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

United Linux

[demon_2k]

It's a shame really, I had high hopes for them.
Linux needs more strics standards...

Re:United Linux

[demon_2k]

May I ask, what has Linux Standard Base achieved?

Well sure, they've got Mandrake on board. What about Redhad?

Also, to my knowledge they only apply to rpm based distros. What about Slackware and Debian?
I could be wrong about all this. But if I didn't. The SLB isn't strict enought.

It's SCO's Fault

[piett134]

A big portion of what pulled the UL project apart was SCO's lawsuit right at the beginning of it. They then pulled out, leaving on SuSE, Turbolinux, and Connectiva. Not exactly a star studded cast :)

Do you Opine?
http://www.opine-it.com

Re:It's SCO's Fault

[advocate_one]

IIRC, they didn't pull out, they're still in it... Suse left in disgust...

oh this is so ironic... posting a link to a Maureen O'Gara article...

Re:United Linux membership

[DaEMoN128]

I can only say they have definately succeeded. If I had mod points, itd be worth 1 funny

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

[geoffspear]

As long as people like you keep buying the Windows versions of games, what motivation could developers possibly have to support another platform? They're not going to see an increase in sales if the potential customers for a new version would be buying it instead of buying what they already make.

United Linux - far from everyone

[dabadab]

"everyone who wasn't Red Hat"

Or Debian, or Slackware, or...
United Linux would be better described as a group of smaller commercial Linux distros.

Re:United Linux - far from everyone

[FluffyPanda]

Would you call SuSe a smaller distro?

I've never managed to find any reliable statistics (oxymoron noted) about the popularity of the various distros, but from the mailing lists that I subscribe to I can certainly believe that they are the second most used distro after Redhat/Fedora. Possibly the most used in Europe.

Re:Article, or paragraph with links?

[LarsWestergren]

Exactly. Strange links too. For instance, how has "Sun's rants" united and focused the Linux community?

The blog linked to is about the Java Desktop System, which at the moment is based on Linux. Are we supposed to feel... what? Outraged? Apprehensive?

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

[brianlawson]

How am I supposed to buy a Linux version of a game if one isn't produced? Chicken or the egg? I think the community of gamers that work on fixes, WINE, emulation, etc. to configure games to run on Linux should be an indication that there is a demand there. If someone would go to that much trouble to play a game on Linux as opposed to clicking "install" on Win, it represents a strong desire (at least for a certain community) for gaming on Linux.

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

[halivar]

The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES.

Linux is driven by the needs of the professionals who make the big-time procurment decisions. The needs of gamers are singularly unimportant. If you want games, get an XBox.

Re:LSB

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly, i whole heartedly agree, i love it when apps like Azureus, OpenOffice, Mozilla, HelixPlayer/RealPlayer, Sun's j2re etc..., can all install in any Linux distro with just a single binary package or from a single extracted directory...

It's too bad that....

[MarkEst1973]

a grassroots unification will have to happen in order to solidify the Linux standards.

Microsoft has the unparralleled advantage of maintain strict control on its own platform. It can push an agenda much more easily than a disparate group of distros.

I am posting this from a RH box right now and feel good having a linux box under my desk at work (on a KVM switch to a windows box), but I don't use this box for much. Everything is more difficult than in windows, unfortunately. I'm a coder but a linux newbie. If it's difficult for me, you can bet your ass it'll be difficult for the non-techie.

And that's why Microsoft is king of the hill right now. They make it for the mass market and make it easy for all.

A *STANDARD* type of Linux distro, app installer, etc. would be a great stride forward for Linux.

Re:It's too bad that....

[mccalli]

Although you are a Coder, you guys usually do not know anything about computers in general.

(I was asked at work to install the drivers for a new monitor from one of them. it was fricking funny.)

That's exactly the point. Although your example is a bit extreme, it doesn't back up what you say - it actually helps the poster you're replying to. Knowing about "computers in general" doesn't mean knowing how to stick a monitor driver on some desktop. That's specific knowledge about some particular platform.

Knowing about "computers in general" is much more than that. It's about algorithms at one level, it's about hardware knowledge at another level, it's about systems knowledge at yet another level....it really does have nothing whatsoever to do with slapping drivers onto things. That's the difference between tech support and design/development.

For the record, I too asked tech support to put a new graphics card driver on to my client XP box. Could I have done it myself? Yes, I could. But you see, my knowledge of computers in general tells me that the client box is a platform, a tested coherent whole. If I randomly slap a driver on to fix one problem, I might cause a whole host of others. Hence a call to tech support - tsick me an approved driver on here, you perform the operation, and you support the platform afterwards.

Be careful of claiming computing knowledge. There's a world of difference between systems knowledge and knowing how to write a particular macro in Excel, updating monitor drivers or even knowing to put in an /etc/init.d script.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:It's too bad that....

