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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.""
This isn't a reference to a story, this is a paragraph with a few links thrown in. Where's the news?
AccountKiller
I dont buy anything until it hits version 2 and gets all the bugs out.
If you look at UL's website, they SCO is still members of united linux . how ironic
http://www.unitedlinux.com/en/partners/index.html
Stop signs are only Suggestions
I'm now hoping Linux Standard Base 2.0 will really take off.
Omnis amans amens
Now this isn't the only reason but the thing that bothers me most about Linux is updating software. Debian looks like it would be easy to update but I wouldn't know becuase I can never get X to work correctly.
The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES. I'm sure people complain about this all the time. If the game developers would just design games to run on most systems I would be using Linux right now but instead I'm stuck using this piece of shit Windows.
If Linux distro Could get a macosx type Application installer (aka drag and drop the application anywhere into the harddrive) it would gain support like you wouldnt believe, RPM, deb, ebuilds, tar.bz2, tar.gz, all are to complicated for the normal user. Yes I know rpm -ivh blah.rpm isnt hard and apt-get install gaim isnt hard, but I think Staticly compiled binaries are the way to go!
keanmarine.com
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.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I think Staticly compiled binaries are the way to go!
Great, a 1.5MB hello world.....
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
"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.
Real life is overrated.
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.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
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.
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.
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
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.
The competing versions of Linux are worse than the browser competition. Microsoft has made sure that HTML, and now XML, are proprietary depending on how you choose to implement them. The divisions are killing the effort. Is this the future of Linux? Or is this the fate of open source?
oh this is so ironic... posting a link to a Maureen O'Gara article...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I used to believe that linux was harder to set up than windows too, then I installed XP and SuSe 9.1 Pro on my laptop in the same weekend.
At the end of the weekend I had a fully configured Linux system with all the apps and server components that I wanted. My windows install was already crashing because there aren't WHQL certified drivers available for some of the components in my laptop.
I was still trawling the web looking for applications to meet my needs on monday morning.
It certainly didn't seem to me like windows was easier to install.
Unitied Linux was not an grassroot efort like Linux standard base. This are the one to follow for more strict standards.
/* Hello World, the way Real Men(TM) do it */
.alo:
.string "Hello.\n"
.data
.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...
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
You are right, but that doesn't make RH completly like UL.
I didn't put it in my post but the original idea behind UL was to make a strong RH competitor. In that perspective debian comes closer....
One of the bad things about companies choosing RH exclusivly is that they asume RH==Linux and anybody who dares to put its files a little different or use a different library version is in for a surprise.
(When are big software vendors going to learn not to link to a specific sub-sub-version of a library instead of just a major version?)
If there were two big guys (RH & UL or RH & debian) vendors would be forced to take possible differences in account. The result will be better and more flexible software.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
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.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
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.
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.
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...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I've always thought the "problem" with Linux is that it is a democracy.
:-) ) couldn't give a **** what desktop they use as long as it works. ...and what happens if a distribution decides to just supply KDE or Gnome (but not both) ? We have a flame war !!! There is so much in-fighting in Linux that I fear that it may never be accepted as a real alternative.
While on one hand this allows anyone to make any bit of code and bolt it on to Linux, it has the very serious adverse affect of generating "non-standards".
I think the BSD projects are much better in this respect (Theo of OpenBSD has actually stated "it is not a democracy"). While the odd use might complain of lack of choice etc (not me, I might add), I think most users really appreciate the fact that you can pick up a bit of code and if it is documented as working on *BSD then you can be pretty sure that it will.
I accept, of course, that there are differences between the BSDs out there so it's not all rosy.
When it comes to Linux though, I think the problem has got completely out of hand. You have the KDE vs Gnome ware. Ok, this is not specific to Linux, but I think its affect it much more strongly felt in the Linux community. Most end users (and I'm talking about Jo / Jane Bloggs here, not us geeks that read Slashdot
Personally, I think the world should move to one of the BSDs (OpenBSD is my choice) - they simply do not suffer this in-fighting to anywhere near the same extent as Linux does. But that's another issue altogether.
In the meantime, I think the Linux needs someone (elected by all the distributions) who can steer this whole mess into some cohesive system so that when we say "Linux" we actually know what we are talking about and we don't have to worry about exactly WHICH Linux we are talking about. Until this happens (and I don't think it actually will !), Linux will always have an acceptance problem.
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.
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.
as far as server technology goes we all know that most of the backend of the internet is served to us on some POSIX (linux, unix, sun etc...) unit or cluster. So we know that the community has won that war. The things that Linux needs to do to win the DESKTOP war is this: 1. easy install features (automated installers) RPM's are close, but dependencies can be a nightmare. 2. games. you are all going to bitch about this one I know, but the reality is that the game industry has now SURPASSED the movie industry in profitability... now tell me games are not important to desktop applications. Look at how much business TransGaming does just simply by retuning Wine to run games...
I forgot that not all the world is a x86...
BTW, it won't run even on FreeBSD/x86 if you disable the Linux binary layer.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog