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Linux Business

United Linux: Two Years Later 210

Posted by CmdrTaco from the talk-amongst-yourselves dept.
ajs writes "In November 2002 everyone who wasn't Red Hat was gathering behind a banner that many thought would spell the beginning of a new chapter in the Unix Wars. That banner was called United Linux. Much has changed in the Linux world since then, and some Founding Partners in the United Linux camp have decided that there are other ways to change the market. Thankfully there are more level headed members of that group. Today, we're not so focused on the differences between Linux distributions, Sun's rants, the aforementioned lawsuits and ever-present, market-gobbling Microsoft keep everyone focused and united enough as it is, and United Linux has begun to fade into memory. So what has United Linux done? Well, it unified three distributions at least, focused attention on Linux standards and made hardware vendors feel a bit less lost when writing drivers for Linux, so it wasn't all a loss. Alas, according the the United Linux site, "There are no plans for a version 2.0 at this time.""
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United Linux: Two Years Later More

United Linux: Two Years Later

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  • Article, or paragraph with links? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:00AM (#10797227) Homepage
    This isn't a reference to a story, this is a paragraph with a few links thrown in. Where's the news?
  • I dont buy anything until it hits version 2 and gets all the bugs out.

    • Re:No version 2? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Aliencow ( 653119 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:10AM (#10797287) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, Windows 2 was AWESOME !!

      • Re:No version 2? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Decaff ( 42676 )
        Yeah, Windows 2 was AWESOME !!

        Well, I hate to admit this, but it was... Windows 2/386 was pretty good at preemptive multi-tasking (I remember being amazed at watching my DOS Fortran code run in several dos shell windows at the same time).

        OK, so it wasn't UNIX, and it looked ugly, but this was neat.

        Also, for someone who had been dealing with a variety of awful print driver systems and graphics libraries, Windows 2 provided just one awful print driver and graphics library - this was actually a time-saver

        • Re:No version 2? (Score:3, Informative)

          by runderwo ( 609077 ) *
          Windows 2/386 was pretty good at preemptive multi-tasking
          That's interesting, since the Win16 kernel has always been a cooperative multitasking kernel (even under Win95).

  • Working link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Meostro ( 788797 ) * on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:01AM (#10797231) Homepage Journal
    ...have decided that there are other ways to change the market.
    Here [groklaw.net] is a link that works... not sure what's up @Groklaw, looks like a typo in the PHP =)

  • United Linux membership (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DaEMoN128 ( 694605 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:07AM (#10797261)
    If you look at UL's website, they SCO is still members of united linux . how ironic

    http://www.unitedlinux.com/en/partners/index.html [unitedlinux.com]

  • LSB (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:07AM (#10797262) Homepage
    My big hope for United Linux was that if I created a binary it would work under all x86 versions of Linux.

    I'm now hoping Linux Standard Base 2.0 [linuxbase.org] will really take off.

    • Re:LSB (Score:2, Informative)

      by cpthowdy ( 609034 )
      Note that SUSE 9.2 recently received the first LSB 2.0 certification...

    • It's too bad that.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MarkEst1973 ( 769601 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:31AM (#10797443)
      a grassroots unification will have to happen in order to solidify the Linux standards.

      Microsoft has the unparralleled advantage of maintain strict control on its own platform. It can push an agenda much more easily than a disparate group of distros.

      I am posting this from a RH box right now and feel good having a linux box under my desk at work (on a KVM switch to a windows box), but I don't use this box for much. Everything is more difficult than in windows, unfortunately. I'm a coder but a linux newbie. If it's difficult for me, you can bet your ass it'll be difficult for the non-techie.

      And that's why Microsoft is king of the hill right now. They make it for the mass market and make it easy for all.

