01.24.14

Why a Deletion of Pear OS From the Web (Including SourceForge) is Mysterious

Posted in GNU/Linux, Ubuntu at 10:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A rising star among Ubuntu derivatives abruptly shuts down and some believe that Apple may have caused it

LAST month it was Linux Mint, a popular derivative of Canonical’s Ubuntu (there are many such flavours [1,2], including new ones [3]), which received “distro of the year” honours, not just the top position at DistroWatch. Judging by journalists’ affinity towards it [4], as well as various positive new reviews [5-8], we are living in a Mint world [9] and Mint may be the world’s most popular (depending on how it’s measured) GNU/Linux distribution [10]. I use it myself sometimes. No wonder Canonical starts making things harder for Mint, in a similar fashion to what Red Hat did to CentOS back in the days. Canonical can also be quite aggressive with trademarks, but nowhere as aggressive as Apple, which has a history of shutting down clones, critics, and even news sites that reveal Apple “secrets”.

Among the popular distributions of Ubuntu there is a Chinese derivative, there is Kubuntu (which I use a lot along with Debian), the rising star Bodhi [11,12] (looking to raise funds right now), and several other independent-from-Canonical ‘flavours’, some of which we no longer hear about. One that we have been hearing about increasingly is this “French Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution” called Pear Linux or Pear OS. People have been speculating that Apple’s legal team would harass it.

According to the reports that say Pear OS is gone [13-16] there is also speculation that Apple might have had something to do with it [17]. We previously wrote about Pear OS as it had been rising in popularity and becoming very similar to OS X (like Elementary). Jim Lynch, who thinks that Apple may have had something to do with it, says “[t]he developer mentions that it was bought by another company but doesn’t say who nor does he give specific reasons on why they purchased it.” Curious to say the least. Softpedia, which has a copy of the distro, says [18]: “It looks like Pear OS also disappeared from many of SourceForge’s mirrors.” It remains to be know if Apple had something to do with the acquiring party. If we never find out who the buyer is, then maybe, as Lynch insinuates, it was a shell. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Xubuntu 13.10 – Same again please bartender

2. Ubuntu flavours release Trusty Tahr Alpha 1

3. Ubuntu Mini Remix 13.10 Is A Tiny Ubuntu 13.10 Unofficial Respin

   Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Ubuntu Mini Remix 13.10 provides a minimal version of Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander, enabling the users to install the preferred desktop environment and all the main packages that will get installed.

4. The Remarkable Intel NUC

   My unit had Win 8.1 pre-installed on the SSD, but I could easily install various versions of Linux. I’m currently playing with the MINT distro. The NUC easily booted from any of the USB CD Drives I had laying around the house and quickly into Linux Mint. The machine immediately recognized all the weird USB devices I had hooked to a hub connected to the little box.

5. Linux Mint 16: No Surprises, but Plenty of Solid Improvements

   Linux Mint 16, also known as “Petra,” is a very solid release that fixes a lot of annoying traits left behind in previous versions.

6. Linux Mint 16 “Petra” Cinnamon, KDE and MATE review

   Linux Mint 16, code-named Petra, is the latest edition of the popular desktop edition that is based on Ubuntu Desktop.

   This edition is different from Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), which is also from the Linux Mint project, but is based on Debian, not Ubuntu.

   The Linux Mint line of this distribution has support for the Cinnamon, KDE, MATE and Xfce desktop environments. The Cinnamon edition, which is the main edition, is typically released before the others, but as at the time of writing this review, installation images for all four desktop environments have been released.

   This article presents a review of the Cinnamon, KDE and MATE desktops, starting with aspects that are common to all three.

7. A minty fresh start

   We’re into a new year, so isn’t it time you thought about a fresh new start? Mint 16 is out and it’s easily the best version of Mint to date, packing Cinnamon 2.0 as its desktop. To celebrate its launch we’ve got eight pages dedicated to how the Mint community pushed through these key features, bug fixes, taking Mint 14 from what it was, to today; making Mint 16 a truly awesome Linux desktop experience. We also look forward to Mint 17, which creator Clement “Clem” Lefebvre and the Mint community have huge
   plans for.

8. Linux Mint 16 Xfce Desktop Review

   We have all the highlights of Linux Mint 16 Xfce, so you can see if this is the right distribution for you. Users will not find a long list of new features, but thankfully the desktop is more stable than ever. The Mint 16 Cinnamon desktop release will likely get all of the publicity, so I decided it was time to revisit Xfce.

9. Minty Day in the Linuxsphere

   Jim Lynch’s post “Is Linux Mint the most popular distro?” was the first article to catch my wandering eye today as I perused the newsfeeds. He was actually prompted by an article by David Hayward originally published in Linux Format and posted at www.techradar.com. In it, Hayward asked “What makes Linux Mint so awesome?” Then he answers it – in detail. But check out the rest of Lynch’s post too as he discusses more on Mint’s popularity.

10. Is Linux Mint the most popular desktop distro?

    Who knew when Linux Mint started out that it would give Ubuntu itself a run for its money? The article notes the negative reaction to Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, and the many dissatisfied Ubuntu users that switched to Linux Mint.

    Think I’m kidding about that? Take a look at the screenshot below from DistroWatch’s rankings. Linux Mint is listed in the number one spot, beating out Ubuntu itself. I know a number of people who abandoned Ubuntu immediately when Unity was released, and they haven’t looked back since switching to Linux Mint.

11. Bodhi Linux could easily become a desktop distribution contender

12. Bodhi Linux powered Chromebook Raffle

    Something you may not know about Bodhi Linux is that we are 100% funded by user donations. We do not plaster our home page or user forums with ad content like so many distros do. We are very thankful to all of the folks that donate to keep our package servers running. Towards the tail end of 2011 we raffled off a Dell Netbook to a random person who donated at least five dollars during a set period of time.

13. Bodhi Linux could easily become a desktop distribution contender

14. Bodhi Linux powered Chromebook Raffle

    Something you may not know about Bodhi Linux is that we are 100% funded by user donations. We do not plaster our home page or user forums with ad content like so many distros do. We are very thankful to all of the folks that donate to keep our package servers running. Towards the tail end of 2011 we raffled off a Dell Netbook to a random person who donated at least five dollars during a set period of time.

15. Pear OS downloads removed

16. Pear OS Is No Longer Available for Download

    We are extremely sorry to inform all users of the Pear OS Linux operating system that David Tavares, the creator of Pear OS, has announced a few minutes ago on Google+ that the Pear OS distribution will no longer be available for download.

17. Pear Departure, Bodhi Fundraiser, and Mageia 4 RC

18. Mysterious Disappearance Of PearOS

    A distro with GUI resembling MacOS and known for distribution of multimedia codecs has suspended downloads. That could violated GPL licensing unless the new owners appear promptly.“Its future is now in hands of a company who wants to remain anonymous for the moment. The concept has pleased them it and now wants to continue and improve the system for their own products. I can not give a name but it is a very large company well known …”

19. Was Apple involved in the death of Pear OS?

    Was Apple involved in any way with the death of Pear OS? The conspiracy-minded among us probably think that might be a real possibility, particularly if Apple acted behind the scenes via a shell company. Apple has been known to do just that in years past when it wanted to negotiate for something without having its real identity known.

20. Pear OS Is No Longer Available for Download

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