In this article at DesktopLinux.com, Tom Adelstein says that UserLinux marks an important step for Linux. Commercial versions are available from big name vendors with support packages. But what happened to the roots of Linux and a freely available version that is standards-compliant and does not carry a large support price tag? Enter UserLinux and the spirit of open source.
UserLinux: An Important Step
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
But what happened to the roots of Linux and a freely available version that is standards-compliant and does not carry a large support price tag?
Hm…Talking ’bout Gentoo? (Debian, Slackware..
WTF IS UserLinux?
Gentoo, Debian, Slackware… hello?
The author was replying to an article that was basically completely disregarding UserLinux.
Personally I think UserLinux is an interresting project. Userlinux is 100% Debian with Gnome Desktop and a choice of best Apps for an Enterprise Desktop/Server environment – i guess a bit like Ximian Desktop for Novell. And of course there is the certification program and support etc.
Gentoo, Slackware and Debian in themselves do not provide this (i.e enterprise support, certification)
Gentoo, Debian, Slackware… hello?
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yes but only redhat and suse linux is considered as enterprise distributions because they have a long release cycle with a level of agreement to support binary compatibility as much as possible. agreements with oracle and other ISV’s for example doesnt leave much choice in the area. while redhat enterprise and suse is pretty good here they might be costlier than affordable for many people who would prefer per incident support options. while there are clones like caos/taolinux/whitebox linux for redhat ISV’s may refuse to cooperate. userlinux gives them a valid and free as in beer alternative with multiple vendors, resellers and support options as required for a fee
What RHEL is to Fedora core, UserLinux is to Debian testing.
“..that is standards-compliant.. ” “..Gentoo, Debian, Slackware…”
Especially Debian is not interested in standards at all, the debian community is so arrogant: they think they are the only standard, so they don’t care about fhs/lsb, posix etc.
It would be nice if we had seen any progress or heard anything at all out of userlinux in the last 6 months.
What RHEL is to Fedora core, UserLinux is to Debian testing.
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Surely that’s what RHEL is to Fedora Core, Debian Stable is to Debian testing? = Debian is more than capable of acting in an enterprise role if a company stands behind it – why another distro?
It would be nice if we had seen any progress or heard anything at all out of userlinux in the last 6 months
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a beta is expected to be released on sep 1.
“Surely that’s what RHEL is to Fedora Core, Debian Stable is to Debian testing? = Debian is more than capable of acting in an enterprise role if a company stands behind it – why another distro?
”
debian stable is too old and the lifecycle isnt fit. moreover debian tries to accomodate everyone without playing favorites.
userlinux is about choosing and supplying support for one and only software for a particular task usually. for example gnome as DE, mozilla as browser and so on
… that userlinux only supports gnome.
one can argue about it, but apart from the sheer amount of FUD, there isnt much gnome does better than KDE. exept from dumbing down the interface, that is.
integration? KDE rules. (gtk-qt-engine anyone? spellchecking in the webbrowser? everywhere the same dialoges? KIO-slaves?)
configurabillity? well, GNOME *used* to be quite nice, until they decided to remove options, and/or obscure them in a registry tool.
speed? well, hard to measure, but I think KDE is generally faster. and its easier to develop in qt/kde, too, isnt it?
aaah, whatever – if userlinux doesnt support both, they wont come far.
What is much more stupid than normally would be stupid is that some stupid people out there want stupid distributions to support that stupid favorite desktop environment of yours while there’s only one real stupid distro (RH/Fedora) with this stupid GNOME as the stupid default desktop environment, which some stupid people do like to use, even if it’s totally stupid.
So, use some other stupid distribution and don’t complain on this stupid site about this stupid issue.
Bye bye, stupid KDE fan boy. And take your own stupid fud with you, please.
* Stupidly signed by a stupid GNOME, stupid KDE ánd stupid Windows user.
Bah. This was a stupid message. /me clicks on the stupid submit button.
Serously. Is that project still alive? If so it has to be the slooooowest moving open source project ever. It was announced like a year ago.
readers get another look at mainstream media bias toward the open-source community. Credit the Vnunet author for doing what many journalists do — jump on a topic about which they know little.
Wait, you’re a journalist… oh the irony.
Serously. Is that project still alive? If so it has to be the slooooowest moving open source project ever. It was announced like a year ago.