[MarkEst1973]

I think we're like-minded in our desire to see Linux triumph over M$, as evidenced by our desire for a unified installer mechanism. Still, though, I think the community overall needs to tighten further and create broad standards and general consensus. Without that, I fear an organized M$ will continually kick the crap out of a disorganized Linux community.

I really don't want a whole lot of unification on Linux.

Then it won't ever take off like we all want it too. If it takes a guru to work all the various distros your using for different purposes, well, you can expect to have M$ keep on eating linux's lunch. IMHO, an organization that is focused, centered on a single vision, and effective in executing its strategy will always crush the loosely organized, no vision or direction, disparate grassroots organizations.

The Bazaar might be a better form of development, but the Cathedral is significantly better at sales, marketing, communication, and stategy.

Competition is good, too, but when distros are competing against another distro, how is the community effectively competing against M$??? Competition means choice and freedom which (generally) benefits the consumer. Political infighting in the linux community (competing distros, competing desktops, competing anything that is incompatible with another distro) reduces the community's effectiveness in competing against M$.

I also disagree with everything being harder under Linux. Setting up my home DSL connection was a snap

When i set up this Fedora Core 1 box at work, it wouldn't connect to the interweb, despite the fact that I set it to use DHCP. There was something wrong with a DNS lookup that was found and fixed by the single linux guru we have in our office. He walked me through editing a config file in vi.

I'm sorry, but that is not what I call "easy." It was certainly not a snap. Everything else was installed quite easily, though. I even installed a JDK and Eclipse, but that's only because the Fedora desktop (Gnome, right?) gives me the ability to right-click a RPM and install it.

Re:It's too bad that....

[achim]

I also disagree with everything being harder under Linux. Setting up my home DSL connection was a snap, and as far as applications even when my wife boots my machine into Windows she's running the same OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Opera that I'm running on my Linux drive. The only reason there's Windows at all is because she needs Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop etc. and refuses to learn the GIMP.

That's not really the thing that is more difficult.

Have you ever tried to distribute a program in binary from for Linux? You are directly in distribution hell, because every distribution (and different versions as well) contain incompatible library versions. Static linking used to be a resolution, but since glibc 2.3.3 it does not work anymore (even worse, it prints out warning, then works on your computer, but crashes on a computer with a different glibc version).

Everything is fine with source packages, either you download/compile/install it yourself or your distributor has already done that and provides you a package of some sort (or an ebuild, or a port, or whatever...), but for people who want to distribute binary packages, a common base like UnitedLinux would have been great. If LSB can do that, also fine! That would never mean the end of specialized distributions not targeted at normal desktop usage, nor would it mean to have the one distribution only.

Now I already can see lots of answers to this post telling me to simply distribute source, open source and nothing else. Sorry, as much as I would love to do that, that's not an option for the stuff I write at work for two reasons:

1. giving away our source would mean giving away our knowledge as well and that be the end of the business in our current situation.
2. we are targeting at an audience not too comfortable with compiling programs before using them.

A GUI installer would be nice, but a common package format (maybe compatible with RPM, DEB and other on the backend level) that works on every Linux would IMHO be more important. Maybe one where you have the chance to install the program in your home directory if the system dirs cannot be accessed.

Re:United linux would succeed if..

[kbmccarty]

RPM, deb, ebuilds, tar.bz2, tar.gz, all are to complicated for the normal user.

I have trouble understanding why comments like this keep coming up. RPM, deb, tar.gz, and so on aren't installation programs. They are package formats.

Even leaving aside the whole question of whether an integrated package manager like Synaptic, KPackage or RHN is easier to use (it certainly is!) than for the user to download software manually from all over the place... Users don't need to have a clue about the actual file format of these things; they just need to be able to double-click on one of these files in (say) a Nautilus window, causing the underlying package manager to pop up a "Root password?" dialog box, then automatically install the package. What could be simpler than that? From the user's point of view, how is this any different from double-clicking on the icon for a Windows installer program generated with InstallShield?

Admittedly we may not quite be at that point yet -- if the RPM/deb has unmet dependencies, for instance, then the package manager should automatically download and install those as well when the file is double-clicked -- but we're getting there fast. And Windows-style executable installers, for reasons of consistency, are NOT the way to go.

Slightly off-topic: anyone ever try binary editing of a deb file to put "#!/bin/dpkg -i" at the beginning, or "#!/bin/rpm -i" at the beginning of an RPM, and chmod a+x'ing it? Does it work?

Bullshit.

[SalsaDoom]

This annoying nonsense pisses me off. I don't want a fuckin *MICROSOFT* XBox because...

1. MS stinks and I'm not some POS hypocrit that ditches his values for a few crappy games.

2. I already own a PC with a powerful graphics card that performs better then any lame console.

3. Gamepads make playing 3d games a chore, mouse+keyboard is the One True Way.

What is singularly unimportant is your damn opinion that all linux users should buy XBoxes! I mean, what kind of assholes do you think most slashdotters are? A whole lot of us complain about Microsoft, then you lamely suggest we should all go buy Microsoft XBoxes to play games instead of use our PC's which are better suited to our desires.

