]

Slashdot imposes a 2-minute posting limit. That works out to 30 per hour if I try really hard.

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[xutopia]

his keyboard? I heard he used 2 keyboards, one with each hand. How else do you think he can keep up?

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[Anonymous Coward]

[OT, but so is this whole thread]Did he get his Linux drivers for the Belkin in the end? Does anyone know?

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[74nova]

if they are on two machines with seperate IPs that would up his max to 60 posts per minute!

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[sootman]

nah, it's just his first day pimping his techno-thingy blog. expect to see a lot more from him.
;-)

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[torako]

Not only that, but he also gets modded +5 for every single one of those posts... I wish I could do that :P

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard he uses a third "arm" too...

Arm, as in penis...

He can also levitate.

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah! I am sure you are surrounded by 17 machines, posting under 17 different identities, including AC.

Yours Bru^H^H^H AC

Shit, still has some bugs, backspace will be fixed in next UserLinux beta - promise...

Re:Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens

[Anonymous Coward]

That explains modetation points too...

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[account_deleted]

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BUT...

[superpulpsicle]

But there are only 2 legit version of linux for corporate use, Suse and redhat.

Simply because they are the only linux distros with HBA drivers that can have it sit on a storage area network. Before you run any giant App, you need storage.

Re:BUT...

[Mr. McGibby]

Simply because they are the only linux distros with HBA drivers

A lot of corporations don't even *use* SANs. Not every corporation needs em. Just because other distros lack a certain feature X doesn't mean that they're useless for corporations. That's just narrow minded thinking.

BTW, at my corporation, we use Gentoo because we know what we're doing and don't need or want the hand holding that RH and Suse provide. It's amazing! We're a corporation and we're successfully using a distro other than red hat and suse!

Re:BUT...

[Anonymous Coward]

In this corporation we use Debian Stable for servers, because it's the only distro that has reasonably long support cycles for security related bug fixes for the low-cost version.

Redhat and SuSE's upgrade cycle seems much more disruptive than Debian's. Our main frustration with them is that each of them seem to want to do a complete re-install when doing a major upgrade.

Re:BUT...

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

As another data point, the place I'm currently contracting with has Debian on some of their servers. And they're a multinational.

Re:BUT...

[akrabat]

Can't comment about RedHat, but as far as I know SuSE supports the last 5 releases for security updates. i.e. although 9.1 is out, 8.0 is still supported. (See http://www.suse.de/de/security/2004_23_libpng.html for an example from this month [aug '04].)

That's why we use SuSE... we can plan for a downtime upgrade for a given server around 2 to 3 years after initial setup to bring it up to "latest SusSE" and be confident that it'll be supported for another couple of years. (at which point we'll probably be thinking hardware replacement anyway!)

Re:BUT...

[jweage]

There's nothing particularly wrong with a reinstall for major upgrades as lots of things can get broken in the process. RH et. al. don't want to carry on supporting legacy versions of packages with their major releases. With Anaconda and network kickstarts the pain of doing complete reinstalls is pretty much eliminated - assuming you manage your configurations well.

With the RHEL product, there will be security updates for 5 years, which do not require reinstalling the entire system. There are "free" clones of RHEL, check out WhiteBox Linux or CentOS or Tao Linux. I'm using WhiteBox in a production environment.

Re:Maybe not.

[Bruce Perens]

For those who worry about karma whoring: There is a karma cap of 50. I have made 48 moderation points in one day, commenting on one story that concerned me. So, there would be no point in my doing anything for karma. I have more of it than I can use.

Bruce

Watching with interest

[Skraut]

As "The computer guy" among other things in a small office, I'll say this is something that definately interests me. As more and more of my day gets consumed with cleaning systems ridden with viruses and spyware (Yes I have scanners and all the usual crap up there, but this isn't my "full time" job here and shouldn't have to be) I've been contemplating just making the whole office switch to Linux.

Obviously that's a huge jump and the right distro is important. I've been strongly considering Gentoo mosty for keeping the systems up to date and secure (leave everyone in the stable tree, and cron a nightly GLSA to patch all known security holes, and emerge -uD world)

As "administration free" as it seems right now in thought, I am a bit concerned of the nightmare it could become if things get unorderly.

With Red Hat abandoning the business desktop a dedicated business desktop with the open source community behind it is exactly what I am looking for. I admire Sun's Java desktop and Xandros' Business desktop, but I guess I'm just too spoiled by the Debian and Gentoo forums. Both are very active with loads of people helping out. For me I'd much rather get my help that way as apposed to waiting on hold to talk to the next know nothing tech support person.

