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Linux Business Operating Systems Software

Anatomy of a Successful Enterprise Linux Distro? 217

Posted by Cliff from the what-pieces-do-corporations-drool-over dept.
phenix asks: "With the new release of Novell Linux Desktop, and the upcoming release of Sun JDS3, I am curious to hear how these two suites, and their underlying enterprise infrastructures (JES and OES) compare. Specifically, I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation. All of these, of course, without the use of Windows products like Exchange and Windows technologies like Active Directory. Is there a better alternative?"
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Anatomy of a Successful Enterprise Linux Distro? More

Anatomy of a Successful Enterprise Linux Distro?

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  • How about YOU test it & get back to us? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:29PM (#11934633)
    http://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserve r/beta.html [novell.com]
    Open Enterprise Server is now shipping. An evaluation version will be available from the product web site on March 15, 2005. You may choose to download the public beta at this time or return when the evaluation is available.

    The Java Enterprise system is available for download in its entirety as a CD Image (ISO) or Compressed Archive [sun.com]

    • Re:How about YOU test it & get back to us? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:35PM (#11934695) Homepage
      At risk of wandering offtopic, the parent post is a microcosm of why people don't try OSS. A user asks for help/opinion, and it gets thrown back at him/her. Almost as un-helpful as "RTFM".

      • Re:How about YOU test it & get back to us? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by kneecarrot ( 646291 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:52PM (#11934880)
        Current users of OSS are constantly bemoaning the lack of wide adoption but also have their personal identity and self-esteem heavily reliant on the elitism associated with the communities surrounding OSS. The natural urge is to bar membership to this community to perpetuate the elitism, greatly harming new user adoption.
        • Free Software is not about being whiny and helpless.

          Even Apple is not about that despite the fact that they've been the vangaurd of user friendly computing since foundation.
        • Well if the article was not a blatant troll I might agree with you. But it was trolling so I think the RTFM was a perfectly valid response.

          Ask not what open source can do for you, ask what you can do for open source.

        • The natural urge is to bar membership to this community to perpetuate the elitism, greatly harming new user adoption.

          Sometimes. But untrue at least two-fold.

          First, much of the FOSS community is genuinely interested in helping people to use FOSS, regardless of their abilities. The majority, in all likelihood. It's only a small fraction of FOSS users with some intelligence and more than a few personal insecurities that belittle the attempts of others to learn FOSS software.

          Second, there's always the cach

        • ...their personal identity and self-esteem heavily reliant on the elitism associated with the communities surrounding OSS. The natural urge is to bar membership to this community to perpetuate the elitism, greatly harming new user adoption.

          It's just software.

          The people you are describing are generally known as "wannabees". They want to be elite, but they aren't secure enough in their knowledge or skills and react to questions as if they were threats.

          You can see them most anywhere. They're usually the on

      • No, "RTFM" is by far the most cross-platform application ever developed.

        So, before you ask for help from one of us, please RTFM and check the bug listings, first.

        :-D

  • Just like (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:30PM (#11934643)
    The anatomy of the unicorn. They're both mythical creatures.

  • -1 Troll (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:33PM (#11934683)
    This is just a veiled "which distro is best" post (most of what poster asks is at application level, not distro level), this entire discussion will be a flamefest.
    • You are Slashdot's most intelligent user.
    • This is just a veiled "which distro is best"

      Agreed, plus RHEL 4 just dropped and not even a mention of it. Sounds a bit like a commercial.
    • Not at all.

      The question can be easily quantified and while there may be disagreements regarding which distros satisfy the given conditions best, this is far from a vague free-for-all.

  • Blame (Score:4)

    by peterprior ( 319967 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:38PM (#11934725)
    Having someone (a company / corporation) to blame / call when it goes wrong

  • Steps to a better Enterprise (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:39PM (#11934738)
    1. Get rid of Berman and Braga

    Ohhhh, were on about Linux in the enterprise.

  • what about multimedia? (Score:3, Informative)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:42PM (#11934762)
    I see you (the submitter) have not mentioned multimedia! And ohh, the topic "successful Linux desktop" is subjective.

    The question to ask/consider would be...Successful as defined by who? To me, SuSE is successful but after heavy modification of KDE as discussed here at slashdot many times, and installing MPlayer to handle all my multimedia needs. I also use streamtuner because I have not been able to fine any other KDE based directory browser, that will let you record a stream too.

