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Which Distribution for Grandma?

[This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar]

Linux distributions have traditionally catered to technically savvy computer users and IT professionals. But the growing disillusionment with some of the Microsoft practices as well as the realization that Linux is, in fact, a superior operating system (both technically and philosophically), have made many others consider Linux as an alternative to Windows. Look around some of the Windows community web sites and you will see that many people are seriously trying (even if some of them fail in the end) to convert to Linux. This has created a new market for Linux software integrators - making Linux distributions for Grandma (and Aunt Tillie), the unfairly designated lowest common denominator when it comes to knowledge of computer technology.

The concept of creating a simple and easy-to-use Linux distribution is not new. Corel Linux made an early attempt in 1999, but the company's efforts have faded together with the end of the dotcom era. A new wave of these attempts have started within the last year or two, with Elx, Lindows, Lycoris and Xandros (Corel's successor) all vying for the non-technical users. As many of us are regularly approached by friends and family members asking for advice on computing matters, perhaps it is useful to take a brief tour of these distributions and also mention one upcoming surprise that is likely to succeed where others have (so far) failed.

What are the major characteristics of these so-called "user friendly" distributions?

1. Very simple installation program. Always graphical, usually limited to no more than a few clicks, free of technical jargon and superior hardware auto-detection. (In other words, exactly the opposite of the Debian installer.)

2. Limited number of applications. The motto is to have one application per task instead of giving users a choice of several browsers, e-mail clients, office suites, media players etc. (In other words, none of these products come on 9 CDs that one finds inside the SuSE Linux Professional box.)

3. Windows-like menus and graphical utilities. Single-click software installation routines, graphical system management utilities, menu layout and application names strongly resembling those found in Windows - all designed to make the migration process as painless as possible (In other words, Slackware's text-only configuration doesn't cut the mustard here.)

Unfortunately, none of the four distributions we have mentioned above have generated mass conversions. Xandros Desktop ($40 - $100) has probably created the best distribution for general desktop use, so it's disappointing to see how little marketing effort the company has expended to get the product onto the shelves of software stores and pre-installed on new computers. LindowsOS ($129 per annum), on the other hand, has been on an enormous drive to grab media attention with grand (and shifting) claims, but the product itself received mixed reviews. Neither Xandros Desktop, nor LindowsOS are available as free downloads.

Lycoris Desktop/LX (free for non-commercial use, otherwise $30 per seat) has been in development for a long time, nearly 3 years. However, the small development team insists on working on the old Caldera OpenLinux code base and outdated applications, failing to take advantage of the great new developments that have taken place recently. The advancements in XFree86, KDE 3, GNOME 2 and much improved font rendering have seemingly gone past them unnoticed. ELX Linux (US$50, free download of an older release) is another distribution which promised plenty at first. But as the developers stopped reading the mailing lists and responding to queries on their forums, many users simply walked away. There aren't many web sites where the only indication of a product release is a big "buy now" button, which wouldn't be much of an incentive even if the economic times were better.

But all is not lost. There is a new horse in the race and it is looking more promising than anything else created to date. The name to remember is Ark Linux. Why such a bold claim? Two reasons. Firstly, the project was started by Bernhard "Bero" Rosenkraenzer, a well-known KDE developer and former long-term Red Hat employee. This in itself creates an atmosphere of trust and high probability of success. Secondly, Ark Linux is a completely non-commercial project à la Debian, with open software repositories and freely available source code. As such, it will remain free, it will attract new developers and it will certainly gain market share a lot faster than any of the commercial distributions.

While Ark Linux is still in early development (only alpha status ISO images are currently available), the project has a clearly defined to-do list and several unique features. When the final product is released, we will more than likely examine it in much greater detail, but those who want to know more, follow these links to early reviews by addaboy.com, madpenguin.org and osnews.com as well as this interview with Bero by OSNews.

Watch out for Ark Linux. It is probably the first Linux distribution that has a serious potential (in its pure form or, more likely, as a commercial fork) to take a significant market share away from Windows on the desktops of home users.

Comments (4 posted)

Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Weekly News for April 15, 2003 is out. This week's issue contains a warning to look out for loitering dragonfly brooches; also libcupsys2 is splitting; more on the Debian Popularity Contest; Information Law Training for Debian Developers; and much more.

Debian Planet reports presentations from the Debian Mini-Conf held just before the Linux Conference of Australia 2003 are now online.

Martin Michlmayr reports that many long orphaned packages will be removed, unless of course they are adopted soon.