Re:Watching with interest

[Anonymous Coward]

"With Red Hat abandoning the business desktop..."

Since when?

http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/desktop/

Kernel Versions?

[JHillyerd]

I love Debian on servers, that's the one place where packages not changing often is a good thing.

One big frustration I have with debian-stable is that the kernel gets so far out of date, that it doesn't support newer hardware properly. Will UserLinux try to keep more up-to-date with kernel versions. I don't need bleeding edge, but 2.4.18 is two and half years old!

Don't tell me to use debian-testing, I've tried it and it replaces too many packages too often for a production machine.

Re:Kernel Versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you look a bit harder. Debian has the current kernels individually listed.

Re:Kernel Versions?

[ultrabot]

Don't tell me to use debian-testing, I've tried it and it replaces too many packages too often for a production machine.

Umm, use Debian testing (==Sarge). It will be released Any Day Now (my guess - 2 months), so it's not changing much anymore, at least not in disruptive fashion (like Sid).

So go change those apt sources *now*, or download the debian-installer netinstall image. Just be sure to get 2.6.7 kernel if your Linux partition will be on a SATA disk (the latest, 2.6.8, doesn't work).

Re:Kernel Versions?

[JHillyerd]

The machine that I was having problems with is now in production running White Box Enterprise Linux - I didn't want to build a custom kernel. I'm not really looking for a fix for this particular moment in time, but thinking about a year or two from now when Sarge's kernel is getting long in the tooth.

Re:Kernel Versions?

[Macka]

Why would you need to change the kernel a year from now if you're still running on the same production hardware?

Re:Kernel Versions?

[natrius]

You know you can install a newer kernel on top of Debian stable, right? It's just like any other distro in that regard.

Re:Kernel Versions?

[jasondlee]

Security updates, performance enhancements, and on and on...

Re:Kernel Versions?

[JHillyerd]

In my case, it's because I'm buying new hardware, and I'd like to keep the same version of Linux installed across all our servers.

Re:Kernel Versions?

[steve_deobald]

Our intention with UserLinux is to work closely with the Debian team and improve on the current release cycle. Hopefully the Debian stable release cycle can be shortened (so users aren't left with 2.5 year old packages) without sacrificing the unmatched quality debian-stable has always had.

Bruce has mentioned on the list that we'll cook our own packages and tweak Debian where the need presents itself. However, we'll be following debian-stable as closely as possible (Sarge).

With regard to people recommending you use debian-testing: `testing' is currently preparing to become `stable' on Sept. 15th. Thus, this recommendation is less "use testing" than it is "use the up-and-coming stable." :)

Re:Kernel Versions?

[Macka]

That depends on whether you''re buying more of the same hardware, or newer hardware with updated chipsets, etc. If your chosen production kernel supports your new hardware, then you can stay with the same kernel. But if not, then you'll need to choose a version that does. And if you want a common kernel across all systems, then in the latter case you'll have to upgrade the kernel on your older systems too.

That's just the way of things, and it's the same in the commercial world too, except that kernel updates are sometime bundled with patch kit releases, and other times you're forced into an entire OS upgrade to get the functionality you want. At least with OSS you get a bit more flexibility.

Prodigy Also

[nurb432]

They also work closely with Debian, especially since Ian is runing the place..

Not faulting UL, just another 'closely knit' option..

Re:Prodigy Also

[xenocide2]

Last I checked, Ian was busy with Progeny, and UL was Peren's pet project. I could be missing a fact, like Ian is helping out, but it seems somewhat disingenious of Ian to support fragmenting his own Linux support consulting market.

A little off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's a little off topic, but while we're talking about free distributions, what about PowerPC64 compatible distributions? Userlinux is x86, so that's no help. Fedora, the have a couple of files in the dev branch, but no ISOs. The best I can find are RedHat AS and Suse Enterprise Linux, but both of those are not free. Yellow dog claims to have a distribution, but not if you don't give them some money.

Is the PowerPC 64 completely deviod of free linux distributions?

Re:A little off topic

[Lank]

I think Gentoo has a PPC ISO. I'm not 100% on that, though. I figured I'd install Linux on my Mac just to try it out, but then I found Fink. It was really all I needed.

Re:A little off topic

[Bruce Perens]

All of our packages will install on PowerPC, because we don't have any architecture-specific packages, those are all in Debian. You have to install Debian "sarge" first, and then add the userlinux.com repository to sources.list .

When will we support PowerPC? Hopefully soon. If someone wants to pay, even faster.

Bruce

Re:A little off topic

[ch3]

They indeed have a PPC iso (works even for G5s) and they even ported portage to OS X. Really cool as soon as more packages will be unmasked.

