[ale] Linspire and other commercial distros

[Christopher Fowler]

I do not know why they chose to run as root.  In our J2EE server that we
sell sometimes the tomcat user needs to be root to do system related
stuff.  I use sudo to accomplish that.

The goal of our server is to be web based only so ip config and
everything else takes place on apache running perl scripts.  Anytime the
system files need to be touch then sudo is used.

On Thu, 2004-09-30 at 09:05, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
> On Wednesday 29 September 2004 10:15 am, Mlfveer at cs.com wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I'm new to the ALE list, but not new to oss. Generally, what is the
> > response to 'commercial' Linux variants? I cut my teeth on Corel's version
> > of Linux years ago, and progressed to SuSE (which I now use). The reason I
> > ask is that I am consistently asked for 'the easiest distro to install for
> > a non-geek.' I've always felt that SuSE was pretty easy to install, but
> > have read some glowing reviews of Linspire and Xandros.
> 
> Generally the response is positive in that we (the Linux community) appreciate 
> what the companies are doing and think it is a good thing.  The response is 
> luke-warm in that not that many people buy these distributions.  Why buy 
> something when you can get it for free.  The distributions with the most 
> purchasers have free versions available, too.  
> 
> In particular, Linspire is an interesting case.  I think it has almost zero 
> uptake in the Linux community because it is so proprietary and it has a huge 
> security problem--it encourages you to run as root, so any virus or worm can 
> take over the system.  Linux fans ignore it for those reasons.  On the other 
> hand, it has real marketing muscle behind it and it is pretty easy to use.  I 
> think I've seen more preinstalled Lindows desktop computers than any other 
> distribution (walmart, tiger direct, Fry's, sub300.com).
> 
> I think that xandros, libranet, lycoris all get a lot more respect from the 
> community, but don't have the maketing savvy and $$ of Linspire.  
> 
> As an aside, I'm still interested in anyone who wants to give a 15 minute 
> presentation on any of these "alternate" distributions.  By alternate I mean 
> anything other than RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian.
> 
> Michael
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