Linux Distros Have Had ‘App Stores’ For Years

      by Wyatt Walter

It appear that the next company to join the ‘App Store’ bandwagon will be Novell. According to PCPro, they’re considering launching an App Store for netbooks, much like vendors have been doing in Apple’s footsteps for the mobile phone market. The App Store would be in the openSUSE version of Moblin and would essentially allow users to install open source applications with a few clicks on their netbooks. One of the things that they’re depending upon to attract users to the platform and store is the fact that its applications are available for free.

What I find completely ridiculous about this whole thing is that it just might work. Linux users (including openSUSE users) have had repository after repository open for them to use for years. openSUSE (or Ubuntu, Red Hat, take your pick..) have had the ability to have these few-click installs for their users this whole time but most people don’t know what a repository is.

Novell VP of Business Development Holger Dyroff told us that “it’s also a method of educating people about the benefits of open source”. I don’t think this will work for educating people about open source, however. People will learn that “open source app store” means free as in price and not care about free as in freedom. Good or bad, this idea of an app store does seem to have brought this idea of repositories of software to be installed to the masses.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Jun 9th, 2009

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