Userlinux support in the Bay Area

Tony Godshall Tony Godshall <togo@of.net>
Wed, 30 Mar 2005 07:31:06 -0800


According to Ian Zimmerman,
> 
> Tony> ... it helps standardize, which...
> 
> Tony> Heck, if Bruce can get, for example, HP to certify a distribution
> Tony> that's little more than a subset of Debian, that's a win all
> Tony> around, isn't it?
> 
> Not if they standardize wrongly (and they will, according to someone's
> definition of "wrongly").


Look, it's not like they are forcing anyone to use the
packages they choose.  And your favorite not-on-their-list 
app is still just an apt-get away.

They're just saying that there's a particular suite of apps 
that will be found in a system bearing the UserLinux brand.  

And a group of vendors committed to support that suite.

This will help companies choose to use Debian.

Because if a worker sits down at a UserLinux workstation,
they know they'll have Gnome, and Openoffice, and the menus
will look a certain way, etc.

If someone sits down at a Debian workstation, who knows what
they'll have.  It could be KDE, it could be Gnome, it could
be Blackbox or Fluxbox.  This isn't bad for people like you
and me but it frustrates and confuses users.

Userlinux is good for end-user types and business.  It
balances vendor-neutrality and ease-of-use consistency.