Like most business partners, the organisations that make up the UnitedLinux initiative--SuSE Linux, Turbolinux, Conectiva, and The SCO Group (formerly Caldera)--are hoping that their combined efforts will bear more fruit and bring in more customers than attempting to go it alone.
Keep in mind that these four partners are still separate businesses with their own Linux distributions and pricing structures. Their partnership consists of the sharing of ideas and the development of a common core operating system upon which they can add their own enhancements.
It's an intriguing prospect with the potential for a positive reaction from business users of Linux software, who have long been dealing with multiple distributions and the headaches that can come from working with different platforms.
The thrust of UnitedLinux
An impressive and potentially profitable undertaking, UnitedLinux seeks to take the chaos and pain out of developing software for multiple Linux distributions. However, noticeably absent from the group is Linux distribution leader Red Hat, which said that support for Red Hat Advanced Server is already sufficient. Red Hat currently enjoys an excellent market position in comparison to the four founding members of UnitedLinux.
Also missing from the fold is Mandrake, widely considered one of the most, if not the most, popular desktop Linux distribution. The missing Mandrake makes some sense because UnitedLinux is aimed at servers. But without current market leader Red Hat, UnitedLinux may have a hard time making inroads into some markets.
Are the benefits good?
UnitedLinux provides a common platform on which developers can base their products. Although most Linux distributions make use of a common kernel, significant patches and enhancements are generally made to the kernel by each distribution, which can make the process of developing software that will work across various Linux distributions very difficult.
With UnitedLinux offering the possibility of wrapping up four major Linux distributions under the auspices of a common core, development for this platform and for Linux in general becomes much easier. Now, instead of developing for and testing on six distributions (Red Hat, Mandrake, and the four UnitedLinux partners), developers essentially need to worry about only three.
Both UnitedLinux 1.0 and Red Hat 8 comply with the requirements of the Linux Standard Base (LSB) 1.2. The LSB defines a set of interface standards that allows for portability of applications across open source platforms. The LSB helps address the need for a common core system infrastructure to aid in development and porting of applications between distributions. This could further ease the difficulty of development across Linux distros.
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