According to a story published by another LDN affiliate, LinuxandMain, the UnitedLinux consortium should release a beta to select testers by the end of the month. UnitedLinux, which launched in the end of May, is a group of four beleaguered Linux companies attempting to make a proprietary GNU/Linux “standard.” “The UnitedLinux consortium says the first beta drop of its common base system will be available to its customers by the end of August. An open beta, the consortium said, will be made available by the end of September.”
UnitedLinux, which comprises Caldera, Suse, TurboLinux, and Conectiva, is an effort to pool the resources of the four companies to produce a base system common to all, with the goal of luring third-party commercial developers and perhaps cutting into Red Hat's commanding lead in enterprise and server Linux. There is no desktop distribution anticipated, though each company is expected to incorporate at least some aspects of the UnitedLinux product in its desktop distribution. The enterprise version on which the group is concentrating would involve extensive support and other options in addition to the software itself.