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no. did you see the project mailing lists. the beta is expected on sep 1. dont jump to false conclusions. btw it wasnt announced 1 year ago. it was started in late 2003. its been about 4 months since work started on it
KDE is backed by Qt and trolltech.
Gnome is backed by GNU. Debian is also backed by GNU.
I think he’s going for consistency, and, openness. Qt costs money on windows, whereas gtk is free. Granted Gtk is a lot worse on mac, but I’m sure they’re working on a decent port.
In the end though, KDE can have all the functionality in the world. this fact will still remain: gnome is easier to use. and that, quite frankly, matters more in the long run when enterprise linux is ready for primetime on most of corporate america’s desktop machines.
Hell http://gnnix.org will be more important than Userlinux, released sooner and updated more frequently. To keep comparing it to Redhat and Suse is just putting on airs, doubt they lose any sleep. Maybe the other 315 on Distrowatch.com might be a little closer competition unless he plans on releasing version 10.0 on day one, like those are MATURE distros and he should have at least picked a name that doesn’t rhyme with loser linux. Good luck with that.
“debian stable is too old and the lifecycle isnt fit.”
“Serously. Is that project still alive? If so it has to be the slooooowest moving open source project ever. It was announced like a year ago.”
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Debian 3.1 will be released shortly and will then have the latest kernel and about the latest KDE version. That’d mean that the release cycle argument isn’t valid anymore.
Support is another point, but then why not simply offer support for the Debian 3.1, and then possibly only for the KDE environment + OO.org + Gimp or something like that?
I could have several reasons for mentioning KDE there, for example, that it is fast enough for a Pentium II 350, or that its FTP support actually works properly, or that it doesn’t have so many bugs, or that most KDE applications actually are quite usable, or that Mozilla, Firefox and Gimp aren’t GNOME applications. But those aren’t the reason; my reason is that Debian 3.1 will probably have about the latest KDE available now (3.2.2) but only Gnome 2.4.
“but only Gnome 2.4.”
Right now the only 2.4 Gnome package in Debian “testing” is gnome-games, everything else is 2.6.
Your lucky I can’t figure out if thats a real distro or not! They have files on an ftp site, but things like “fixed hot and cold plug” don’t lend credit to a real distro, as well as adding all the fd.o software.
And I forgot: I believe there must be a reason why the newbie-oriented distros (Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros) all use KDE.
And I forgot: I believe there must be a reason why the newbie-oriented distros (Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros) all use KDE.
And there must be a reason why the top 3 commerical distros all use Gnome……
I think I am newbie-oriented too with the GNUstep LIVE CD, http://www.linuks.mine.nu/gnustep/ . Oh and it’s there already.
“Rather than seeing a hurdle by users, I have only one concern regarding Bruce Peren’s project: The general open-source community does not understand the need for enterprise Linux. Gaining an understanding of the difference between popular and enterprise Linux will require some education. Other than that, UserLinux appears as a viable project and one which will see major adoption.”
So why didn’t he name it EnterpriseLinux? Must be his Debian roots. Must (deb)obsure everything.
> And there must be a reason why the top 3
> commerical distros all use Gnome……
Hm, no. While RH defaults to a bluecurved “Gnome”, it’s quite different everywhere else:
Europe:
* Novell/SUSE defaults to KDE in SUSE Linux now. And according to them they will do so in the future as well. Novell’s separate distribution for business customers NLD won’t have a default desktop at all. It will be up to their customers to define the default for their employees.
* Mandrake defaults to KDE.
Asia:
* Turbolinux defaults to KDE
* With Asianux Redflag-Linux and Miracle Linux default to KDE as well
South America:
*Connectiva defaults to KDE
*Kurumin Linux defaults to KDE
North America:
* Xandros and Lycoris default to KDE
And Knoppix as well as most of its derivatives default to KDE.
Redflag/
> Redflag/
oops, While this is a KDE distributor as well I overlooked to delete this line. Sorry.
Debian 3.1 will be released shortly and will then have the latest kernel and about the latest KDE version. That’d mean that the release cycle argument isn’t valid anymore.
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no it doesnt invalidate the lifecycle argument unless debian move to faster releases which wouldnt be possible with the number of software and architecture. consider userlinux a focussed debian for enterprises. its compatible with debian. why are you complaining
“So why didn’t he name it EnterpriseLinux? Must be his Debian roots. Must (deb)obsure everything.”
no. he just choose the name because he didnt want to limit future possibilities.
