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

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 =)

United Linux membership

[DaEMoN128]

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

Re:United Linux membership

[FluffyPanda]

Well, they are trying to unite linux after a fashion...

LSB

[danormsby]

My big hope for United Linux was that if I created a binary it would work under all x86 versions of Linux.

I'm now hoping Linux Standard Base 2.0 will really take off.

Re:No version 2?

[Aliencow]

Yeah, Windows 2 was AWESOME !!

United linux would succeed if..

[dcstimm]

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!

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?

Re:If linux had..

[pe1rxq]

I think Staticly compiled binaries are the way to go!

Great, a 1.5MB hello world.....

Jeroen

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.

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: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).

Too many cooks

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought the "problem" with Linux is that it is a democracy.

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 :-) ) 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.

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.