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Debian Software Linux

UserLinux Releases First Beta 316

Posted by michael from the luserunix-also-available dept.
MohammedSameer writes "According to DesktopLinux, UserLinux has released their 1st beta CD, based on Debian. The project, led by the long-time open source advocate Bruce Perens, aims to provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options intended to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs."
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UserLinux Releases First Beta More

UserLinux Releases First Beta

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  • User vs. Business (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:27AM (#10213630)
    So, if it's oriented to Businesses and support-conscious people, why is it called *User* Linux? Wouldn't BusinessLinux be more appropriate?

    • Re:User vs. Business (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:29AM (#10213665) Homepage Journal
      It comes from user-supported, because anyone can participate in Debian, the development organization we base our system upon. So, if a user doesn't like something about the system, they have the ability to change it directly.

      Bruce

      • Re:User vs. Business (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:38AM (#10213750) Journal
        How is that different than Fedora?

        • Re:User vs. Business (Score:5, Informative)

          by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:51AM (#10213870) Homepage Journal
          IMO, fedora is way too Red Hat Corporation centric. RH management sets its governance. Any other partner is always going to be a second-class citizen. We can do better than that. Focusing development in a legal non-profit, Debian, with 10 years of history of successful work is better.

          Bruce

          • Re:User vs. Business (Score:3, Interesting)

            by DAldredge ( 2353 )
            How do you plan on getting the closed source software venders to certify their products to run on UserLinux so I can get support on those apps from the vendor?

            • Re:User vs. Business (Score:5, Informative)

              by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:11PM (#10214680) Homepage Journal
              We have to approach them with existing customers. They don't care to certify anything until there is customer demand. Which is why we are not approaching them yet. We intend to operate a certification lab with a small share of the revenue from our support providers userlinux business - that is part of what they trade for being certified as support providers.

              Thanks

              Bruce

              • As a person involved in selling enterprise Linux, support and consulting services, my feeling is that users who buy big quantities of enterprise Linux licenses for single (high performance computing) or few (ISPs) purposes stand to benefit most by chipping in some money to get User Linux certified for that one or two commercial apps they need.
                Government and research centers belong to these categories.

                Say a customer with 400 cluster nodes that pays $100/node for enterprise Linux every year - $40K from one s

            • Re:User vs. Business (Score:3, Informative)

              by tacocat ( 527354 )

              I think you are missing the entire point behind UserLinux and what they are doing here. If you read up on some of the essays by Perens et al you will find that they have an answer for this.

              Open Source and Free software (compatable with Debian) has demonstrated the capability to replace closed source software in a great majority of the applications that a User or Business might require. For those areas where closed source software may still hold an advantage (financials?) the posit is that it is a matter

        • Re:User vs. Business (Score:5, Interesting)

          by mrroach ( 164090 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:25PM (#10214856)
          <hearsay>
          Fedora is still struggling to reimpliment Debian's community, and is still making it difficult for "outsiders" to have as much say as RedHat folks.
          </hearsay>

          Debian and UserLinux have almost the reverse of the relationship between Fedora and RHEL. RHEL starts with Fedora and adds various things. UserLinux starts with the HUGE number of well-tested packages in Debian and whittles it down to a manageable core that can be depended on to be there. It's sort of a "Debian standard base" if you will.

          One excellent feature is that instead of relying on stuff like Dag Wieers excellent, but still 3rd party, set of packages for Fedora, nearly every open source application of note is packaged in debian (and has been checked against Debian's very strict policy) and will be easy to install on a UserLinux system. When the next Debian and UserLinux releases come out, the upgrade path for those "add-on" packages will also have been well tested.

          So, long story short (too late), what really makes UserLinux valuable is that it _is_ Debian, and has all the strength and experience of Debian behind it.

          -Mark
      • While that may be why its named that way, i agree with the first poster that it should be renamed..

        Remember its not 'us' that need to understand, its the rest of the world.. And its all about effective marketing..

        Poor naming ( regardless of accuracy ) is NOT good marketing.