”
Support is another point, but then why not simply offer support for the Debian 3.1, and then possibly only for the KDE environment + OO.org + Gimp or something like that? ”
why not just polish it a bit and call it userlinux. thats what exactly it is. debian wont lend its name to a enterprise focussed product not created by the project volunteers. so a new name is required
“And there must be a reason why the top 3 commerical distros all use Gnome……
”
suse uses kde by default. so does mandrake. only redhat has gnome as default.so what 3 commercial distros are you talking about
Hm, no. While RH defaults to a bluecurved “Gnome”, it’s quite different everywhere else:
You forgot JDS
Novell/SUSE defaults to KDE in SUSE Linux now.
Its been said before, Novell had no say in SuSE 9.1
Novell’s separate distribution for business customers NLD won’t have a default desktop at all.
They clearly said the intergration work is being done on the Gnome side (evolution, gaim, ifolder/nautlius, beagle, etc).
You will proably( I dont work there, so I wouldnt know) be able to use KDE but why?
….
Buddy add up the money JDS, RH, and potentially NLD will rake in and compare that to ALL the distros you mentioned combined!!!
I never said Gnome was the most popular.
” You cannot transfer the spirit of the community to people who have nothing but profit to motivate them.”
What exactly is the linux community “spirit”? Whats wrong with getting something other than a warm fuzzy feeling for your work.
[And] according to HP, too many distributions could confuse users. ‘Having too many competitors is not good for the market,’ said a spokeswoman for the company.”
I tend to agree with this statement. One of the biggest problems with linux is the fact that joe college student thinks that he can come up with a better Linux distro than everyone else. So we suffer through countless reviews of YALD. Perhaps UserLinux can come out on top at the defacto standard Linux distro and clean up the market. I wish Bruce the best of luck.
> You forgot JDS
Yes, because they simply don’t matter. Look at their rank on distrowatch. And try to find out what actually happened to their “huge” china deal … it was basically marketing crap to give their distribution a good start.
> Its been said before, Novell had no say in SuSE 9.1
SUSE 9.2 will default to KDE as well … You don’t want to tell me that they had no say there as well, do you? BTW: SUSE is Novell now.
> They clearly said the intergration work is being
> done on the Gnome side (evolution, gaim,
> ifolder/nautlius, beagle, etc).
Actually Novell does the same integration work for KDE as well … go and ask the Kopete guys.
Yes, because they simply don’t matter. Look at their rank on distrowatch.
Hmmm nice logic. Red Hat right now is in 12, does that mean that knoppix, gentoo, mepis, etc are more important then RH, that accounts for 70% of commerical sales of linux?
And try to find out what actually happened to their “huge” china deal … it was basically marketing crap to give their distribution a good start.
First link? Secondly what about Allied Irish Banks, OGC, etc? Sun has had more commerical linux success then 99% of linux distros.
SUSE 9.2 will default to KDE as well … You don’t want to tell me that they had no say there as well
If you’ve got a Novell exec saying that im listening. Its obvious that Novell is focusing on the business desktop, and like Ive said before NLD = Gnome-centric.
Actually Novell does the same integration work for KDE as well … go and ask the Kopete guys.
Nice, no links, no quotes, no nothing. What we *KNOW* is that Novell is working on Evolution and Gaim. So put up or shut up.
Here we go.
http://news.com.com/Novell+to+release+enhanced+Linux+in+fall/2100-7…
“Novell’s desktop software employs the GNOME user interface and software, but it will also include that of rival KDE, McLellan said. However, Novell’s integration work is happening only with the GNOME applications, she said.”
I win. 🙂
McLellan is form Ximian.
A trustable person? No, from Ximian.
You win nothing.
More trustable then someone who has nothing to back up their claims.
To me, it seems that most commercial distributions choose GNOME because it is more hackable for some reason.
SUN chose it because GNOME 2.x was far from ready, giving SUN the opportunity to have bigger influence on it than on KDE 2.x which was already a finished thing.
NOVELL, on the other hand, chooses GNOME because they own Ximian, and with that Evolution, Red Carpet and so on. Therefore Novell has the power to do with these products what it wants, things it possibly couldn’t do with KDE.
