Bruce Perens on UserLinux and Ubuntu

SDenmark writes "Ever wondered what happened to UserLinux, and how it's faring now that Ubuntu has stolen the spotlight? Linux Format has an interview with Bruce Perens, founder of UserLinux, the Open Source Initiative and Linux Standard Base. Perens discusses the impact of Ubuntu, how industry bodies are helping open source and why figureheads are important for the Free Software community."

Comments

Money talks

[smokeslikeapoet]

Ubuntu has a huge bankroll behind it. It's great, I use it. But the bankroll helps.

Re:Money talks

[Lumpy]

Ubuntu also has newbie love.

i have tried over the years to convert many loved ones and friends to linux. It failed because of the "hard" factor.

Every single one of them LOVE Ubuntu and will not switch back to windows. Why? installing new software is brain dead easy... Far easier than windows and MAC os has ever been, plus they all do not care about running brand name apps but simply something that works.

The biggest thing they all love, no viruses and no spyware.

Re:Money talks

[EnronHaliburton2004]

/etc/ld.so.conf is missing

I blieve this is correct, and is also the new Debian-way of doing things. This has never prevented me from compiling anything. Perhaps you are misusing /etc/ld.so.conf ??? /etc/ld.so.conf isn't needed to run the default OS. /lib & /usr/lib are already included in the default library path, and other libraries are cached in /etc/ld.so.cache .

People tend to overuse /etc/ld.so.conf (and LD_LIBRARY_PATH). Perhaps someone at Debian or Ubuntu finally decided to clean up. Good for them.

Re:Money talks

[towsonu2003]

the default GCC installed (GCC 4.0) from the default debian repositories cannot build executables, /etc/security/console.perms is missing, /etc/ld.so.conf is missing

stop whining and start filing bugs!

Re:Money talks

[DrWhizBang]

latest version has PAM older than .79 and the latest is .99, the default GCC installed (GCC 4.0) from the default debian repositories cannot build executables, /etc/security/console.perms is missing, /etc/ld.so.conf is missing ...

For all it's faults atleast things work right with Fedora Core and I can compile mythtv with miniminal effort

I know! My wife said the same thing when I installed Ubuntu on my home computer. "WTF! PAM is really old! We can't let the kids use this!"

I mean really, compiling mythtv is absolutely necessary on a desktop distro. How are the newbs going to get past that? Having no ld.so.conf is definitely not userfriendly.

Re:Money talks

[ardor]

It must be your fault. I installed dapper, apt-getted build-essentials, gcc & g++ 4, make, and can build both sources from the net and my projects without any problems. No ld.so.conf problems arise.... ever.

Re:Money talks

[OneSeventeen]

To install software in Ubuntu, you click "Applications">"Add Applications"

This requires the administrator (root) password, since we don't want just anybody to be able to install software. (i.e. viruses embedded into emails)

Then, you just scroll through the categories, and the programs in them, and when you find something you might be interested in, you click on it, see the description of the software on the right side of the window, and if you like it, you put a check in the checkbox next to it.

You keep doing this for however many applications you want. Once you are done, you click Apply, and it downloads the required files, installs them, puts them in the main "Applications" menu, then tells you where to find all of your new software.

It is basically a user-friendly version of "package management", and kind of like Windows XP's Add/Remove programs, only you can add software from a variety of vendors, and you use the internet to get the latest version, rather than your install CD to get a 5 year old version. (kind of nice, actually)

I have used that method to install software such as email clients, 3d rendering programs, vector art programs, audio editing programs, and even desktop publishing software.

Re:Money talks

[aCapitalist]

Every single one of them LOVE Ubuntu and will not switch back to windows. Why? installing new software is brain dead easy... Far easier than windows and MAC os has ever been, plus they all do not care about running brand name apps but simply something that works.

It sounds like your family and friends really don't need that much in the way of software. There are a lot of people that can basically live in a browser. That's fine, but once you need to step out that repository universe, installing software becomes much more difficult than on windows or mac.

I never quite understood why something like autopackage wasn't adopted as a universal package format and native package systems could be retrofitted to play nicely with it.

For example, a developer could just package up his code in an autopackage and it would just work with all the major distros. The native package system could go out and find all the dependencies and install them seamlessly. Of course there could be library versioning problems with that scenario, but who knows.

I actually consider Linux (or something like Ubuntu) to be a better fit for newbs than windows. I'll still use windows on my desktop though because I can basically get a full Unix environmnet, plus a whole lot more with windows. I tend to run colinux or an xserver to the machine in the basement.