      A *STANDARD* type of Linux distro, app installer, etc. would be a great stride forward for Linux.
      • A *STANDARD* type of Linux distro, app installer, etc. would be a great stride forward for Linux.
        What do you mean by "standard?" If you mean a single distribution / desktop environment / set of applications that everyone will use -- forget it. You're going to be using Windows for a long time.
      • I really don't want a whole lot of unification on Linux. I use different distro's for different tasks: For example, for a system recovery / rescue disk, I use Knoppix. For my in-law's home computer, I installed Mandrake, and it's easy to use configuration tools. For the datacenter server I'm designing at work for a project, I'm recommending Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

        Microsoft has the unparralleled advantage of maintain strict control on its own platform. It can push an agenda much more easily than a dispar

        • I think we're like-minded in our desire to see Linux triumph over M$, as evidenced by our desire for a unified installer mechanism. Still, though, I think the community overall needs to tighten further and create broad standards and general consensus. Without that, I fear an organized M$ will continually kick the crap out of a disorganized Linux community.

          I really don't want a whole lot of unification on Linux.

          Then it won't ever take off like we all want it too. If it takes a guru to work all the
          • There's a big difference between a uniform system, and one that's easy to use. I think the two concepts are nearly orthogonal. (Not quite. Familiarity makes even difficult systems easier. N.B.: Not easy, merely easier.)

            Fedora Core 1 was an early beta. Criticising it for rough spots it taking shots at a straw man. Of course it's easy to knock apart! On my system it wouldn't even boot...I didn't bother to work on the problem. It was obviously something so basic that it was on the list to be fixed. C

        • Re:It's too bad that.... (Score:2, Insightful)

          by achim ( 3513 )

          I also disagree with everything being harder under Linux. Setting up my home DSL connection was a snap, and as far as applications even when my wife boots my machine into Windows she's running the same OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Opera that I'm running on my Linux drive. The only reason there's Windows at all is because she needs Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop etc. and refuses to learn the GIMP.

          That's not really the thing that is more difficult.

          Have you ever tried to distribute a program in bi

      • Why limit yourself to one installer?

        Why doesn't the LSB specify what functionality is required in both the installer and the package format?

        That way, any installer can include that functionality and any package can include that format, yet we can still use whatever works best for each individual.

        And that's why Microsoft is king of the hill right now. They make it for the mass market and make it easy for all.

        With Microsoft, there is not one standard installer. Package management in Linux is far better than

        • There is: Windows Installer, it comes standard with w2k and XP and
          can be added to older systems.
          Wise and Installshield are no more than easy GUI builders for it.
          You could write your entire installer in Orca, the MS env. for it.
          It has versioning and package dependency, version 2.0 even does uninstalling correctly IF the programmer of the install script did his/her homework. It also supports updates and patches.
          I am no expert on rpm, but I think it's quite similar, as usual with MS.
          • Look at the functionality of deborphan and debfoster. They can tell you what packages are not required by other packages so you can clean out any junk you don't need.

            They can also tell you what packages are dependant upon others so you can remove all of them at once.

            With Windows, I cannot identify every installed file and where it came from. With Linux systems, I can.

            I can also verify the the files against the package that installed them.
          • RPM also has Encryption signing though I think even the Windows Installer supports that if you pay MS for the priviledge.

            Point is that RPM did it first and still does it better.

    • Re:LSB (Score:2)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      I think that's why there's no longer as much demand for Linux standardization -- the market for proprietary binary-only software turned out to be far smaller than had been hoped. Pretty much every such software product I see now just targets Red Hat and leaves it at that.
      • from someone who worked at proprietary binary-only software:
        It could be a lot bigger if Linux was less of a moving target.
        In my specific case: Lack of a standard way to talk to modems. (no not /dev/ttySXX, modems: Diamond Supra Pro 56 USB, Nokia 6150, Tornado III 9600, Siemems C55, some don't even use a character based protocol, but are essentially "winmodems") I just should be able to tell it: "Dail 123-456", NOT "ATDT 123-456", which might do the trick for some of them, depending on their GSM node network
        • First off, complaining that WinModems don't respond because the hardware manufacturers don't supply specs or drivers for them is not a problem with Linux.

