Slashdot Mirror

Kanagawa asks: "The last few years have seen a slew of new Linux clustering and blade-server hardware solutions; they're being offered by the likes of HP, IBM, and smaller companies like Penguin Computing. We've been using the HP gear for awhile with mixed results and have decided to re-evaluate other solutions. We can't help but notice that the Google gear in our co-lo appears to be off-the-shelf motherboards screwed to aluminum shelves. So, it's making us curious. What have Slashdot's famed readers found to be reliable and cost effective for clustering? Do you prefer blade server forms, white-box rack mount units, or high-end multi-CPU servers? And, most importantly, what do you look for when making a choice?"

Pii writes "News.com is running a story about Penguin Computing acquiring Scyld Computing, a company founded by Donald Becker, of linux ethernet driver and Beowulf cluster fame. Becker will stay on as Penguin's Chief Technology Officer, and the companies claim they don't expect any layoffs as a result of the merger."

blueforce writes "Computer World is reporting that there's a shortage of skilled mainframe workers on the horizon. Quote: "Getting IT professionals, especially young ones, interested in learning mainframe work isn't easy." No kidding. While I've never worked on a mainframe, I have worked on AS/400's. 3 words - Mind Numb ing. Perhaps it's time for a more long-term solution to the problem. Interesting nonetheless. Who'da thunk it - a shortage in IT. What's next, COBOL?"

Cerlyn asks: "I am the network administrator of three server grade machines purchased from three separate companies. The recent power problems in California reminded me of the fact that none of these servers seem to support power management. The operating systems these systems run (Linux 2.2, 2.4, and FreeBSD 4.2) are compiled to support power management, but do not detect any power management capabilities at all. Granted, no one wants a server sleeping on the job. But the way things seem to be coded, processors can not even sleep while idle without known hardware support. Lightly loaded machines are often idle 75% of the time or more. Sleeping while idle could make them save a significant amount of power. For many companies, the extra ten seconds it would take to spin up a backup server's hard drive(s) likely would be a non-issue. So, why don't server grade computers support advanced power management (APM), APCI and the like?" And in the land of the rolling blackout, one has to wonder if the potential power saved could help the situation, assuming a good percentage of the big iron in Silicon Valley were configured to conserve what power it could (as opposed to adding on to the drain as it is now).

You've seen Penguin Computing's "Tux stomps Microsoft HQ" ad, right? It's the one with the caption, "Good evening, Mr. Gates, I'll be your server today!" This morning, when I opened up my copy of the Washington Post, that ad, in full color, dominated the entire front page of the business section. Below it was a story headlined, Microsoft's Next Trials - Windows Case Could Open Doors for the Upstart Linux Operating System. This may be the most unabashed piece of journalistic Linux advocacy ever published in a major daily newspaper. The print edition, but apparently not the Post's Web site, also contained a sidebar story about how the article's author installed Corel Linux on his home desktop computer -- and found it fairly easy to do. Indeed, he says, the hardest part of his personal Linux foray was parting with the high-end Linux-loaded Latitude laptop Dell loaned him to test. "It will pain me to give it back," he said.

Stunt Pope asks: "I'm looking for general opinions on Penguin Computing's Blackfoot 2500 series racks. Pro's or con's, anecdotal evidence, rants, raves, particularly using RAID1 and RAID5. The price seems competitive and I'm wondering how they hold up under production environments in terms of extended uptimes and hardware reliability. "

BigTed writes "Webmonkey has got an interesting article up about the VA Linux takeover of Andover and its effect on *gasp* Slashdot and the Open Source Community." Personal note: I almost quit when I heard about the merger, because I had exactly the same worries Jay Greenspan expresses in this editorial. Since then I have been personally reassured by Larry Augustin that VA Linux has no desire to mess with the content on any Andover site, including Slashdot. I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it. And yes, we will continue to post news of Red Hat, Penguin Computing, and others in the Linux corporate community, same as before. Everyone who works on Slashdot, and everyone in Andover.net management, has sworn to defend Slashdot's editorial independence. Period. - Robin 'roblimo' Miller, Editor-in-Chief, Andover.net. Update: 02/09 05:16 by CT : here is a Salon Story by Andrew Leondard expressing the same concerns as the webmonkey bit.

