United Linux
United Linux was an attempt by a consortium of Linux distributors to create a common base distribution for enterprise use, in an attempt to minimise duplication of engineering effort and form an effective competitor to Red Hat. The founding members of United Linux were SuSE, Turbolinux, Conectiva and The SCO Group (formerly Caldera Systems). The consortium was announced on May 30, 2002. Its end was announced on January 22, 2004.
History
With the rise of Linux during the 1990s, GNU/Linux distributions proliferated. Since the Linux kernel and GNU userland were both free software, anyone could put together and market a distribution. Many industry observers feared fragmentation and wide-ranging incompatibility, similar to the UNIX wars of the early 1990s.
The first moves towards the United Linux project were made at COMDEX in November 1999. There were a number of false starts, but the participants consistently agreed that a unified GNU/Linux platform for business made sense. The key factors for success were identified early in 2000.
Starting in March and April 2002, the United Linux board put together a base technical specification, getting input from the four consortium members and their business partners and vendors.
The project was announced to the world on May 30, 2002. A first beta was released to United Linux member partners on August 14, 2002, a public beta was released on September 25, 2002 and United Linux 1.0 was released on November 19, 2002.
Technical overview
Starting with the Linux Standard Base, the distribution was based on SuSE's distribution, with SCO, Turbolinux and Conectiva primarily marketing the distribution in their territories.
It was planned that version 1.0 would take six to eight months to release, be the current version for one year and be supported for another year after the release of 2.0. Minimum technical requirements were:
The end of United Linux
The end of United Linux was announced in a Novell press conference on January 22, 2004 by Richard Seibt, president of the SuSE division. The stated reason was SCO's public attacks on Linux and the SCO v. IBM case having made the alliance unworkable.
It emerged that no real work had been done on United Linux since soon after SCO v. IBM had started, and that SuSE had ceased active participation around this time. The last United Linux announcements were of Oracle support for United Linux on 13 March 2003, and of AMD64 CPU support on 22 April 2003.
Despite the failure of the united front, many believed United Linux had the desired effect: increased corporate awareness of Linux — particularly SuSE's version — and increased participation in Linux by software and hardware vendors, leading to wider compatibility. SuSE has announced continued support for United Linux 1.0 and that it will continue to work with Conectiva and Turbolinux, the remaining consortium members.
Others still attempt to form a credible GNU/Linux distribution for business, most recently Bruce Perens' UserLinux initiative.
External links
Referenced By
Caldera International | Caldera Systems | Distro | Linux Meta-distribution | Linux distribution | Meta-distribution | Metadistros | SCO Group | The SCO Group | Turbolinux | YaST | Yet Another Setup Tool
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