So, in both cases the choice isn’t made because GNOME is the best, but because they can have more influence on GNOME than on KDE.
Stop the childing arguments and use whatever the hell you want. I am tired of the KDE vs. Gnome bullshit.
I love KDE, but Novell can choose to package and sell whatever the hell they want. If it doesn’t fit my needs for my servers and desktops, I’ll find a distribution that does.
Why is this discussion even happening?…I use GNOME and like it a lot more then KDE..but I know KDE as well and have submitted a couple patches to fix bugs in it + admin a couple comps that use it as the default and it is a very nice DE. GNOME is also a very nice DE. Many corps like GNOME because GTK is LGPL. GNOME focuses on simplicity of UI and KDE focuses on features..this is going to change as KDE starts focusing on UI simplicity and gnome starts gettings things like Beagle/Dashboard/Hal
So basically this is what I am saying…SHUT UP
Perhaps but I think it was because of Gnome’s superior usability and LGPL framework/toolkit.
> Allied Irish Banks, OGC, etc? Sun has
> had more commerical linux success then
> 99% of linux distros.
That’s nice to hear 😉
Then why are they so desperately and obviously in need of a business plan and a future direction?
> If you’ve got a Novell exec saying that im
> listening.
http://linuxtoday.com/mailprint.php3?action=pv<sn=2004-03-31-026-…
“We will never support anything but KDE in Personal Edition,” he predicted. Schlaeger gave “ease of use” as the reason why.
Apart from that it isn’t that difficult to contact Novell/SUSE and ask them or join their team of beta-testers to see where they are going 😉
> Nice, no links, no quotes, no nothing.
SUSE has never been very verbose about their ongoing development and they weren’t very verbose about their support for KDE either … If you really want to find out what’s going on contact them directly and ask them (like I did).
And concerning your quote from a former Ximian employee:
It’s not the first time that Ximian employees try to make free competitor projects look bad. Another well-known example is their FUD campagne against DotGNU:
http://wiki.dotgnu.org/FUDfromNovell
Then why are they so desperately and obviously in need of a business plan and a future direction?
What does that have to do with anything? I was pointing out that SUN has had a few high profile contracts and that they are spanking companies like linspire, Lycoris, Xandros, etc when it comes to revenue generated by linux sales.
“We will never support anything but KDE in Personal Edition,”
DUH *PERSONAL EDITION*. Novell isnt going to make money by selling distros to home consumers, they’re focused on the business desktop, NLD. And once again NLD = Gnome-centric.
Apart from that it isn’t that difficult to contact Novell/SUSE and ask them or join their team of beta-testers to see where they are going 😉
Um you do know that NLD is in close-beta testing and is only avaliable to Novell employees, so unless you work for them, your out of luck.
If you really want to find out what’s going on contact them directly and ask them (like I did).
All I here is YADA YADA YADA, show my proof or you have nothing.
It’s not the first time that Ximian employees try to make free competitor projects look bad.
First, Mono is free. There are no proprietary extensions and its completely opensource.
Secondly your condemning the Mono people for promoting their project? Could you be anymore of a hypocrite?
I think people want to read the UserLinux mailing list history, and ask themselves how Gnome and other software came to be chosen. What practical company situations were analysed with Bruce Perens’ enterprise backers, and what user testing was done to come to a balanced decision about what would be required? Where are the results? I’m not interested in KDE vs Gnome arguments or by-fiat decisions by Bruce, this is what I’m interested in. Until people do that, UserLinux is right next to useless.
I hate to put anyone’s planes on hold for world domination, but Enterprises don’t want to hear stuff such as “the LGPL means you can develop software for free.” They want to know how they will convert word documents, macros, what good commercial development options there are and what UserLinux is going to do to support existing companies like Trolltech and MySQL with business models.
Seriously, enterprises will ask these questions (migration of VB apps, migration of Word macros etc) and everyone will be so busy pointing out license issues that no one will be able to answer them – should UserLinux be lucky anough that those questions are ever asked.
There’s a big gulf between what people think is good enough to get UserLinux (or even just Linux – as pro-Linux as I am) used on the desktop, and the practical day-to-day difficulties of what is required.
Where are Bruce Perens’ backers these days?
Qt costs money on windows, whereas gtk is free.
You think GTK runs on Windows, and if it does, anyone will develop with it commercially? GTK doesn’t cut it as a development tool for commercial software development – end.
