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New Debian-based Enterprise Linux?
arkanoid.dk writes "Sources close to Progeny, Mandriva and Turbolinux report that a new Enterprise Linux distribution is on its way. Apparently, the distribution will be based on Debian 3.1 Sarge and will form the foundation of the next server distributions from the three companies. The three companies hope that the new distribution will enable them to compete with the market leaders Red Hat and Novell Inc's server distributions. An interesting part is that the new system should support both DEB (Debian package) and RPM (Red Hat Package Management) to enable better cross-compatibility with other Linux flavours. The vendor said: 'It will have a nice, Web-based front end for service management, which Sarge lacks. It's basically oriented toward edge-of-the-network type applications, such as ISP software.'"
I'm more interested to find out what kind of administrative tools they would bring to the table. Debian has had RPM support for a while.
It disappoints me that distributions that are forked off of Debian often fall short of it by not preserving some of Debians greatest assets, like being the NetBSD of Linux dsitributions so I can run Debian on my x86 desktops, and my PPC Mac Mini. I tried Xandros, which is based off of Debian a while back (not for myself, I was running Slackware back then) and it was okay for x86, but required alot of mucking around just to change the window manager to one that the user preferred. Also, it is x86 only, which is too bad (I know about Ubuntu, but I want one distribution for all desktops if possible, but I don't mind different iteraitons of *BSD on server/router) Lets hope this one will at least support both PPC Macs and x86 PCs.
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If their focus was really for a consumer desktop, they'd knock off the bullshit with Java, Flash, and other desktop must-haves. They have alot of stuff in their wiki that describes the painful steps you have to take to get things working right.
Oh and I hope you don't plan on using dvd::rip or other dvd creation tools that require mplayer. Mplayer segfaults all over the place due to an audio bug and the ubuntu devs have done nothing to fix it.
The kings of the linux desktop will remain Suse, Mandrake and maybe even Fedora until the Ubuntu devs take their distro more seriously. I like it and run it but it's definitely got alot of weirdness they need to work out.