        • Re:Marketing Image (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:53AM (#10213890) Homepage Journal
          Why do so many people object to business people being referred to as "users"?

          Bruce

          • Agreed. The name is more descriptive. I'm sure we've all had a well-meaning relative send us a forward of a fictional Abbott and Costello routine about the names of Microsoft products. Somehow "Windows" means "Operating System" and "Office" means "Word Processor, Presentation App, Spreadsheet, Low-End Desktop Publishing, and Database Frontend"

            *shrug*

  • Maybe? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:27AM (#10213632) Homepage Journal
    Maybe I'll get first post :-)

    Bruce

    • Re:Maybe? (Score:5, Funny)

      by kundor ( 757951 ) <.kundor. .at. .member.fsf.org.> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:30AM (#10213672) Homepage
      Hmm...leaving your "more mature forum that slashdot" to indulge in some puerile first-post attempts, eh? ;-) Just goes to show it happens to the best of us.

      Congratulations on the release.

    • Re:Maybe not. (Score:5, Funny)

      by hugesmile ( 587771 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:32AM (#10213695)
      wow, if you are Bruce Perens and have a low slashdot id, you get modded up for "First Post" messages?

      I am impressed.

      not Bruce

    • Funny. :)

      I'd like this thrown in: LSB Compliant. After all, LSB has pretty much the same goals.
    • You get *paid* to hang out on Slashdot and discuss Free Software? No fair...

  • Torrent (Score:5, Funny)

    by anandpur ( 303114 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:29AM (#10213657)
    Do we need torrent for 4.5 megabytes iso image?
    http://userlinux.com/installer/netboot.iso

  • yet another distro? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bwy ( 726112 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:29AM (#10213661)
    Personally instead of seeing 100's of distros I'd like to see some serious work poured into maybe a handful of popular ones to make them more serious desktop contenders. There is a thin line between "choice" and "fragmentation".

    • Re:yet another distro? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:34AM (#10213713) Homepage Journal
      Then you will be happy with UserLinux. We do all of our technical development within the Debian project. Our value-add is support and certification. The only packages in our own repository are configuration, like selecting a list of debian packages and debconf settings for them, and patches that we haven't been able to get into Debian's release (none of those yet).

      Bruce

      • Bruce: What are the advantages of this particular distribution over the other ones currently available?

        On a semi-related note: I recently tried to install Debian, Knoppix, Mandrake, and Gentoo on my laptop. Of those, only Mandrake installed (mostly) successfully. Well, ok. Knoppix installed (to hard disk - I want a permanent environment), but had some serious bugs that forced me to keep re-creating user accounts. I also ran into a problem with Debian and Gentoo attempting to download packages, but not

        • Re:yet another distro? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @12:02PM (#10213969) Homepage Journal
          Well, first look at the advantages of Debian over other distributions.

          • 15,000 packages in one repository with no cross-dependency issues. 3 times Red Hat, 5 times SuSE.
          • 11 architectures (12 if you count AMD64, which will not be "official" for this release but exists and runs fine).
          • Open to participation by all. If you want something in the system and it's free software, you can be a Debian developer and get what you want done.
          • Over 1000 active developers. One of the largest Open Source projects.
          • More than 10 years of successful history. It's older than RH or SuSE.
          Now, add what Debian hasn't been able to do: Commercial support, application vendor certification.

          Regarding your installation issues. Please try the UL installer, which is based on the new Debian installer. It has a "go back" feature and asks for a proxy URL.Bruce

          • Re:yet another distro? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @12:13PM (#10214070)
            Looking at the web page, I wasn't really able to figure out what User Linux is. I mean, I see that you're doing commercial support and certification, but the impression I got was that the distribution is just Debian. (Especially comments like the best way to try out UL is to install debian and switch to unstable. If that's it, I've been running UL for years.)

            I assume that's not everything, given that you have a seperate release and everything. What is the difference between the User Linux distribution and Debian? In other words, why aren't you just doing "Debian support" rather than creating a new project?

          • NetBSD/FreeBSD/openBSD (Score:3, Informative)

            by nurb432 ( 527695 )
            Dont forget the *bsd series is just as huge, if the number of ports is truly that much of an advantage ..

