On Tuesday, November 13, 2001, at 12:34 PM, Gavin Scott wrote:

> John writes:
>
>> Red Hat's proprietary Linux?
>
> I have a hard time comprehending a definition for the word "proprietary"
> that applies to an operating system which is entirely under the GPL.
>
> G.
>
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>
The fundamental difference between virtually every linux distribution is
basically.

1.  The installer
2.  The software they decided to include (all of which is freely
available, the commercial stuff (if any) is on another CD in the box)
3.  The default for putting software (Redhat and Mandrake have it wrong
in my opinion)
4.  If it is RPM or DEB based for packages - 98% of them are RPM based,
but DEB is far far superior.  RPM came from Redhat many years ago and
since most distributions are descendants of redhat, they use it - DEB is
part of Debian and any distro based on it, and there are currently no
viable Debian based distributions, but Xandros (who bought Corels Linux
a couple months ago) might make it successful.  Finally there is
Conectiva in Brazil who have a tool to allow rpms to work like debs, and
i understand it's very nice.

but proprietary Linux?  Hogwash.

shawn

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