Survey Date: 03/21/2000 Name of person providing information: Dan Graham E-mail address: dan@maxos.com Connection with this distribution: (note, survey information from distribution creators/developers will replace information from other interested parties, wherever available.) In charge of development of proprietary tools within the distribution. Planning on adding a proprietary installer. Aside from that, it is primarily GNU. Why that installer? Avoid organizations by Cheapbytes. Free versions available for download, but redistribution by others with our proprietary tools and/or trademark will not be allowed. We have shareholders to answer to. 1. What is the name of your distribution? MaxOS What is the website for your distribution? http://maxos.com 2. What is the derivation of your distribution? _ SLS _ Slackware _ Jurix _ Red Hat _ Debian X rolled from scratch _ other (Please name: ) 2a. If you answered anything besides "rolled from scratch", do you still consider your distribution "tied" to its derivation, e.g., you release updates to your distribution based on updates from the original distribution? 2b. If you answered "rolled from scratch" or other, do you use a package management system? If yes, which one? Plan on supporting multiple package managers. The distribution itself will use the Max package manager, which uses their own format, but supports rpm, .deb and slackware formats. The Max package manager will be released as open source, along with other items, in the near future. Only the installer will be proprietary. 3. What languages do you support? Please list, including English, if appropriate. English to start multi-language support as provided by Linux itself specific language support sometime later in future 4. Would you classify your distribution as a "mini"-distribution? (This is a very flexible term, covering Linux distributions sized for a floppy or smaller, up through CD or disk-based Linux distributions that are on the small size. It is more a matter of perception, in terms of whether you define the distribution partially by its small size compared to generic distributions like Debian, Red Hat, et al.) _ yes X no 4a. If you answered yes to the above, please mark any of the following that are applicable: _ CD-based, e.g., intended to be booted from and run directly from a CD without requiring a hard disk. _ Disk-based, small, but intended to be run from a hard disk. Presumably too large for a floppy. _ Floppy-based How many floppies for the base distribution? How many floppies for supported add-ons? _ Flash-disk-based _ Other Please explain: 5. Hardware Support. Please mark all the hardware platforms that your distribution supports. _ Alpha _ IBM S/390 X Intel x86/Pentium _ NEC Mobile Gear PDAs _ Sparc _ PowerPC _ PowerPC G4 _ RS/6000 _ Microcontrollers _ Other, please list: 5a. What hardware platforms do you optimize for? Distribution will be optimized for Pentiums IA 64 in the future, eventually MIPS and Alpha. PowerPC is being considered but not certain. 6. Why did you decide to produce a Linux distribution? We believe we can do it better. What we're seeing is that we're moving in that direction. We've seen poor installs, lack of additional hardware support. Dealt with end users that are tired of dealing with the problems they see. We want one that is easier to install and, once installed, runs better. We see other distributions also making progress in this area and my hat is off to them, but it is only being recently addressed. Too many of them fail right out of the can. We test on fairly vanilla hardware, yet we can't get the distributions to install without failure. How does an end user deal with this? We believe that where we're headed will be of interest to a lot of folks, including support for the Reiserfs right out of the can. We like it. It has been exceptional. ext2 is stable but slow. It is lacking. Once you've tasted the Reiser file system, there is no going back. 7. What is the target audience for your distribution? Originally, the whole thing was going to be aimed at desktop users, first time users. However, the more we look at it, the more it seems like it will reach a larger audience, because of better performance right out of the box. Expect to see people employ it on servers as well, but the emphasis will be on new users to Linux. 8. Would you consider your distribution to be: x general purpose, e.g., useful for servers, desktops, and requiring tailoring for specific purposes. No tailoring for desktop usage, some required for servers. _ special purpose, e.g., specifically tailored for a single functionality or a small group of functionalities. 8a. If you consider your distribution to be special purpose, below are a list of possible purposes. Please check all that apply and add any that are missing: _ Appliances, such as: _ Communications Server _ Router/Firewall _ Web Cache _ DOS/Windows support, via: _ DOS partition _ DOS/Windows install, separate boot _ Windows Users, accessible from Windows _ Diskless Terminal support _ Education/Schools _ Ease-of-use, for non-technical users _ Embedded Systems _ High-end and Cluster computing _ Non-exportable crytographic support _ Older, slower hardware (pre-Pentium, for example) _ Optimized performance _ Reduced memory usage _ Rescue disk _ Security _ Targeted user market, such as: _ ISPs _ E-commerce sites _ Highly Experienced, Technical users 9. Who are the primary developers for your distribution? Please provide email addresses. Dan Graham, Travis Bouchet, Tim Pigeon, Everitt Dana. Previous background: We've been at this for a long time. Travis and Everitt are young hacker guys, Dan and Travis are old, burned out kind of guys. That's the scale. This whole thing came together about a year ago in conversation with a legal guy that was working with Alta Terra. We thought we'd bring it to market. Needed good people to manage it for us because we're a bunch of developers, not managers. As it turned out, we decided to do this in partnership with Alta Terra and the rest is history. 10. If this is a commercial distribution, what is the company providing the distribution? Alta Terra Ventures, Inc. Originally, the work was done by DT Studio Systems, Inc. Alta Terra purchased that and all the rights, then hired them to continue working on the project. 10a. Based where? "Slave Lake", Alberta, Canada, where it is dark five months out of the year. A little town, way up north. That leaves you only a few things to do with your time, one of the healthiest of which is playing with your PC. Came there to work for the local college. Within weeks, I was providing computer support for everyone in town and things have gone down-hill from there. Right now, actually speaking from Edmonton, slightly further south. 11. What other Linux distributions do you consider to be your primary competitors? Between Mandrake and Corel, for Linux distributions, but prefer to consider Microsoft our real competitor. 11a. Of the above, which distributions pre-date your distribution? Mandrake, Corel. 12. What version of the kernel are you currently shipping? 2.2.14 with the reiserfs patch. 13. What C libraries are you supporting: x a.out x glibc x glibc2 13a. Which C library is the default for your builds? (Check only one) _ a.out _ glibc x glibc2 (glibc2.1 will be the default) 14. How large is your default installation? Not sure yet, but it will be large. The automated partitioning tool will require 1.2 GB of free disk space or more. 15. How many packages are provided, including both default and optional packages? Can't answer that now, but will be able to within three weeks. 16. Optional Description: "Kick-ass". 17. Optional Comments: "Please be kind." 18. Specific questions for Maxos: Why an animation to start, particularly one that requires the use of a commercial, non-open-source plugin? 19. Support Will be providing telephone and email support for end users as well as remote administration and control support. 20. Education bias: Yes, we're going to be bundling Max with all of the stuff from Mosaic Technologies, out of New Brunswick, Canada, a company that we recently partnered with in that arena. Very good for first time users, full tutorial on using Linux. Dexter Dombro, dbdombro@maxos.com. 780 849 6333.