          Secondly, "proprietary binary-only software" should have an easier time on Linux because the entire developmental process is open.

          If you were working on an app for Windows, then you'd have to wait for the actual release.

          With Linux, you can see the changes being tested and take advantage of that knowledge. You should be able to have your app ready the da
      • Oh, I don't know. I'm in a position to talk to software vendors here in the US on a semi-regular basis. About 3/4s of them are supporting at least Red Hat and Suse (now Novell) distros. ALL of them target specific versions of each distro that they support. I point out to them that generally speaking, their software doesn't really need that level of specificity, and that they would reduce their development and test costs considerably if they could target the LSB instead.

        About a third say, "But our custo
    • I understand what you want, and why it would be desireable. Please understand that there are also many reasons why it's a bad idea. We need to maintain at least three separate versions. (I suppose that Mac can't count here...I'm not REALLY certain.)

      Monoculture allows parasites to flourish. So it's really best to avoid it, even if you try to design things so that the parasites have a difficult time. There are always flaws. The advantage of a diverse genotype is that the flaws are different in differin
  • Now this isn't the only reason but the thing that bothers me most about Linux is updating software. Debian looks like it would be easy to update but I wouldn't know becuase I can never get X to work correctly.

    The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES. I'm sure people complain about this all the time. If the game developers would just design games to run on most systems I would be using Linux right now but instead I'm stuck using this piece of shit Windows.
    • As long as people like you keep buying the Windows versions of games, what motivation could developers possibly have to support another platform? They're not going to see an increase in sales if the potential customers for a new version would be buying it instead of buying what they already make.
      • How am I supposed to buy a Linux version of a game if one isn't produced? Chicken or the egg? I think the community of gamers that work on fixes, WINE, emulation, etc. to configure games to run on Linux should be an indication that there is a demand there. If someone would go to that much trouble to play a game on Linux as opposed to clicking "install" on Win, it represents a strong desire (at least for a certain community) for gaming on Linux.
        • Desire, yes. Extra profit, no.

          No corporation is going to want to spend extra money to make 2 versions of a product if the market for the 2nd version consists of people who will just buy the 1st version even though they have to go through trouble to play it. The fact that the people go through all of that trouble instead of not buying the game at all tells the corporation that they're product is so great that they don't need to improve it; their customers will do the work for them.

          • People that are willing to jump through hoops to do *anything* are a minority in *any* case. If you have a target market (Windows users) where an adjacent market (Linux users) are willing to use it despite being difficult to use for them, that normally means there'd be a much larger market for a product actually directed at them.

            Let me take a trivial example. If women were buying men's razors, built for male facial hair (primarily, let's not get into that) and design appealing to men, would there be or not
      • True, but the linux population is too few/small. If we all stopped buying games, would there be much of a dent to begin with?

        The problem is educating the general public, in business (Open Office/Firefox) and friends/family. Then move them over the Linux with the same general tools and they'll say: "Hey this isn't too different". Linux needs to grow up now. We can't just say, "because its in Windows, why do we have to do the same". Windows is the dominant OS out there. There is nothing you can do ove
        • No, it wouldn't create much of a dent. But the size of the market is another thing working against you.

          There aren't nearly as many games for the Mac as there are for Windows, but it really makes more sense for a game manufacturer to port their game to the Mac than to Linux. The x86 Linux users already own a machine that can play a Windows game, it just involves running Windows (which probably came with the hardware in the first place) or getting it to run under wine. A person with just a Powermac prob

      • A standard way of:

        1) Installing any App
        2) Installing any Driver

        Those are the only things that matter. The rest is preference.

        With these two things, Linux use will skyrocket.
        • I don't think you mean what you appear to be saying.

          Synaptic is certainly easy enough. And it exists on Fedora systems as well as on Debian (and actually a close relative exists on the Mac, but only for the Fink).

          So it would count as a standard way of installing any software, and if the packages are built properly, it figures out it's own dependencies.