Re:Money talks

[cHiphead]

ALWAYS use Synaptic, its loads stabler than Adept (and its interface is more traditional and not so 'search filter' lamed). Also don't use 'Kubuntu' iso installs, install Ubuntu then apt-get the kubuntu-desktop package.

Coincidentally, if you are doing development from within linux, you should use a distro you are comfortable with and actually know how its configured. Did you spend any time on ubuntuforums.org or (especially) on the irc channel asking for help? I've never come across a more nub friendly free support experience.

OSDL Desktop Linux

[anandpur]

Why not help? http://www.osdl.org/lab_activities/desktop_linux/

BP:Well, some of the industry bodies try to help open source. OSDL is actually handicapped in one very important way, which is that the majority of OSDL's membership have a conflict of interest where the agenda of open source is concerned.

Figureheads? Let's do it Hollywood style

[TheSpatulaOfLove]

Figureheads are useles unless they're glamorous. I can see it now - (Pick your favorite Hollywood Floozie) dressed in a business suit touting the wonders of (favorite flavor Linux). Marketing speaks to mouth-breathers.

Re:Figureheads? Let's do it Hollywood style

[STDOUBT]

Debian has a floozy:
http://www.linuxforum.com/linux_wallpapers_full/10 4.php

I can see it now.

[slashbob22]

Fear and Loathing in La SuSE (They've got the lizards, just need some product placement).
Honey I Shrunk the Embedded Ubuntu.
Star Wars XV: Attack of the CentOS (Didn't this happen in Tuttle, OK?)
Miss Fedora Universe (Make the Geeks go crazy for models in Fedoras)
A Beautiful Distro (A Linspiring movie)

OK, I am done. But why not have product placement, much like Apple has done in popular culture for the past few years.

What is Userlinux?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Not to be an ass, but what is Userlinux? Is it a Linux Distro? There is no obvious description on the Userlinux webpage. People like to blame Ubuntu for stealing the spotlight, but Ubuntu fame isn't preventing anyone from putting up a quick blurb describing "Userlinux".

Every open source project should have a quick 2 line description at the top of the webpage. It shouldn't take me 6 clicks to get a BASIC description of your project.

Before you criticize, here's what I did:

• http://www.userlinux.com/ directs me to http://www.userlinux.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl
• http://www.userlinux.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl doesn't have a description, but it does say:
  
  "Main announcements have been moved to the UserLinux web site at http://www.userlinux.com/ . "
  
  and
  
  "# See http://www.userlinux.com/ and http://www.userlinux.com/about for more information. "
  
• 
  
  Great, so I click on http://www.userlinux.com/ and end up back at http://www.userlinux.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl . No luck there!
  
  
• Let's check out http://www.userlinux.com/about/.
  
  This site is parked via OpenSourceParking.com .
  No-Cost Parking, only Open Source / Free Software are used.
  Proceeds from advertising will go to political and promotional efforts on behalf of Open Source / Free Software.
  Now, you can do some good with that parked domain!
  
  

I still have no idea what UserLinux is. And that was what, 7 clicks?

Compare this to Ubuntu.com. It took me 10 seconds to read the 2 line blurb at http://www.ubuntu.com/:

"Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!

Re:What is Userlinux?

[data64]

Not to be an ass, but what is Userlinux?

See UserLinux description on Wikipedia. And I do agree with you, there should be a better description on Userlinux.com website. I still don't know why one would use UserLinux rather than Ubuntu.

Re:What is Userlinux?

[data64]

Interestingly enough, its listed under Inactive or Discontinued distributions on Wikipedia.

Re:What is Userlinux?

[int14]

I just went to the UserLinux FAQ looking for the question, 'What is UserLinux?', and I was going to be all smug and reply with some 'read the FAQ you fool' type comment...

but then I realized...

They don't even have that question on the FAQ. Wow, so yea, you're absolutely right.

Re:What is Userlinux?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because it has been inactive for a very long time. In the article, Bruce says that he will try to get back to it.

Re:What is Userlinux?

[TDO48]

I like your comment... actually happends with sooo many open source software: instead of having a quick description of 2-3 lines on the main page that explains the project, we usually find some news/revision history/CVS update or some general blurb saying something about free, hosting, etc.

Somehow in science we learn to convey the key message of an article in its abstract... but apparently in OSS sometimes this is not the case. And without clear description of what is the stuff about, well... unless you've time to loose...

Of course having the news or revision history on the front page is certainly interesting for those guys who know what is the project about, but in this case we might also argue that they could link to whateverproject.org/news and leave the general description on the main page for the casual visitors.