    Unfortunately, I have never had any success with amaroK and Kmail. Amarok keeps crashing, and its equalizer sucks, the analyzer is always behind...while Kmail cannot connect to my ISP, even after letting it detect what the ISP supports. It would be interesting to know that Evolution is just fine.

  • -1 Offtopic (Score:2, Insightful)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) *
    A successful enterprise Linux distribution?

    Mac OS X [apple.com] + X11 [apple.com] + Apple Developer Tools (Xcode) [apple.com] + Fink [sf.net]

    In all seriousness, we have found that a desktop or laptop with Mac OS X, with X11, all of the compilers and development tools, and a ports/package manager like Fink or DarwinPorts, which still allows running normal productivity software like Microsoft Office, mainstream media players, Adobe products, etc., has been the most productive platform of all.
    • The guy didn't ask what Dave Schroeder finds the most productive platform, he asked for a comparison of two enterprise Linux distros.

      Seriously. What part of the question is so hard to understand? If he wanted to know about Apple, he'd have mentioned it.

      You're totally right in your subject: that was a -1 Offtopic post, so in future don't post them please. Doing so is just an abuse of the system - Apple is quite capable of doing its own marketing thanks without you shilling for them.

    • osx isnt linux nor is it even bsd. its some bizarre hybrid which was bsd-ish but has weird mutated incompatibilities such as missing dlopen() (recently fixed, but was missing for a long time).

      not to mention the mess that is bundles. yes i know its legacy from nextstep and yes it sucks less than classic macos resource/data forks. but that doesn't make it right :)

      also anything which links to the Carbon framework needs access to the GUI. unfortunately a lot of the fundamental OSX API is only available in Car

  • Be the borg (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LINM ( 255706 ) <mbego00.gsb@columbia@edu> on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:44PM (#11934783) Homepage
    The problem with Sun and Novell is that they are both approach the problem: how to be Microsoft. As such they are trying to be all things to all people (their own OS, own directory services, own productivity, etc.). I support the effort, but there are two many years and too much functionality of built up Microsfot competitive status to comprehensively replace in one package.

    A more feasible / successful approach the "assimilation" that is being led by Xandros. Let the user keep his productivity suite (Crossover), keep his Active Directory (Xandros authenticates against it), keep their NTFS, etc. Above all, get the home and corporate user on the right OS (Debian in Xandros' case) and migrate the other functionality in a best of breed fashion in the future (when it is easier).

    In some of the cases, Xandros did build out functionality that Linux normally lacks: e.g. remote application installation. In this case though, they also built Windows hooks so the same manager can control both Linux and Windows boxes: clever.
    • "The problem with Sun and Novell is that they are both approach the problem: how to be Microsoft."

      Given that they are both for-profit public companies and Microsoft is the most financially successful software company in the world, is it really hard to understand why they would like to emulate it? Now actually getting away with it is another matter.

    • Re:Be the borg (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mchawi ( 468120 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:28PM (#11935331)
      To be fair - Novell had all of those things before Microsoft did. They are just porting most of it from Netware to Linux.

      I use both AD and eDirectory, and have used both SMS and ZENWorks. If I can do the same things with either one, it means I can choose what I want based on the company rather than on what I am missing from the OS.

      The approach you say with Xandros is a very good approach - and I agree that it will hit a definite market that Novell and Sun do not hit. I do think though that trying to have an enterprise wide solution from start to finish from one company with one management interface (sort of) is a real giant step for Linux. They've always had all these tools, but it has never been marketed as a cohesive unit until now. Sometimes the difference is in the perception.
    • and too much functionality of built up Microsfot

      Anyone besides me actually like that spelling better? Microsfot. Sounds Greek or Russian.

    • As such they are trying to be all things to all people (their own OS, own directory services, own productivity, etc.). I support the effort, but there are two many years and too much functionality of built up Microsfot competitive status to comprehensively replace in one package.

      Er, not quite. First off NDS(now eDirectory) has been around longer than ADS, so Novell is hardly trying to match what MS is doing. What they are trying to do is put their services on top of Linux which badly needs that level of E
  • There is absolutely no reason for a company wanting to use Linux, to not have its administrators roll their own distro, with their own builds of whatever apps they need.