            Though its somewhat debateable how many text editors one really needs...( for example ). I feel quality of the ports is more important then the sheer numbers..

            BSD is also much older and mature.. and if you pick NetBSD, it beats 11 platforms in its sleep..

            Not bashing debian at all, just reminding people its not the only fish out there.. with out leaving that GPL aftertaste..
          • 15,000 packages in one repository with no cross-dependency issues. 3 times Red Hat, 5 times SuSE.

            Yeah, and stable's packages are only a few years out of date while unstable not only *has* dependency issues quite often but is also slower than the update services of the other distributions most times (kdeaddons is still 3.2.3 weeks after 3.3 and weeks after most of the other kde packages got upgraded and it breaks a number of features, great)

            11 architectures (12 if you count AMD64, which will not be "offic

        • Re:yet another distro? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by sydb ( 176695 )
          If only there were some way to get them to read the proxy.pac file...

          Interesting idea, would require a javascript interpreter somewhere though.

          Failing that, why not just wget the pac file and read it to get an address, the set http_proxy and/or ftp_proxy environment variables?

          And of course that could be be stuck in a script if the pac file is simple enough.
      • They also work closely with Debian, especially since Ian is runing the place..

        Not faulting UL, just another 'closely knit' option..

      • Re:yet another distro? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tacocat ( 527354 )

        So UserLinux has the same requirements for free software that Debian has?

        As a recent example, I won't find Sender-ID support in UserLinux?

    • Re:yet another distro? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kundor ( 757951 )
      Ah, you're missing the point.

      The strength of OSS is that the more different projects, and the more users, the better, because the core programs and libraries that everybody uses have their bugs fixed, features added, and generalizations taken care of even faster.

      It's not fragmentation, because all the work of the different distros migrates upstream and benefits the entire community.

      And it's been made clear many a time that having a choice of OS's specialized to your needs makes for a more satisfying e

      • "It's not fragmentation, because all the work of the different distros migrates upstream and benefits the entire community."

        I don't think that's necessarily true. There's no requirement for changes to "migrate upstream" in the GPL. You are required to distribute the source when you distribute the application. If you don't distribute "upstream" then your changes may never be incorporated there.
    • You're not the only one:
      No of Linux distros surpasses no of users [bbspot.com].

    • Re:yet another distro? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by archen ( 447353 )
      You base that off of the assumption that people want to work on another distro when it many not meet their needs or goals. Some people work on a Linux distro because it's THEIRS, or they signifcantly contribute towards that distro's direction. You just aren't going to get that level of control or experimentation in Gentoo or Fedora. Probably 90% of Linux is concentrated in the top 10 distros (offical made up statistc!) anyway. Why stop at a handful? Why not go towards ONE distro for all?

      Linux will come

  • Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SavedLinuXgeeK ( 769306 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:31AM (#10213683) Homepage
    I honestly don't think that the cost will have much of an effect on the success of this project. I mean, IT managers willingly pay $xxx to M$ for so much, anything remotely less than that is always a good deal. And then again, most people are apprehensive to the word free. Normally associating it with lower quality, hidden costs, etc. Honestly they could have charged $50 a licesnse, and it would probably increase its use. People like to pay for things they rely on, its just wierd.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 4minus0 ( 325645 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @12:12PM (#10214067)

      Good points but the landscape with regards to budgeting is beginning to change. The company I work for does a mix of installations; fileservers, email, web...the usual. When given the choice, most businesses now like the sound of free.

      It's basic economics...here's how we sell our open source services:
      Companies are used to paying for a software license and support. It makes more sense to their bottom line to just pay for the support. Why pay more than you have to if somebody (in this case my company) will stand behind the product and support it?

      Don't underestimate the power of free. We are beginning to deal with a lot of governmental type organizations (counties, city govts, etc) and they hate paying for a server license for Exchange, a CAL for the workstation and someone to support it. They simply do not have the funds for this kind of frivolous spending. If they aren't using the neat stuff of Exchange like shared calendars why not drop in a qmail|postfix|exim server and just pay for the support? Our backlog of contracts says that people will do that.

