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

[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

[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

Maybe?

[Bruce Perens]

Maybe I'll get first post :-)

Bruce

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.

Torrent

[anandpur]

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

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?

[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?

[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: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

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

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

[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

[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: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

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.

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

[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?

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: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: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

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 :-)