Timothy R. Butler writes “Former Red Hat employee Bernhard “Bero” Rosenkraenzer has resurfaced, after leaving Red Hat last fall, with a brand new GNU/Linux distribution meant for the average user. According to the distribution’s web site, “The Ark Linux distribution is based primarily upon a Red Hat Linux 7.3 / 8.0 foundation. On top of this, we have added a new easy-to-use installer (an Ark Linux installation is only four mouse clicks away!) and extensively tailored the software applications and utilities included – all in an effort to ensure that Ark Linux provides superior ease-of-use and the features and functionality end users have told us they want.” Read more here.” The ArkLinux home page.
Former Red Hat Employee “Bero” Starts New Distro
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So what does it use? Gnome or KDE?
Ummm…did you read the website?
“so far, nobody has tried making an easy to use version of Linux for the masses, even though the KDE user interface makes Linux very easy to use.”
I hope they focus as much on making the entire suite of programs easy to use, because many can install linux, but few care to learn the myriad interfaces for each program (they are substantially different).
so far, nobody has tried making an easy to use version of Linux for the masses, even though the KDE user interface makes Linux very easy to use.
Hello ELK! Hello Lycoris!
Here comes the Ark that will save us all!
but why is everyone and their grandma starting a new distribution?
“but why is everyone and their grandma starting a new distribution?”
Because the time is ripe for Linux. This year will see a major push for Linux on the desktop. It may take a couple of years to begin to impact Microsoft but as the Linux server push is now making a huge dent in Microsofts plans for the server market, the Linux desktop push will begin to affect Microsoft plans for desktop computers. Unlike past competitors Microsoft has crushed, Linux is coming from all corners of the globe. If 1 Linux vendor fails, 2 or 3 will spring up in its place to continue on. I expect one major Linux vendor will fail this year but members from that vendor will do as Bero has done and go on to either found a new distribution or two or contibute their efforts to another company as employees. Linux momentum will increase steadily until Microsoft is forced to work with industry wide supported standards or go under. Microsoft will go down much faster than most people believe currently. A years time can change things dramatically. Wait and see.
I completely agree. I think developers should concentrate on making existing distributions easy to use (Debian maybe?) rather than creating their own, but he might want to market his OS and make some money on top of the intellectual experiences he wil gain from creating the distro.
Just what we need. Another Linux distribution to introduce further incomptibilities and further headaches for developers trying to write software for Linux.
looks like the freedom that linux offers only encourages talents reinventing wheels.
>looks like the freedom that linux offers only encourages talents reinventing wheels.
HHA! Very funny! Don’t you think people should be allowed to say “This is not good enough, I want to do better?” no? Okay, lets pretend to be happy about what we currently run. Right everyone SMILE!!
Linux has Mozilla(and phoenix). In my opinion Mozilla is FAR superior to IE in every way. On my WinXP desktop I use Mozilla instead of IE. And on my Linux desktop I use Phoenix.
“HHA! Very funny! Don’t you think people should be allowed to say “This is not good enough, I want to do better?” no? Okay, lets pretend to be happy about what we currently run. Right everyone SMILE!!”
The problem is that everyone always thinks they have a better way of doing something, and that Linux has become the “property” of commercial vendors like Red Hat and such. Linux is dangerously close to rediscovering the same problem that UNIX had, which is that it became so fragmented that it was a nightmare for software vendors to try to support their apps on UNIX.
The wise saying “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” comes to mind.
Granted United Linux may be a step in the right direction, but United Linux wasn’t designed to create a Linux standard. It was designed so that the smaller vendors could try to compete with Red Hat. Notice that Red Hat was not invited to be a part of it until only a couple of days before the conference. An oversight? I doubt it.
1. That it includes the Taiwanese locales and
2. That it complies to the UnitedLinux standard. Or at least, to the LSB (which is a subset of UL).
Regarding Mozilla: if it’s so fucking superior to IE, how come they -still- haven’t fixed the ThinkPad Trackpoint issues? Fucking morons.
I don’t care if it’s a fourty-click installation, just make it easier to understand. Users don’t care about questions, they just like to answer questions with the knowledge that they did it correctly. For example, instead of asking if they want to install “xlib” (let’s just say that it is an extensive Python library), they could ask, “Do you code in Python?” If you answer no, then they move on. If they answer yes, the installer asks what libraries they want (it’s assumed that somebody who programs in Python under Linux knows what they want and what they don’t want).
