More Companies Jump on the Linux Train

"X Company now supports Linux" announcements are coming in thick and fast these days. Examples: yesterday J Ellerbroek sent this link for Aureal's Linux drivers and Drakar wrote, "I e-mailed Sigma Designs asking them about Linux support for the RealMagic Hollywood Plus DVD Decoder, and they say they're working on supporting Linux for a future product." And Nicholas Tang turned us on to this announcement about an upcoming open sourced RPG with a Linux client. Very nice! But we're getting so many of these announcements that we can't possibly run them all. If you've spotted any others recently, please post them below. (Click for more.)

I had a thought while I was typing the words above: should Slashdot do periodic "roundups" of new Linux ports and support announcements? With so many hardware and software vendors now moving into the "Linux marketplace" (which is how many of them see Linux -- as a marketplace), these announcements are no longer "news" in the sense of being unique or unusual events, but they're still good to know about.

Should we make a weekly post out of all these announcements? Or, because they don't come in at an even rate, should we save them up until we have 10 or so and post them all then whether that takes two days or three weeks?

So, besides posting any new Linux product/support announcements you've seen lately, how about a little advice on how Slashdot might best handle these announcements in the future? I promise to read every comment with a moderation level of zero or higher.

- Robin "roblimo" Miller

Comments

Linux? What about Free Software?

[Kaufmann]

At the risk of coming off as some unholy Stallman-wannabe, I have to say this.

Linux isn't what's important. Free Software is.

Linux is software, and software comes and goes. Whether some company or other jumps on the Linux bandwagon is irrelevant in the big picture. What is truly important is to spread Free Software in general - not only the software itself, but the accompanying meme that says, essentially, that "sharing is profitable". The catch is to ingrain this idea into our culture in the same way that sharing is already ingrained in the scientific and mathematical communities.

Once we've done that, we'll have achieved something much greated than pressuring a lot of companies to support a Free operating system. We'll have dominated the world. Because world domination is not achieved by actually taking over the world, but by having the world think that you're in control of it.

(Again, sorry for the rant. I'm in extended no-sleep mode.)

Re:"In a future product"

[damyan]

Where I was working last year they had several marketing ideas floating around -- one was 'lets see if we can get this on Slashdot'. (Along with 'lets email everyone on the internet' and 'lets fax every fax machine in the UK' -- they weren't very bright)

The point is that the unscrupulous could quite easily get themselves onto /. and basically (in their eyes) reap in the same benefits that spam provides them with.

I think that perhaps /. should ignore announcements like 'we'll be supporting linux in a future product' and only post ones like 'version 1 of xxx for linux is out'.

Linux is important!

[rogerbo]

Sorry, I beg to differ and I bet a lot of other people do to.

I don't require that everypiece of software is GPL'ed, or even that every piece of software is freely available in any form.

Binary only software distribution has it's place and so does (gasp horror) binary only software that you have to pay money for.

What is important about linux gaining mainstream driver support (even in binary only form) is that people now have a real choice in the future on intel rather than being forced to use Microsoft operating systems by default.

With the mostly collapse of non-intel architecture unix platforms in the workstation market (Sun, SGI, HP etc) we needed a robust unix based low cost alternative.

Linux is it, and I don't care if some software is binary only or I have to pay money for it.

Linux Anouncements

[chabotc]

I think i'd like a combination of some of the above ideas.

First create a anounce section, in which every 'anouncement' is an article. This gives people the option to discuss every anouncement, eg those aurol 3d drivers seem to be a nice discussed item, so why stomp the discussions.

Then create a slashbox, to show the most N-recent anouncements. This alows people who are interested to see all the recent trafic on the 'anounce list', but ppl who dont care dont have to be confronted.

Then every once a 'period' eg week, biweekly or whatever, do a roundup, as we do quickies every-once-in-a-while (Tm) currently, on the main page.

This way people who want to read, and reply to everything, can.

People who have questions on this release/anouncements, have a place to discuss.

People who just care a little bit, can just read the slashbox, to get a @ a glance impression.

People who care even less, will see an article commin by every week/ every other week, and get a quick glance @ what happend, and is of intrest...

This way we should serve all people, and all desire levels.



-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"

We don't need announcements...

[Eccles]

...we need a web page. With summaries of each company's existing support (and non-support), the structure of this support (closed driver vs. published specs vs. open source driver), and announced plans. That web site could then have a weekly news report of new announcements.