OStatic

In January, we wrote about a free, downloadable book on Ubuntu called Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference, which is helpful for diving into Ubuntu. The book's author is Keir Thomas, who has written other books on Linux. Today, he reports in a post that over the years he has heard from many readers and other people who have quit Linux to move to platforms such as Windows or the Mac. He supplies the Top 7 Reasons People Quit Linux here. There are some interesting reasons why people quit, and some interesting rebuttals from Thomas. There are also some implied usability lessons for the Linux community.

Since the dawn of the distribution, there have been ways to remaster, re-spin, and otherwise rework a Linux flavor into something slightly different -- something that could be replicated and installed across multiple machines. These remastering tools are usually distribution specific (I first tried my hand with this several years back with Knoppix and the Debian live-magic live image creator) and vary in how forgiving (and permissive) they are when new users get too enthusiastic in choosing packages to add and remove.

TechRadar recently featured InstaLinux, a web interface utilizing the Linux Common Operating Environment (LinuxCOE) SystemDesigner. This application allows for the creation of network and media (including USB) installation images using a number of core Linux distributions as a base.

On Monday, Michael DeHaan cast his net into Debian/Ubuntu waters, seeking out those who might be interested in packaging and maintaining the Red Hat-centric installation/provisioning server, Cobbler.

DeHaan states that recent additions and improvements added to Cobbler's development branch are shaping the project into a viable alternative to Debian's FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) package.

What user of open source has not wrestled with software installation at one time or another? If you're not tracking down conflicts or hunting for the download site for the current version of something, you're chasing dependencies in a seemingly-endless chain. Perhaps this is a symptom of the decentralized and rapidly-moving nature of open source - or perhaps not. Cloudsmith (in seemingly-eternal beta) suggests that there might be a way to get past at least some of the installation pain points.