UserLinux has released its first beta CD and is widening the scope of testing. The project, led by long-time open source advocate Bruce Perens gives enterprise customers a certified version of Linux without the support price tag and restrictive licensing policies offered with commercial distributions from vendors like Red Hat and SuSE.
UserLinux releases first beta CD
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Some minor squeaks with i18n remain, but hey: It is a beta.
I’m actually a bit excited about this. When the release comes, if it’s any good it may replace fedora on my laptop which now leaks memory like an open faucet.
not much detail as to what software is included, from the screenshot on their hompage it looks like Gnome is their default desktop…
this is good news, i wish them good luck :^)
I have been useing UserLinux for a while now and I love it. I’ve tryed FC2 ans Suse but i keep on switching back to UserLinux.
As superficial as it sounds, does anyone know if the screenshots are for a vanilla install or is it tweaked a bit? What I really like about fedora is that the look is pretty consistant throughout. A debian distro that does the same and stays up to date would be fantastic.
I’ve been waiting a while to test this one out, but sadly it seems to have a lot of problems. It would not install for me on a system that has run debian woody previously. There is no excuse for that, this is not even beta quality yet.
Yes, the default desktop is GNOME. I don’t know the provenance of the screen shots, but they must be treaked a bit as the bottom bar is not the default one you get with GNOME – which is what I see on new installs. If you want the GNOME theme, it is at http://art.gnome.org/themes/metacity/710/ . It’s called “Office”.
Thanks
Bruce
According to http://art.gnome.org UserLinux seems to use theme called “Office” for its default looks.
– the GTK theme: http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/713/
– the Metacity theme: http://art.gnome.org/themes/metacity/710/
I’m not sure about the icons, but the folder icons do look prettier in that screenshot than waht default GNOME has.
Thanks for pointing out that there is both a Metacity and a GNOME theme.
my personal opinion is that name “userlinux” sounds stupid 🙂
they should come up with some “enterprise” sounding, impressive name!
– an enterprise linux who don’t support rpm packages is stupid nowadays when rpm is a “de facto” standard
– Why boycott Qt and KDE ? If it is not Debian, why be license-pure ?
– Does it have a graphical installer or it uses ncurses like Debian ?
RPM is not the defacto standard for Linux, you got microsoftish thinking on the brain…
altho RPM is a standard it is not “The standard”
hehe, rpm is the standard… oh wait, you are serious.
I don’t know a single linux user that use an rpm based distro, maybe I live in a debian town, but I think a lot of people around the world are using debian or debian based distro. So much easier to maintain. Not to mention most rpm package can be installed in debian thru Alien.
A solution in search of a problem?
I didnt think rpms were portible between distro’s anyways. SuSE Rpms dont work with Red Hat etc.
It is just debian with less package control. I installed the enterprise package set, and when I tried to apt-get remove open office it wanted to uninstall ALL of the User Linux enterprise packages. It is alright, but it is just Debian.
The one thing Redhat has going for it is how they provide certain guarantees to their customers. For instance, they will maintain each release for not less than 5 years to their customers, and they will provide upgrades free of course. They also have guarantees about how they provide bug fixes and security fixes. This is what thye need to tell us if they want to provide an enterprise linux, and emphasize less on the technical side because I think we are al familiar with that, and no distro actually manages to do much better than others.
So instead of screenshots, we need more info about the plan for the future.
If you read around the UserLinux website, you can get more of an idea of the goals of the project. It seems to me that they’re trying to build a free distro that outside companies can support to eliminate the vendor lock-in that is present with most enterprise distros. The support companies will be the ones making the promises of how long they will support a current version, not UserLinux. There is a plan for the future, it’s just hard to find on the website since it is poorly designed. Getting a finished product out seems like a more important primary goal than a good website though. Keep up the good work.
rpm is the only or principal package format for distribution of many commercial software, like vmware, etc. The .deb format is restricted to Debian and derived distributions.
Note that I am not saying rpm is better or deb sucks. I think that an enterprise distribution must have a native way for install rpms.
Can it use Debian’s own packages, or does it require its own customized versions? If the answer is the latter, how much stuff do they have available so far?
