Unified Linux effort won't faze Red Hat (News.com) [LWN.net]

Here's News.com's take on UnitedLinux. "UnitedLinux pools some resources while giving much of the technological control to SuSE--a recognition of the reality that SuSE was the only Linux seller that had a development staff with depth comparable to Red Hat's."

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Unified Linux effort won't faze Red Hat (News.com)

Posted Jun 2, 2002 14:11 UTC (Sun) by DeletedUser651 ((unknown), #651) [Link] (3 responses)

I hate the no desktop idea as much as you guys... But - what would they do to standardize the desktop? There is no LSB for the desktop - we still can't even decide on whether or not to use GNOME vs. KDE. GNONE is inferior, of course. Of course - I would have liked to see them take some initiative on this front. They have a fundamental misunderstanding about what their corporate customers want. They want the "simplicity" of Windows (nice-looking and functional GUI) alongside the power of UNIX. They are not bright. You can't get the simplicity part until the Desktop has standardized on the universal way to change the hostname, ip settings, apache settings, etc, etc. UnitedLinux on the desktop would provide this standardization. I was happy about the announcement yesterday. I kept saying to myself - "this is what Linux needs". Now I'm pissed. They still don't get it.

Unified Linux effort won't faze Red Hat (News.com)

Posted Jun 2, 2002 16:34 UTC (Sun) by erat (guest, #21) [Link]

Actually, at unitedlinux.com it's clearly stated that KDE3 will be the desktop (it's under "Release Plans").

As for the article, I find it irritating (but not at all surprising) that the media is trying to paint UnitedLinux as being an anti-Red Hat initiative. Even when it's made clear that this couldn't be further from the truth, the media and analysts still insist on trying to stoke the distro-war fire. All the media has to go on is the fact that Red Hat was not cordially invited to participate until a week or two before the announcement. Out of hundreds of Linux distros, hundreds weren't invited until an initiative was outlined. I don't know what went on behind the scenes, but when a group is trying to make a viable standard and they invite a "de-facto standard" to the discussion, I think we can all predict where that "de-facto standard" company will try to drive the talks. I've been using Red Hat in addition to other distros. I have no desire to make it a Linux standard. It has its plusses, but it's not standard material.

Unified Linux effort won't faze Red Hat (News.com)

Posted Jun 2, 2002 17:05 UTC (Sun) by DeletedUser839 ((unknown), #839) [Link]

Hey dude! Aren't we supposed to work together to help Linux to gain more dominance? Sounds like some distros are ganging up to fight at other distro, aren't it? We should worked together rather than challenged each other. Oh man... give me a break! {PS: Our uncle Bill should be laughing at us right now.}

Unified Linux effort won't faze Red Hat (News.com)

Posted Jun 3, 2002 0:48 UTC (Mon) by DeletedUser416 ((unknown), #416) [Link]

Well, you have to consider, the desktop is an entirely different battle. In the case of KDE or Gnome, Linux is simply a delivery mechanism for a desktop. Joe User isn't going to care if it runs on top of Linux, BSD or Solaris. It really has nothing to do with Linux at all. It's just another application, one that could run on top of any number of OS's. Think of it like MacOS X. Does your typical Mac user really care what's under Aqua? Probably not, they never look under the hood. Apple could change the underlying OS at anytime, and most users wouldn't know the difference. When you talk about "Linux on the desktop", what you mean is "KDE or Gnome on the desktop". Those environments will have to succeed on their own merits. Linux is incedental to the process.

Unified Linux effort won't faze Red Hat (News.com)

Posted Jun 2, 2002 22:53 UTC (Sun) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

It Never Fails to make me laugh we got Red Hat there saying one thing yet meaning something completely different . Take the Patent thing whst they doin aye tell you what acting just like that tribe from redmond thats what , Now there sayin that they aint bothered about the alliance Errr "i dont think so " Wake up Red Hat you may be big stateside but you aint much more that a minow in these parts .. Pete.

Connectiva ...

Posted Jun 7, 2002 18:52 UTC (Fri) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link]

I think this comment greatly underestimates the quality of Connectiva's development staff. TurboLinux has never contributed much back to the community (certainly not in code). Their strength has been in localization to the Asian markets. Caldera did some interesting work with early versions of OpenLinux --- particularly in Netware interoperability; but that was never released back to the public. I can't think of any other significant Caldera contributions.

It might be less controversial to say that S.u.S.E. had the most marketshare among the UnitedLinux participants, and/or that theres was the obvious technical choice.