A lot of people seem to dislike the idea of “yet another distro”. I beg to differ.
I see all the linux distros as like little amoeba bubbling awayA lot of people seem to dislike the idea of “yet another distro”. I beg to differ.
I see all the linux distros as like little amoeba bubbling away in the early stages of our evolution. A new distro is like a genetic mutation. If the mutation is successful then that distro will split off other little distros. The older distros will either try and adopt the new mutation somehow or risk losing out.
This is the strength of linux, not its weakness. It allows for countless different research projects to be carried out simultaneously. Not even Microsoft can afford such resources. Add in open source so that other distros can easily adopt the latest and greatest and the whole approach pack a powerful punch. This is why linux has come so far so quickly. Open source prevents linux distros from fragmenting too much…
If you were to somehow stop new distros from emerging, then you would deny linux its greatest strength which is its capacity to evolve. Remember, it may not just be software that the guys are innovating. A new distro means:
A different business philosophy (lindows)
A new level of ease of use (xandros)
Longer life cycles (debian)
Perhaps better management practices etc
The number of ways a new distro might be innovating is endless. Good luck to Ark!
“I see all the linux distros as like little amoeba bubbling away in the early stages of our evolution. A new distro is like a genetic mutation. If the mutation is successful then that distro will split off other little distros. The older distros will either try and adopt the new mutation somehow or risk losing out.”
Well, I am an ecologist so now you hit on my field.
Guess what? Too much genetic diversity can be bad. Too much gene flow can reduce the fitness value of the existing population. Personally, I think Linux is dangerously close to reaching that point. It’s to the point where the diversity is going to harm the existing distros. Sofrware isv’s are just going to say “To hell with it. It’s too fragmented. We can’t support it because there are 10 different ways of doing things.”
They are either going to choose not to support Linux at all (which most have done), or they are going to choose to support only one or two distros (as Oracle has done).
or at least, that’s what they plan to. Which one? Well, try to guess.
Simba, as much as I might agree with your point that too many distros are bad for Linux, I don’t quite understnad what do genetics and Linux distro policies have in common. It’s not like Linux distro’s are mating or giving birth to new, little Linux distros. That would be, quite literally, FUBAR-ed :o)
Has anyone used Ark Linux yet? I’m curious to hear what end users think about this distro.
OK.
I haven’t even downloaded Ark, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll move over to something close to Ark-like.
First up I’ve been using RedHat since the 6.0 days, and ahve been quite happy with it. Except for now, where RedHat are screwing up KDE badly, really badly, KDE 3.0 RedHat looks like a POS compared to a clean version from KDE, but the effort required to compile KDE under Redhat really isn’t worth my time anymore. I use KDE, but KDE under Redhat sucks.
Considering Bero would agree, and Ark is based of 7.3/8.0 Redhat – sounds like the best of both worlds here. I’ll go buy the first ark that has KDE 3.1
I hope they focus as much on making the entire suite of programs easy to use, because many can install linux, but few care to learn the myriad interfaces for each program (they are substantially different).
We’re trying to address that – we’ve started, and we’re making progress.
Just don’t expect miracles from an initial alpha version.
I completely agree. I think developers should concentrate on making existing distributions easy to use (Debian maybe?) rather than creating their own, but he might want to market his OS and make some money on top of the intellectual experiences he wil gain from creating the distro.
Debian is a very good distribution for people who know what they’re doing – but it’s unsuitable for newbies for quite a few reasons, from the installation all the way up to the default configuration and package choice.
Different groups of users have different needs – I don’t believe you can make a really good OS for servers, corporate workstations, newbie home users and geeks all alike. There are way too many tradeoffs you have to make (e.g. security vs. usability, picking the traditional Unix tools vs. fancy GUI stuff that’s easy to get started with, but potentially not powerful enough for a power user, …)
And, since users of existing distributions won’t want to drop the stuff they’ve come to love and need (great but hard to use stuff), you’d have to fork the distribution anyway — or does anyone really think Debian or Gentoo would want to reduce their package count to be less complex for a newbie?
Therefore, it (IMO) doesn’t make much sense to turn a great geek and server distribution into an end user desktop – it makes more sense to write something from scratch with the needs of the group you’re targeting in mind all the time.
The right tool for the right job – Ark Linux is not about taking users away from other distributions.
Also, Ark Linux – unlike other attempts to make desktop Linuxes – is 100% Free Software.
