More distros, more chaos (?)
Company News | Reuters.com: "Oracle says may launch own Linux version"
Linux is already a me-too technology now, and every Tom, Dick and Harry has a distro of his own. There are plenty out there. Just look at the distrowatch.com, even though the list is not exhaustive, its big enough to be able to keep track of. I bet even distrowatch people must be finding it difficult. And to add, there are numerous livecds scattered all over with all sorts of names.
It could be difficult to find a right distro for you. But pretty much is standardized and the application areas of many are well understood - "Which Distro Do You Recommend?" Also unless you have emphatically different or special needs, theres already a distro recommended for you. If not anything, it at least spreads awareness and gets lots of people involved in the process. So more the better?
Its nice to have choice, but its really not good to be overwhelmed with many. Starting a distro for fun its ok, you want to do it just for the sake of learning, even then its acceptable. But when it comes to companies starting out their own..it may not neccessarily help open source as a whole. Also whats getting heavily smacked in such situations is an unified effort to get the GNU/Linux on layman's desktop (the ultimate target!). Oracle buying out Novel would be welcomed more that it starting out on its own, with again a new bundle of things, new way of configuration, new package manager, and so forth. Its working against us. We are scaring away people with this; for the learning curve could be really steep even when it comes to installing a software as simple as IM or watching DVDs.
Again, there has to be some choice and no one distro should monopolize. For the sake of competition and wider options for the user, would be better to see a limited set of distros (and we already have many) backed-up by strong foundations like Red Hat, Ubuntu and like, and not every foundation setting out on its own.
Linux is already a me-too technology now, and every Tom, Dick and Harry has a distro of his own. There are plenty out there. Just look at the distrowatch.com, even though the list is not exhaustive, its big enough to be able to keep track of. I bet even distrowatch people must be finding it difficult. And to add, there are numerous livecds scattered all over with all sorts of names.
It could be difficult to find a right distro for you. But pretty much is standardized and the application areas of many are well understood - "Which Distro Do You Recommend?" Also unless you have emphatically different or special needs, theres already a distro recommended for you. If not anything, it at least spreads awareness and gets lots of people involved in the process. So more the better?
Its nice to have choice, but its really not good to be overwhelmed with many. Starting a distro for fun its ok, you want to do it just for the sake of learning, even then its acceptable. But when it comes to companies starting out their own..it may not neccessarily help open source as a whole. Also whats getting heavily smacked in such situations is an unified effort to get the GNU/Linux on layman's desktop (the ultimate target!). Oracle buying out Novel would be welcomed more that it starting out on its own, with again a new bundle of things, new way of configuration, new package manager, and so forth. Its working against us. We are scaring away people with this; for the learning curve could be really steep even when it comes to installing a software as simple as IM or watching DVDs.
Again, there has to be some choice and no one distro should monopolize. For the sake of competition and wider options for the user, would be better to see a limited set of distros (and we already have many) backed-up by strong foundations like Red Hat, Ubuntu and like, and not every foundation setting out on its own.
We need it to grow, but in height.