Will in Seattle writes "C-Net has a story about how the bundled-in games on newer Linux pre-installed boxen may drive the rapid adoption of Linux in the mainstream. Which, naturally, all the coders fear above all else. Who let in these gamers? (Reminds me of my days at SF and Comix cons back when I was a SMOG and a SMOF - will we ever learn?)" The story also says that Penguin Computing is now building Linux computes specifically for gamers, too. Enjoy!

Quite a number of people have written in with the news that Dell is going to be expanding their Linux support. Beginning in October, they will be offering installation of Linux on their hugely popular Dimension Line of PCs-before this, it had only been offered on servers. Will this mean more competition for the VAs and Penguins?

Couple of interesting developments in Linux hardware lately. The Linux Store is selling super cheap linux boxes. news.com has a story about them where they proclaim that they will only be advertising on sites like Slashdot and Freshmeat except that Scoop doesn't even had ads, and I'd never heard of them before reading that article. An actual advertiser (Penguin Computing), however now has a 8 CPU Xeon Box that runs Linux (of course). First 8 CPU box I've seen running Linux (which I didn't even know could do 8 way SMP. Although I've been told of 32 and 64 chip linux boxes in development by other companies. No I can't name names).

Allison Huynh writes "In the HBR (sept/oct. 98) issue, there's this positive article call "Dawn of the E-lance Economy" that mentioned Linux and Linus Torvalds prominently! It's mainly a speculative piece on the future of economic organization rather than a rigorous analysis of our favourite Penguin. Nevertheless, it makes great use of Linux as a discontinuous and innovative example in economic trend calling." The full article costs money ($100 for an annual subscription fee), but there is an executive summary available (Ed: I expect that e-lancing will become standard next century. I would expect to see the development of syndicates that protect their members from unscrupulous companies and that build a reputation for themselves. Do you agree? Would you want to work for such a syndicate?) Allison also asked us to plug an Open Source Forum at Stanford University this November. Please e-mail him if you have suggestions on topics and speakers you would like to see there.

ockman@penguincomputing.com writes "It looks like IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq have decided to get back in the game of adding real value. They have a PCI spec. [Ed's note - will have] that's six times faster than the current one. This was created without the support of Intel, as what these companies call "a grass-roots type of backlash" Sounds like good news - either Intel supports the superior technology and competes with Mylex and the gang, or loses market share. Besides, it looks as if Intel will support it anyway. More MHz never hurt anybody (no pun intended).

Kevin Forge has written in with an interesting piece called Lawyers use WordPerfect. It talks about his view on free software vs. commercial software, and especially commercial software on free Operating Systems. Check it out. The following is a feature written by Slashdot reader Kevin Forge Lawyers use Word Perfect Each time even a rumor of a commercial app being ported to Linux is mentioned we get comments that run the gamut from ; "Let's all go buy this to show our support for the platform" to "We can achieve most everything that prog offers by using these open source tools so why should we trust our important work to this propriatery bloatware ?".

"who wants world domination"?

We constantly hear the argument that Linux will achieve world domination or that a significant percentage of all computers will be run on Linux in a few years. However to achieve either goal Linux must be a viable option for people with real business needs now.

This brings me to the lawyers we all love to hate. I am siting in a Lawyer's office waiting to be paid for fixing Windows 95 on 2 PCs ( again ) when a client walks out having just spelled out the details of her divorce ( loud enough for me to hear ). Before she is in the parking lot the laser starts spiting out the 1st page of a 30 page court document for her case.

How the hell could that be done so fast ?

Simple It was already done. The details that change are few and far between. Things like names, addresses and dates. Once these are entered into fields a macro is run that generates your own customized "I can't live with this bum anymore" court filling.

Don't discount inertia

Now you could say it's easy enough to do this kind of thing with a shell script on a Linux system without the added expense of Word Perfect. However it took these people years to tune operations and learn WP to the point where this became a practical time saving prosedure. To move this operation to existing open source software would mean learning all these tricks again.