Giving Back

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce, one major thing you haven't talked about on your wiki is how you are going to give back to us developers who work on Debian, which is the core distro. So far, no of the distro vendors have been willing to support us monetarily (unless they hire us into their corporations). What is the plan on redistributing some of that consulting/support income back to us?

Re:Giving Back

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce, just to expand on my question: for instance I am working on enhancing support for SMP in Debian on various architectures, and I had to BEG for hardware from various sources to do my work. Sometimes I wonder why I can't get the resources I need, after all there are people making lots of money off of the work we do.

And I am just a small contributor - I don't have a lot of spare time to work on this because of my real job.

I was just wondering if there was a plan to redistribute some of this support contract revenue back into the community, or should we apply for support jobs, or what the plan is.

Re:Giving Back

[Macka]

Before Bruce gets into answering that, assuming that he will, how about you first step out from behind the AC smoke screen and prove that you really are a Debian developer, not just a Troll.

Re:Giving Back

[Anonymous Coward]

How come I am not getting a response? Is no one reading this because I am posting as AC? I am just curious, because that is how the OSS model is supposed to work right? The support money that the corporations make pays for the development? Do we need to work for corporations in order to share in that money (as a salary), or is there another method? What method is UserLinux going to use? Can we apply for support (money) via the website?

Thanks!

Re:Giving Back

[Anonymous Coward]

I would rather not, because I know it will open myself up to personal attacks from the zealots (not Bruce). I am asking a legitimate question, or do you not agree? Isn't that how the OSS (revenue) model is supposed to work? The support pays for the development If not, please educate me Macka.

Re:Giving Back

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess "giving back" in this case means giving back code/improvements to the Linux community...

I don't think you should expect them to give $$$ to every single coder out there. Especially if you are not a "top" one (as you said you don't have much time to code).

Re:Giving Back

[Macka]

Personally I agree with you. Though pragmatically I think that they'll have to retain the money for a while first to: 1- recoup their up front investment (through lost earnings, advertising, travel, etc) and, 2- make sure they can generate enough cash to sustain the business in the long term.

Most new businesses don't make much if any profit for the first 1-2 years.

Re:Giving Back

[Anonymous Coward]

ahhh, this is the one question that Mr. P doesn't take the pleasure of answering himself... pretty much the only thread on this topic that has the dubious honor...

Re:Giving Back

[rasz]

Bruce, just to expand on my question: for instance I am working on enhancing support for SMP in Debian on various architectures, and I had to BEG for hardware from various sources to do my work. Sometimes I wonder why I can't get the resources I need, after all there are people making lots of money off of the work we do.

You are a looser just as the BSD folks. Try to apply for a job in SuSE. You have got to decide, do it for the community for free or go someplace where they pay for code.

Re:So its "fixed"?

[chill]

Is there an alternative kernel? 2.6.8 has problems as noted at http://k3b.plainblack.com/index.pl/news2.

This affects the dvd+rw-tools and not just K3B.

-Charles

BusinessLinux makes sense

[erroneus]

And the first person who gets a serious distro using that name will do VERY well. It's a name that makes sense and we know that everything is in the name... or at least the people who make decisions think so.

Here's my wish/hope list for a business [client] oriented distribution:

Network Login Service Support for:

* Novell NDS, Microsoft Domains and of course your NIS and all that.

* A nice email + swiss army software thingy (like Evolution with support on the server)

* MS Office compatible office suite and/or an ass-kickin' wine configuration that REALLY works especially for brain-dead admins who expect to double-click on SETUP.EXE.

Of course there will be other apps that will need to complete anything beyond the basics listed above, but once those basics are done, it's 90% there.

And when I mean MS Office compatible, I mean REALLY stinking compatible for importing and exporting MS Word docs and stuff. So far, nothing's been perfect yet though it keeps getting better.

Re:BusinessLinux makes sense

[tsstahl]

Then why don't you use Windows, Exchange, Outlook and Office. You seem so enamored with their features...

Re:BusinessLinux makes sense

[erroneus]

COST

Re:BusinessLinux makes sense

[rasz]

so now your cheap ?

Re:Maybe not.

[Gherald]

+1 Funny moderations do not count towards karma.

RTFFAQ

The Slashdotter's friend

[Chris Daniel]

Most Slashdotters should love the fellow who did this quiz: http://ex-parrot.com/~chris/moral.html

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

MP3 and non "free" software

[div_2n]

Bruce,

Forgive me if this is answered somewhere on the UL website, but do you include or plan to include support out of the box for MP3's and any other technology that Red Hat may refuse to include?