          But you also said driver. I can't think of the last time I intentionally installed a driver, and I install from OS's from CD frequently (trying out new d
    • A lot of distros are (and will be) based on debian. So in a way it already is the common base UL was supposed to be.
      • All of the big commercial distros (the ones consumers and businesses will/are using) are based on Red Hat. Red Hat is pretty good with standards, so itd be safe to say that if a standard is in order companies and developers are more likely to go with Red Hat. It is safer (or at least appears to be from a business perspective) because its backed by a corporation, and its already what most commercial distros are based around. Game developers etc... are going to listen to where the money is. If someone refuse
        • You are right, but that doesn't make RH completly like UL.
          I didn't put it in my post but the original idea behind UL was to make a strong RH competitor. In that perspective debian comes closer....

          One of the bad things about companies choosing RH exclusivly is that they asume RH==Linux and anybody who dares to put its files a little different or use a different library version is in for a surprise.
          (When are big software vendors going to learn not to link to a specific sub-sub-version of a library instead of
    • The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES.

      Linux is driven by the needs of the professionals who make the big-time procurment decisions. The needs of gamers are singularly unimportant. If you want games, get an XBox.
    • What is needed is a distro that panders to the games developers. That means not only the libraries, but the post development of a distro that fits on a cd or a dvd. Think Knoppix. Once that happens, then major games can create a cd that the user boots from. Simplifies a lot of things.

    • "The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES."

      I had the same dilemma. I chose Linux.


    • The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES.


      That's nice but the real reason Linux is not on the desktop is because of DRIVERS. Primarily, printer drivers and wireless network card drivers.

    • The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES.

      I have been using Linux on the desktop for years. I play games, way too much in fact. I like 3D FPS, so I play things like ut2004, doom3, and that old standby quake 3 arena, which still has a lot of people playing it out there.

      On the mellow side there are things like frozen bubble as well as pysol and other variations on the card-game-with-soundtrack theme.

      Sure, there aren't as many titles currently available as there for the ms windows platfo

  • United linux would succeed if.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dcstimm ( 556797 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:12AM (#10797302) Homepage
    If Linux distro Could get a macosx type Application installer (aka drag and drop the application anywhere into the harddrive) it would gain support like you wouldnt believe, RPM, deb, ebuilds, tar.bz2, tar.gz, all are to complicated for the normal user. Yes I know rpm -ivh blah.rpm isnt hard and apt-get install gaim isnt hard, but I think Staticly compiled binaries are the way to go!
    • I'm so with you brother. It's all about the install. There will NEVER be a mainstream Linux until after the intall process is made simple. Pick whatever version you like, it'll never reach mainstream ears until they can 1. download it 2. install it 3. use it

    • Re:United linux would succeed if.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kbmccarty ( 575443 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <ytraccmk>> on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:39AM (#10797499) Journal

      RPM, deb, ebuilds, tar.bz2, tar.gz, all are to complicated for the normal user.

      I have trouble understanding why comments like this keep coming up. RPM, deb, tar.gz, and so on aren't installation programs. They are package formats.

      Even leaving aside the whole question of whether an integrated package manager like Synaptic, KPackage or RHN is easier to use (it certainly is!) than for the user to download software manually from all over the place... Users don't need to have a clue about the actual file format of these things; they just need to be able to double-click on one of these files in (say) a Nautilus window, causing the underlying package manager to pop up a "Root password?" dialog box, then automatically install the package. What could be simpler than that? From the user's point of view, how is this any different from double-clicking on the icon for a Windows installer program generated with InstallShield?

      Admittedly we may not quite be at that point yet -- if the RPM/deb has unmet dependencies, for instance, then the package manager should automatically download and install those as well when the file is double-clicked -- but we're getting there fast. And Windows-style executable installers, for reasons of consistency, are NOT the way to go.

      Slightly off-topic: anyone ever try binary editing of a deb file to put "#!/bin/dpkg -i" at the beginning, or "#!/bin/rpm -i" at the beginning of an RPM, and chmod a+x'ing it? Does it work?