[Linux has Mozilla(and phoenix). In my opinion Mozilla is FAR superior to IE in every way. On my WinXP desktop I use Mozilla instead of IE. And on my Linux desktop I use Phoenix.]
hehe, even you – a mozillar believer – don’t use the bloated POS on linux, you know it is slooooowww like a pig.
for average user, the speed of IE – or perceived speed of IE is the “standard” – mozillar might do others things 100x better, but until a substantial amount of users switch to MZ, most people wouldn’t care how good it is and no web site would pay significant attention to it either. I can’t understand why they can list 100 things IE can’t do, but failed to let MZ start in seconds not tens of seconds.
Opera is faster, but it just has too many segfaults, not a chocie if there are free and a faster alternative.
When I use Linux I use khtml/Konqueror, and that’s by far the fastest complete browser on my computer, in any system.
“Simba, as much as I might agree with your point that too many distros are bad for Linux, I don’t quite understnad what do genetics and Linux distro policies have in common. It’s not like Linux distro’s are mating or giving birth to new, little Linux distros. That would be, quite literally, FUBAR-ed :o)”
Well, I’m not the one that made the analogy. The other poster tried to claim that like genetic diversity, having a shitload of Linux distributions around was good because the weaker ones would die out, the stronger ones would propser, etc. I was merely pointing out that even in genetics, too much diversity can be a bad thing.
It was a bad analogy to start with. But it is made worse by the fact that it isn’t genetically accurate.
but my comment was good-natured, so no harm was done (I hope).
Hey Bero, in case you’re still reading these, would you comment on the 2 points I made? I really care about those, actually, I wasn’t kidding.
http://www.arklinux.org/support.php
uh…..how come?
Get a life, brain, room and other things that a lacking. In the end of the day, commercial developers choose a distro and stick with it. The majority run mainstream distributions like United Linux and Redhat. When the software vendors do come, they’ll most likely right for Redhat.
I say, screw the other distros, either conform to the defacto standard defined by the commercial developers or be prepared to live out on the fringes of the linux community.
That is kinda obvious, isn’t it? Isn’t Bero a KDE developer? What else would he use? Windows Explorer?
Anyway, off topic, Mosfet posted a rebuttal of my arguments against his on his website (http://www.mosfet.org/rh-rebuttal.html). I have replied her via email, but it is nice to note now that Bero probably didn’t leave just because of RH crippling KDE. There must have been a lot more disagreements on how the desktop should be and Bero wanted to try his hand at it.
The reason is that everyone wants a piece out of the Linux desktop pie. There are many ways to the desktop, and every company in the field disagrees to a certain extend which is right.
In a couple of years or so, there would probably be a shakeout of commercial desktop distributions, while I sincerely doubt non-commercial distributions would get all that far because they don’t have a company behind them.
Many people complained about the crippled KDE in RedHat8.0/8.1. Bero wants to offer a distribution abutted to RedHat8.0/8.1 which is based on KDE. This seems a reasonable idea to me.
Linux is all about having choice, so I really don’t understand why people think there are too many distributions. The distributions that do not serve people’s needs will go away, the one’s that are good, will stay.
Noone has tried making a KDE-distro for the masses? Then what is Xandros, Lycoris, Lindows, Conectiva, Mandrake and SuSE?
This is just “yet another KDE-based distro”.
If it was purely GNOME-based, then at least it would be something new.
I know this is off topic, but Mosfet is a guy (his real name is Daniel Duley). Those pictures on his site are of his girlfriend
Yeah, I realize that now, thanks. It is quite confusing though because all his pictures are of a female, and Daniel is more or less a unisex name.
what are you on, rajan? In what forsaken country is Daniel a female name? Danielle perhaps (France) or Daniela (Slavic languages and Italian), but Daniel? It’s one of the oldest MALE names in history.
sorry for the O.T.
“I don’t care if it’s a fourty-click installation, just make it easier to understand”…
I think Mandrake amony many other distros tries to give a brief description of each one of its packages during installation. If one tries not to choose a certain applicacation X, then a host of other dependancies arent selected either. My roommate spent 2 hours READING all the info about the packages (I admire his patience!) and selected only those packages that he thought he would need; only to find that a bunch of packages/apps that he had deselected were installed still!
He simply said after the ordeal that he wished one could have the “Freedom” to choose the programs one wanted to use.
And I agree.