Additionally, if the amount and breadth of your own patches and packages makes it such that UL and Debian are relatives only in spirit, will you go your own way or continue to try to keep ties with it?

TIA

Re:MP3 and non "free" software

[Bruce Perens]

We could include that stuff that red hat refuses to include only at the cost of potentially having to pay a patent license for every copy of the system or deal with a horribly expensive lawsuit. We'd rather push open formats.

We don't want to split software development away from Debian. It's so much more work that way.

Bruce

Re:MP3 and non "free" software

[rakkasan]

From the looks of the screenshot (particularly the Maxtrix clip) I would say yes, unless of course it is deliberately misleading the end user into thinking the "proper" package has been preloaded to view encrypted dvd's.

Re:MP3 and non "free" software

[rakkasan]

I really should have read the rest of the re's. My apologies.

Re:MP3 and non "free" software

[rodda]

Right now, if Debian supports the format, UL will likely support the format. I suspect UL will stay very close to Debian.

Re:So its "fixed"?

[Bruce Perens]

We'll probably have to go to 2.6.9 at some point. I'm told SATA is broken in 2.6.8 as well.

Bruce

Actual realease date?

[datadriven]

Are plans in effect for when the final release date will happen?

I have 6 Gmail invites to give away.

Progeny -- Typo

[nurb432]

Yes i meant progeny, not prodigy.. sorry about that.

Re:Progeny -- Typo

[Bruce Perens]

Ian's main business at the moment is generating customized distributions for the "large-system" embedded industry. But Ian has been extremely helpful in creating the first LSB-certified version of Debian, work that we intend to piggyback upon.

I am told that I am #2 stockholder in Ian's company, although I am not currently part of its management.

Bruce

Second worst install program ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Next to the pain of a Debian install, this installer is absolutely not a "User" Linux distribution. I am currently selecting the "method for selecting your monitor characteristics"???? Whatever the heck that is. Somehow I got through the Postfix phase of installation (whatever that is). Thank goodness I get to guess at my monitor refresh rates. This is almost as much fun as installing Redhat 5.1.

I don't want to start a flame

[xutopia]

but with the myriad of choices, what DE comes by default?

Re:I don't want to start a flame

[Qerub]

GNOME

Re:I don't want to start a flame

[jcphil]

It's Gnome. And since I have a long preference for KDE, UserLinux is an irrelevance for me.

Re:I don't want to start a flame

[fmckee]

And since I have a long preference for KDE, UserLinux is an irrelevance for me.

Your relevance problem would be solved by installing KDE using apt-get. Nothing is preventing you from doing so.

New stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for UserLinux to actually create something new. Like GUI configuration tools... OK, I've seen the artwork and metapackages but they don't qualify.

Re:New stuff?

[fmckee]

I'm still waiting for UserLinux to actually create something new. Like GUI configuration tools

As UserLinux matures more of that will be fleshed in. Non-graphical configuration customization has already been done on the installion aspect of UL. If you have specific ideas, participation is always welcome.

Knoppix UserLinux

[bfree]

Has anyone made a UserLinux LiveCD yet or is that my next challenge (armed with Fabian's new remastering tool and perhaps I'll even try rolling in some automation of the lazy umount method of removing the cd, I don't need much of an excuse but I suspect I might have to do some fixing up so if anyone has already started ... :-)

Re:Knoppix UserLinux

[fmckee]

Has anyone made a UserLinux LiveCD

Not yet. But it would be nice to have for demonstration purposes. I'd suggest floating the idea on the mailing list. I remember at one time it was discussed, but to what extent I cannot recall.

Re:I don't get it - It is a subset

[fmckee]

If UserLinux can select a small subset of Debian, and produce a stable/supported version of this subsest that's more current than Debian Stable -- and more importantly, position the product as a supported, modern Debian, we'd love it.

UserLinux _is_ a subset of Debian. The team has chosen a streamlined set of applications to include in each of the various packages (soho desktop, enterprise desktop, and server). You are free however, to install any of the Debian packages, not included in the UL release using standard Debian tools.

Half a gig download?

[alexborges]

So much for User Friendly....

Maybe by tomorrow afternoon, ill have a review.

Re:Half a gig download?

[tsstahl]

During the beta cycle, updates can happen much faster if the static packages stay in a repository. As a 4 + meg download, you can try beta steppings much faster, too. I agree, of course, that for the casual looker, a 400 meg download can be a bit off-putting. However, a local repository only has to be filled en masse once.

Congratulations.

[jfisherwa]

You and your team have put together a distribution that finally takes Linux in the right direction--now I no longer have to paste the same "This Is What's Wrong With Linux" comment for every "What should Linux do?" article. You're doing it.

