[conspire] Ah, another test subject for this Saturday's CABAL

[Rick Moen]

Quoting David Fox (dfox94085 at gmail.com):

> According to distrowatch, it is available. I am getting the i386
> torrent and probably will have it and the amd64 iso's available by
> Saturday if people need them and if noone else has beaten me to the
> punch yet. (I have pretty good bandwidth here.)

OK, thanks.  I might take you up on that.  Do I correctly assume that
you're downloading 8.04 betas of the Ubuntu Desktop images, and not of
the Alternate images -- and nothing of Kubuntu or Xubuntu?


> Distrowatch as of right now also features SUSE 11.0 [...]

Well, no.  Just the third _alpha_ release.  That'll be pretty scary.


> and a new Mandriva [...]

Second release _candidate_.  Often, such a release gets redesignated as
the _actual_ release in a few days, if no serious problems turn up, but
you never know.  It's probably more than reliable enough for someone
with a tiny bit of adventuresomeness, anyway.


> Slax [...]

_That_ one's a full release -- though personally a live CD based on
Slackware seems a slightly weird idea.


> something called "Ulteo" that I'm not familiar with.

New distro from France, by the former head of the Mandriva company
(previously MandrakeSoft).  Like gOS, it emphasises _hosted_ (online)
proprietary applications at an ASP (Application Service Provider),
instead of providing local (real) applications in the distro itself.  
This is sometimes called the "Software as a Service" (SaaS) model.

In the case of gOS, this approach outsources the bulk of your computing
to Google Apps (GMail, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheet, etc.) --
though it does also furnish as (very light) selection of genuine, local
open-source applications as well.

In the case of Ulteo, you outsource your data and computing to hosted
apps running at Ulteo's own ASP servers:  You sign up for an "account"
with them to get going, with some basic levels of service provided free
of charge for now, and no doubt others by subscription.  I see no
mention of any local applications being provided in Ulteo's case, at all.


> No mention of Knoppix yet, at least on distrowatch.

Yes, quite.  5.1.1, dated over a year ago, remains the latest public
release (i.e., as opposed to 5.3, which was available only _at_ CeBIT).
Of course, the mirrors will be mobbed when 5.3.1 comes out, so I won't 
make matters worse by telling you where I'm checking.  ;->