Wichert Akkerman provides an update on Alioth; the new SourceForge system has migrated to GForge. Find out what works and what doesn't, so far.

Andrew Suffield is looking for maintainers with excessive numbers of old RC bugs. It's time to get these bugs closed.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter -- Volume 2, Issue 15

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for April 14, 2003 is out. This week's topics include the release of Gentoo Linux 1.4_rc4 and the new Unreal Tournament 2003 Game CD.

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Mandrake Linux

MandrakeSoft has announced the release of Mandrake Linux 9.1 "Bamboo" for PPC processors.

Several bug fixes are available for Mandrake Linux 9.1. While the problems are not exploitable, these fixes will take care several annoying problems.

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Red Hat Linux

Red Hat has an updated RHN Notification Tool available which fix several UI and behavior bugs, as well as a memory leak.

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SCO Ships SCO Linux Server 4.0 for the Itanium(R) Processor Family

The SCO Group has announced the release of SCO Linux Server 4.0 for the Itanium(R) Processor Family, a high-performance Linux operating system designed for use with Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2-based systems.

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Itanium2 Gets Boost In Supercomputing Market (TechWeb)

TechWeb looks at supercomputing with Intel's Itanium2 and the NPACI Rocks Cluster Distribution. "Version 2.3.2 of the NPACI Rocks software makes it easier to add Itanium systems into clusters using other chips. The software is being used at Northwestern University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Stanford University and other academic and government facilities."

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Staying Current with NetBSD (O'ReillyNet)

This O'ReillyNet article steps through the process of upgrading a NetBSD system. "The NetBSD Project provides comprehensive documentation on how to upgrade the operating system. As with many such comprehensive documents, it's frequently difficult to know which steps you should follow in your particular situation. This article isn't a comprehensive tutorial that covers every possible situation; rather, it covers the most common situation: updating your source with CVS, building that source code, and installing it on the build machine."

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New Distributions

blueflops

blueflops is a Linux distribution that fits on two floppy disks, and includes a graphical Web browser (links 2.1pre9 using svgalib 1.4.3) and a popular IRC client (BitchX 1.0c19). The kernel is 2.4.20 with most of the Ethernet drivers compiled as modules. The C library is uClibc 0.9.16, busybox is a slightly modified version of 0.61.pre. The 'links' and 'BitchX' binaries are statically linked and compressed with UPX 1.90. The distinguishing feature of blueflops is its configuration procedure. The scripts are all accessible through a 'setup' script, and they all have a nice 'dialog' front-end. Version 1.0.0 was released April 15, 2003.

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Minor distribution updates

Bernhard's Bootable Linux CD

Bernhard's Bootable Linux CD (or BBLCD Toolkit) has released v0.7.7 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This version adds an example in misc/suse/8.1, supports automatic calculation of the necessary initrd-size, and includes minor bugfixes and enhancements as suggested by users."

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KNOPPIX

KNOPPIX has released v3.2-2003-04-09 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: mousedev is now used for all USB mice in an attempt to fix some reported problems. Most of the GNOME 1 stuff was deleted because of space limits. The following packages will be omitted until a GNOME2 version exists and fits: evolution, libguppi16, gcdmaster, gnome-games, and kino. Flash-Installer was added. Support for ALSA drivers was added, but it is untested. This feature can be used by adding the "alsa" option to the boot command. An argument can be passed to the "alsa" option to specify a particular sound card driver."

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Slackware Live CD

Slackware Live CD has released v2.9.0.12 with major bugfixes. "Changes: A lot of bugfixes with USB mouse detection."

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TrinityOS

TrinityOS has released v04/08/2003 with major security fixes. "Changes: Many updates were made, including the addition of critical files to the backup floppy and Samba 2.2.8a to resolve security issues. Compilation help for 2.2.8 Samba users was also added. The recommended version of Sendmail was changed to 8.11.7 or 8.12.9, and information on disguising the version of Sendmail running was included."

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TrustedDebian

TrustedDebian has released v0.9.3 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This version adds RSBAC kernel configuration fixes, adds a RSBAC ACL module, enables RSBAC CAP module process hiding, adds rsbac-doc, rsbac-dev, and rsbac-klogd packages, and updates glibc and related packages."

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Trustix Secure Linux

Trustix has announced the release of Trustix Secure Linux 2.0 beta 1 (Tornado). "Being a beta we will not recommend it for production use nor will we maintain it. With some luck and skill, you might be able to swup upgrade it, but a plain reinstall is recommended."

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uClinux

uClinux has releaed v2.5.67-uc0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: Uses the latest development kernel."

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