      • Never tried it, but unless dpkg/rpm knows to ignore the line you added, they would choke.
      • "[i]if the RPM/deb has unmet dependencies, for instance, then the package manager should automatically download and install those as well[/i]"

        That's precisely what apt does since the end of the last century.

        • That's precisely what apt does since the end of the last century.

          Don't worry, I'm well aware of APT (being an avid Debian user). I meant the case of J. Random User double-clicking in a file browser window on the icon for a random RPM or .deb file s/he happened to download from somewhere (not via APT), since InstallShield fans apparently want to install software this way.

      • ### Users don't need to have a clue about the actual file format of these things; they just need to be able to double-click on one of these files in (say) a Nautilus window, causing the underlying package manager to pop up a "Root password?" dialog box, then automatically install the package.

        The throuble is that that is completly impossible unless you first have a standard way to package and compile stuff. You can't just resolve missing dependencies of a Redhat RPM when you are on a Debian box, it just won

    • RPM, deb, ebuilds, tar.bz2, tar.gz, all are to complicated for the normal user.

      Last time I used an RPM-based distro, installing an application was as simple as clicking on its RPM, and it would simply show up in the menus. That was years ago. Sure things like ebuilds are more difficult - Gentoo is aimed at the power-user, not the average desktop user.

      I think Staticly compiled binaries are the way to go!

      Hmm... let's see, assuming KDE:

      $ du -sh /usr/qt/3/lib/
      17M /usr/qt/3/lib/
      $ du -sh /usr/k

    • Sorry, but you are _so_ wrong. Packages are far superior to plain application folders, and especially installers (commonly used on Windows). I don't have time or desire to explain it now, but dependencies are an important part of it.

      And what's that about packages being too complicated? Select the packages you want, click install, and you get them with all dependencies and everything tuned for your distro. Difficult? Maybe computers are not for you, then.

      You can even search package names and descriptions,

  • United Linux - far from everyone (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dabadab ( 126782 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:20AM (#10797351)
    "everyone who wasn't Red Hat"

    Or Debian, or Slackware, or...
    United Linux would be better described as a group of smaller commercial Linux distros.

    • Re:United Linux - far from everyone (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FluffyPanda ( 821763 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:24AM (#10797391)
      Would you call SuSe a smaller distro?

      I've never managed to find any reliable statistics (oxymoron noted) about the popularity of the various distros, but from the mailing lists that I subscribe to I can certainly believe that they are the second most used distro after Redhat/Fedora. Possibly the most used in Europe.
    • Or Debian, or Slackware, or...

      Indeed, It should be noted that Red Hat wasn't asked to be a part of this standard until 6 hours before the announcement was made: "hey RedHat we made a new standard, you have half a day to be standards compliant, thanks -United Linux"

      People should be aware of what this really was, SuSE attempting to be what RedHat already was.
  • Okay, this is a totally outside the box way of thinking but I think Linux could win the desktop wars if it were "one-click" installable and ready to use. But it isn't. It never is. Get that part right, and maybe this discussion is worth something.

    It's not about what version, it's about ease of use.
    • I used to believe that linux was harder to set up than windows too, then I installed XP and SuSe 9.1 Pro on my laptop in the same weekend.

      At the end of the weekend I had a fully configured Linux system with all the apps and server components that I wanted. My windows install was already crashing because there aren't WHQL certified drivers available for some of the components in my laptop.

      I was still trawling the web looking for applications to meet my needs on monday morning.

      It certainly didn't seem to
      • Windows is self installing, self fixing, self updating. As broken as all those things are, how does Linux answer that?

        Look, there is no way Linux even comes close to the daily needs of the user like Windows does. Windows=automated, Linux=start reading.

        -personally, I use a Mac.
        • And yet my boss calls me into his office at least three times a day to explain something you'd consider trivial to him.

