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Time for a Linux Consolidation?
An anonymous reader writes "Are there too many Linux distributions currently available? Can there be too many? This article explores the effect of the large number of distros out right now and suggests that progress could possibly be made through a consolidation. The article is more focused on Linux on the desktop but the ideas presented would impact the entire community, especially as it is seen as a rival to Windows." From the article: "One of the less widely recognized reasons why Linux has not yet toppled Windows, despite it many advantages, is how divided the resources available to Linux are. With dozen of different distributions the Linux community is so diffuse that the power or significance of any specific entity is severally limited."
... the success called "United Linux"??
Meh.
We should form a committee to consolidate and leverage synergy for our information technology solutions in the marketplace!
THIS IS A PERFECT OPPORTUNITY FOR BUREAUCRACY!!1
Linux is never going to reduce the number of available distributions, even if it's what's good for Linux, because the people making these distributions aren't doing it for the benefit of "Linux". They're doing it for the benefit of themselves.
It's all very well and good to be some kind of columnist, standing outside of Linux and going "well, Linux would be better if Slackware and Gentoo would combine". That's easy to say. But this doesn't help you much if you're a Slackware user; it might be better for Linux if that happened but it wouldn't be better for Slackware and to the Slackware developer, what's better for Slackware is what matters because Slackware is what they want to use. If it wasn't, they'd be using Gentoo instead in the first place.
Linux development, as an open source process, is fueled by self-interest. This is its greatest strength. That it indirectly produces weaknesses is unavoidable.
I am a windows apologist - look at my history and you will see I entirely willing to point out the failings of Linux to the Zealots as the next guy.
But even I can see that the diversity of Linux is one of its strengths, as well as its weakness right now. Thanks to the sheer variety of work done in exploring slightly different approaches to the same task, we get to experiment with a multitude of approaches and ideas.
While that may not be a truly better product now, it can only lead to an excellent one in the future.
I am in no hurry for Linux to take over - I am not even sure that the operating system that does take over will be called Linux. Windows will have to sink a lot lower before its abandoned by the masses.
I am entirely certain that the work done in Linux over the past 10 years will shape the next generation operating system that finally does defeat windows though.
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I think there are too many distros, but moreover, I think there are too many competing technologies: QT vs. GTK, dpkg vs. rpm vs. ebuild vs. tgz, etc. If we could work out some good standards -- that everybody followed -- we could have all the distros anyone wanted and it wouldn't be a problem.
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> With dozen of different distributions the Linux community is so diffuse that the power or significance of any specific entity is severally limited.
The author clearly missed the point of Open-Source. *The power or significance of any specific entity is severally[sic] limited* so the users have control. That is *why* people want to use Open-Source. Indeed there are few reasons apart from that one.
DEs are freely interchangeable between distros, and even package manager GUIs are fairly universal - There may be hundreds of distros, but how many are there that don't use RPMs, apt-get or source code?
The amount of community time spent on distro-specific stuff is miniscule compared to the time spent on projects that can be used on a wide variety of distros. The number of distros is therefore largely irrelevant, rather than some community-draining problem like TFA says.
After all, that's the whole point of Open Source, isn't it. . ? Sharing code amongst projects. . ?
So.. it has come to this
First, the hyperlinks in the articles are actually advertisement links. Second, you cannot consolidate distributions when I can start my own distribution tomorrow.
Dear editors, can we please mod articles? Recently there have been numerous articles that are just thinly disguised advertisements and click-through magnets. Slashdot as a community deserves better.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Competition is good. Ubuntu is a latecomer that just came out September of 2004 and it's one of the best distros for newbies. And most popular.
Knoppix is good and for a different audience/purpose. Imagine if either weren't out there.
A little known distro LFS (Linux From Scratch) is great for learning linux deep down inside and for ultimate configuration, but serves neither market the above two do.
The people who make distros, especially the ones not in the top 20, are people who are doing it for fun. You will not be able to funnel their effort without them feeling forced and ultimately quiting.
I would also like to have more cooperation in the *nix world, but this would have to do purely with standards and how drivers work, etcetera so that there is a reduction on overlap on projects few people want to work on (to get things working right).
