The Ultimate Distro
The name of Gaël Duval's new distro, Ulteo, with its hint of the word "ultimate", smacks of a certain ambition. But Duval probably means it in the sense that it is the last distribution you will ever need to install, because thereafter it will "self-upgrade automatically," as the announcement of the alpha release put it. Ease-of-use has been a constant theme in Duval's work. When he launched his first distro, Mandrake, in July 1998, one of his stated goals was "to provide a working and easy-to-install linux-distribution to people who don't want to spend too much time in installing and configuring their Linux system : just install it and USE IT."
But if the vision has been steadfast, the path to achieving it has proved somewhat stony. First Mandrake acquired Conectiva to form Mandriva, and then, in March 2006, Duval was "laid off", as the euphemism has it. If you're interested, you can read Duval's comments on the whole affair, as well as those of François Bancilhon, CEO of Mandriva, and decide for yourself what really happened. But looking at the bigger picture, what's interesting about the Mandrake/Ulteo saga is that it recapitulates so much of the recent history of free software, as new distros have continually been created in an attempt to resolve the perceived shortcomings of existing offerings.
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