By Rick Lehrbaum, LinuxDevices.com Executive Editor . . .

[Updated June 3, 2002, 10:30am PDT]

Linux distribution vendors Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux have announced the creation of a consortium which will jointly develop 'UnitedLinux', a “standards-based, worldwide Linux solution targeted at the business user.” UnitedLinux, which is intended for enterprise and webserver applications, will initially support IBM's complete eServer product line, AMD's current 32-bit and forthcoming 64-bit AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processor-based platforms, and Intel's x86 32-bit and Itanium processor family platforms, and will support the LSB, Li18nux, and GB18030 standards.

Holger Dyroff, SuSE Director of Sales for North America, said the core of UnitedLinux will be derived from SuSE's Enterprise Linux 7. The members of the initiative will share the development efforts of turning the initial SuSE-based core distribution into the UnitedLinux distribution, and each will market the resulting Linux distribution under their own brand (e.g. “SuSE Enterprise Linux 8, Powered by UnitedLinux”) and with the addition of differentiated value-added services, support, and selected software applications (e.g. StarOffice 6.0, CrossOver Office, etc.).

According to Dryroff, the aggregate worldwide market share accounted for by the four founding partners of the UnitedLinux initiative is “approximately 50 percent”, making it a strong competitor for Red Hat's comparable distribution. Dryroff said the four companies' Linux distributions currently are ranked #1 in Europe (SuSE), #1 in Asia (TurboLinux), #1 in South America (Conectiva), and #2 in the U.S. (SuSE).

Here is the press release announcing the launch of the UnitedLinux initiative, which describes the effort's goals and objectives and provides links to further information about UnitedLinux . . .

• United Linux: a Uniform Version of Linux for Business

Red Hat provided the following brief statement in response to LinuxDevices.com's request for a comment on UnitedLinux . . .

“Too many distributions hamper the migration of applications to Linux, so if this effort by Caldera and others consolidates distributions, this is a good development. But in Linux, application support is everything. Red Hat Linux Advanced Server has it today. Time will tell if the Caldera group's distribution will achieve the same level of support,” said Mark de Visser, Vice President of Marketing, Red Hat.

And here are links to several articles that provide further analysis and perspective on this significant announcement . . .

• Where UnitedLinux got it wrong — In this guest editorial at NewsForge, Russell C. Pavlicek gives his opinion on a major flaw of the UnitedLinux strategy as announced, and offers a suggestion: As a basic business concept, UnitedLinux makes sound business sense. A single business-centric distribution makes life simple for ISVs and OEMs . . . UnitedLinux, rather than multiple different distributions . . . Sounds good. Almost. There is at least one serious problem. It can be fixed very quickly, if the member companies decide to do so. If they refuse, however, they may find themselves in a very uncomfortable place.
• Commentary: Good, but not enough — Gartner analysts George Weiss and Andrew Butler offer this viewpoint about 'UnitedLinux' for CNET: Both ISVs and hardware vendors should welcome the potential for UnitedLinux to reduce the costs and complexities of supporting Linux. The partners have stated that UnitedLinux will focus on Intel's IA32 (and emerging Itanium 64-bit) processors.
• Unified Linux effort won't faze Red Hat — Stephen Shankland offers his perspective on UnitedLinux in this article for CNET: A move by four sellers of Linux to unite behind a single version of the operating system might help those allies — and boost Linux's popularity — but it isn't likely to dent the dominance of the top dog, Red Hat. Note that Shankland shows quite different marketshare numbers than those provided by SuSE's Holger Dyroff (quoted above).
• United Linux: One for All, and All for One — Writing at Practical Technology, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols gives his take on the importance and likely impact of UnitedLinux: Some Linux fans are pooh-poohing this announcement as not being that big a deal. They're dead wrong. While it won't make much difference to consumer Linux, United Linux (UL), a pure business operating system play, completely changes the Linux business landscape. Why? Because at long last OEMs, like IBM and HP, and more importantly independent software vendors (ISV)s will need to work with, at most, two Linux versions-the other being Red Hat- instead of the five major versions they must deal with today. That will save these companies a bundle of application porting money.
• Together We Get It Together — DesktopLinux.com contributing editor Malcolm Dean offers a perspective on the recent announcement by Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux, and Connectiva to produce UnitedLinux, an uber-distribution aimed at enterprise customers constructed from the best technology of the participating Linux companies resulting in a common code base for 32- and 64-bit Intel, AMD and IBM platforms: ” . . . A computer press corp devoted to reporting division and discord was eager to encourage the perception that nothing has changed. But together, the initiatives prove that powerful forces are gathering in support of Open Source technology and Linux. By eliminating duplication of effort and allocating their talents more effectively, the UL consortium will produce a stable OS tested by Quality Assurance and certification labs around the world . . . “
• Love: The competition is not Red Hat — ZDNet's Matt Loney offers the first interview with Caldera chief executive Ransom Love about the recently formed 'UnitedLinux' and the implications for Linux: ” . . . If it fulfils its promise, the initiative could herald an end to fragmentation of the Linux code base and the start of simpler certification of applications . . . With the ink barely dry on the agreement, Caldera's chief executive Ransom Love told ZDNet UK why the agreement is so significant, what it means for Linux, for customers, for developers and, not least, for Caldera's Unix operating systems . . . “
• Linux vendors move to standard platform — ZDNet's Matthew Broersma offers his perspective on the new UnitedLinux initiative and its implications: “Four Linux distributors — Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux and Conectiva — are to back a standard software distribution, as a way of encouraging application development and battling the dominant position of Red Hat . . .US companies Caldera International and Turbolinux, Germany's SuSE Linux and Brazil's Conectiva said that by the end of this year they will shift their product lines to focus on a uniform Linux distribution called UnitedLinux. The move addresses concerns about the large number of Linux distributions, each of which must be taken into account by software developers . . .”

 
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