      It comes down to this: the software is free for the taking...the support can either be absorbed in-house or outsourced, just like it always has.

  • Bruce, how about Canonical (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:32AM (#10213699)
    Bruce Perens, now that you are around, what's your take on the Canonical project? On the surface, it would appear to be along the lines of what UserLinux is supposed to do... not forgetting that neither is "final" yet, of course ;-).

  • motherhood, apple pie.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by eludom ( 83727 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:33AM (#10213709) Homepage
    > he project, led by the long-time open source advocate Bruce
    > Perens, aims to provide businesses with freely available, high
    > quality Linux operating systems accompanied by
    > certifications, service, and support options intended to
    > encourage productivity and security while reducing overall
    > costs."

    Did I hear "buzzword compliant" ?

    ---eludom

  • Collective Yawn (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 )
    Userlinux is an answer to a question no one was asking.
    • Except for that guy the other day [slashdot.org], who was looking for support for Debian. 'course, he was looking for more than that, but support would have helped his case.

    • Re:Collective Yawn (Score:3, Informative)

      by ultrabot ( 200914 )
      Userlinux is an answer to a question no one was asking.

      Umm, it's an answer most of people in the Linux-using IT industry have been asking for a few years - "where's the free-beer enterprise-grade Linux we've been expecting?"

      I don't like the anti-RH attitude some less mature Linux enthusiasts seem to have, but boy, do I love to see the competition it will be getting from free alternatives (i.e. not just Novell/SUSE).

  • Show them! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bull999999 ( 652264 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:37AM (#10213737) Journal
    freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options intended

    Best of luck to you and show them that it is quite possible to make money off of supporting open source softwares.
    • Best of luck to you and show them that it is quite possible to make money off of supporting open source softwares.

      It's already been shown. Remember Cygnus, Redhat, etc.

      • More the better as most non techies still thinks that OSS are free as in beer and also believe that you can only make money in the software business by selling them.

  • I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:37AM (#10213739) Journal
    ...freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options

    Why a distro based on Debian? Why not just certify, service and support Debian itself?

    I know there has to be a seperate distro for every ego in the OSS world, but from a technical point of view, why is a new distro needed?

    • Probably to standardize on a (small) subset of Deb that can be kept simple. The better question would be, if Deb releases a new stable (yeah, I know, before Duke Nukem Forever, yada-yada), how will this distro fare?

      Also, if anyone would care to explain the broad "accompanied by certifications" statement - do these guys hope for some sponsorship in getting official certs?

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:49AM (#10213845) Homepage Journal
      Why a distro based on Debian? Why not just certify, service and support Debian itself?

      We would end up certifying Debian, at least a specific subset of Debian packages, because our policy is not to do development outside of Debian except for configuration and temporary fixes.

      Regarding service, we need to be outside of Debian to operate for-profit enterprises. Debian is part of a legal non-profit. So, we created a separate brand, and we will certify service providers to that brand and market the brand with funds from those service providers. But it makes sense to put the free software development in the non-profit, and that's where it will stay - in Debian.

      Bruce

    • From the FAQ on UserLinux Q: Why another Distro? Why not work on the Debian (Desktop) project and installer? Is improving an existing distro not better than creating a new one? A: [Jeff Waugh] The easiest way to answer this for yourself is: UserLinux is not a new distro. It *is* Debian. It just happens to have a different - or arguably more - focus. Concentrating on business and enterprise users and concentrating on what they want/expect rather than trying to be a general Linux ditribution.

