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Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet)Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet)Posted Sep 9, 2004 7:26 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981)In reply to: Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet) by hppnq Parent article: Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet) > sounds like such a great and innovative idea Great, maybe. Innovative, no: ALT Linux was two years into this model before RH and SuSE started scratching their heads in a visible manner. The commercial firm (ALT Linux Ltd) produces the distributions (which are also published on FTP and widely mirrored) based on its public unstable tree, ALT Linux Sisyphus, which is considered as a product of ALT Linux Team (some 20% being fulltimers in commercial firms who benefit from the development directly and some 80% volunteers). ALT Linux Ltd is providing the infrastructure, QA (mostly) and publishing (until recently; now professional publishers got in). Partners and community also do maintain packages, create additional infrastrusture and resources, and provide specialized and public support. So far so good -- I believe it's somewhere in between of RH/SuSE/Mdk, Debian and Owl which is quite unique. Weak points being currently low level of manageability using GUI tools (the framework is being revamped) and lacking PR/marketing, strong points being considerable security out-of-box [*], most packages being readily available for immediate use right after installation with apt-get, and very nice community to communicate within. [*] from the last talk security advisory (translate.ru'ed): "In ALT Linux distributions, talk service is off by default, remote users don't have access to it, and local unprivileged users can't form UDP packets of such special form needed for DoS attack; nevertheless we recommend talk server users to update the package with the fixed version". Last glibc troubles also enjoyed "fixed 3 years ago" status statement. Go figure :-)
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Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet) Posted Sep 9, 2004 8:03 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Great, maybe. Innovative, no: ALT Linux was two years into this model before RH and SuSE started scratching their heads in a visible manner. Damn! ;-) I humbly bow to ALT Linux, of whom I must admit I had never heard before. Cheers for the pointer, mate. It's a weak defense, but I was really only thinking of the major distributions, although I am aware that there is a vast number of unique Linux distributions, each of them with their own merits, as well as Linux companies that are developing business models that hopefully serve them well. Don't you just love Open Source? ;-)
Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet) Posted Sep 9, 2004 10:26 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link] > of whom I must admit I had never heard before Heck, that's what I'm regarding as "weak publicity" :-) btw: the pointer, DistroWatch, LWN, 2.4 beta5 (seems like release's on the way to the publisher) [skip: sure] Yeah, and I hope that business model patches will get at least as agile between companies as software patches are to get the overall result better yet. :-) [err... even though the latter aren't nearly as agile as could be] > Don't you just love Open Source? ;-) Exactly. :-) --
Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet) Posted Sep 15, 2004 7:51 UTC (Wed) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link] ALT Linux, of whom I must admit I had never heard before No wonder: ALT Linux is really big in Russian-speaking countries (here in Minsk it is second only to Debian), but has zero marketing outside of Russia.
ALT Linux Posted Sep 15, 2004 7:41 UTC (Wed) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link] ALT Linux was two years into this model before RH and SuSE started scratching their heads in a visible manner. There is significant difference, though. In Fedora's case, most of the work is done by Red Hat, while company tries to present it as a community project. In ALT's case, most of the development is done by the community, while company tries to present the product as its own achievement. Ironically, ALT Linux has only recently run into the same problem with this model as Red Hat: a product that is developed by a community, but controlled by a single commercial entity. It took two years and an unpleasant trademark controversy for community to notice the conflict inherent in such situation. Exactly the problem UserLinux is attempting to solve. Last glibc troubles also enjoyed "fixed 3 years ago" status statement. Not a fact to be proud of, actually. This particular fix (IIRC borrowed from OWL) received a well-deserved bashing from LWN: keeping important fixes to yourself and not propagating them upstream where they belong is not considered a good practice in the FLOSS world.
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