UserLinux: A Cheaper Enterprise Linux?

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is hard to know for sure how many different commercial Linux distributions the world can support. Technically, the number is boundless, but economically, markets tend to cluster around two or three major alternatives. The members of a new Linux distribution project called UserLinux, which was being championed by none other than open source luminary Bruce Perens, think there is room for another--and a cheaper--enterprise Linux alternative to Red Hat and Novell.

One of the great things about Linux is that it is open source, which means that the software is actually free for people to use and distribute. The only cost that customers have to incur is supporting Linux--they can get wise and do it themselves, or get money and pay someone else who is smarter than you to do the support. The problem is that the commercial Linux distributors are charging quite a bit more than free for licenses, maintenance, and support for Linux and its related open source stack. No one using Red Hat or SuSE Linux distributions is happy with the price, even if they are happy that this software does cost a bit less than a Unix or Windows environment. Simply put, Linux has gotten too expensive and that is limiting its adoption out there in the business community.

Perens and his compatriots at UserLinux want to change that. Last week at LinuxWorld, Perens hosted a press conference where he announced that the UserLinux project would launch a beta program on September 1 for 32-bit X86 systems. Perens has bigtime credentials in the Linux world. He was formerly one of the techies behind the animation systems at Pixar that brought us Toy Story, and has been the voice of reason in the SCO-IBM Linux-Unix lawsuits. He has also, among many other things, been a project leader in the amorphous and sometimes tumultuous Debian organization. The sentiment is if anyone has the charm and smarts to pull UserLinux off, it is Perens.

UserLinux is based on the Debian implementation of Linux, which is perhaps the purest and broadest implementation of Linux with the most enthusiasm among the hacker community. Debian Linux does not have pinstripes, but rather wrinkled khakis and torn jeans. It is also rock-solid and third behind Red Hat and the now defunct Sun Cobalt Linux out there on the Internet. There are considerably more Debian Linux servers on the Internet than SuSE Web servers. Perens says that UserLinux will track the Debian release process, and that while native 64-bit support for the AMD Opterons will not be officially available in the initial beta, since the Linux Standards Base (LSB) specification on which Debian and UserLinux are based do not yet support 64-bit X86 instructions. That said, Perens says that the UserLinux beta can run in 64-bit mode on the Opterons (as can Debian, obviously, in beta) and that he himself has been running it on an AMD machine for months and it is stable. The problem is not the code, but getting Debian and LSB, which is administered by the Free Standards Group to agree on how to cope with the 64-bit extensions. It seems that Debian wants to create a 64-bit Linux and then use a multiarch facility to backcast 32-but support where necessary.

Exactly what will be in UserLinux is unclear, but in the past Perens has said that he wanted to streamline the stack and make it as simple as possible. Last December, when he started talking about the project, he said UserLinux should be based on Debian's interpretation of the Linux 2.6 kernel, with the Gnome user interface, PostgreSQL database, Apache 2 Web server, Samba file server, Postfix mail server, Python interpretive language, OpenOffice office suite, and the Mozilla browser. It is unclear what will actually be in the beta when it comes out in three weeks.

Perens wants to give UserLinux away for free via electronic download and charge a modest amount for retail distributions. (How much, he has not said, but he wants it to be a lot less than Red Hat and Novell charge.) On top of this, Perens wants to build a federation of local support vendors to provide the handholding that commercial enterprises need. So far, his own California company as well as three others (one in Venezuela, one in France, and one in Illinois) have said they will offer support for UserLinux, and three other organizations have signed up. The trick for the UserLinux organizers will be keeping the pricing and level of support and expertise consistent across so many support providers. Of course, they simply many not try to do that and let a meritocracy evolve.

UserLinux is expected to come in four versions: an enterprise server edition that spans up to eight processors, an enterprise desktop edition that has Gnome and OpenOffice, plus a home edition that includes the server and desktop editions in one package (since many people network their home machines these days). Additionally, there will be a GUI Server edition that has a graphical thin client server administrator program for those who do not want to use the command line interface to manage their servers.