  • advantages of UserLinux (Score:5, Informative)

    by phreakv6 ( 760152 ) <phreakv6@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:52AM (#10213882) Homepage
    From a FAQ on UserLinux

    Q: What will be the advantages of UserLinux?
    A: [Brock Frazier] Key UserLinux distribution advantages:

    1. Streamlined: UserLinux is a streamlined distribution with one key application in mind for a given piece of functionality. One web browser, one word processor, one mail client, one web server. This reduces support overhead both for users and for maintaining security.
    2. Standards compliant: UserLinux encourages cooperation with other open source organizations, and values compliance with open standards.
    3. Designed for business: The UserLinux distribution is specially tailored towards the needs of business.
    4. Professional Services: The third party network of UserLinux affiliated commercial Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) allow for choice in professional services and custom application design options. The separation between the UserLinux organization and the ISVs is a win-win proposition allowing both the support advantages of a service provider network and the neutrality advantages of an operating system not tied to a single company.
    5. Flexible: While each UserLinux configuration is designed to support common functionality as shipped, the systems are also open for expansion beyond the standard UserLinux set.
    6. Disclosure: As a not-for-profit organization working with software developed in the open, the UserLinux organization as well as the development process for the UserLinux distribution are in the open. Critical system updates are clearly and promptly announced so systems remain properly secured.
    7. Lack of lock-in: There are no licensing fees for the UserLinux distribution or related development tools. Service is available from your choice of service providers, but is never mandatory.
    8. Free to obtain: ISO images and the source code are freely available.
    9. Inexpensive to maintain: The streamlined nature of the UserLinux distribution assures less software to update. There are no per seat charges or OS licenses to be tracked and audited.
    10. Secure: Leveraging from the power of open source, the code used in the UserLinux distribution not only has thousands of hours of development but thousands of hours of peer review.
    11. Certifications: Hardware, software, support and professional certifications will be available.
  • I realize this project isn't at the "released" stage yet, but the web site and even the article linked here don't really provide much info on what makes UserLinux "special". Not only is there little to market specifically to suit types, but to me as a geek there's no info on the site that shouts "here's why we're different!" Specifically, information like: how does it intend to improve the Linux "desktop" initiative? This really needs to be fixed, IMHO, if people are to take a serious interest in UserLinux.

  • Human DDOS attack on Slashdot by Pruce Berens (Score:5, Funny)

    by mdproctor ( 74927 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:54AM (#10213904) Homepage
    It has been reported the Pruce Berens, from the KickMeInTheGooliesILikePainLinux fame, is attempting to bring slashdot down by furiously typing at his keyboard to reply to every single slashdot post creating a human DDOS attack. Luckily slashdot has survived this onslaught and he's on his way to achieving a world record for the most number of posts on slashdot for a single article, as long as his smoking keyboard withstands the punishment.

  • Watching with interest (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Skraut ( 545247 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:59AM (#10213932) Journal
    As "The computer guy" among other things in a small office, I'll say this is something that definately interests me. As more and more of my day gets consumed with cleaning systems ridden with viruses and spyware (Yes I have scanners and all the usual crap up there, but this isn't my "full time" job here and shouldn't have to be) I've been contemplating just making the whole office switch to Linux.

    Obviously that's a huge jump and the right distro is important. I've been strongly considering Gentoo mosty for keeping the systems up to date and secure (leave everyone in the stable tree, and cron a nightly GLSA to patch all known security holes, and emerge -uD world)

    As "administration free" as it seems right now in thought, I am a bit concerned of the nightmare it could become if things get unorderly.

    With Red Hat abandoning the business desktop a dedicated business desktop with the open source community behind it is exactly what I am looking for. I admire Sun's Java desktop and Xandros' Business desktop, but I guess I'm just too spoiled by the Debian and Gentoo forums. Both are very active with loads of people helping out. For me I'd much rather get my help that way as apposed to waiting on hold to talk to the next know nothing tech support person.

  • Kernel Versions? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JHillyerd ( 13209 ) <james@MOSCOWhillyerd.com minus city> on Friday September 10, 2004 @11:59AM (#10213938) Homepage
    I love Debian on servers, that's the one place where packages not changing often is a good thing.

    One big frustration I have with debian-stable is that the kernel gets so far out of date, that it doesn't support newer hardware properly. Will UserLinux try to keep more up-to-date with kernel versions. I don't need bleeding edge, but 2.4.18 is two and half years old!

    Don't tell me to use debian-testing, I've tried it and it replaces too many packages too often for a production machine.