I run vmware on my Debian box just fine. and I didn’t have to do anything special either, just followed the install instructions. RPM is just a huge headache IMO.
I’d take Deb’s anyday, at leat there is consistancy over the Debian derived distributions out there unlike the Red Hat derived ones like Mandrake and the likes. Still, I’m using Arch so what am I crapping on about. Hope my community builds cause I would like this to be the little distro that could (-:
Yes! Now we call all look like we’re running OS X while really not running OS X!!
It’s not really a question of which format is used, just whether or not a package for one distro would work on another. It would be great if alll RPMs worked on all RPM distros, but the often times don’t. As more Debian based distros diverge from the main trunk, this could happen too, but so far it looks like most Debian based distibutions stay pretty compatible with vanilla Debian, but thats is more of an implementation feature than package formats.
Preventing devating from the core is what debian is good for. It is big, slow and open. The fact that debian has a huge user base makes it so pretty much all the .deb packages target the base debian distro. The slow and open parts make it easy for debian based distros to be compatible with the core.
This is just another binary distro. i switched between binary distros for years like suse debian and redhat. i always found one problem or another locking me down to what i could do or not finding dependanceys. then i desided id actually learn to use linux and started useing source based distros. if you want to have a OS build for you and not a standard made to fit anyone id suggest a source based distro. i use gentoo and ill never go back.
What?
Did you not read the UserLinux mission statement?
It isn’t for hobbyists and hackers like Gentoo is. It’s a distribution for serious production networks designed with the number one goal of ISV certifications.
Userlinux’s main goal is to bring the “freedom” of linux back into the enterprise, by creating a stable distribution which can compete with RHEL but without the bundled support contract.
I’m sorry, I love gentoo too, but it’s never going to be ISV certified, it won’t ever be run on a production machine by a fortune 500 company, it will always be a playground for hobbyists and the showcase for the features which will hit stable enterprise linux distributions in the next five years.
Bruce, thank you for your effort. I hadn’t heard anything from Userlinux in a while, and decided that you either disappeared or were too busy hacking on UL to evangelize it. I am glad to hear that it is the latter, and am VERY impressed by the beta.
Kudos, a big milestone. I think I get the mission, the support network and all but it’s a little murky in the area of defining the difference between it and debian. I mean it’s debian based, so why would I want to nuke my potato and install this?
Since it is based on Debian, can you simply apt-get KDE? I know it seems silly, but I’ve been searching for a nice polished non-commercial version of Debian, and UserLinux seems to be it. I prefer KDE to GNOME however (both are good, I’m just used to KDE more)
I know it seems silly, but I’ve been searching for a nice polished non-commercial version of Debian, and UserLinux seems to be it.
Sounds to me like you’re looking for Debian.
Since it is based on Debian, can you simply apt-get KDE
—
yes or a vendor could ship it. even bruce perens own company does that
As die hard deb fan, all I can say is “Very Nice.” Oh, and Thank You.
I signed up for the UserLinux mailing list when I first found out about it, and I’ve kept most of the messages from that list. There are a wide range of opinions, even on the list, about what should and should not be done. One of the great things about Linux software is that you can distribute it in all kinds of different ways. The Debian system was once known, or carried the impression, that it was difficult to install. While that is no longer true, numerous packaging attempts have been created to resolve this and other issues. The result is that we have some of the most flexible, easy to use systems in existence. Commercial Debian software includes Linspire and Xandros, two of the easiest systems in the world to install, but there is also Knoppix that runs directly from CD and a great number of spin offs from that project. I like MEPIS. It installs from CD, can be installed to disk or simply run from CD.
UserLinux carves out another space. It provides a base from which integrators can customize desktop or server solutions for small, medium, or even large businesses.
UserLinux is really easy to install. First you download a rather small ISO image. The exact size may vary a bit, but it is currently around 45 MB. Once this is downloaded, you burn a CD ISO 9660 image using your favorite CD burning tool. Then you boot the resultant system from CD. Next, you set the Debian source locations to point to the UserLinux archives in addition to the defaults. Once you do that, you install the UserLinux software. From there, you can customize it, just as you do any Debian based system.
The result is easily customized systems that meet specific needs.
So does it use standard debian packages and repositories or not?