    "Enterprise" means "not being too lazy to do it properly, so that it works" in my book, so before you MSCDE weenies get all GUI, let me just insult you all right now: if you aren't rolling your own, you're a mouse monkey at best..

    • Re:Best Distro for Enterprise: Roll Your Own. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:53PM (#11934886) Homepage
      I can think of one big reason not to do this: Oracle.

      Some enterprise applications have very rigorous support and compatibility matrices. Unless your idea of running Unix servers is just playing around with apache, you will likely have some serious support considerations.

      In this case, RH and Suse enterprise are the only options if you happen to be in the US or Europe.

      • Re:Best Distro for Enterprise: Roll Your Own. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by johnjaydk ( 584895 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:28PM (#11935324)
        So very true.

        The other extremely important factor is the "Warm and fuzzy feeling(tm)" in your manager. It boils down to covering his ass. Having a really big name behind your distro really helps. Novell/Suse have a winning hand here. We all know that in the real world vendors won't cover jack-shit but it's all part of the big lie. Various bogus partner programs can also help here but not as much.

        The more insecure your maneger is the more important these factors are.

        But having your key applications certified on your distro of choice is essential unless you've got source for them and can roll them yourself.

        • Sometimes I ask myself wether this is the reason our economy sucks: Insecure, incompetent managers.

          They definitely are the one group with enough influence to ruin the economy, there are very few hard facts you can check for when hiring one and they are in a position where it is easy to hide their incompetence good enough not to be fired (too often).
    • No, it means that your base is now so large that if you dont have proper tools and do it all manually you never get your job done.

      Its got nothing to do with being lazy.
    • Surely it's more time-consuming and resource-intensive to do that, though? Unless you've got special needs for your specific setup, why is this an advantage?

    • It only takes three commands (Score:5, Funny)

      by imtheguru ( 625011 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @04:42PM (#11936260)
      it only takes three commands to install Gentoo

      cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootsrap.sh && emerge system && emerge vim && vi /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6

      that's the first one

      Source Bash.org [bash.org]
    • There is absolutely no reason for a company wanting to use Linux, to not have its administrators roll their own distro, with their own builds of whatever apps they need.

      There are two excellent reasons not to do this:

      1. Commercial software that is only supported in certified environments.

      2. Cost (software is cheap, people time is expensive).

      I've noticed that a rather large chunk of the Linux community - both users and developers - has a fascination with creating busywork by reinventing the wheel over a

  • You might want to include RHEL 4 in the comparison (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crush ( 19364 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:50PM (#11934850)

    It comes with Samba 3.0 for SMB/CIFS, Active Directory authentication and a Microsoft Exchange connector.

    Citrix and Acrobat Reader, OpenOffice2.0 etc

    Hmm.. what else... NUMA support for multi CPU (also a lot of multicore enhancements)...LVM2 for easy disk addition, removal....

    RHEL4 [redhat.com]

  • Red Hat? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phenix ( 80988 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:52PM (#11934873) Homepage
    You're all just mad because i didn't mention Red Hat.

    Seriously though, the question really has nothing to do with the distribution, I'm concerned primarily with the infrastructure provided by Novell and Sun to support and implement the distribution.

    I'd love to test these myself (and will), but nothing is more informative than real-world users who have done a real-world implementation; I'd be very surprised to hear that there are no /... readers who have tested these yet; meanwhile, please comment on these companies past performance with their products (JES, SuSE Enterprise, Red Carpet).

    I'm not looking for Windows clones, or Windows compatibles, and am rather disturbed that both Novell and Sun seem to be touting their "Exchange connectors" as one of their key features.


    • Ubuntu.

      This is the first linux distro that I've recommended to my mom, and to my brother-in-law, who has used Windows exlusively. My mother's experience was that the web browser worked without any configuration when she booted up, and my brother-in-law was happy that his wireless connection on his laptop also "just worked." Sun and Novell could learn a lot from some of the open source integration efforts, but they have the advertising budget, so we can guess who will get al of the press.
    • look at Xandros too. They have a great way to manage all your PCs, pricey but good.
    • You're all just mad because i didn't mention Red Hat.

      No, just puzzled.