I guess what I really mean to say is: Kiss my ass. If we want games, then we'll just try and convince people to port them to linux and if they don't fuck'em.

Besides, since when was linux made for big business jackasses? I don't recall hearing anything about how Linus started working for The Man. What a lot of garbage.

--SD

Re:Install and Use...

[FluffyPanda]

And yet my boss calls me into his office at least three times a day to explain something you'd consider trivial to him.

Today I've had:
Why his win 98 box won't print (he hadn't logged on to the domain with his usual password)
Why isn't norton antivirus working? (beats me, reboot?)
What the hell's happened now? (errr... it's crashed. Try rebooting)

And I still have 2 hours to go.

Windows isn't as straight forward as people tend to make it out to be. It's just that the layman expects all of windows little bugs and crashes and has got used to hitting the reset button.

Yeah, you might need to read something to fix a problem in linux, but it stays fixed.

Re:Install and Use...

[Technonotice_Dom]

I can't resist the flame bait...

Windows is self installing
Eh? I installed FC3 yesterday on a machine to play with it (I'm normally a Debian fan) and the whole thing's done in X, and is very easy to go through. I'm sure Ubuntu, Mandrake etc are even easier. The first part of the installation of WinXP that asks details about partitions and filesystems is all done in text mode. Do you mean that Windows is bundled with new PCs? Is that an advantage of Windows?

self fixing
How so? Self-breaking in my experience. Unfortunately, part of my job requires me to repair Windows machines, and I'm sceptical at best about any "self fixing" Windows does.

self updating
So is FC3 to name one. It has a program called up2date which as soon as I'd installed FC, it flashed and asked me to download some new versions that had been released. Other distros also have similar systems.

It all depends on the distro. A lot of distros have done a brilliant job for the desktop user giving them great hardware detection, clear control panels to change settings. There are distros (my favourite, Debian) that cater to those of us like to understand what's going on, but even so, the package system and the community are brilliant.

Re:It's a shame

[pandrijeczko]

Just about everything in your bigotted argument is wrong:

it's a shame that ever effort made to merge the ditros together fails miserably.

There has never been any effort to merge the distros together. There has been an effort by United Linux to introduce a standard way of doing things such as the layout of the filesystem, device naming, etc.

However, the reason to have different Linux distros is due to the requirements for which it is used - embedded systems, secure servers, desktop use, etc.

For precisely the same reasons you should be criticising Microsoft for producing Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional, etc.

this is the reason why microsoft will win

Erm, precisely what will Microsoft win? It's already got 95% of the desktop share and most of the corporate share. Yet Linux is being used more and more.

So what determines Microsoft has won??? The Linux community doesn't care, we're just here using it and enjoying it.

My niece, for example, happily uses Windows to do her homework on, play games and surf the Internet. Just because me, her uncle, prefers Linux does not mean I'm going to erase her Windows install and put Red Hat on? The fact is, she uses what she likes to use, I use what I like to use, end of story.

Linux will die out.

How do you work that one out??? It's already embedded in more devices than you could possibly be aware of, Open Source apps like Apache and Sendmail are the core Internet applications and the whole UNIX philosophy started a whole 10 years before Gates even thought of MS-DOS!!!

the community needs to get it's shit together and fast.

Sorry, which community? The Open Source and GNU have been creating and distributing free software for nigh on 20 years now, the Firefox browser is stealing users away from Internet Explorer, third world countries can't get enough of OpenOffice...

Sounds like a community that's got it's "shit" labelled, weighed, measured and filed away in neat cabinets if you ask me!

You need to go off and try Linux yourself, then hate it! At least then your opinion will be valid...

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

[glamslam]

A standard way of:

1) Installing any App
2) Installing any Driver

Those are the only things that matter. The rest is preference.

With these two things, Linux use will skyrocket.

Re:Install and Use...

[grumbel]

The Linux install itself never was much of the problem, todays Linux are not harder to install then a Windows, in many cases even much easier since almost all drivers come with it, no need to hund down a trillion different sites to find the drivers.

Where Linux however misarably fails is in the maintainability, the day to day install of some toy app or a new 'not yet in the distris standard kernel' driver. For the average Joe User RPM, DEB, tar.gz and friends don't make any sense and never will. Under Windows and MacOSX installing is a matter of double-clicking, pretty much a no-brainer, under Linux there are dozens of ways to package and compile stuff, incompatibilties all over the place, there simply is no right way to package stuff, everybody is doing it their own style, leaving the user stuck with a whole lot of try&error. Until Linux gets to the point where I can install a 'Linux App' in a common way on every Linux out there it won't make much of a difference on the desktop.

Re:United Linux membership

[rainman_bc]

I thought Caldera was one of the driving forces behind United Linux...