UserLinux

[bhirsch]

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't UserLinux just sarge (when it was testing) pinning some sid packages? I honestly don't remember it being anything terribly more substantial than that along with some convenient metapackages like graphical-desktop-environment and enterprise-server.

When Perens announced at the Desktop Linux conference in MA a few years ago, it sounded like a pretty half-baked idea.

Re:UserLinux

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a Bruce Perens vanity project that didn't take off. It didn't cause the desired effect which was a giant Bruce Perens masturbation fest. Bruce is a publicity whore who has been skating on accomplishments of a long long time ago, he would very much like you to buy him a fast new car that you can give him blow jobs in. Enjoy.

UserLinux was never going to work

[ProteusQ]

I remember being on the mailing list years ago. The conversations with Bruce can be summarized this way:

BRUCE: I can't tell you who I'm working for, but there's a lot of money behind this project. So, we have to be serious about this. What should we call this distro?

BOB: SuperLinux!

FRED: Enterprise-D Linux!

ELMER: CoolNIX!

BRUCE: No, no, no! You have to be serious about this! There's a lot of money behind this project. I can't tell you whose money, but we have to come up with a name for our distro that they'll like!

FRED: If they have that much money, why don't *they* pick a name?

BRUCE: I want this to be a community effort! How about 'UserLinux'?

FRED: Boring.

BOB: Generic.

ELMER: Ditto that.

BRUCE: But the community has to be serious about this! There's a lot of money behind this, and the companies that I can't name won't use Linux without a professionally named distro!

ELMER: So, this is a community effort, but the decisions will be made by fiat?

BRUCE: No, the community has to be a part of this. Now, KDE or GNOME? My clients only want GNOME. What do you think?

ELMER: That we should take this seriously because there's a lot of money behind this project from companies you can't name?

BRUCE: Exactly! So, KDE is out!

Eventually, there was a big rumble and KDE got shoved back in. I dropped the list some time after that, because it was clear that the community was meant to rubber-stamp a project that some large companies wanted to produce on the cheap.

Re:UserLinux was never going to work

[Ploum]

I was on the UserLinux since the beginning and it's absolutely true. Please mod this as "informative", not "funny" !

In fact, the mailing list was more grumbling about the logo and the name than anything else. The only constructive work was done by an Italian guy who did the paperplane logo because he tought it was a good idea (and it was right).

Then, for the next two months, everyone was discussing the color of the plane, if it must point to left or right.

After 6 months of effort, we had ... a paperplane ! woohoo !

Times change, people don't

[Itsacon]

I still think it's funny how there's a new `Holy War' between Linux distros every few months.
`Back in the day' when I had my first experience with Linux, you had the Red Hat Camp vs the SuSe Camp. (Real hackers used Slackware then, btw).
Then Red hat became the evil empire, people started yelling `Debian' at each other, while SuSe became something you didn't talk about.
Around then Mandrake finally made a proper installer (albeit a very limited one if you knew what you wanted) and raked in Windows users by the dozen.
Then that position was attacked by Lindows(C), which was so effective it got in trouble with Redmond itself.
In the meantime, Red Hat looked out of the Windows (pun inteded) and started to make some money. So they started Fedora to keep the free code coming (and stay somewhat compliant to the GNU GPL). And Debian went out of the picture again.

Now I'm hearing Ubuntu on all sides (still sounds like an African dictator to me, but whatever), while my work PC suddenly runs CentOS (where did that one come from?).

UserLinux? Never heard of it either, so must have been a pretty weak spotlight in the first place...

Wonder what the next `Must-have-distro' will be.

I'll make the switch when they stick to one for more than a year, until then, I'll use Windows and BSD.

Just my $0.02...

Re:Times change, people don't

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

You also forgot about Corel's version of Linux, which was supposed to be the first real user friendly Linux that embedded WINE to allow native support of Windows applications (namely, Corel's CorelDRAW suite and WordPerfect).

True, I do agree, Linux distros come and go, but the OS never really takes off. They need one Distro to rule them all, but the Linux camp is so disorganized and filled with too many individuals trying to be the hero that Linux will never be an effective replacement or competitor to Windows. Until you get ALL linux developers concentrating on ONE Linux distro, the very fact that there are 100+ camps will mean Linux will never succeed as a workstation platform. Each distro has its unique claim to fame, but if you had one distribution with ALL these claims, then that would be impressive.

Re:Times change, people don't

[mccalli]

...my work PC suddenly runs CentOS (where did that one come from?).

Tuttle.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Times change, people don't

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I'll make the switch when they stick to one for more than a year, until then, I'll use Windows and BSD.

Alas, poor wretch. Then misfortune shall be thy lot.

