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New Commercial Linux Distro Based on Debian

Posted by Roblimo on from the another-player-in-the-commercial-distro-game dept.

We got a press release in the middle of the night touting Linux by Libranet, which is "based on the world acclaimed Linux release by Debian." They go on to say "Up to now the Debian distribution was a viable choice mostly for software developers and technical people. The Libranet release now brings Debian to the desktop, making it available to users with little or no Linux experience." Wouldn't it be just as easy to get an experienced friend help you install "pure" Debian and go from there? This robably won't be the last one of these we see, though.

1 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Warning, another CITYOT* response by rcw-work · · Score: 4
    Call it the year of the Debian clones.

    For years, Debian has maintained that it would be better for a developer to fork the distribution if you don't agree with them in a key political area (for example, the DFSG). However, it seems Corel was the only one who forked for this reason (Debian wouldn't have accepted wordperfect .debs into non-free without written permission that anyone -- like, oh, our mirror administrators -- can redistribute them).

    Perhaps:

    1. these other developers would just like their own sandbox to hack around in? This seems to be the case with Stormix, the developers have been associated with Debian for quite some time and the relationship between Stormix and Debian is fairly amicable.
    2. they want to make and sell their own branded commercial distribution? (this would include both Stormix and Corel)
    3. they want the fame of having their very own distribution?
    4. some part of debian has become technically or politically hostile to them and they wish to fork because of that?

    If it's #1, the best case would be to have the changes from their modifications put back into Debian itself, then everyone profits.
    If it's #2, more power to ya.
    If it's #3, sorry, you're going to be another also-ran.
    If it's #4, then communication with an aspect of the Debian project has quite possibly failed. Typically these things can be worked out and a concensus reached, unless it's one of those things that just isn't open for discussion (like the DFSG). And there are a LOT of things you can do without being a developer (for example, take a look at http://master.debian.org/~wakkerma/bugs/, nail a few of them, and email patches to nnnnn@bugs.debian.org)

    I'm sure there's lots of other reasons too. Whatever they are, more discussion about them couldn't hurt.