I'm enthralled on your decision to only include one (the best) of each application-type and provide a 'unified front' for those new to Linux and the spirit of OpenSource.

Looking forward to seeing what it's all about..

Best regards,
Jason Fisher

Re:Maybe not.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I have a question, I downloaded a Debian 'ISO' file and burned it to a cd using windows 98, then, I closed my cd burner and opened explorer to the cd I just burned, double clicked the file ending in 'ISO', and it asked me to insert a blank cd, so I removed the cd I burned and inserted a blank cd, but then I still couldn't get it to work.

Should I try a reboot?

Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes from user-supported, because anyone can participate in Debian, the development organization we base our system upon. So, if a user doesn't like something about the system, they have the ability to change it directly.

So you're saying if someone doesn't like something about UserLinux should go upstream to Debian and try to get it changed there? And when you say we, this refers to you? Or Debian?

I saw Bruce at LinuxWorld in SF. He had a little podium at the corner of someone else's booth, and a letter-sized piece of paper that said "UserLinux" on it taped up. Most of the time he was standing there looking pretty lonely. Not many users seemed interested.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Bruce Perens]

Either the UL project or any concerned individual will go to Debian to change stuff. We have a number of people in the UL project who have gone through the Debian developer process, and I can mentor others.

Well, actually that was "my" booth, I am still executive director of the Desktop Linux Consortium. Everybody had the same sort of cube. Yes, the sign was cheap. And how much audience did you expect for a system that hadn't released its first beta? That was sort of a "show the flag" exercise.

Bruce

Not Just Another Distro

[Ashcrow]

Not true at all. UserLinux takes Debian and molds it into an easier to manage subset for buisness. Unlike RedHat and SuSE, support comes from a network who compete with eachother giving the user/company better prices and more choices. Since UserLinux had Debian roots, it is 100% compatable and offers all the packages Debian provides if the administrator so chooses to install them.

Ugh, Epiphany

[fred3666]

Mozilla Firefox is the future. They might as well base things around that now. I think even the Gnome team will abandon Epiphany development eventually. It is rather redundant, IMO.

Any Word from App Vendors like Oracle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, add what Debian hasn't been able to do: Commercial support, application vendor certification.

Have any major application vendors signed up yet to support their stuff on UserLinux? I love Debian, but.... companies like Oracle don't support their software on it. That holds back adoption of Debian alot and basically locks most companies into either Redhat or SuSe (or brand-name UNIX).

Even with no "company" like Redhat to sign contracts with, you would think Debian would be *easier* for an application vendor to support because of Debian's go-slow development cycle, conservative packages, and high level of quality control.

Re:Any Word from App Vendors like Oracle?

[jbolden]

When Oracle first got interested in Linux they were definitely cross vendor oriented in their discussions. RedHat agreed to build ENT3 to Oracle's specs for 10g so now they are in bed together. OTOH I wouldn't be shocked to see groups like SAP wanting to pick a non redhat solution just because of RedHat's close relation with Oracle.

Another Distro... Just what we needed

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it's been said 1000 times over, the Linux community needs to have 1 distro, Linux. This is getting ridiculous. You know why so many people haven't switched from Windows to Linux? Because you people make it so difficult to do so.

Instead of creating a new distro everytime there a developer wants to add a new feature or something, why not add it to the core Linux OS. Seems like every month Slashdot has a story about some new distro that just hit the streets and about how great it is.

For once guys, get your act together and start banning together. Community my ass!

http://rip747.blogspot.com

Re:Another Distro... Just what we needed

[twistedcubic]

Do you even use Linux? What is this "core Linux OS" you speak of?

Re:Another Distro... Just what we needed

[CAIMLAS]

Developers don't add stuff to the "core OS" because they can't. They're not allowed.

Linux is an independent project. It's not run by committee of slashdotters or anything so mundane. It's a situation where Torvalds' word is final. Anything someone were to add would likely have to be a fork - and there are quite a few such forks.

Another thing: you're ignorant about exactly what Linux is. Linux is a kernel. Nothing more, nothing less. RedHat, et al, are distributions. They have a lot of different software. A distro is simply a collection of hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of packages.

Your Windows-centric view of an OS is pedantic and disturbing. I hope you don't work in computing.

Re:Another Distro... Just what we needed

[JThundley]

Because there is no core Linux OS you fucking retard. Come back to slashdot with a clue.

Re:Maybe not.

[hugesmile]

Where do I start, with this message? Oh man....

> sarcastic comment about Bruce getting +funny.
um, it wasn't sarcastic, and Bruce didn't get +funny, when I wrote it. He was modded +1 Informative. I never saw a "first post" moronic post marked informative before! I was impressed.