How important is the cost of changing ? Well these same lawyers buy new PCs preburdend with MSOffice 97 and promptly upgrade to Corel Perfect Office 8 or even 7 in order that they can keep using the same techniques. Sure those features are available on MSOffice and the learning curve from one Windows app to another is tiny compared to moving to traditional Unix tools. However an even lower cost is simply shelling out a hundred bucks for a CD from Corel.

Where does Linux fit?

Well with WP on Linux the barriers to entry become significantly lower for Lawyers. Simply put, a Penguin preloaded and configured with XDM, KDE, WP8 and Laserjet support has the same learning curve as moving up to a Dell with NT4 or 98 and WP8. With the massive reliability gap taken into consideration they could see Linux as a cost effective solution and another group joins ISPs and tech companies as Linux users.

Where does this leave the open source word processors ?

I see no reason to not continue aggressive development of the better GPLed Word Processors. K/LyX is moving well and there is talk of a serious contender from the Gnome camp. Maxwell, which shines among Linux apps has been GPLed with a flat request to "port it to Gnome and KDE" ( It's Motif based ). One of these will eventually become a challenger to WP across the board. By then Word Perfect will be accustomed to maintaining a quality lead that enables them to survive against a free challenger. In other words those without money or who attend "The church of Emacs" will have good WPs and the rest of us will have slightly better WPs.

Telling people to "accept the open source concept" if they want to use Linux or to "GPL all code that you will release on Linux" is completely pointless. Even RMS knows this which is why he wrote the LGPL.

This applies to the SQL people too.

Right now all but 2 of the large database makers are officially supporting their products on Linux. IBM programmers say a port is running in the lab ( I have no reason to doubt this for even a second ) and Microsoft would prefer to pretend Linux doesn't exist (let's return the favor :). Some months ago I argued that Oracle wouldn't ever port to Linux until they saw it as a "port or die" desision at which point they would start selling the DB for Linux they already have running in the labs. The reality is a little more impressive than the speculation. It seems all these vendors will be giving away products in order to establish market share. Is it just me or do other people think they are trying to get a significant piece of the Linux DB pie before it gets big?

Should we all just run out and buy these programs to show our support?

No. That's just crazy. Let the free market have it's say. There are evaluation versions of the better stuff floating around. If you find it's good enough to keep beyond the evaluation period then fork over the dough. That doesn't mean you need to wait out the full period however, just until you know it's a keeper. We should buy them if they are of some use to us. We should buy them if they are good. It's your money spend it wisely, you now have choices.

Nick Moffitt writes " Industry giant Microsoft just opened their new 32-acre Silicon Valley campus one block away from Penguin Computing. We at Penguin have received intelligence that this was not accidental, and that the legacy OS manufacturer is attempting to squash our innovation. As a retaliatory measure, we plan to announce construction of our 64-acre Redmond campus, with satellite buildings in Seattle, Factoria, Bothell, and Tukwilla, effectively surrounding our competition. "

Nick Moffitt writes " Industry giant Microsoft just opened their new 32-acre Silicon Valley campus one block away from Penguin Computing. We at Penguin have received intelligence that this was not accidental, and that the legacy OS manufacturer is attempting to squash our innovation. As a retaliatory measure, we plan to announce construction of our 64-acre Redmond campus, with satellite buildings in Seattle, Factoria, Bothell, and Tukwilla, effectively surrounding our competition. "

Sam Ockman writes " the 500 members or os of SVLUG, are going to have a big rally tonight at the largest/most prestigious computer store in Silicon Valley, Fry's, when they stay open until 1am to distribute Windows 98. We're going to hand out Linux CDs and stuff like that as well. We'd like to have more people at the rally then go to buy Windows 98. " You can check out the details here.

Sam Ockman writes " the 500 members or os of SVLUG, are going to have a big rally tonight at the largest/most prestigious computer store in Silicon Valley, Fry's, when they stay open until 1am to distribute Windows 98. We're going to hand out Linux CDs and stuff like that as well. We'd like to have more people at the rally then go to buy Windows 98. " You can check out the details here.