There is much work to be done yet, but just as much progress has already been made. The future looks very bright, and by the beginning of March 1994 we hope to be well on our way toward our goal of making Linux a viable alternative to commercial operating systems. My goal from the beginning has been to create a commercial-quality distribution of the Linux operating system, a product which has not existed until now but which is absolutely essential to the success of Linux in the commercial market. In this month's column I am including the Debian Linux Manifesto as a means of introducing what I have done and what I plan to do with Debian Linux. In future columns I will discuss such topics as the commercial potential of Linux, the problems with the current commercial distribution of the operating system and the progress of the Debian Linux Association toward solving these problems.
Distributions are essential to the future of Linux.
Essentially, they eliminate the need for the user to locate, download, compile, install and integrate a fairly large number of essential tools to assemble a working Linux system. Instead, the burden of system construction is placed on the distribution creator, whose work can be shared with thousands of other users. Almost all users of Linux will get their first taste of it through a distribution, and most users will continue to use a distribution for the sake of convenience even after they are familiar with the operating system. Thus, distributions play a very important role indeed. Despite their obvious importance, distributions have attracted little attention from developers.