I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, first of all, being Bruce is big. And you are not him.

No problem here... where's the problem?

Sorry. I don't buy that "being Bruce is big", and therefore every word he says is "interesting". I personally don't feel that every comment spoken by "important" people are, by default, interesting (or funny!) Frankly, if the leader of the Free World was on Slashdot crying "first post!??" I wouldn't want to read it. Others may mark it up, to show how immature even a huge leader can be. And I figure that's why Bruce got modded up. (It's "interesting" to see someone like Bruce Perens act like a moron! And the bigger they are, the more interesting it is.)

I certainly don't think Bruce is big. Quite frankly I have no opinion on the man - he's done nothing noteworthy from my perspective. So it shouldn't be surprising that I would be impressed that he's modded up for imaturity.

I am quite happy being me; no need being jealous of not being Bruce Perrins - he means zero to me.

Second, it is modded funny...
no, it was modded "informative". We've been over this!

Now, a side-effect of it being funny is that Bruce's karma improved, and that makes you jealous?
No, once again, it was "informative".

...and that makes you jealous?
I believe the term I used was "impressed". If being impressed equates to jealousy, that's news to me.

finally, note that +1 funny doesn't actually improve your karma (see slashdot faq's for more).
Ref: also read slashdot faqs, and how they ask you to not fret too much about the "karma"..
I told you, it wasn't modded as "funny". Get your undies out of a bunch. Maybe if YOU realized how slashdot worked, you wouldn't get all worked up over me being impressed. Articles get posted. Losers write "First Post". Moderators mod them down so other readers don't need to look at "First Post" messages. Sometimes items get modded up as Interesting. Maybe by the time you look at it, it's ben changed to "Funny". Ever think that maybe YOU don't have this figured out? Because if you did, you wouldn't have gone wacko in your post!

Installing UserLinux?

[Anonymous Coward]

How come the URL for the installation instructions points to http://Goat.cx?

Not in tune with what most businesses want...

That's nice

[smacktits]

But how is one supposed to take them seriously when their "installing UserLinux" section is actually a link to goat.cx?

If you don't believe me, go here and click "See installing UserLinux"

Re:That's nice

[smacktits]

-1? I guess one of the usual brainless mods got up on the wrong side of their semen-encrusted bed this morning.

NetBSD/FreeBSD/openBSD

[nurb432]

Dont forget the *bsd series is just as huge, if the number of ports is truly that much of an advantage ..

Though its somewhat debateable how many text editors one really needs...( for example ). I feel quality of the ports is more important then the sheer numbers..

BSD is also much older and mature.. and if you pick NetBSD, it beats 11 platforms in its sleep..

Not bashing debian at all, just reminding people its not the only fish out there.. with out leaving that GPL aftertaste..

Re:NetBSD/FreeBSD/openBSD

[flacco]

with out leaving that GPL aftertaste..

tastes like... Victory...

Anyone notice????

[Anonymous Coward]

The folder named "gayporn" at
http://img83.exs.cx/img83/8616/2004-06-01.jpg

hehe!

Re:Anyone notice????

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Locarius (798304) posted about it before you did. However, he got modded to -1 Offtopic. Odd thing to include in an official screenshot.

or hour...

[74nova]

but to remain on-topic, im looking forward to trying a distro that has less stuff installed by defualt. if i want another browser, ill apt-get --install one. thats one thing i dont like about most distros, albeit a small caveat.

another one byte the dust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Debian, with 10 years of history of successful work is better."

WoW , nice quote , too bad history is more " 10 years in existance "

Debian in the business category , is the equal of "what not to do" to try and go against a free community. Yes Debian core and Flavours are your ally , sure ( your wrong , if you think that )...

- Debian Flavours have one of the best installer ( knoppix ) your not using it ...
- Debian Flavours as one of the best GUI software Installer ( Linspire ) your not using it
- Debian Flavours have some great utilities wich are second only To YAST tools , Drake Tools , And redhat tools ( Libranet , Xandros , etc ... ) Not sure but I dont think you have them ...

I dont think you have the budget either , Corel ( 100 + millions ) failed , Progeny ( 30 + millions ) failed , Linspire ( 20 + Million ) there loosing money every day ...

I personnaly dont forget that you used to work for HP , and where only now seeing workstation shipping with a GNU/Linux type of OS from them ...

It will sure be fun to watch how long you and your project survive and if it gain any momentum at all ...

No one as "ever" created a profitable business solution that does the same thing as debian core outside of services ...

I will be sure to add your project to the list of :

another one byte the dust ...