      Seriously though, the question really has nothing to do with the distribution, I'm concerned primarily with the infrastructure provided by Novell and Sun to support and implement the distribution.

      There's around four times the amount of people working on Linux at Red Hat than working on Linux for Novell. They're marketshare of server distributions is greater than all other competitors. They have more certified software, and software
    • Ok, Red Hat have their RHN solution. They also provide a tool named Satellite which effectively provides RHN on your own site. The idea is that it will manage your entire environment from deployment, through patching, rollback, configuration management, etc. On paper and in the demos it looks like an amazing product.

      Having said that, it's looking increasingly likely that this pile of shit will cost me my job. From small problems like being able to take the entire Satellite solution down with a single secur

  • Anything better then PAM? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:56PM (#11934923)
    For authenticating against an LDAP directory or kerberos key store, is there anything other then PAM for Linux to handle it?

  • Novell has done this long before AD existed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Havokmon ( 89874 ) <rick.havokmon@com> on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:01PM (#11934981) Homepage Journal
    directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation.

    What an odd question. NDS has existed almost 10 years, providing centralized appliation serving via NDS integrated applications. Look at Pegasus Mail (I assume this is what you mean). Install the app on the server, and the programs INI files are stored in the user's home directories. Users can move from PC to PC without migrating anything that's PC-specific (such as the registry). Hell, if there's any reason to get MS Source code, it would be to get the source to Outlook and rip out the registry crap.

    Zenworks takes care of the rest of the desktop 'distribution', like installing and upgrading pc-centric software.

    I would guess you didn't know Novell's Border manager could be thought of as IPChains based on NDS login.

    It sounds like you really don't know much of what is out there, and you need to read some whitepapers at Novell.com. Or goto some tradeshows. Get exposed.

    • But, Pegasus Mail and Mercury Mail (the server-side component) don't only run on a Netwaresolution, they run just fine on Windows NT as well.

      But wait, a similar solution has been around in Unix systems forever, NFS sharing the mail spool.

      What was your point again?

      • But, Pegasus Mail and Mercury Mail (the server-side component) don't only run on a Netwaresolution, they run just fine on Windows NT as well.

        "Just fine" isn't automatically integrated with AD like it is with NDS. For NT, you have to specify a username on the command line. That doesn't jive with Win98, where Windows doesn't provide easy to assign variables.

        But wait, a similar solution has been aroundin Unix systems forever, NFS sharing the mail spool.
        What was your point again?

        If the guy doesn't e

      • FYI - Mercury on NetWare is no longer in development. I don't see a date on their latest release, but according to its What's New page [pmail.com], it now works around a problem in NetWare 4.11SP7 and 5.0SP2 - neither of which platforms are even supported by Novell for the purpose of migrating off of them.

  • Interface and Control Issues (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zombie Ryushu ( 803103 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:02PM (#11934987)
    I think that Linux Distributors need to help get distrobutions configurations optimized.

    In Linux, often, the needs of the Enterprise have to translate into the needs of the Home User. I know you likely think that the Home User doesn't need OpenLDAP, when in reality, with the amount of information they have to manage using computers, they absolutely need OpenLDAP, MySQL, Samba, and other things.

    Alot of Linux "Bugs" are fixable out of the box configuration issues. I have a friend of 8 years who much to my emotional devistation, is moving from Linux to Windows XP. The major issue he had? There was always something wrong in how something was configured.

    The permissions not being set right on the CD Burner, Gaim not being absle to direct connect from behind a NAT, even a well configured Shorerwall NAT.

    Linux can be configure such that it does "Just Work(tm)." The issue is the distributors, even Mandrake do a hard time gauging what the real needs of the Enterprise and Home Users are.

    This isn't a "Linux Software is inferiror" issue its a "Why did you set the CD Burner to 600 when it should be 660" issue. These configuration issues cause Linux to fail. Giving people the impression Linux Software "Doesn't work" Like my friend.

    Linux Distributors Underestimate the needs of Home Users and Distributors of this day and age with half-hearted configurations and sometimes downn right "Wrong" information. They substitute Universal comprehensive Linux Applications like Linuxconf for Proprietary ones like thee Mandrake Control Center.