  • BusinessLinux makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @12:11PM (#10214047) Homepage
    And the first person who gets a serious distro using that name will do VERY well. It's a name that makes sense and we know that everything is in the name... or at least the people who make decisions think so.

    Here's my wish/hope list for a business [client] oriented distribution:

    Network Login Service Support for:

    * Novell NDS, Microsoft Domains and of course your NIS and all that.

    * A nice email + swiss army software thingy (like Evolution with support on the server)

    * MS Office compatible office suite and/or an ass-kickin' wine configuration that REALLY works especially for brain-dead admins who expect to double-click on SETUP.EXE.

    Of course there will be other apps that will need to complete anything beyond the basics listed above, but once those basics are done, it's 90% there.

    And when I mean MS Office compatible, I mean REALLY stinking compatible for importing and exporting MS Word docs and stuff. So far, nothing's been perfect yet though it keeps getting better.

  • MP3 and non "free" software (Score:4)

    by div_2n ( 525075 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @12:17PM (#10214119)
    Bruce,

    Forgive me if this is answered somewhere on the UL website, but do you include or plan to include support out of the box for MP3's and any other technology that Red Hat may refuse to include?

    Additionally, if the amount and breadth of your own patches and packages makes it such that UL and Debian are relatives only in spirit, will you go your own way or continue to try to keep ties with it?

    TIA

  • Knoppix UserLinux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bfree ( 113420 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @12:46PM (#10214402)
    Has anyone made a UserLinux LiveCD yet or is that my next challenge (armed with Fabian's new remastering tool [knoppix.net] and perhaps I'll even try rolling in some automation of the lazy umount method [knoppix.net] of removing the cd, I don't need much of an excuse but I suspect I might have to do some fixing up so if anyone has already started ... :-)

  • re: userlinux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @03:38PM (#10216342) Journal
    I keep seeing Bruce talk about how easy its going to be for outsiders to influence UserLinux which he says doesn't happen with Fedora. He may have a point that Fedora's direction is very much controlled by Red Hat but watch what happens in a few years once UserLinux becomes established. Mature projects are very difficult to bend to your whim or take in a new direction. Thus the many debian forks.

    I also don't see how going negative on other distros is going to help your cause when commenting in public. Prove why your better with code, not somewhat negative marketing against Red Hat. You seem to be a bit Red Hat obessed and constantly mention them in the UnitedLinux white paper. I'd rather see why its better than Windows, Solaris, or OS X, not fellow OSS distros. Yes I know your trying to appeal to linux users first but great features sell themselves better than a negative comment anyday. And realize that future UserLinux users will pick up on your tone and intent. A year from now I don't think we all want to a bunch of UserLinux users Trolling against Red Hat and other distros constantly here and elsewhere.

    I wish UserLinux the best of luck though and very much look forward to trying it out. It sounds like a great idea and is definitely needed. One more distro in the mix especially a Free one that caters to the business crowd specifically is fine by me.

  • nice network install for debian (Score:4, Interesting)

    by yarikoptic ( 571456 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @09:16PM (#10218658) Homepage
    Actually I installed UL before I knew what I've done. I was looking for network installation images of debian for one of the freshly arrived machines. The default debian installer didn't work for some reason - I don't remember if it was SATA harddrive or smth like that... I did more search - found this UL network installation files, put them up in dhcp and installed the beast... What I liked: besides standard basic questions which it had to ask (like keyboard, partitioning) it asked me just 1 question to choose from: workstation or workstation and server... I remember that I chose workstation... Since then it installed everything and didn't ask a question (or I was sleeping and I missed it), as opposed to debian installation where you need to configure many packages by answering some basic questions... What I didn't like - I didn't catch why workstation installation installed apache for me... So in two words: I installed debian wo knowledge that it wasn't debian and was surprised that it went too smoothly... Then splashscreen announced that it is userlinux... anyway I decided to upgrade to unstable so I moded sources.list and here we go - I had the desktop ready to be used in less then an hour without paying much attention on what it is doing there :-)

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