MD5 Please

[smurfnsanta]

I realize it's just an early Beta, but can we please always impose security first and insist on md5sum's? TIA from a big fan.

Re:MD5 Please

[rasz]

sorry, but file hashes are PATENTED in USA

Let us hope this does not go the knoppix route

[dominic.laporte]

Debian "gurus" are known for rejecting anything out there that is not debian. I had my debian box hosed at one point so i inserted a knoppix CD headed towards the debian channel and boy did i got flamed ... Imagine having to explain why i was running knoppix in the first place !

Re:Let us hope this does not go the knoppix route

[Anonymous Coward]

i run several knoppix hdinstalls and have no trouble getting help from #debian

the trick is to make sure they don't know you are running knoppix ;)

Re:Let us hope this does not go the knoppix route

[rick_qcs]

knoppix has done more to bring windows users to debian than apt-get.

Re:Let us hope this does not go the knoppix route

[nb caffeine]

Ill second that. I was a lifetime windows user, converted in oh, about 15 minutes. Now running debian unstable, but learned a lot from knoppix. I learned about apt-get a week or two later and it was a second revalation! couldnt be happier with my personal linux expirence (only if the doom3 linux binaries were released by now). Oh, and I fix computers on the side for a little dough, and knoppix has saved MANY friends data after windows has gone a little wonky.

Mod parent up, juicy details

[ultrabot]

Subject says it all

re: userlinux

[bogie]

I keep seeing Bruce talk about how easy its going to be for outsiders to influence UserLinux which he says doesn't happen with Fedora. He may have a point that Fedora's direction is very much controlled by Red Hat but watch what happens in a few years once UserLinux becomes established. Mature projects are very difficult to bend to your whim or take in a new direction. Thus the many debian forks.

I also don't see how going negative on other distros is going to help your cause when commenting in public. Prove why your better with code, not somewhat negative marketing against Red Hat. You seem to be a bit Red Hat obessed and constantly mention them in the UnitedLinux white paper. I'd rather see why its better than Windows, Solaris, or OS X, not fellow OSS distros. Yes I know your trying to appeal to linux users first but great features sell themselves better than a negative comment anyday. And realize that future UserLinux users will pick up on your tone and intent. A year from now I don't think we all want to a bunch of UserLinux users Trolling against Red Hat and other distros constantly here and elsewhere.

I wish UserLinux the best of luck though and very much look forward to trying it out. It sounds like a great idea and is definitely needed. One more distro in the mix especially a Free one that caters to the business crowd specifically is fine by me.

Fork the project! The beauty of Open Source.

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're all so much smarter than Bruce, let's each fork UserLinux with our own favorate names, and take on his project head to head.

I think he's all the right choices technically (if he ended up with postgresql instead of mysql - can't remember where that one came out) -- but agree the name won't appeal to businesses.

The beauty of this fork is that it'll be extremely easy to maintian.

* Since the fork would use all the same code all the companies that support UserLinux would support ForkedUserLinux.

* We can have a fast-track certification process where anyone certified with UserLinux is automatically certified for WhateverLinux.

* It's a simple matter of s/userlinux/yourfavoriatename/ and you're on your way to become famous!

Re:So its "fixed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, SATA is broke in 2.6.8. Such a headache to find that out the hard way hehe.

And...

[Anonymous Coward]

...While they create yet another distro we got HP shipping laptops with SUSE preinstalled and KDE as the main desktop. Today ;)

Re:Fork the project! The beauty of Open Source.

[Anonymous Coward]

OOoh... and I can make my fork that uses tvtwm instead of KDE or Gnome! Cool.

Debian release cycle

[DavidNWelton]

The thing I don't like about our release cycle is that in an ideal world, there would be a way to support both desktopish users, who need something that is secure, and won't have any major breakage, as well as server users, who may be happier with a release rarely cycle. Testing is close to what the first group needs.

You can't just nab random packages from testing or unstable though, you risk making a mess of the system.

It's a difficult problem, and I wish I had some better ideas about the answers... I don't think the other guys have quite figured it out yet either. Redhat isn't bad, but like Bruce says, we need something that's free and open.

Perhaps! But no...

[copponex]

I think you might be the one who's out of touch

Question: How can I get a stable, easy to use, and supported Desktop OS that doesn't require me to invest a huge amount of money into new hardware or software licenses?

Answer: UserLinux.

UserLinux = HomoLinux!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check this UserLinux screenshot.
http://img83.exs.cx/img83/8616/2004-0 6-01.jpg

Then make up your own mind.

Questions to Bruce?

