United Linux: Two Years Later

ajs writes "In November 2002 everyone who wasn't Red Hat was gathering behind a banner that many thought would spell the beginning of a new chapter in the Unix Wars. That banner was called United Linux. Much has changed in the Linux world since then, and some Founding Partners in the United Linux camp have decided that there are other ways to change the market. Thankfully there are more level headed members of that group. Today, we're not so focused on the differences between Linux distributions, Sun's rants, the aforementioned lawsuits and ever-present, market-gobbling Microsoft keep everyone focused and united enough as it is, and United Linux has begun to fade into memory. So what has United Linux done? Well, it unified three distributions at least, focused attention on Linux standards and made hardware vendors feel a bit less lost when writing drivers for Linux, so it wasn't all a loss. Alas, according the the United Linux site, "There are no plans for a version 2.0 at this time.""

Comments

Article, or paragraph with links?

[Vellmont]

This isn't a reference to a story, this is a paragraph with a few links thrown in. Where's the news?

Re:Article, or paragraph with links?

[ajs]

It was meant as a retrospective. I was inspired to write it last night when I stumbled on the United Linux site for the first time in a year.

If you don't find any of it informative, that's likely because you've been paying attention to this for 2+ years, but much of the Slashdot community isn't aware of some of the back-story (especially the Unix Wars and why UL was founded and by whom).

Working link

[Meostro]

...have decided that there are other ways to change the market.

Here is a link that works... not sure what's up @Groklaw, looks like a typo in the PHP =)

Re:The reason why linux isn't strong on the deskto

[pe1rxq]

A lot of distros are (and will be) based on debian. So in a way it already is the common base UL was supposed to be.

Re:The reason why linux isn't strong on the deskto

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Ubuntu, it is based on Debian and works with X right out of the box. And with Synaptic, it is easy to install software. When you enable universe and multiverse you have access to all the software available in Debian proper (and more) all compiled for Ubuntu. It is the Most newbie frendly distro ever. I switched from Mandrake which I got tired of not finding an rpm for software that I wanted, or finding ones made for RedHat but wouldn't work correctly in Mandrake.

Re:LSB

[cpthowdy]

Note that SUSE 9.2 recently received the first LSB 2.0 certification...

Re:The reason why linux isn't strong on the deskto

[LnxAddct]

All of the big commercial distros (the ones consumers and businesses will/are using) are based on Red Hat. Red Hat is pretty good with standards, so itd be safe to say that if a standard is in order companies and developers are more likely to go with Red Hat. It is safer (or at least appears to be from a business perspective) because its backed by a corporation, and its already what most commercial distros are based around. Game developers etc... are going to listen to where the money is. If someone refuses to pay for a linux distro, they most likely (yes this is stereotypical of me) won't buy other software, so why should a software developer dependant on making money from software, market it to a base that typically doesn't buy software? I'm not trolling/flaming/etc... just trying to be realistic.
Regards,
Steve

Re:United Linux

[Lussarn]

Unitied Linux was not an grassroot efort like Linux standard base. This are the one to follow for more strict standards.

Re:If linux had..

[menkhaura]

/* Hello World, the way Real Men(TM) do it */

.data
.alo:
.string "Hello.\n"
.text
.globl _start
_start:
movl $4, %eax
movl $1, %ebx
movl $.alo, %ecx
movl $7, %edx
int $0x80

movl $1, %eax
movl $0, %ebx
int $0x80

See? After compile/strip, we have a mere 273 bytes binary. Nowhere near 1.5 MB...

Re:Focus on functionality.

[RogerWilco]

There is: Windows Installer, it comes standard with w2k and XP and
can be added to older systems.
Wise and Installshield are no more than easy GUI builders for it.
You could write your entire installer in Orca, the MS env. for it.
It has versioning and package dependency, version 2.0 even does uninstalling correctly IF the programmer of the install script did his/her homework. It also supports updates and patches.
I am no expert on rpm, but I think it's quite similar, as usual with MS.

Re:United linux would succeed if..

[dabadab]

"[i]if the RPM/deb has unmet dependencies, for instance, then the package manager should automatically download and install those as well[/i]"

That's precisely what apt does since the end of the last century.

Re:No version 2?

[runderwo]

Windows 2/386 was pretty good at preemptive multi-tasking

That's interesting, since the Win16 kernel has always been a cooperative multitasking kernel (even under Win95).