This Week's Featured Presentation Open Source Tools for Web Developers David Mandel's Latest Linux Project What is the best Linux distribution? Mandrake? RedHat? Suse? Debian? Conectiva? RedFlag? or one of 200 other distributions we know about? At Netule, we don't believe there is a single "Best Linux Distribution". Instead, we believe your distribution should be designed to fit your problem. This is the beauty of Open Source Software. Developers are free to build distributions to fit particular needs. Thus, we are building a family of special purpose distributions which include (or will include): A firewall distribution A mail server distribution A web server distribution A print server distribution A network backup distribution and many others (Our goal is start with general distributions like the firewall and mail distributions and migrate to very specialized distributions like a community portal distribution, or a small retail store accounting distribution, or a GIS map distribution.) Each of these are (or will be) quick and easy to install and optimized to the task at hand. The Distribution Incubator Building and maintaining and marketing one distribution - even a thin distribution - is time consuming and expensive. No one makes money doing this, altho some people do well on associated services. And of course, building an entire family of distributions is even more difficult than building a single distribution. At Netule, we are looking to the community to help. There are currently thousands of developers working on hundreds of distributions. These people have very different technical goals and business models, but we are working with a growing number of Open Source consultants, developers, testers, technical writers, and business people who share common goals which include: Better, simplier, more robust computing solutions for small business Common branding and joint marketing Central web sites for sales, development, and technical support A mix with a small paid core staff, some royality based developers and writers, and unpaided volunteers all working together Simple installation procedures requiring little or no Linux knowledge and few technical decisions Simple web based administrative tools Simple, reasonable licenses A concern for security Hooks to external managed services when needed Our goal is the impose as few contraints on our development partners as possible while building a comprehensive high quality family of Linux distributions with a similar look and feel. Furthermore, we want to build distributions that normal people can install and administrate with minimal reliance on highly skilled consultants and computer professionals. An Open Invitation We are always looking for more people to join our team. We do not have many paid positions and most of these are in marketing and project coordination. However, we can offer other benefits to help you enhance your resume and/or get consulting work. If you would like to help in any way, please contact the Netule project or better yet contact me directly. For more information visit

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