[Elivs]

Bruce,

1) Do you think it would be fair to describe UserLinux as a sub-distribution of Debian, rather than a distribution in its own right? If it is a sub-distribution can you explains some of the advantages and disadvantages.

2) As a 4yr Debian user would I be able to start using UserLinux right away? Are the tools the same.

3) I presume the system almost completely complies with debain-policy. Is this true and if not, where does it differ?

4) How large is the UserLinux archive at this stage? How many packages do you have? How many of them are pure-configuration type packages? How many are applications that aren't in the offical debian archive? (such as video players etc)

Thanks is advance for any answers and sorry amount the number and scope of questions. A few links would be great if its easier than giving full answers

Elivs

(PS - I'm about to try a netinstall to check out the system myself.)

Very disappointed

[theantix]

As I'm both a big fan of the Debian project and a Gnome user, I was really looking forward to trying UserLinux. After the announced their beta I decided to finally give it a test run. I have to say that their installer is embarrassingly broken. I've run Debian Woody, Debian Sid, SuSE 9.1, and Fedora Core 1-2 on my desktop and have never run into any problems with it. But the UserLinux installer refused to install to my existing partitions (simple ext3) and only "installed when I gave it the entire disk. Even then, I say "installed" because there were massive broken dependencies and error upon error.

I would have reported this to them, but you have to subscribe to a mailing list first just to file bug reports. Uh, okay maybe not. I'm still hoping that they put out a usable distro -- maybe when Debian Sarge stabilizes they will be able to put out a more stable installer. Until then it's just not good enough to bother.

Re:Very disappointed

[rodda]

I suspect your installation source was bad. This installer is based very closely on the original debian installer. I've installed this thing like 20 times and have never had broken deps. You are aware of the 'official' debain installer: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ give that a try...

Re:Very disappointed

[tsstahl]

This has not been my experience at all, and I've been installing since Alpha. Of course there are warts, but no gaping wounds that I have found.

Re:Very disappointed

[theantix]

Actually, when installing another OS I came across other problems -- turns out my CPU was overheating. With a fan blowing on my case and underclocking my processor, it installed fine. My bad.

Re:Very disappointed

[theantix]

Actually, when installing another OS I came across other problems -- turns out my CPU was overheating. With a fan blowing on my case and underclocking my processor, it installed fine. My bad.

I disagree.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Bruce,

Perhaps if you had wiped the feces off your finger,
then you wouldn't have slipped around the enter-key
that first 5 seconds of the slashdot story; to
receive the first post.

Re:Maybe not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but this was a +5 Funny moderation!

Yes, like other OSS project leaders...

[Anonymous Coward]

...he hypes more than he shows results. This isn't even in release stage yet, and the name doesn't even make sense.

Well

[rd_syringe]

"where's the free-beer enterprise-grade Linux we've been expecting?"

*cough* Gentoo?

Re:Maybe not.

[DaoudaW]

Nope...he got modded up because he's Bruce Perens.

nice network install for debian

[yarikoptic]

Actually I installed UL before I knew what I've done. I was looking for network installation images of debian for one of the freshly arrived machines. The default debian installer didn't work for some reason - I don't remember if it was SATA harddrive or smth like that... I did more search - found this UL network installation files, put them up in dhcp and installed the beast... What I liked: besides standard basic questions which it had to ask (like keyboard, partitioning) it asked me just 1 question to choose from: workstation or workstation and server... I remember that I chose workstation... Since then it installed everything and didn't ask a question (or I was sleeping and I missed it), as opposed to debian installation where you need to configure many packages by answering some basic questions... What I didn't like - I didn't catch why workstation installation installed apache for me... So in two words: I installed debian wo knowledge that it wasn't debian and was surprised that it went too smoothly... Then splashscreen announced that it is userlinux... anyway I decided to upgrade to unstable so I moded sources.list and here we go - I had the desktop ready to be used in less then an hour without paying much attention on what it is doing there :-)

Re:Maybe not.

[Humble Legend]

And, no karma for funny posts, so I hear...

cheers
zenaan

Just One Question

[Anonymous Coward]

When I got a new machine a few years ago, I installed Progeny Linux. It was another Debian-with-added-value distribution. I had trouble getting it to install (it was harder than Debian, if you can believe that). Soon after, Progeny announced that it wasn't really worthwhile to maintain their own distro, and told everybody to go back to Debian.

My question is: Why should I believe UserLinux will be any different? Debian is a huge distro with incredible momentum. I really *want* to use a Debian-but-better (as evidenced by the fact that I tried Progeny despite the fact it was so hard to install). But I've been burned before. Deep in my heart, I know Debian will still be going strong 5 years from today; I don't know that UserLinux will even exist.