But Linux's strength comes from diversity, otherwise it wouldn't have come so far. Just look at the Window Managers - specifically KDE and Gnome - without the one, the other wouldn't have been pushed to be better or as good as it is today.
We don't want to be Windows. A one-size-fits all approach wouldn't have let linux run on servers, as well as PCs, as well as in PDA's and other embedded applications as well as it does.
Has Windows really improved since 95 that much in any significant way? Is their one-size-fits-all solution what we want?
So, a consumer walks into a computer store to buy a computer, and they're overwhelmed by too many choices of Linux.
Sorry, I don't buy it.
The problem is that, with few exceptions, you can't buy a machine at retail with *any* Linux on it. The only way Linux ends up on machines now is when a consumer decides to get rid of the OS they got for "free" on the machine.
Consolidating Linux distros doesn't do anything about getting it into the hands of users and onto machines - an effective sales and marketing organization does that.
They often have no interest in "rivaling" MS.
The larger distros like SuSE, RH, Mandriva, etc. are companies, they are going to keep trying to make a profit.
Then you have distros like Gentoo and Debian that are firmly established and will keep producing their fine distros because they have such enthusiastic communities.
Over time leading distros will emerge and fade away. Some people will see the benefits of consolidating their efforts and others will continue to pursue their goals on their own.
It's just the way it is; writing one more article about why all the distros (or GNOME and KDE) should "join forces to bring down MS" is not going to change that.
If I improperly categorized the article I didn't read, I'm sorry, but I still think it's a waste of time to try and "unite the troops".
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is how much wasted effort is spent on "packaging" (which is a concept that doesn't really exist on other operating systems). For any given piece of software there are probably 30 people who all do the same work (more or less) putting it into some quasi proprietary format. That's where consolidation is needed.
Well, no, we don't really want this. What we need, more compatibility between different distros, not a single distro
..., for one. And then, even if we'd use the same packaging format, we'd have lots of troubles anyway: The "package namespace" is different in each distro, xorg can be split up in 50 different packages called "lib$FOO" in debian xand in fedora 25 called "xorg-lib-$FOO", or some shit.
.deb or .rpm. Sight....
DEB vs RPM vs ebuilds vs
That's the biggest problem for inter-distro compatibility IMO . And the one way that it can be fixed is by moving the "packagin work" to developers (ie: let the developers write the spec files / debianize them, don't redo all the packaging work yourself as ALL distros currently do). But then, the one packaging format that encourages developers that is autopackage, which nobody is going to use because it's not
Perhaps, but as long as they exist we have to waste our time resolving them over and over and over again.
The question is more like: how much time do you spend working on installing/configuring/repairing the Linux (or BSD or whatever *nix) box of your choice, versus how much time you spend installing/configuring/repairing Windows?
For me, it's easy:
1 - Installing Linux: maybe twice as much time as Windows, due mainly to the lack of prepackaged drivers for this or that
2 - Configuring Unix: 10 times as much time as Windows, because I want to have everything neat and well installed, and KDE can be non-obvious at times.
3 - Maintaining Unix: 0. Maintaining Windows: it's an endless pain in the butt (patching, running Norton, de-spyware-ing, de-virusing, renewing licenses, etc etc...)
So, in terms of time, I spend a lot more time installing and configuring Unix, but then after that I'm done for good.
So even with the minor differences in distros as they are, I'm winning over using Windows anyway. And I'm not even talking about the hard-dollar price of Windows and Windows software, so that's why I'm saying that, for moderately technically-savvy people, Linux is already a better choice than Windows, even with its flaws.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
More FUD of the "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine Fuhrer!" variety.
I'd like to think I'm only going to have to explain this once (yeah, right) so here goes my attempt to explain a few things to the Windows using world.
1. Windows sucks. NT is probably the single most technologically inferior operating system to have ever seen the light of day. In terms of usability, on the surface it might seem great, but go even a few microns below the surface and it is revealed as an absolute dog. (Keep this point in mind, kids, cos it's a very important one)
2. Microsoft have taught the computer using world to think in a number of perverted, unnatural, and generally harmful ways. One of these ways is the insistence that one size has to fit all, i.e., the concept of a monoculture. There can't be more than one operating system in existence at any one time, goes the old saw. Unfortunately what Microsoft doesn't understand (aside from virtually everything else, that is) is that diversity is actually good for computer security, rather than bad for it. If different people run different operating systems, or even different versions of a similar or same operating system, it means that the anarchic 14 year olds wanting to break into said computers will have to work harder...because they will need to write versions of a given virus for a greater number of operating systems than just one. We could even hope that faced with that much effort, they won't bother.