    The Distributors need to start creating more dynamic and sophisticated DEFAULT CONFIGURATIONS to meet the growing dynamic needs of today's home and Enterprise Users. /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow Just don't cut it anymmore.
  • Ok, so I work for them... BUT you should definitely look at Xandros Business edition as a desktop, and xDMS as a deployment solution.

  • Not really important (Score:5, Informative)

    by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:09PM (#11935090)
    Most of these features you wish to compare are not part of a Linux operating system. Most are applications that are installed on top of a Linux operating system.

    So, among the Linux distributions, all of these features are roughly eqivalent, providing that you are using the same software to meet the need for the particular feature.

    Now in comparison between Linux and something else, Solaris, Windows, whatever... the ability to compare becomes much more difficult; because, you are comparing different products. In some platforms (Windows for example) the product can be part of the operating system, while in others it may require the purchace of "3rd party" software. In a few cases (Oracle, et. al.) you get lucky, you are really comparing the same product on two different platforms.

    When comparing different products, you are usually comparing different solutions, and such comparisons often break down to personal preference, familiarity, and comfort factor.

    As far as the base Linux operating system, a company can't go far wrong with either RedHat or SuSE. I'd pick RedHat personally, but Novell's backing of SuSE is not to be discounted. Both products support many of the solutions businesses will need, but neither will perfectly act as a Microsoft server clone.

    Lack of a feature is not a defficency, when the feature itself creates more problems than it solves.

    • Re:Not really important (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <{ajs} {at} {ajs.com}> on Monday March 14, 2005 @04:02PM (#11935764) Homepage Journal
      "Most of these features you wish to compare are not part of a Linux operating system. Most are applications that are installed on top of a Linux operating system.

      So, among the Linux distributions, all of these features are roughly eqivalent, providing that you are using the same software to meet the need for the particular feature."

      VERY untrue! You will find that, for example, LDAP support (and the ability to talk to AD if needed) varries widely from distribution to distribution, even though they all have roughly the same tools for talking to LDAP. The key questions are: how easy is it to set up; how well are applications, tools and libraries configured to integrate any given feature you need; are conflicting services installed by default (and/or REQUIRED);etc.

      You might not think this way because you worry about <1000 end-user machines, but let me tell you, when you need to install 5,000 end-user desktops, you're not thinking, "eh, it's ok... I'll just install anything and configure to taste," you're looking for something that gets you as close to the finish-line as possible so that you can worry about the truly hard problems. Sure, you're just going to dupe hard-drives, but that doesn't get you the perfect economies of scale you might have expected. You're going to worry about things like, "oh look, this LDAP server falls over when 1000 clients ask it a question at once," and other scaling issues. You don't want to have to start at ground-zero, "why doesn't LDAP work with applications X and Y and works half the time with Z."

      The above is just an example, but I think it illustrates the point.

      • If you're configuring 5000 machines, and not using the tools available to do customisations like this (autoyast on SuSE, kickstart on RH, Drakx auto-installation on Mandrake), then you're wasting your time.

        If you think one AD box will handle 1000 clients, think again - OpenLDAP scales better, you need to tune it some though.

  • Dual smooth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:11PM (#11935132) Homepage
    This is my wish for a linux distro. I work in a Windows only company where linux is slowly creeping in (embedded, specialised application servers, a small beowulf). I have ZERO chance of getting admin rights on the network or influencing the IT dept. towards Linux. What I need is a distro which not only coexists with windows, but automatically sucks its settings, copies email settings, home drive and printers. Automatically install the correct autentication module so people can log on with their active directory password. Read the windows drive letters and mount them. Note I write this from a linux box. I am trying, but it could be easier.
    • If you can do it, so can others. Others might not be as good intentioned as you are.

      What you need to do is to communicate more effectively with your IT department. It may seem nearly impossible, but it is really the easiest path to building the trust necessary to get better permissions. Eventually, they'll get to a point that they trust you enough to feel that they don't have to be looking over your shoulder. Expect to instantly lose any accumulated trust if your software interrupts (or even is suspect
    • Many users will post about distributions most of us consider to be "closed" and that they have these features, but Mandrake has supported authentication to Windows domains since 9.1 (for NT4 domains) and 10.0 (for AD domains).

