What can you do to stand out from the hundreds of other Linux distros that already exist?
There are a number of angles you can explore for this – choose one, two or all of them if you want!
1. Be cutting edge
At its height, Mandriva was famed for including the very latest software, but the management decided to focus less on features and more on stability, which meant that older, "tested" software became the norm, and many users left to find their cutting-edge fix elsewhere.
Similarly, Ubuntu launched as an up-to-date version of Debian, but has also fallen prey to the same problem – Ubuntu 8.10 won't include Mono 2.0, for example, despite it being released a month before the distro ships.
We're well aware of feature freezes and other stability-enhancing techniques, but if you want to capture the market for cutting-edge software then you need to forgo such niceties and focus on getting the software into your distro as fast you can. Your users will thank you for it!
2. Be super-stable
The opposite of being on the cutting-edge is being super stable, which means choosing your selection of apps from the sturdiest, the most tested and the most reliable options available to you.
Yes, this does mean shipping OpenOffice.org 2.x rather than 3.x, but it also means you should have fewer bug reports because the software you provided has already been through years of testing and fixing.
The downside to this plan is that stable distros require years of support – Ubuntu LTS comes with five years of support on the desktop, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux comes with seven. If you're aiming to compete in this market, you need to be ready to provide lots of backports of security updates and the like.
3. Be super-light
One of the most impressive features of open source software is its apparent ability to outpace Intel's attempts to ramp up the performance of our computers. By that we mean that some of the most popular free software applications have a reputation for being slow, RAM-hungry or otherwise resource intensive, which is why there is such a market for thin-and-light distros.
The idea here is simple: rather than choosing Application A for your distro, which uses 100MB of RAM, choose Application B, which uses 10MB of RAM. Repeat that for just about everything in your distro (excluding any apps you honestly feel you can't live without), and suddenly even a Pentium II is starting to look quick.
Again, there's a lot of competition in this space, but all too often you either get a fully functional and fat desktop, or you get a slim-and-light desktop with a look and feel on a par with Windows 3.1. Perhaps there's room for you to innovate somewhere in between?
4. Focus on a group of users
If you want to build a loyal group of users, give them some love: make a distro focused on the needs of a specific kind of user, and you'll find that they stick with you through thick and thin. So, rather than create yet another do-everything distro that covers all bases, why not create a distro focused on developers? Or artists? Or gamers?
This allows you to slim down your choice of packages to the essentials for your target market, then lets you pre-set all the options they most want to see. For example, here at LXF Towers we're big fans of programming with Mono. Why not create a distro with all the Mono libraries and documentation preinstalled, along with all the best Mono-based apps for inspiration?
Your comments (4) Click to add a new comment
zeke123
December 22nd 2008
4. >but has also fallen prey to the same problem – >Ubuntu 8.10 won't include Mono 2.0,
Spreading Miguel de Icaza's disease ridden Mono is not a problem, its the reverse.
Heck, that sounds like a great idea for a distro... keeping Mono out.
There is not need for it and it has the potential for havoc.
And I'm not a hater of interopability since I've worked on Samba mods when I worked at my last job.
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solifugus
December 22nd 2008
3. Many will disagree but I think management of software packages should best never have been the job of a distribution. It's just too much to keep up with and, inevitably, users want something that isn't in their distribution's package hierarchy... This often leads to conflicts and other forms of difficulty. It is possible to develop a common platform that all distributions provide. My approach would be to use AutoPackage with dynamic libraries stored according to version and make-options. And, I'd build an automatic package builder to package just what dependencies are required for your system before downloading.
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bohu
December 22nd 2008
2. I agree very much with #3 on this list. I spend a lot of time putting linux on old computers that I donate to people who need them (seniors and single moms, etc). I need a distro that is light enough to run on old hardware but is full-featured enough to be useful and easy to learn by non-geeks. The only one I have found that meets these criteria is Debris Linux. Debris is a stripped down Ubuntu Hardy that manages to keep a full gnome desktop and usefull applications while keeping the ISO under 200 MB.
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polaris_s0i
December 22nd 2008
1. I think that people focusing on a lot of these "rules" is the problem with Linux distros these days.
Ubuntu is booming yes due to bleeding edge software, but there is something else that is missing that people are forgetting about with it. And its more to do with its "Gnome roots" then anything. Integration.
Integration, or lack there of it is the problem with most distributions these days. I find that commercial Unixes like Solaris and HP-UX do a better job of that then Linux does, and that to me is the problem with Open Source software.
What distributions need to do, is focus on creating a "seemless" version of Linux, one that doesn't feel like you are just installing separate applications on top of some desktop on top of any configuration of Linux.
It needs to make sense, and so far I haven't seen a distribution that does it very well.
I think that Linux is desktop ready, but not ready for business workstations and only has some use on some servers, and this is mostly due to lack of integration and "polished" software that is standard on other Unix flavors.
LVM2 isn't ready for anything yet, its too new and I don't think that the project owners are sure whether they are copying HP's lvm, or Suns ZFS. And EVERY commercial Unix out there that I have used (AIX, Solaris, HP-UX) uses LVM exclusively (or ZFS in Solaris' case).
There isn't really a standard easy network domain setup like AD, just piecing together an ldap server with samba and/or NFS and maybe Kerberos if people haven't given up at that point.
Back when I used Mandrake (and then Mandriva), though I took it as being a bloated distro that seemed to install more then I really wanted by default, I had to at least applaud them for putting in Wizards aka WizardDrak. Ubuntu has done something similar, though its only during the install process rather then being able to access it at anytime.
So anyway, back to my point...
A Linux distro needs to be part of the Open Source community, not just taking their spoils and using them. It needs to first figure out "where are we going", and then be active with these Open Source projects to either see if they will help out.
Say a distro wants integration by adding Kerberos authentication to all software in a distro for eg. They should be out there asking the project developers if this is something they would accept for their project, and if the project can't do it themselves, then either pay someone to do it, or offer up the personnel themselves to get the job done.
Redhat does this, others do this too... but I don't think its being done enough and in the right way all the time.
Remember, if you make a distro, you are the face of Linux, and you can make or break people's experience with it. Don't just sit idle letting projects maybe support things you want in your distro over time, go out and make sure it happens.
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