Bridging the Linux chasm

Most people will agree on what a commercial distro is. it is fairly obvious. A distro that is funded and backed by a company.

Examples would be Suse, RedHat, Mandriva, and others. Some of these making more money than others.

Then there is the wild west world of "Community" distros.

It is an interesting place this Community world. It contains distros that stretch the very boundaries on either end of the scale.

For example, on one end, there is Ubuntu. It pushes itself as a community distro although it is financially backed by a company, Canonical, and does pay some developers to contribute and maintain it. it is not sold to the public in any form and does not generate revenue, unlike the 'full' commercial distros mentioned above.

Ubuntu is released on fixed schedules and the repos are available to support those releases for a fixed time.

Ubuntu is based on another distro, that ironically, perhaps best encompasses the entire opposite end of the spectrum that is Community. Debian.

Debian is about as "Community" as it gets. Leaders are elected by the general community and development is done largely on consensus.

Debian tries hard to release on schedule, but with such a large group of people involved in development, the consensus and coordination side of the operation can take unexpected turns and stalls at times waiting for everything to come together.

What is the results of these two ends of the Community spectrum?

Well, Ubuntu enjoys popularity with more releases throughout the year and because of it's increased financial support from Canonical, has an advertising budget that no other 'Community" distro can match.

Debian on the other hand has garnered the respect of the overall Linux community by it's continued longevity and it's commitment to stability. People tend to be patient waiting for the next release of Debian because when it is ready, it is almost always capital "G" Good.

What about those distros that fall somewhere in between?

OpenSuse and Fedora also enjoy limited financial backing from companies and operate in a semi-formal organizational structure.

They have leaders elected by the community to act as representatives in development. Even so, the community 'temperature' is monitored heavily to see that they are moving along lines most likely to be widely accepted.

Some of the distros Have entirely no company backing and survive on volunteerism and donations from the community.

The organizational structure of these other distros range between benevolent dictatorships to being led by committee.

Some distros start as one man shows and benevolent dictatorships and evolve over time into something mixed. Almost like having a parliament and prime minister of the distro, the former benevolent dictator becoming the PM and the community stepping up to form the parliament.

I can think of two such "parliament" distros, or distros evolving to become such. Both share incredible popularity although both have no commercial support or backing.

Both distro started as 'one man shows' and have grown in community and scope to require evolution or stall and perish as a distro. Luckily for us, they have both continued to evolve and though experiencing growing pains, both are showing signs of longevity and continued support.

The distros being discussed here are PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint.

A fella named Clem started Linux Mint and another guy referred to as Texstar started PCLinuxOS.

Both used other distros as their foundations and while keeping close to those foundations, haven't been afraid to do their own thing at the same time.

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and follows the Ubuntu release schedule as closely as is feasible.

PCLinuxOS is originally based on Mandriva and will 'rebase' off of it from time to time but by and large takes the primary snapshot and then follows it's own path from there.

There are so many parallels between the two distros it is uncanny. At the same time, they are entirely unique in their own rights.

If one visits each of the distro forums, one will find a wide variety of users from outright 'newbies' to highly experienced and seasoned 'pros' co-existing peacefully. Giving lie to the idea of Linux Elitism prohibiting community adoption.

Also, one will find so called 'fan boys' in each community. Called so because their enthusiasm for that particular distro knows no bounds and is approximate to a soccer or football teams fans. They can sometimes be annoying and permanently bound to their rose colored glasses in regard to their distro of choice, but are by and large harmless.

Both distros are in the process of evolution, moving away from the 'one man show' or ' benevolent dictatorship' depending on any one persons interpretation. to the style I like to call 'parliamentary'.

Both distros have felt the heat of the community in putting out new releases in what the general Linux community might think of as 'timely'.

Linux Mint receives a bit less attention in that regard because it follows the Ubuntu release schedule as closely as it can, which is at least twice a year.

PCLinuxOS takes a bit of a different approach to the release cycle and prefers to release on a roughly annual cycle, given that a set of standards imposed by the development team, headed up by Texstar have been met. If the expectations are not met, then the release will be prolonged until they are.

No matter what distro or type of community structure it employs, all Linux distros face the same wants and expectations from users. Some users are hobbyists and demand the newest, latest/greatest apps and pkgs regardless of stability. They want to play and can often be the noisiest group of users out there.

As usual, the noisiest group is usually the smallest and most polls and studies show that by and large, most users want a stable distro and are willing to be patient in getting the newest apps available so as to get increased stability.

The type of structure a distro takes is done in large part to produce the distro in as timely and reliable fashion as they can. The need to respond to users in the community increases as the popularity of the given distro grows. some might say it is an enviable problem. For if it seems the entire world is demanding more and more of the distro, that means the distro is gaining in popularity and enjoying more people using it.

The more popularity a distro gets, the more it will be required to grow and evolve to respond to that community of users. That which made you, can also break you.

Any distro team needs to be able to respond to that while at the same time maintaining a structure that will still allow it to do the type and quality of work they intend to do.

It's a hard line to walk. Decisions aren't easy and the fun can be lost in a heartbeat if one doesn't allow others to step up and help. How many cooks will spoil the soup though? So much to balance.

I tip my hat to all the various and sundry Linux Distro development teams and communities. It can be a lot of fun and it can be a lot of stress. Overall, you make it what you want it to be.

Ain't Linux great?