Best

[AlterTick]

This is all too confusing. Can't someone just cut to the chase and tell me what the best Linux distro is?

A wise Linux guru

[january]

I am amazed how pragmatic Bruce Perens is. His paper on the economy of Open Source is much better -- both in terms of being concise, as in terms of being correct -- than anything I ever heard from some other Open Source or Free Software Gurus.

I highly recommend http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.htmlthis paper to anyone who has not read it yet. It is much more interesting than the interview itself (which is short, and, in my opinion, quite uninteresting given the experience and knowledge of Bruce Perence -- the interviewer(s) did not get as much of him as they could have).

The article is quite long, but very well researched, and definitely worth spending some time on it.

Cheers,
j.

Holy misleading excerpt, Batman!

[dougmc]

There's a nice little excerpt in the article, in bold, that says this --

"I don't believe that Linux distributions are a natural fit for the enterprise."

... which seems a strange statement for Bruce to be making. But then I read the article, and see that what he really said is this --

BP: I actually considered going to work with Canonical when Mark [Shuttleworth] was starting it, and there were a couple of problems with that. I think that Mark is eventually interested in having a successful and profitable company, and I don't believe that Linux distributions are a natural fit for for- profit enterprise. Indeed, if you go on my website I have a very long paper on the economics of open source, and one of the things that you can derive from that is the fact that open source works almost worst for a for-profit Linux distribution.

Which isn't completely clear, but it seems that Bruce is saying that making a Linux distribution is not a good way to make money. The excerpt that they took makes it sound he's saying that Linux isn't good to use in a business. (And it's made worse in that they edited his words -- they took out `for-profit', which helped qualify his statement a bit.)

In any event, the writer should consider himself chastized. Excerpts like that are only useful if they give you an idea of what the article is about, and in this case it says (when taken out of context and then edited) something totally different than what the person who said those words meant.

Re: Ubuntu...why is it so special?

[uglyduckling]

Like Fedora Core ... 4? Thats the grandparent's point. Theres 100 distros that have up to date packages. Whats so great about Ubuntu that have people crazy about it?

Because there are a lot of people - myself included - who have used Debian for a long time. We like it for various reasons including it's proper Free-(as in speech)-ness, the apt/dpkg package management system, the fairly hands-on approach to system configuration and all sorts of other reasons that vary from person to person. The biggest problem with Debian is that it sucks as a desktop distro because it's too out of date. Ubuntu gives those of us that are long-term Debian fans what we need on the desktop without sacrificing what we love about Debian - except, arguably, a certain level of stability since Debian stable is tested like crazy.

To put it another way, here's why I don't use a selection of other distros: Redhat - too commercial, Suse - ditto, Fedora - can't stand the package management, Mandriva - ditto, Gentoo - would rather spend my time configuring the package well rather than compiling it. I have Debian on my server and love it, and have the closest thing to Debian on my desktop.

Try Wikipedia Next Time.

[twitter]

UserLinux.

UserLInux was a step on the way to a great distro

[beachdog]

UserLinux came closer to being a simple, successful business desktop than anything before it.

Ubuntu has taken over on my desktop because of better USB integration. Ubuntu handles my USB scanner, printer and camera and UserLinux doesn't.

UserLinux made the extraordinary Debian software and package environment accessible without the without the inadvertent and uncontrolled negative Gurella marketing presence that has undermined the mainline Debian distribution.

I'll tell you a UserLinux story:

Back in the days when Red Hat stopped selling a $50 box I started looking for another Distro.

I tried Knoppix and an interesting thing happened when I mistakenly visited the Debian IRC chat seeking assistance. I was treated with gruff and rude dismissal.

What I think was going on was somebody was engaging in Gurella Dis-marketing. Whoever this was, it was someone deliberately making sure that anybody exploring Debian got a good bitter mothful of rejection. The people in the IRC chat were hybrid child-professional assholes. People who projected a veneer of competency, and had nothing to say except "go away".

So after that, UserLinux looked like a really nice bunch of people with a reasonable tolerance for my interests.

UserLinux has a picture of a folded paper airplane reflecting that it was a careful selection of the best of breed applications from the huge Debian package universe. Unlike Debian it didn't make you "Figure this out if you want to install this software"

The target client for UserLinux was a "business desktop". The charm of the distribution was it installed like gangbusters and you could add anything you wanted from Debian.

I joined the UserLinux project and I contributed a help file. For UserLinux I wrote a help file covering tasks like dual boot setup and Java installation.

So I'll say thanks Bruce Perens and also Linux Format British edition is an excellent Linux publication (sold at Borders Books I think).