          Today I've had:
          Why his win 98 box won't print (he hadn't logged on to the domain with his usual password)
          Why isn't norton antivirus working? (beats me, reboot?)
          What the hell's happened now? (errr... it's crashed. Try rebooting)

          And I still have 2 hours to go.

          Windows isn't as straight forward as people tend to make it out to be. It's just that the layman expects all of windows li
        • I can't resist the flame bait...

          Windows is self installing
          Eh? I installed FC3 yesterday on a machine to play with it (I'm normally a Debian fan) and the whole thing's done in X, and is very easy to go through. I'm sure Ubuntu, Mandrake etc are even easier. The first part of the installation of WinXP that asks details about partitions and filesystems is all done in text mode. Do you mean that Windows is bundled with new PCs? Is that an advantage of Windows?

          self fixing
          How so? Self-breaking in
    • Windows XP isn't easy at all to install, but it comes preinstalled on most desktop computers. If you need to reinstall for any reason, modern Linux distributions are easier to install and configure than any system from Microsoft.

      I recently did two installations from scratch, a Windows 98+Linux on my desktop, because I got a larger disk, and an XP+Linux installation on my laptop. In both cases the Linux installation was much quicker and smoother than the Microsoft installation.

      Ironically, the biggest probl

    • Re:Install and Use... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )
      The Linux install itself never was much of the problem, todays Linux are not harder to install then a Windows, in many cases even much easier since almost all drivers come with it, no need to hund down a trillion different sites to find the drivers.

      Where Linux however misarably fails is in the maintainability, the day to day install of some toy app or a new 'not yet in the distris standard kernel' driver. For the average Joe User RPM, DEB, tar.gz and friends don't make any sense and never will. Under Windo

  • United anything is a joke (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Che Guevarra ( 85906 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @09:35AM (#10797472)
    The competing versions of Linux are worse than the browser competition. Microsoft has made sure that HTML, and now XML, are proprietary depending on how you choose to implement them. The divisions are killing the effort. Is this the future of Linux? Or is this the fate of open source?

  • Too many cooks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 12, 2004 @10:45AM (#10798056)
    I've always thought the "problem" with Linux is that it is a democracy.

    While on one hand this allows anyone to make any bit of code and bolt it on to Linux, it has the very serious adverse affect of generating "non-standards".

    I think the BSD projects are much better in this respect (Theo of OpenBSD has actually stated "it is not a democracy"). While the odd use might complain of lack of choice etc (not me, I might add), I think most users really appreciate the fact that you can pick up a bit of code and if it is documented as working on *BSD then you can be pretty sure that it will.

    I accept, of course, that there are differences between the BSDs out there so it's not all rosy.

    When it comes to Linux though, I think the problem has got completely out of hand. You have the KDE vs Gnome ware. Ok, this is not specific to Linux, but I think its affect it much more strongly felt in the Linux community. Most end users (and I'm talking about Jo / Jane Bloggs here, not us geeks that read Slashdot :-) ) couldn't give a **** what desktop they use as long as it works. ...and what happens if a distribution decides to just supply KDE or Gnome (but not both) ? We have a flame war !!! There is so much in-fighting in Linux that I fear that it may never be accepted as a real alternative.

    Personally, I think the world should move to one of the BSDs (OpenBSD is my choice) - they simply do not suffer this in-fighting to anywhere near the same extent as Linux does. But that's another issue altogether.

    In the meantime, I think the Linux needs someone (elected by all the distributions) who can steer this whole mess into some cohesive system so that when we say "Linux" we actually know what we are talking about and we don't have to worry about exactly WHICH Linux we are talking about. Until this happens (and I don't think it actually will !), Linux will always have an acceptance problem.
  • as far as server technology goes we all know that most of the backend of the internet is served to us on some POSIX (linux, unix, sun etc...) unit or cluster. So we know that the community has won that war. The things that Linux needs to do to win the DESKTOP war is this: 1. easy install features (automated installers) RPM's are close, but dependencies can be a nightmare. 2. games. you are all going to bitch about this one I know, but the reality is that the game industry has now SURPASSED the movie indus

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