Thoughts on a new distro: SLUDGE
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| herzeleid Nov 14, 2007 11:32 AM EDT |
I know there are already more distros than anyone could ever keep track of, but I've been thinking about a niche that needs to be filled. A few years ago linux vendors began a trend of forking into 2 classes - the "enterprise" versions and the "consumer" or "enthusiast" versions. RHEL vs fedora, SLES/SLED vs opensuse, etc. When redhat discontinued their shrink wrapped Linux, forcing users to choose between RHEL or fedora, some of us went with fedora, and some of us went to other distros. A series of RHEL knockoffs hit the scene, and today it looks like Centos is the anointed RHEL clone. It's great for poor students, self taught sys admins and startup consultants who can use Centos for free to learn exactly how RHEL operates, thus preparing themselves for lucrative linux consulting work; some organizations find that centos is just fine, that they don't need the official support from redhat. therefore, for a lot of scenarios, centos makes sense, while fedora doesn't. IMHO this free beer version of RHEL helps redhat, because even if they don't get money from the sale, it propagates the RHEL personality and way of doing things, and so when it comes time to pick a supported enterprise distro it's a no brainer to move from centos to RHEL. I've been a full time suse user since 2004, and I like SLES, it's been rock solid in our data center, and IMHO there is a real need for a free beer version of SLES, for the small businesses and those just starting out. Some will say that opensuse is the free beer version of SLES, but that's simply not the case. Opensuse has a newer kernel, newer libs, different tools. Sure, there's a strong family resemblance but it's not identical, and what works on one might not work the same way, or at all, on the other. So, I'm toying with the idea of doing a distro which would be to SLES as centos is to RHEL. It would be a lot of work, but the basic idea is to remove the novell branding and build the source RPMs to make a SLES work-alike. The real work would be keeping it up to date and maintained, tracking the SLES updates, doing the regression testing and making updates available through some as yet unspecified channel. Am I crazy? maybe so. It's just a thought at this point - but I can't help thinking there are lots of places where SLUDGE, a free-speech *and* free-beer version of SLES would be just what the doctor ordered. And let's face it, novell's flirtations with microsoft provide more than enough impetus for people who would love to use sles but don't want to pay novell. Feel free to reflect some harsh reality to me. |
| techiem2 Nov 14, 2007 12:01 PM EDT |
Quoting:Feel free to reflect some harsh reality to me. *holds up a mirror* ;) I think it's a good idea. |
| jdixon Nov 14, 2007 2:09 PM EDT |
> So, I'm toying with the idea of doing a distro which would be to SLES as centos is to RHEL. A good goal, but IIRC there are at least a couple of proprietary pieces to the SLES puzzle, which would have to be worked around or left out. It also sounds like too big a job for one person to handle by themselves. I'd try to get a team of at least 3 people to work on it, and more would be better. Or you take the easy route and just use Slackware. :) |
| herzeleid Nov 14, 2007 2:30 PM EDT |
Heh slack is teh cool, but it's not in the target audience of people who would like to use SLES but can't afford to or don't really want to pay novell... and I agree, it would probably be too much for one guy to pull off. If I'm the only one in the world who thinks this right now, it probably will have to wait for more of a critical mass of popular demand. |
| hkwint Dec 08, 2007 11:37 AM EDT |
LXer is not the best place to ask. Ask on the OpenSuse forums! |
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