  • Filesystems (Score:4, Informative)

    by Micah ( 278 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:20PM (#11935237) Homepage Journal
    You would think that a serious enterprise Linux distro would support filesystems beyond ext3.

    Ext3 is good and stable and all, and is fine for pretty much any general purpose use. But Reiserfs and XFS both have advantages in certain areas. Reiserfs for tons of small files (like mail spools) and XFS for monster files. Either of those could have uses in the enterprise.

    So I'm a little disappointed that RHEL4 only supports ext3, and even removed Reiser from the distribution entirely. We were going to use Reiser for our new RHEL based mail server, but now it will have to be ext3.
    • You would think that a serious enterprise Linux distro would support filesystems beyond ext3.

      Asides from a variety of speed bumps to Ext3 in RHEL 4 (mainly a different elevator algorithm, plus more) Red Hat supports (and has Open Sourced) GFS, which is both a SAN and on-disk filesystem.

      If you need it, you pay extra for support, but if you're already using a few TB of storage, its not too expensive.

      Reiser doesn't work properly with SELinux (still!) and most adminstrators think it has terrible recovery to
    • ReiserFS has been known to suck under load, like the mail queue directory, or the mail spool of a busy server. It will be a few years before Reiser can be trusted with critical data.
    • Looking at some of the replies here:
      > think about which filesystem has been in use the longest on linux
      > I have seen reiserfs do some funky things to fielsystems
      > ReiserFS has been known to suck under load

      What a bunch of FUD. I've been using it in production on a dozen servers, on dB servers, web servers, and a Postfix server with over 20K users since 2000 without a single problem. You guys haven't a clue what you're talking about.
  • For the veri first LARGE BOLD HEADLINE of the link provided:

    Sun Java Desktop System, Release 3 for the Solaris 10 Operating System

    • JDS is a DESKTOP... it's a gnome variant.

      It is not an operating system and strangely enough you can use JDS on top of both linux and solaris. Which make pretty good sense since end users probably can't tell the different between the two OSs.
      • The title of the artcicle was "Anatomy of a Successful Enterprise Linux Distro?" Maybe that is the fault of an idiot Slashdot editor rather than the intent of of the original poster. If so, I stand corrected. If not - JDS is NOT a linux distro, whatever else it is.

  • The same issues that have been for years. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @03:59PM (#11935730) Homepage Journal
    Make Printing or CUPS work. Period. Don't make me fuck with it. Just make it work. And have more drivers than 10 yer old HP laserjets.

    Have an installation proc that CLEARLY tells you what it requires of your disk partition and CLEARLY tells you what it's going to ignore.

    Get mouse support in X to work better. Seriously, anyone who who builds a distro where the installation fails because of a fucking minor mouse configuration glitch in X should be shot.

    We don't need 4 or 5 6 windows managers. We need X term, K, and a lighterweight one like fluxbox or ICEWM but not both and absolutely either put all of the same apps in all the menus or strip them all down to minimum.

    Create the ability to change screen res on the fly w/o forcing a shutdown/restart of X and PLEASE indicate that settings you have already stored will not work if in fact they will not work.

    Application installation apps need to have clearer discriptive lines of WHAT they do. Calling something "Monkeysoutmyass+glb.flx.x86windget.v.11.110.9.1.1 .23bmourning_becomes_electra" does not help me in the fucking least.

    Put applets that manage devices in ONE PLACE. ONE. not two not three. ONE.

    You need:

    one office suite
    one IM client for AOL/Yahoo. etc.
    one IRC
    one image management app
    one burner
    one real/quicktime/etcetera
    one file manager

    You need to make the appearance of the filesystem in the file manager MORE simple not LESS simple. if that means making a linear type arrangement like windows then so be it.

    Make applications uninstallers obvious.

    • In the enterprise the goals are entirely different.

      Installation doesn't need to be graphical, it should be as automated as humanly possible. In the proper environment you can install solaris using nothing but the network and bios.

      Applications should be updated remotely (or launch from a netmount), users shouldn't be installing/uninstalling or you'll create a support nightmare.

      Enterprise linux seems a whole lot closer than desktop linux, and they aren't the same.
    • All good points.

      You just fairly well described Mandrake 10.1...

      I just hope they stop adding acpi=ht in the default lilo setup, as that rather kills off USB on several Athlon based boards.