And there must be a reason why the top 3 commerical distros all use Gnome……
Again you’re seriously deluding yourself about commercial Gnome Linux distros (and there certainly aren’t three). Red Hat abandoned, and then half restarted, their desktop strategy ages ago. Most of it is now in Fedora – hardly commercial. Sun claims to have shipped X numbers of Java Desktop, without a deployment in sight in China. I know for a fact that the NHS stuff was total bollocks, and came from a half-hearted comment from an official about “evaluating options”. Ximian Desktop does not ship as part of a commercial distribution anywhere, and never has done – a fact that seems totally lost on some short-sighted people, for whatever reason.
Its been said before, Novell had no say in SuSE 9.1
That’s not the way Nat Friedman painted it when he and Miguel hinted that they would “do the right thing”
. They don’t have any say whatsoever over any of Suse’s product lines, nor will they ever. Suse gained guarantees on that before the Novell merger. Suse is the Enterprise Linux Division of Novell, and since Novell is moving to Linux, what Suse says goes.
If you’ve got a Novell exec saying that im listening.
I judge in terms of actions, not just words. KDE integration of Open Office http://kde.openoffice.org and Suse investment. Richard Seibt, Head of Novell Europe: “We will always continue to support KDE.” Chrs Schlaeger: “We will never support anything other than KDE in the Personal Edition.” Meaning? If there are two desktops, guess what it will continue to default to?
Suse 9.0 (the one Nat Friedman hinted would be tightly stitched with Ximian Desktop) – Defaults to KDE, and has a Qt installation routine.
Suse 9.1 – Defaults to KDE, Qt installation routine.
Suse 9.2 – Investment in KDE Open Office, statements above – have a wild stab in the dark! You haven’t seen the Suse 9.2 beta.
Its obvious that Novell is focusing on the business desktop, and like Ive said before NLD = Gnome-centric.
If you’ve got a Novell Executive (i.e. not Nat Friedman, Miguel, Christine McLellan or any ex-Ximian employee masquerading as Novell) saying that, I’m all ears.
Nice, no links, no quotes, no nothing. What we *KNOW* is that Novell is working on Evolution and Gaim. So put up or shut up.
The ex-Ximian people work on Evolution. Neither people within Novell, or Suse does. What we *KNOW*, is that Suse’s Desktop defaults to KDE and will continue to be shipped with it. What we *KNOW*, is that Ximian comes out and says these things – the rest of Novell and Suse doesn’t I’m afraid. Kopete does have exactly the same integration with the KAddressbook in exactly the way they describe. Why the Ximian people chose to lie about that is anyone’s guess.
DUH *PERSONAL EDITION*. Novell isnt going to make money by selling distros to home consumers, they’re focused on the business desktop, NLD. And once again NLD = Gnome-centric.
Yer, Personal Edition – a business desktop. Lightweight, cutdown and focused. That’s not just for home users, and since they have to have core technology to implement right across they’re product lines – guess what that is?
The most successful commercial Linux desktop distributions today are Suse and Mandrake (Mandrake actually have firm agreements with the French government, even if it does start mainly with servers – but that’s where you start). Guess what desktop they default to? These are just the two main distros, and I’m not going into geography here – TurboLinux, Connectiva….
Seriously, if you delude yourself with the word commercial you’ll completely miss the ordinary, mundane bigger picture – as UserLinux (and Ximian) is currently doing.
All I here is YADA YADA YADA, show my proof or you have nothing.
By all means do so.
Secondly your condemning the Mono people for promoting their project? Could you be anymore of a hypocrite?
If you want to promote, by all means do so. Whatever the licensing disagreements, you can do it without calling fellow open source developers kids. He’s a talented guy Miguel, but he can have no complaints if in the end no one ever co-operates with him. I’d certainly be glad that he’s working in a division on his own if I was working at Novell or Suse.
First link? Secondly what about Allied Irish Banks, OGC, etc? Sun has had more commerical linux success then 99% of linux distros.
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is this why jonathan was complaning about luke warm support for jds compared to redhat and novell. jds is a failure compared to these distros or even mandrake
Tatersalad: That was my point but that point aside you’ve piqued my curiousity, what makes a real distro? What would that albeit poor example need to do to become, “real”, and help users figure it out?