3. Another one of these bad ways of thinking is the insistence that every GUI on the planet be identical to Windows'. You'll normally never hear me praising Apple (takes deep breath, wonders if he can really do this) but they also came up with some great ideas for user interface design, as well. The people currently designing KDE for Linux have even managed to come up with a few.
4. Yet another of Microsoft's evil ideas is the concept that programs should be designed monolithically. This actually follows on from the "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine Fuhrer!" groupthink mentioned earlier. The Linux way of doing things on the other hand tends towards making various pieces which snap together, so that whoever works on a piece only has to worry about the bugs in said piece, rather than the entire program. Because the pieces are often fairly small, they're also usually a lot easier to understand than the sort of software Microsoft writes, and it's therefore easier to figure out how they work.
5. So from these few examples, we can see how Microsoft's ideology is bad. Therefore, I humbly beg you to kindly cease and desist authoring screeds about how Linux should supposedly be more like Microsoft's monstrosities...because it really shouldn't. Microsoft should be taking pages from Linux's book, not the other way around...for many different reasons.
I couldn't disagree more. First of all. Linux is the kernel. If you could choose a different kernel, it'd be something else. There are other things(BSD, QNX, OS/2, BeOS, Apple), but they are not Linux.
Second, "overall usability" is a very subjective and(in your case, I think) loaded phrase. I think you refer to "overall usability," in a self-serving manner, that assumes that everyone wants everything to work the same. This line of thinking is contrary to the spirit behind Linux and open source application development.
Linux wasn't written to be a linear system, with no choices for the user. It was written to be a free alternative, with the ideals of freedom attached to it, to encourage as much independent and diverse development as possible.
Some things work very well, and some don't. That doesn't mean that the system has failed. The system is still moving, and by the grace of freedom, it always will be. Linux has made massive advances, and continues to do so, without restricting its users' creativity and ingenuity.
I trust a community a lot more than I trust a committee.
Meanwhile, busses carry 95% of the traffic, even though they are uncomfortable and smell bad and break down a lot. To switch to driving yourself requires developing too many new skills that you don't need to ride the bus, and those do not carry over to the different models.
So it's not necessarily that the number of choices is, in itself, a bad thing; it is that each choice locks you in to that model, so that even though there are 100 choices, once you pick one, you are stuck with it. That makes the cost of picking wrong so high that it just isn't worth getting off the bus.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
No. I don;t think it was a reference to UnitedLinux. From the article:
"With dozen of different distributions the Linux community is so diffuse that the power or significance of any specific entity is severally limited."
Evidently, they are suggesting that centralized control over the operating system is what is required for Linux to spread. This is not like United Linux because no single entity controlled United Linux. This is instead the Microsoft model, which is why they are wrong.
Clearly there are a lot of areas that need improvement on unifying the base platform for Linux-based systems. And clearly the fragmentation has caused problems (was that Runlevle 2 or 3? Was that runlevel 3 or 5 in this distro?) but these areas are being worked on. The answer comes in many forms, from FreeDesktop.org to the LSB project.
The average Linux user should not have to worry about the holy wars regarding KDE v. GNOME. They should be able to get KDE apps and GTK apps running on the same system and integrating seamlessly without any problems. This is happening.
The average Linux admin should not have to worry about which utilities are on a system, which runlevel is which, what the device name for the serial port is, and half a dozen other annoyances that have at one time or another plagued the Linux world. These things should be standardized. And it is happening.
In short, consolidation is not the answer. Standardization is the answer. Interoperability is the answer. On top of that, each vendor should be encouraged to extend the standard as a way of trying out new things. Eventually new ideas will make their way in, just like other standards (POSIX, SQL, etc).
And just to mention this, there may be cases where the standard does not apply. I for one don't think that TiVo's need to be LSB compliant...
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