Distributions [LWN.net]

News and Editorials

2002 retrospective

2002 was year of belt-tightening and consolidatation in all technology sectors. A return to reality after the excesses of the dot com boom. Most distribution companies fared well though there were layoffs and struggles to find sources of real, sustainable income.

To that end, MandrakeSoft launched the "Mandrake Clubhouse" at the end of 2001. Club members have provided a steady source of income for MandrakeSoft, almost enough for the company to break even, but at year's end the company is still struggling financially. If you are a Mandrake user it is your best interest to join Mandrake Club (or Mandrake Corporate Club) and buy Mandrake products from the MandrakeStore to help support the distribution. This is MandrakeSoft's answer to the question, "How do you make money with free software?"

In September MandrakeSoft announced the release of Mandrake Linux 9.0, codenamed "Dolphin." One of the first distributions to be certified by Linux Standard Base.

LWN.net released the "new and improved" LWN Distribution List. Changes to the list were heavy for the first few months of 2002, and minor updates continue. The list remains a cumbersome flat file, with over 300 distributions currently listed. We still plan to move the list to a database. Perhaps in 2003.

Caldera International released Caldera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1.1 and Caldera OpenLinux Server 3.1.1 at the end of January. We could not have predicted at the time that this would be last release of OpenLinux. Caldera International became The SCO Group at the end of August and the next release was called SCO Linux 4.0 powered by UnitedLinux.

Speaking of UnitedLinux, this collaborative effort released version 1.0 on November 19, 2002. (UnitedLinux powers distributions by SCO, SuSE, Conectiva, and Turbolinux.)

LSB-certified distributions. Distributions from MandrakeSoft, Red Hat, and SuSE receive LSB certification in August.

Debian GNU/Linux Three candidates vied for Debian Project Leader, Bdale Garbee, Raphaël Hertzog, and Branden Robinson. Elections. Bdale was elected in April. Cryptographic software showed up in the main archive for the first time in March. The long awaited woody release, Debian GNU/Linux version 3.0 came out in July. In November a fire in the computing facilities of Twente University destroyed several Debian services, which were quickly restored.

Red Hat also looks for ways to spend less. This year support has been cut for Alpha and Sparc ports, and there's even an "end-of-life" date for the most recent release.

The Limbo beta was released in July, with the first taste the company's controversial Bluecurve desktop. Limbo became Red Hat Linux 8.0 in October. Red Hat's more stringent trademark requirements went into effect with that release.

SuSE Linux also announced an end of life for older distributions as the new UnitedLinux powered versions are released.

Slackware Linux 8.1 was released June 18, 2002.

Sorcerer GNU/Linux, a source-based distribution, came out in January and quickly gained popularity. By March the development team had grown and with that growth came creative conflicts. Kyle Sallee, original author of Sorcerer, pulled the source from the site. But the source was out there and two new projects forked from the old code. Now there are three projects as Sorcerer is joined by the forks SorceMage and Lunar-Penguin.

Easy to use desktop distributions proliferated, some garnering considerable press coverage. Lycoris Desktop/LX, Xandros Linux, Lindows OS, Desktop ROCK Linux (dRock), Debian Desktop, EvilEntity Linux, LibraNet GNU/Linux, and ELX, Everyone's Linux are just a few desktop Linux projects that started or gained momentum during 2002.

Libranet GNU/Linux took a stab at making a sustainable income by setting up a pay for download scheme.

All in all, a turbulent year for Linux distributions. We leave with a prediction for 2003. This will be the year that we will see some change in the major players. Either two major companies will merge, or at least one will get out of the Linux distribution business. Of course that has been predicted before.