      Unfortunately (for political reasons) you must add contrib and PLF packager sources, easiest by googling for "easy urpmi"
    • Ah... Leave it to an id under 10,000 to put a fine point(s) on it. Loved it!
    • Make Printing or CUPS work. Period. Don't make me fuck with it. Just make it work. And have more drivers than 10 yer old HP laserjets.

      Amen. I just bought a brand new HP and it worked out of the box. The first time a printer hasn't been a Linux nightmare.

      We don't need 4 or 5 6 windows managers. We need X term, K, and a lighterweight one like fluxbox or ICEWM but not both and absolutely either put all of the same apps in all the menus or strip them all down to minimum.

      Definately. Just use xfce4. Not blo

  • stick with the borg (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spyrochaete ( 707033 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @04:26PM (#11936052) Homepage Journal
    I just participated in a test pitting Win2k3 vs Red Hat ES3 vs SuSE Enterprise 9. The test was for useability and functionality.

    Windows came out on top by a mile. These 2 distros are nowhere near a mature state. The included (gui) tools are atrocious, incomplete, and often break the service so bad that it's easier to reinstall than to repair. Yes, functionality can be established from the command-line, but if you could do that you wouldn't be buying a packaged enterprise distro.

    Directory services are a nightmare to configure in linux, and these 2 distros are certainly no exception. Neither distro comes with a gui tool or scripted install procedure, and the testers and I couldn't figure out how to get kerberos and LDAP to work together. Novell's tech support was useless - they said they support installing the service (from RPMs) but not configuring them. The manuals in both distros were totally useless.

    The lack of centralized management tools in linux was the biggest downfall. The sysadmin has a LOT of work to do writing scripts and delegating authority to subordinate admins. What the distros really need is a management console like AD/MMC to administrate objects, groups, security policies, profiles, permissions, etc etc etc.

    Stay away from enterprise linux products for now. Roll your own. There's no substitute for know-how.

  • No one ever adds OS X to the comparison (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sjmikeh ( 621130 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @05:32PM (#11936882) Homepage
    Apple seems to have it all figured out as far as enterprise unix is concerned. I wish a linux vendor looked at what makes OSX work visually and (without blatenly copying) at least implement whats going on. A single well thought out control panel to configure the computer and user environment. Menus using universal sets of words to describe thing instead of the thrown together menus currently used. Stuff that just works. And for godsakes get rid of 90 percent of the stuff the average home user does not need. There is way to much stuff in all the linux distros. Install a base User OS. Don't give them a million options. Don't let them choose to install all the developer stuff. The average person sees the ability to add more stuff and thinks its there I must need it. Give them a good base install. and make them do something else to get more stuff.
    The desktop needs
    One web browser, one office suite, one email program. Thats it. The computer should detect and print to most USB printers, not require the user to setup or turn on cups....

    Again look at apple. What makes there products strong. Its there ability to get rid of all the crap and deliver what most people need. As long as every linux distro tries to make hackers and geeks happy there distros will never serve users.
    • Look at Apple *AFTER* 10.4.

      I'm running it for a cluster. LDAP was easy to set up, Kerberos a nightmare (the "you haven't connected to a domain" after you really have was a nice touch), and NFS is pretty doggy compared with AFP, while AFP makes SSH users go through gyrations to get their home directories.

      Now, for what I do with it (crunch numbers and provide an office worth of desktop connectivity), it's a good system. If I were running a small web-farm, or moderate sized office, then, yes, i'd recom
  • I would think that a big deal breaker is support. Not support for various technologies, or applications/serivces, or hardware, but the "who do you call when it goes tits up" kind.
  • I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation.

    You forgot centralised configuration management - eg: Active Directory's Group Policy.

  • It's good to know that LDAP is a Microsoft technology - even if others developed it years before Microsoft used it in Active Directory.

  • BUZZWORD ALERT (Score:3, Interesting)

    by evil_one666 ( 664331 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @06:21AM (#11941770)
    For the love of god, please stop using meaningless phrases that include 'enterprise'

    'Enterprise infrastructure' has no meaning. Yes, it has possible meaning; No, it is not well defined enough to use in this context.

    This language is invented by salesmen to sell expensive stuff to pointy haired bosses. We should not use this language here.

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