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Petreley on Caldera OpenLinux 2.3
A. J. Rimmer writes "Just ran across this review of Caldera 2.3 from Nick Petreley [?] of LinuxWorld. " Saint Nick likes it - says that "not only continues to leapfrog over all
other Linux distributions for ease of
installation; it also proves, beyond the
shadow of a doubt, that Linux can be
easier to install than Windows. " Pretty strong words - what do you folks like best?
Then I doubt seriously that you've been following the tech media for more than two months.
/. have either never tried Caldera, or they tried it quite some time ago. Give it a fair try now, and I think you'll see it's the only distro at the moment that can even attempt to seriously challenge Microsoft.
I've been following Caldera's progress for several years now (since it was a rogue project in Novell, even), and if you'd been paying any attention, you might even have found several of the posts I made right here about the surprising quality, stability, and incredible ease of installation of the 2.2 release. It's not perfect, and Caldera (as do other Linuxes) has a long way to go, but it's really quite good, and a very solid product.
Although it's anathema to those here who take their distro choices religiously rather than seriously, a very good case can be made that Caldera is the best Linux distro for corporate deployment on either the server or desktop side.
Caldera seems to rub some folks here the wrong way because it's a well-integrated distro rather than the Linux Construction Kits favored by some of the developer community. Caldera is not for everyone (that's why we have multiple distros!), but they have an excellent chance of becoming one of (if not the) predominant mainstream distros.
Finally, I find that most of the Caldera-haters here on
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
IMHO this is the best thing they could have done. When I first started using Linux I would play with the different options that appeared when I right clicked on the root window. I don't know how many times during this initial exploration of my new Linux environment did I manage to completely change how everything looked and worked. More often than not there was no obvious way to change it back.
By bundling only KDE Caldera have acknowledged that one UI is better than lots. They have realised that the geeks who want the flexibility will probably be willing to either:
- download a different WM
- get one off another CD
- create their own themes
- any or all of the above
Congratulations Caldera for having the sack to pick something and stick to it.--------------------------------------------
my blog: good times, man, good times
Quick! Name a Caldera employee! OK....now, name a redhat employee. See what I mean?
In open source software, momentum to harness enthusiasm is everything. This includes media momentum, developer momentum, slashdot momentum, USENET momentum. Try this thought experiment - how many posts about Redhat can you remember reading in the past week? Now...how many posts about Caldera can you remember? My guess is, not many.
Redhat has a close relationship with the community. It knows how to play the media, even if it stumbles over IPO embarrassments. OTOH, Caldera seems to put on the cloak of Yet Another Corporation. At least, that's the impression I get.
I bought a book with a caldera CD a couple of yrs ago. For some reason, I got the impression that Caldera was trying to differentiate itself from the linux community by portraying itself as "Commercial" and not just a freebie company. Maybe this is an unfair characterization, but that's the impression I got.
This strategy is not new. Every other month, a company tries to portray itself as superior because it doesn't depend on the services of freebie programmers; it has its own skilled workforce. If anybody from such companies is reading this, let me repeat - this will not only screw your image in the open source community, it will not make any headlines in the commercial world.
So what is the magic that endears a company to the open source world? Why do linux users flock to redhat or SUSE but ignore caldera? I'd say it's being in touch with the community.
It doesn't make any sense to take a community product and hawk it with detachment. If Caldera has a clue, they need to change their attitude. Simply making a better product won't win the war, as so many dead software companies have proven.
L.
I did my first Linux installation in over two years a couple of weeks ago, and I must admit things have improved to a point where I was able to get most stuff working fairly well. It was faster than a WinNT 4.0 install, too. There are still a couple of things that I found a wee bit arcane, though:
Overall, I'm impressed with how far Linux has come in the past two years, but after a weekend of fiddling there are still some faults apparent. I'm sure I'll find more as I keep fiddling with Linux in my spare time (the various package mechanisms worry me), but it is getting better. I just don't agree it's as easy as Windows (overall).