| Guest Opinion: The class structure of Linux distributions |
Sep. 22, 2005
There is a never-ending "religious war" over which Linux distribution (distro) is best, and which distros will survive. The opening shot of this war is a "discussion" of differences between the distros. At the micro level, there are lots of differences buried under the hood. But at the macro level, where real people do their work, the differences are not very pronounced. When delineating the differences of distros, I take a more holistic approach to Linux. I don't really see "individual" distros. I see classes or groupings of distros; and all of them are pretty much the same. Here is how I see the current state of Linux along with a few predictions (I'm told that I'm "often wrong but never in doubt!")
1. Debian Class (Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, Kanotix, Zen, etc.) -- They all come from the basic Debian "family," but most are based on the "unstable" repos, and all make use of the apt-get package management system "hitting" one of the major repos. However, a number of these distros also maintain a sub-set of the more popular applications in their own repositories. They claim 100 percent Debian compatibility, and they make the changes and patches available back to the Debian community. There seems to be some bad feeling between what is called Debian "pure" and the many derivatives. To me, it's still "all Debian." The main "problem" with Debian "pure" is that the install is still a long way from being as complete as other distros in its class, a great deal of multi-media configuration is left to the user, and of late the "unstable" repos has been a mess.
2. Red Hat Class (RH, CentOS, Mandrake, Fedora etc.) -- These all came from the Red Hat platform, and are characterized by the use of the RPM management system. They all seem to contain a certain amount of bloat, and the RPM system, while far improved from what it was just two years ago, still does not have the sophistication of agt-get or yast. These distros are the "IBM" of Linux, in that no one ever gets fired for buying/using them. Red Hat is currently the "big Kahuna" of Linux in corporate circles. They've had this market pretty much to themselves for the past five years, but things are changing and they are going to have to hire or obtain some world-class management if they want to stay on top.
3. Novell/SUSE Class -- This probably should be called the "Slackware" class, but since no one in the real world has ever heard of Slackware, I call it the SuSE class. SuSE came from Slackware, as does Vector Linux. Both Vector and SuSE are known for their excellent admin tools, with SuSE's YaST being the one many others are measured by. YaST2 is very impressive, both as a package manager and as an admin tool. My money is on Novell as the eventual 'winner' of the corporate sector. They have the name-recognition, easy access to large-scale IT CIOs, and Novell has the sales/service infrastructure to play at this level. Also, they have bet the company on Linux. Failure for them is not an option, so I have to believe they will do a full-court press for the whole game. They have nowhere to go if they lose. That's called "incentive." If Red Hat was going to walk away with the heavyweight championship it would have happened by now. As for Slackware, this aging diva still has many admiring fans, and as long as there is a "Linux," there will be a Slackware. Its package management system is an antique and the rest of the world has passed it by when it comes to administration. But, when old-hands get together to discuss Linux, you find that they all came from Slackware.
4. Single-Purpose Class -- I lump all the distros that were created for a specific purpose into this class. Some, like Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux, were created for small-footprint machines. SmoothWall was designed to be a router. SME was engineered to be a server. Musix is for music composers. Most of these distros will probably disappear in the developed nations when the consolidation of the market occurs, if it occurs, and their functions get folded into the more 'mainstream' distros. However, with many developing nations becoming 'wired' with used machines donated or acquired from the 'developed' world, many of the small footprint distros will find a lot of use, as they run well on older, less powerful hardware.
5.Odd-Ball Class -- There are a whole bunch of distros that are just... well... different. That does not mean bad, they just march to their own tune and shy away from standards or conventions. Arch, with its PacMan management system, is one of these distros. There is Symphony, which has a 'way-out-there, on-the-edge' user interface. Another odd-ball distro is Gentoo, the claim to fame here being that it's a nerd-only distro one can build from scratch and it will run faster than a chicken with the colonel behind it! Finally, there is Progeny, which has a special modular architecture, as well as the famed Ian Murdoch (the 'ian' of Deb-ian). Maybe Symphony or Progeny can "break out" and become more popular, but most of the other members of the Odd-Ball class will remain loved and cherished by their (small) core of rabid fans and users. Linux means choice, so this is all good.
About the author: Alan Canton is president of Adams-Blake Company, of Fair Oaks, Calif., which provides the JAYA123 Web-based back office application for small and mid-size businesses.
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Please Note: The opinions expressed in this guest column are those of the writer, not of the management or staff of Linux-Watch.com.
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